A Sneak Peek at "Amsterdam" from This Time, A New Musical Romance


This excerpt from the song "Amsterdam" features Thomas Knapp as Astor Mason and the Cast of This Time.

Tickets Are On Sale Now for "This Time, A New Musical Romance" at Theater for the New City, August 20-September 6, 2015

This Time, A New Musical Romance will premiere at New York City's Pulitzer Prize-winning Theater for the New City (TNC) (155 First Avenue, New York, NY 10003) on Thursday, August 20, 2015 and will run through Sunday, September 6, with performances Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 8 PM and Sunday matinees at 3 PM.

Advance tickets are available online and at the TNC Box Office. (Box Office purchases are cash only. Tickets are available day of show.)  For online sales, please visit http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showcode=thiB28.

For more information, please visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net/blackbox.html or www.thistimemusical.com.


PLEASE DONATE In Support of This Time's Summer Developmental Workshop and Production

My production partners and I are in the midst of a full developmental workshop of This Time at Theater for the New City (TNC) in the East Village this Summer, culminating with performances at TNC August 20-23, August 27-30, and September 3-6.  We need your help raising $35,000 to make This Time happen.  

Please visit http://www.theaterforthenewcity.net/donation.htm to quickly and easily make a donation of any amount.  TNC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and is co-producing the workshop and performances, so any donation you make is 100% tax deductible.   

If you can assist with a donation, please be sure to 

(1) enter "'This Time' Production/Black Box Studios" in the "COMPANY/TITLE OF PRODUCTION" box and 

(2) send an e-mail to workshop@thistimemusical.com with your name, the name or names by which you'd like to be recognized, donation amount, and date, so we can track and appropriately recognize your contribution.  

No donation is too small.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support!




The Evolution of a Contemporary Musical

JULY 2013  

One of the items on my creative bucket list has long been to write a musical, and in late July 2013, I am inspired to write one.  The odyssey begins with a simple story: Boy meets Girl and they fall in love.  Pretty common, right?  Only this Boy and Girl learn that they have been in love before - many times before - in prior lives spanning centuries.  Set that story in Amsterdam, New Orleans, and Venice and you have the framework for a story that's never been told, seen, or heard as a musical.


AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 2013  


The story continues to develop and grow.  New characters emerge.  Subplots and intertwined storylines spring up around them.  The main characters' careers and backstories change.  And now they have names.

Ridley Barton Howard (Barton) is a composer, who returns from Venice at the start of Act One with a commission to compose a symphony (ANOTHER item on my creative bucket list!) for La Fenice Symphony Orchestra, a symphony which he will compose throughout Acts One and Two and will premiere, in part, before the conclusion of the musical.  Charlotte Austin is a ballerina-turned-school teacher who aims to return to top form and reclaim the soloist spot she walked away from with one of the World's most prestigious ballet companies.  Other characters include an eccentric New Orleans cafe owner who takes an unusual interest in and has a mysterious and complex connection to Charlotte and Barton; his fiancee, a choreographer and childhood friend of Charlotte; and a subdued filmmaker and his colorful actor partner.

The musical now has a name too: This Time.  An intentional pun on the principal plot point, the title is a multiple entendre with varied connotations from scene to scene.

As the story further takes shape, I start to write songs for the musical.  No one knows the story the way I do and, as the story evolves day to day with every new detail, it's fitting that I should be the one to tell all aspects of it.  There is no "right way" to write a musical, especially when the composer, lyricist, and librettist are the same person.  But as I press on, plot points begat songs.  Songs begat dialogue.  Dialogue defines scenes.  Scenes yield conflicts, more plot points, and additional songs.  And on and on.  Imagine starting a 1,000 piece puzzle with only the four corners, none of the sides, and 10 or 15 assorted center pieces....


