The Oe4K blog

I'm not really used to the whole "author's rehearsal" concept. In the past, either I haven't been around for rehearsals, or I have directed my own stuff. Or, I directed other people's stuff and I simply made my own "director's edit of the script" and passed it to the author with a note: "How's this as a cut?"

But to sit around in a rehearsal where we collectively decide to cut... it's strange to see a full-length script you co-wrote covered in a sea of cross-out pen. Because usually I prefer pencil.

So long as it goes well for the script and the show, I have no problem with it though. There is always extraneous material. Often it's mine, as I tend to overwrite (with the intention of cutting) rather than underwrite. And so in these early rehearsals, we're trimming as much fat as possible. Which is good. The less the actors have to come up with excuses for why they would say that, the better.

And the best part about it is all the new lines that keep popping up. The funnier way to say things. I've always felt like "Oedipus for Kids" was a musical that should have the feeling like it was created by a three-person improv troupe. As we do our last-minute script changes, and the actors are being given more free range with their improv moments, it's definitely feeling more and more like that every day.

So I never did mention how Bobby got onto this project. He and I had worked on projects before, and so when we had a first draft of script and lyrics ready to send to NYMF, I called him and said, "want to write music for this show?"

"Sure, Gil."

"Good. You have ten days to write the music for half a dozen songs... Go."

And I must say, some of those first songs are still my favorites in the whole piece. Originally the songs we sent included Once Upon A Time-Ipus, an early version of Lullabye, A Little Complex, a rhythm-only What is It Like When You Get The Plague, and a very different Be Kind To The Blind that I still have a soft spot for.

We then kept working on the book and score after it was submitted, adding song after song after song until the holes were filled in. In the words of Greg Brown, "how come with every song I arrange, I still feel one step closer to being half-done?"

Next week, I actually get to watch the thing get up on it's feet. More then.

Some pictures Dan took, which he himself identified as "lame". I'll put up more and better ones later.

Well, yesterday was Day 3 of rehearsals, but only my second. As a writer, while the actors and directors and choreographers and whatnot get to play the day away, I get to go to work and program financial whoseitwhats.

In the various theatrical projects I've worked on, I think people are having more fun with this one than most. We've got Reed in one corner, coming up with new ways to talk about how Neopolitan Ice Cream annoys him (a little bit we removed after auditions that he's now petitioning to get back in). Then you have Laura, who seems to have found the perfect way to depict that the Oracle's brain is a computerized rolodex. And then there's Gavin, who will do a hell of a job getting the "short people" and "poor people" in the audience to quack at him. Basically the majority yesterday's rehearsal was spent laughing.

As a director I've done tablework before, but not as an author. When you're working on a new piece there's a lot of grey area. Do we cut lines, do we try them out onstage knowing we'll cut later? Do we leave the part where Reed takes off his shirt and asks people if they want to buy his clothing? Or do we do what Mike Nichols calls "killing our babies". Most of last night's rehearsal was just that, going through the script and slimming it down, or occasionally adding new lines.

Jinay, our awesome stage manager, has been keeping the most detailed notes from rehearsals. I'll be putting highlights of these in as I continue to update this blog...

• Da 1, 8/14: READ THRU. Great first reading. The cast did a great job with what was a lot of new material, and Greg/Bobby did an excellent job presenting the score. What we assume will be Act I began at around 11:30 (I was still running around a bit, so forgive my not-entirely-specific times on these) and ran about 55 minutes. Act II came in at about 45 minutes.
• Day 2, 8/15: MUSIC REHEARSAL. Greg worked for about 1/2 hour with the cast on "You Can Do it All", and Dan/Greg changed the lyric in Reed's riff "Oh Ye-e-e-ah" to the clever and fitting "Have Fu-u-uzz."
  
• Day 3, 8/16: TABLE WORK. Dan started the day in discussions with Gavin and Laura about the characters, specifically the Fuzzy Duck Theatre Company and what it is. We ran all of the "backstage" scenes (the non "Oedipus" scenes) and discussed the relationships and histories of the three characters... the last hour was good but slightly punchy.
  

