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When I was twenty years old, one of my high school friends got drunk and fell through the open window of a college dorm room and died. Everyone was drunk that night because it was one of those school-condoned “first-day-of-spring” rituals that colleges love. Community bonding, right? I took the call in my boyfriend’s dorm room. He had a single that year. It was small, impersonal. I rubbed my feet against the cold linoleum while I listened to another friend sob through the information. The phone can ring and your life can change. Except it doesn’t change all that much because you’re still alive. 

The post Behind the Lyrics of "Go Tonight": Grief and Nothingness appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

If we are being honest, we didn't expect to receive any responses at all to our blog post calling for stories. After all, we were asking strangers to share intimate details of their struggles with mental illness—specifically anxiety and depression—in a world that still holds a firm grip on stigma towards those who suffer. We had no idea, really, what we were going to do with these stories. 

We are not doctors. We are not psychiatrists. We are musical theatre writers.

The post When You Feel It's Too Dark to See: Lessons Learned from Three Years of Writing a New Musical About Anxiety and Depression first appeared on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

I thought I’d try something different in this blog and write about one example of how I used the music that inspires me from other genres to create something new in musical theater.  The moment I was writing in this case was the last ensemble number for my musical “Tiananmen,” where the students, in a […]

The post Mendelssohn + Spiritual + Pop Harmony = This? appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

We’re all very aware that there are a million and one ways to approach writing a musical. Some musicals are built around a collection of preexisting songs. Other musicals are devised with a group of collaborative artists. And of course (when adapting a preexisting work into a musical) you have the ability to use the […]

The post The Almighty Blueprint appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

In my blog posts here, I’m talking to a range of people who are all involved with bringing new musicals into being. This week, I had a conversation with Michelle Tattenbaum, a director with whom I’ve worked many times, both on my own material, and as a director of work at NYU’s Graduate Musical Theater […]

The post A Shared Vision, A Sense of Mission: The Director appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

When I stepped onto the plane last week it was 70 degrees at LaGuardia.  Granted, it is the global warming apocalypse, but the point is I was leaving a pretty beautiful day in New York City.  When I stepped off it was in the 30s in Buffalo.  The next day the high was 13.  Thir. […]

The post My Secret Source of Ideas appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

Hi there.  My name is Margaret, and I love musical theatre lyrics.  Like, really love them.  I love to listen to them, read them, write them, and through it all, to break them down into tiny little pieces and analyze what I love about them.  Like any good lyric enthusiast, when I headed out for […]

The post Looking Closely at Lyrics, or “God is in the Details” appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

When I saw [title of show] at the very end of its run at the Vineyard Theater, so many moments resonated with me – come on, who did not cry during “A Way Back To Then”? But one particular section had me laugh-cringing – “Change It, Don’t Change It” – just that simple refrain distilled […]

The post Change It, Change It, Don’t Change It appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

If you happened to read my bio, you would know I have musical theatre training and experience writing about social issues. What my bio doesn’t tell you outright is that I look nothing like a Disney Princess. I do not wear a sample size. I am not a coloratura soprano. Also, sadly, I was never […]

The post The Girls on the Go: Female Character Roles and Society appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

“A novel is only a place of storage – of all the meaningful things that a novelist isn’t able to use in his life.” ~John Irving I came across this quote this week near the end of The World According to Garp, a truly amazing John Irving novel that I somehow didn’t read in high […]

The post A Reason To Write appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

This piece originally appeared at Breaking Character, the online magazine of Samuel French, Inc. In honor of the one-year anniversary of Sandy Hook tomorrow, Brad Alexander is republishing it here.  Whenever a news story moves me to want to express something, the little voice in my head inevitably asks, “Who are you to document this major event, […]

The post The Little Voice appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

Recently there was an article in the New Yorker about Google’s quest to build a self-driving car. In it, Charles Smart, an M.I.T. professor, describes the process of figuring out how to get a dirt bike to drive itself, which involved more than six hundred failed test runs. He recalls a colleague of his telling […]

The post This Is Robotics appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

Musical theatre writers, by and large, are musical theatre nerds first, whose natural proclivities have led them to their craft.  They know their Alan Menken and their Cole Porter, and they may not remember all the words to the national anthem, but they could recite the lyrics to “Getting Married Today” in their sleep.  But […]

The post I Wish I’d Written That appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

We’re all inundated by email.  It’s a veritable avalanche that never lets up from the moment we get up until we go back to sleep.  To stay on top of it completely would be a full time job.  But I have noticed that one of the few commonalities among the most successful theater professionals I’ve […]

The post The Importance of Answering Email appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

I’m sure I’m the only one out there that needs a kick in the inspirational pants from time to time. No one else ever needs a trick or two to get the creative juices flowing. But just in case you have a friend who might need a little help, here are three of my quick […]

The post Getting Unstuck appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.

I love buttons. For the uninitiated, the “button” is that little bump on the end of a song that tells the audience it’s over and prompts them to clap. Left to my own devices, I would button everything. Actually, I’d triple-button everything: music button, movement button, and lighting button. I have a collaborator who hates this. He’s viscerally opposed […]

The post To Button, Or Not To Button appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.