OCTOBER 2013 TO FEBRUARY 2014  

Five or six songs are written, characters are developed, scenes are roughed out, and dialogue ideas emerge.  My next step is a scene-by-scene outline of the Prologue, Acts One and Two, and the Epilogue of This Time, organizing the settings, characters, action, and dialogue of each scene, leaving "holes" where songs would "plug in" or needed to be written.

The initial outline process lasts five months.  During that time, old characters are developed, some are cut or condensed, new characters originate, and relationships between and among characters are forged.  Another five songs are composed and the need for specific additional songs becomes clear.  Themes emerge organically and ties between characters, locations, plot lines, dialogue, and songs surface that I never intended.  This Time is taking on a life of its own.

In the Summer of 1989, while still a Prelaw student at Penn State, I commenced an internship that would span two college Summers, but would have lasting outcomes from which I continue to benefit decades later.  It was that Summer that I met Matt Okin, a theatre student at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, in the fabled mailroom of the renowned William Morris Agency.  Matt and I became fast friends, spending our days sorting and delivering mail to, manning the desks of, and running errands for the World's top talent agents and rubbing elbows with their A-list clients, while our evenings were spent producing his original plays.

Our friendship and professional relationship have stood the test of time.  It was in December of 2013, when I first approached Matt and his Black Box Studios theatre production company about assisting in the development of This Time.  A quarter century of friendship has lead to our greatest joint creative opportunity!


MAY AND JUNE 2014  

By the end of May 2014, I have practiced law for 19 years and all but lost my focus.  While traveling abroad, I consider what I want to do professionally and whether it's practicing law.  I conclude that the answer is in no way simple, that I can't realistically decide if I'm in the right career while still in that career, and that I need time to find the answer.

I return to the US and make THE toughest professional decision of my Life: I decide to leave my coveted position with NBC Sports.  During the month leading to my last day, there is ample time to consider how I will spend my time off.  The solution hits me like a ton of bricks.  While I ponder my future as an intellectual property and entertainment lawyer, I will work full time on the development of This Time.  So begins what will be the best, most inspiring, most prolific year of my Life.


JULY 2014 TO SEPTEMBER 2014  

Following a month of musical directing a production for Black Box, I jump full time in to refining and developing This Time.  More songwriting, story development, and tons of research make the weeks fly by and the outline, initially completed in February, resembles a book more and more with each passing day.

At this point, I start making plans to escape, hide away, hunker down, and hammer out the first draft of the libretto (book and lyrics) of This Time.  I choose a secluded, quiet retreat, away from mobile phones and other distractions to allow me to focus.


OCTOBER 2014  


It's beautiful, warm, and sunny in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, but I'm not here to have fun.  For five solid days, I take every meal in my room and write from the time I wake up until I can't hold my eyes open any longer.  Scene by scene, the outline comes alive.  The characters leap off the page and their relationships find context through the dialogue, settings, and songs, songs that find new depth in the structure of the libretto.  Songs and characters created months before are fatalities as the first draft takes shape.  In spite of a scare on Day 3 - when I thought I'd lost everything I'd written - midday on Day 5, I type the words "End of Epilogue" and "The End."  I come back to the US to begin the hard work.


 NOVEMBER 2014 TO DECEMBER 2014  

Dramaturgy can be defined as a comprehensive exploration of the context in which a theatrical work resides, including the backgrounds and motivations of the characters, the themes and metaphors employed in telling the story, and the overall structure, rhythm, flow, and dialogue.  

Dramaturgical work begins on This Time in November, with Matt as dramaturg and a number of sessions in which we review the libretto word by word, page by page, and scene by scene.  The sessions, the first time I have sought outside input at this point in the process, yield new ideas, additional songs, restructured scenes, and overall rewrites of the first draft, the month of November alone seeing two new versions of the libretto.  I also seek the input of two musical theatre professionals in my family, an exercise that produces even fresher ideas and inspires a big opening number not present in the initial drafts.

