I’ve been thinking a lot about this blog entry … so many things swimming around in my mind and wanting to be true to all of it. Eventually, I just decided to write and see what comes out … after all, isn’t that what blogging is all about?

The theme that keeps appearing for me is “What do I do?” (I know … it’s always good to start with easily digestible small chunks … how am I doing so far?) I’d like to start with my recent trip to Pittsburgh.

Tracking background vocals for SBW

On Friday night 10/24, I flew to Pittsburgh for a Saturday vocal recording session with Brendan and Val for our upcoming “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” album. We’re really psyched about this record … it really feels like us; long time fans of the band should find lots to remind them of what has been special about GrooveLily all along, while at the same time it really feels like a new, inevitable step in our evolution (we throw around the term “GrooveLily 2.0″ from time to time … might be a little high falutin’, but you get the idea). The reason I think this session is so illustrative of how my (and Val and Brendan’s) life has evolved in the last few years is as much in the logistics of the weekend as it is in the content of the music we are making together. I left my full time IT manager day job (my title is “Manager, Technology & Development” … talk about high falutin’!) a little early to hop a flight from LaGuardia to go meet my band mates who are in Pittsburgh debuting a new musical that they were commissioned to write by the City Theatre of Pittsburgh. After a lovely evening with my sister Cherie, brother in law Stanley and niece Edie (who live in Pittsburgh), I met Val and Brendan at the theater at the makeshift studio they’d set up in a vacant dressing room. I think I speak for all of us when I say that there’s always a communal feeling of “oh yeah … THIS is what we do!” whenever we get together after a prolonged absence. This is not to say that the things we do when apart are in any way less important, less impressive, etc. It’s just nice to have an artistic and emotional home base to which you can return.

Ironing Board / Lyric Sheet Stand

As I write this, I realize the analogy I just made … “home base” … is actually the crux of my thematic wanderings as I pondered this blog entry. In baseball, there is only one home base. I realize that I now really have several home bases, that are all important in their own way, and that all require a similar amount of focus, care, and ambition. I imagine this evolution is similar for Val and Brendan … and happily, the overlap in the Venn diagram of our collective home bases is GrooveLily.

GrooveLily, Self Portrait, 10/25/2008.

My other home bases: My IT career, which was always part time until recently, and which is now something I am pursuing not just as an additional means of financial support, but as a part of my life that should be as fulfilling as my music career. Speaking of which, home base #2: my musical life in and outside of GrooveLily, for which my ambitions remain high. Finally, and by far most importantly; my REAL home base … my wife and son. Of course, each of these areas of my life crisscross, overlap, inform each other, conflict with each other, etc. But, I must cultivate all of them. This is at odds with a long-held common belief that you really have one vocation, and everything else is an avocation; sorta the real-life version of the baseball analogy. Well, I don’t believe that … I actually never did, but I feel even stronger now than ever.

There are so many examples of people like me, Val, and Brendan … those with multiple home bases, if I may. Some recent examples that I’ve noticed; Jim Webb … Senator from Virginia and author; I even remember hearing him say in an interview that he thought of himself as an author … that made me smile. I also recently heard a radio show that focused on Ted Conover and his book “New Jack,” which is about his life as an under cover prison guard at Sing Sing. Even though he is a journalist and author, he talks about how the lines became blurred, and how he couldn’t do the job half-assed; his life and those of his fellow guards depended on his really doing the job … not faking it. While not directly applicable to my situation, that aspect of it rang true with me: do it for real. There are so many other examples, including many friends of mine who are truly world-class professional artists (musicians, actors, writers, directors, film makers, dancers etc.) and at the same time have other careers … many of which are pursued with the same care, ambition, and joy that they pursue their art.

While I may always struggle with it, I am equally proud of and hopeful for each of my home bases. I also think that more and more of us are living less-than-typical slash careers like this … I expect that by the time my son is a rock star drummer / surgeon / movie star / middle school teacher / CFO of a major fortune 500 company, it will all seem normal.

