Blog: New Show Progress Report

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Ever since I went to the Stratford East Musical Theatre Initiative Taster Weekend a while ago I've done my best to keep this week and last week FREE in case they asked me to go back to take part in the full FORTNIGHT of the initiative. "If they don't ask me back", I thought, "I shall use that free time to start writing next year's Edinburgh show."

And so I've spent the past week and a half writing next year's Edinburgh show! It's going to be called "Hey Hey 16K" and though the writing got off to a pretty slow start, this week it's started to pick up speed. I'm now in that ZONE where every morning my BRANE goes "How about THIS for an idea?" and suddenly it's two hours later and i've got a new SONG written. It's brilliant!

It all feels weirdly EASY this time too - I've had the idea for the STORY for a while now, so doing that bit of it has felt a bit like cheating, as I already KNOW what's meant to happen and even have a couple of JOKES ready. It feels even MORE like cheating because I'm using a whole batch of OLD songs - I usually have one or two old songs in a show, but this has FIVE in it, including the title song. I did worry a bit about it becoming one of those Juke Box musicals like The Spice Girls one or something, but they do (honest!) seem to fit in without a HUGE amount of going "A lesson you say? What kind of lesson is THAT, Mr Smith and Mrs Smith?"

There's new songs too, which has been VERY exciting. So far there's three - "The Real '80s" , "I Wish That I Was Normal" and "Dad Jokes", the latter featuring a LOT of Dad Jokes which make me LARF every time I tell them. Which is OFTEN. There's at least two more that need doing, plus a bunch of reprises.

It's all going really well so far, which is a bit WORRYING. With all the other shows I remember it taking AGES, with LOADS of re-writes, struggles and rejected songs. I know that I've not even finished the first draft yet so that may be all to come, but it's been a BREEZE so far this time, possibly because I worked out the whole story FIRST, and possibly also because it's a LOT simpler. There's basically just TWO characters in the whole thing, with a pretty straightforward LINEAR story throughout, which seems to work but, once again, feels a bit like cheating. Surely I should have at least TEN characters all with a different, complicated, storyline that nobody except for me will ever really notice? Also, HATS?

I guess we'll find out over the next few weeks and, indeed, the next YEAR, as it goes through the usual process of reading, previews, pub gigs and Edinburgh. It's already got JOKES in though, so it can't go TOO far wrong, right?

posted 8/8/2014 by MJ Hibbett

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