As third and fourth drafts of the libretto are cranked out, three pivotal songs from This Time's Act II are rehearsed for the first time with a pair of professional actors in preparation for their premiere at a Black Box Studios showcase in December.  An audience of roughly 100 warmly receives the revelatory duet "Carry Us Away," Barton's declaration of love "Found," and Charlotte's eponymous anthem "This Time."


JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 2015  

The New Year brings more dramaturgy, still more songs, and substantial rewrites.  But then, it happens.  The seventh draft of the libretto is complete and dramaturgically sound.  We've done as much as we can do in a vacuum.  It's time to "go public."  It's time for a reading.

An initial stage reading of a musical is a public performance of a new musical work wherein a professional cast will read the dialogue and stage directions of the libretto and perform the songs, usually accompanied by a pianist, without sets or costumes.  It is a cold, snowy night in late January when we post the first casting call for the initial stage readings of This Time and the response, from actors of all levels of experience from up and down the East Coast, is overwhelming.  Hundreds of resumes and headshots pour in from multiple sources and we begin the tough work of deciding which actors we'll invite to audition.  Contemporaneously, we fill the ever important roles of musical director (Brody Greif) and stage manager (Kelly Ice) and we get ready to build our cast.

We hold the first auditions for the initial stage readings of This Time at Ripley-Greer Studios in Midtown Manhattan in early February.  Narrowing hundreds of credentials down to a few dozen is no small or easy feat, but over the course of two frigid days, Matt, Brody, Kelly, and I see some of the finest musical theatre talent New York has to offer... and we are blown away!  It will be another week before we extend invitations, but before the end of the month, the cast is set.




MARCH 2015   

Intensive rehearsals for the reading kick March off with a bang and our cast is BRILLIANT!  We return to Ripley-Greer for five cold New York mornings to make This Time a reality.  Finally, the characters are living, breathing entities walking, talking, and interacting with each other.  And the songs....  I am without words to describe what it feels like to hear songs I wrote alone in the studio months before performed by professionals with rich, colorful voices at last.  The payoff of more than a year and a half of work is life-changing!






As much as our cast clicks in the two weeks of rehearsals, they truly gel on the first of two nights of the reading.  A sing-through pre-hearsal is transformative and the energy carries over to the performance. 








But as inspired as the first reading is, the second and final night is spectacular.  After a pre-show "pep talk" during which the cast and crew bond one final time, the team delivers a reading and performances fit for a Broadway cast recording.





The weeks following the readings are a time for reflection.  Meetings with cast members, additional dramaturgy, and contemplation of the next steps for This Time begin almost immediately.  Among the considerations is an offer from Theater for the New City (TNC) in the East Village to co-produce a developmental workshop of This Time in the Summer of 2015.


APRIL TO JUNE 2015  

Major overhaul of the libretto begins, altering not the story of This Time, but the manner in which the story is told.  Several songs performed at the initial readings are cut and additional songs are composed.  Characters depicted in the libretto a month before are condensed or removed all together.  Plot points and relationships once subtle or ambiguous are brought to the foreground.

We ponder the workshop offer from TNC and visit the venue's 72 seat Cino Theater, where the production of This Time will be staged, and the Cabaret Theater, where the workshop and rehearsals will take place.  The decision is made to work with TNC and we negotiate a co-production agreement, under which TNC will partner with us for the workshop and a three week, 12 performance production (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights and Sunday matinee each week), opening August 20 and closing Labor Day Weekend.

The deal with TNC now official, the business of theatre takes center stage.  Cast and crew projections, scheduling, and budgeting follow and it becomes obvious that significant fundraising will be necessary.  A development plan is devised and we reach out to friends, family, colleagues, and other potential donors and patrons for sponsorship, which, thanks to our partnership with the non-profit TNC, is tax deductible.

Two more drafts of the libretto and four new songs are the product of months of reworking This Time.  Pre-production meetings begin well in advance of the start of the workshop and we prepare for casting of the revamped musical.  I begin work on the full orchestrations of the songs and Brody, Matt, and I discuss instrumentation and hiring musicians.