Here is the transcription of my most recent video blog:
(And here’s the audio on AnchorFM)
Hey everybody, this is Queen Mab, and today I would like to talk to you about writing musicals. Now, I know a little bit about this subject, because to date, I’ve written three. The first one was my first solo show, which is called “International Man of Mystery.” That one is still available to watch online…I think it’s like ten bucks or something like that. 90 minutes of good times!(whispered) It’s a little long; I need to cut it…(spoken) but it’s still good, I promise.
The second was a “Mamma Mia!” type situation where I was in a band called Calamity – kind of a folk/Americana all-female band – and I took a bunch of songs that other members of the band had written, and I wrote a story to go with them, and we performed it as a radio play. It’s called “Trouble! A Calamity Adventure,” and you can still find it on Spotify/iTunes Music/Amazon – basically all the places, but I will also post a link, and that one is about 80 minutes long. I would recommend listening to it kind of like an audiobook, like, I don’t know, when you’re cooking or working out or whatever.
And then the last one is “Yes, No, Maybe So,” my most recent solo show all about boundaries and consent and how much all of us suck at them, including myself. And that one I’m going to be performing again on October 19 as part of Binge Fringe Festival at the Santa Monica Playhouse, and it is FREE! So I will post a link if you’re interested. You can stream it or you can see it in person.
So – the writing process for all three of these shows was very, very different. With “International Man of Mystery,” it started out with me just writing songs about this dude from Uruguay, who I got pretty obsessed with for awhile – but to be fair, he was pretty incredible. I mean, he was like Helen of Troy or something. He was kind of otherworldly. And so I wrote one song about him. And then I wrote another song. And then I wrote another song. And then I wrote another song, and I was performing them all around San Diego at various open mics. And I had this dream to make an album kind of like how Eric Clapton made the Derek and the Dominos album all about his obsession with Patti Boyd. I was like, “I’m gonna do like Eric Clapton!”
Well, the problem was that…I mean, I wasn’t getting gigs anywhere. It was just these annoying open mics. And then someone said to me, “Hey, why don’t you do San Diego Fringe?” So I took them and I smooshed them together into a musical. It was really more like a song cycle or a concept album than a musical. It was me with my vibraphone and my pandeiro looped. That’s all it was. And I did that at San Diego Fringe, and then I did it at Tucson Fringe, where it won an award, which was cool, and then Hi-Desert Fringe. And that was where a friend of mine said, “Hey, man – you should get a director.” So long story short, I started working with Jessica Lynn Johnson, who’s in Los Angeles, using Zoom, and I rewrote it so that it had characters and dialogue and all these things, and that’s the version you can watch now.
Okay, so then the radio play – “Trouble! A Calamity Adventure” – again, that was just taking the songs and then coming up with a story and writing the dialogue. There wasn’t – I didn’t have anything musically to do with that.
And then with “Yes, No, Maybe So,” this is truly the musical that I pulled out of my butt. I wrote scenes. I had a few little musical moments in there. I did a reading, and at the reading, I mostly said, “A song will go here!” “A song will go here!” “A song will go here!” And then at the last minute, I kind of pulled it all out of my butt. All of “Yes, No, Maybe So” represents last minute work, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad work.
So then I had a coffee with a friend of mine who is writing a musical, and she’s taken all these classes on how to write musicals. And she said that they told her that you should write the book first – so just like, write all the dialogue, like write the play, basically – and then take parts of that and repurpose it into songs. And I was like “WOW! I kind of wish I’d had that advice before ‘International Man of Mystery!'” Because that is exactly what I did with “Yes, No, Maybe So.” And it was a scarier process, but it was a much more efficient process, so…
Anyway, I’m about to start on another musical, and with that one, I’ve been writing like “words – song – words – song.” So I don’t know how that’s going to turn out, but I’d like to hear from you. Have you ever written a musical? If you did, what did your process look like? Did you write the music first? Did you write the words first? Did you do both at the same time? What was that like for you?
Anyways, you can see more of my content at queenmabmusic.com. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe, and I hope to “see” you on October 19th at 7:30pm Pacific when I do “Yes, No, Maybe So” again. Bye!