After hearing the readthru, and actually hearing the Oracle song in context (the hardest song to write, but possibly my favorite in the show right now), Robert and I realized some major changes that need to happen with the Lullabye. But I'll tell you more about that as we get there.

I'm sitting here in the Sage Theatre, where we were lucky enough to be able to rent rehearsal space from the same place we'll be performing.

We just went through the first read-thru of the script, including a listen to each of the songs that will be in the show. It went great. It really was great to hear not only hear the script being read out by the people who will actually be performing it, but to--for the first time--hear it together, with all of the completed songs, in order.

When you write a thing like this, you worry, "is this as funny out loud as I think as it is in my head"? You wonder if the one-liners, the absurd songs, the rest all work. And then you get to experience a great first reading like today's, and you realize: this is going to work. It can't not work when you have the cast and crew laughing through the entire readthru like that. It also feels pretty damn good.

Also good to see was the first true complete score that says Lyrics by Gil Varod on it. Perhaps the best was when we took a break for the intermission and I walked over to Greg (musical director)'s piano station and found one song in full sheet music titled, Did Everybody Pee? It doesn't get much better than that.

By the way, have you seen the titles of our songs?

1. You Can Do It All [The Fuzzy Duck Theme Song]
2. One Upon a Time-ipus
3. Mommy's Lullaby, and not Daddy's
4. There Is No Man of Delphi
5. A Little Complex
   
6. It's Real Real Tough Just Bein' A Kid (But Coffee Will Get You Through)
7. A Friend Is A Foe You Never Cared To Know
8. Cause We're Greek [Wedding Song / Act One Finale]
9. Did Everybody Pee? [Fuzzy Duck Reprise]
10. What is it Like When Ya Get The Plague?
11. Be Kind to the Blind
12. My Lover Is My Husband Is My Son
13. I'm So Glad I Could Share It With You

The cast just took a 10 minute break after making sure they got the notes right on "Club Med-ipus". How did I get into this?

People who know me know that I used to keep a journal pretty strictly. It was a
daily or at least a weekly writing exercise that let continue to sharpen my writing skills even if I had no projects I was actively sharpening them on. Until, for a large part, Oedipus For Kids began.

Oedipus for Kids was a joke at first, really. All the musicals I had planned to write until then were about ancient civilizations, or fairy tale fantasies, or the occasional movie (curse you, Adam Guetell, for taking "The Princess Bride" off of my list). But we did it because, hey, it seemed like a quick, fun idea for a musical.

Just as planned, the three-person comedy was accepted into Fringe NYC, where we were sure it would be at home with three hundred other plays wanting to be the next urinetown (and usually named as such). We began plans. I was to direct. Kim (co-book) was to produce. Bobby (music) was to musical direct. We might cast some friends, we might hold open auditions, and we'd see what would happen. It was more for fun than anything else.

Who knew that it would be one of 18 chosen out of 400 shows submitted to NYMF's "Next Link" projects. That we'd be able to hire as director Dan Fields, the assistant-director to Julie Taymor of the original Lion King, now the director of Chicago's "Spelling Bee". That we'd be casting entirely equity. That when Dan sends me an e-mail, "okay, we got our new choreographer, she just choreographed Hot Feet on broadway", that it would become expected, not hoped.

This is where we stand right now. From a 5-song, 6o page draft of a musical when originally submitted to the Fringe, to an expensive, high-profile, 12-song, hour and a half musical hilarity when it opens with NYMF on September 12th in a small theatre in Times Square.

Our show has some great buzz to it. We're getting some pretty awesome people working together on this. And today, in about twenty minutes, our first rehearsal is going to start. And after years of wanting to write and put on my first full-length musical, I couldn't be more excited.

Welcome to my Oedipus for Kids blog. I'll be updating often. And you'll learn what it's like to put on a new full-length musical just as I do. So thanks for stopping by. I really will update this a few times a week. Promise.