Author Archives: brendan

Sleeping Beauty Wakes at McCarter, Day 17: This is how I roll.

Sleeping Beauty Wakes at McCarter, Day 14: Embarrassed Toadstool Guy.

So I’m up late the night before, cranking out sheet music for the scene changes, and somebody says something about something at the rehearsal, and it’s like, 10 pm, and I think I nod and say, yeah, sure. I don’t remember what I’ve just agreed to. I simply need to go home and sleep. And [...]

Sleeping Beauty Wakes at McCarter, Day 13: Sucking it up.

Yesterday was exciting. Yesterday we woke up to find that Val had won the grand prize in a contest, and yesterday Rachel and Val and I had a three-way meeting of the minds where we found and settled on a revised ending that we all really love. This morning I am at the theater, alone [...]

Sleeping Beauty Wakes at McCarter, Day 12: Moving forward together with alacrity.

Another read-through of Act 2 yesterday, now that they’ve learned the music at the end. Everyone feels we’ve got the overall structure for Act 2 down now, but we’re missing crucial pieces that we couldn’t see when we were down in the trees, missing the forest. Today, Rachel is coming back to our apartment and [...]

Sleeping Beauty Wakes at McCarter, Days 10 & 11: Submit, Recuperate.

At 12:20 pm yesterday, we turned in script pages for the end of the show, arguing (constructively!) about lyrics and stage directions until the last possible second. As expected, I turned in sheet music only for the beginning of the end, a piece I titled “Typical Wretchedly Horrible World,” which is what the patients feel [...]

Sleeping Beauty Wakes at McCarter, Days 8 & 9: Elation. Despair. Repeat.

I swear, getting the three of us to agree on a course of action, getting the three of us to deCIDE how to define a particular moment in the end of the show is like herding cats. First we’re all filled with elation; we’ve found a direction that we all like! Then we pursue it [...]

Sleeping Beauty Wakes at McCarter, Day 7: (gulp)

In Act 1, there’s a dream sequence which encompasses the entire Sleeping Beauty fairy tale–from before birth of princess through to princes coming and slashing through brambles to kiss sleeping girl one hundred years later. Only the tale is told out of order and through the lens of the dreamers who are dreaming it–four sleep [...]

Sleeping Beauty Wakes at McCarter, Day 6: Bicycle.

Couldn’t post last night, my apologies. The creative team’s preferred method of meeting after rehearsal has become the following: convene at Brendan and Val’s place at 8 pm, after Mose has gone to bed. What’s great about this–Mara Isaacs, Brendan, Val, Rebecca Taichman, Rachel Sheinkin all around the table in our little rented apartment–is that [...]

Sleeping Beauty Wakes at McCarter, Day 5: Three collaborators (& one deadline) in a room.

Never even made it to rehearsal today–long writing session in our apartment with Rachel. Our Orderly, Bryce Ryness, and his wife Meredith and daughter Mercy came by as I was winding down with Mose at the end of the day with some Paper Mario. They knocked on the door and Mercy’s happy 18-month-old face was [...]

Sleeping Beauty Wakes at McCarter, Day 4. A revealing read/sing-through.

Last night Mose slept for eLEVEN HOURS. That’s right, the capitalization was correct: e-LEVEN. HOURS. What a difference. Sleep deprivation makes us all into lousy, grouchy, bitchy uncreative people, and Mose had been getting grouchier and grouchier since we arrived here in Princeton, until we figured out a couple of things: humidifier close the window [...]