I’m at the Beehive Coffeehouse, one block from City Theatre, obsessing about a potential cut in Act One. This convenient and friendly little eatery has become my default Pittsburgh “office” (since they have wireless internet access and the theatre doesn’t); the only downside is the staggering number of cranberry muffins I’ve polished off here while writing.

Because on this show Brendan has taken on responsibility for so much of the music, including orchestration (this is the first time we’ve officially split music and lyric duties - another new thing for us), the script changes have basically fallen to me, and I’ve spent a lot of time with Tracy Brigden our director and Carlyn Aquiline our dramaturg, pulling apart sections of the play and reinventing them.

The concept of the “infinite ache” (which is the title of the original play) has mostly been discarded, because it just wasn’t fitting with our show. We wondered what David Schulner would think, and I have to say, we were a little apprehensive about it, having never met him…until he arrived yesterday. He saw a preview, told us he loved it and didn’t miss anything we had removed from his play. “Cut more!” he said…

Val, David and Brendan

and that’s exactly what we’re now pondering and arguing about amongst ourselves as we approach opening night. Cutting can be even harder than writing.

It makes me incredibly happy when a preview audience laughs at a line of dialogue I’ve written; when they can’t tell whether or not it’s from the original play, I’ve done my job right. But it’s also a bit weird and disconcerting to be in the audience, relatively anonymous despite my photo in the program and my furious notetaking throughout the show…and to overhear comments that a performer would never hear. These Pittsburgh preview audiences, largely comprised of older people, seem to be rather polarized about their views of the piece; some are blown away and stand up weeping and cheering at the end, and some clap rarely and languidly, barely responding at all. At intermission, which comes after a particularly dark moment in the story, we hear people praise the show wildly, saying “it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen!” - and others complain as they order a drink, “wasn’t this supposed to be musical COMEDY? (grumble grumble grumble).”

So much of LONG STORY SHORT is about making a marriage work, and specifically about parenthood, that Brendan and I couldn’t help but draw on our own experiences - not only as husband and wife, but also as father and mother (our son Mose has just turned 3). We have been amazed all along by David Schulner’s ability to capture the emotions of being a parent long before he was one - he wrote the play as a single guy in his 20s. I don’t think I could have done the same - I’m very glad I’ve got these past 3 years to draw on. The one moment of the show that may not ring true for parents is when Charles goes offstage to put his crying baby daughter to bed, and returns only moments later, having succeeded perfectly (she doesn’t make another peep for the rest of the scene). This would never fly in real life, unless your name is Dr. Karp…but we hope the audiences will indulge us for the sake of theatrical pacing.

I can’t end this blog without mentioning what it’s like here in Pittsburgh during the final week before the presidential election. People here may be polarized about our show, but that’s nothing compared to the way they are about this election. Mose and his grandma Julie were playing a game where they open up the free-newspaper box for passersby to take papers (Mose says “come on in!” and opens the metal door, and great hilarity ensues); and an elderly woman came by to take a paper, saying in passing “I’ve been a lifelong Democrat, but I’m voting for McCain!” Julie, intrigued, asked her why: and the woman replied, “because I don’t want a n—— in the White House.”

No one has ever said something that racist to me in any context; I was completely flabbergasted…but that is the reality in some sections of this city, and this state. Coincidentally, an interesting article on this very subject came out yesterday in the New York Times.

Ben and Pearl, our leading man and lady, attended the Obama rally on Monday. (Happily, they both refrained from screaming and cheering due to the singing rigors of our show.) Pearl returned with a poster, which Mose promptly appropriated as a toy.

Mose campaigning in the hallway

Please wish Ben and Pearl lots of broken legs for opening night…and I’ll report back again soon.

Tonight is opening night! As promised, here is the final song of the show. After a relationship of more than fifty years, HOPE has become gravely ill, and CHARLES can’t bear the thought of losing her. Through the course of this duet, they both come to terms with the inevitable.

LONG STORY SHORT demo #15: “Letting Go”

Of course, there is much more to a piece of theater than only the songs…and even though this is the final song of the show, there is a plot twist that happens afterward that may still keep you guessing. If you like the music, we hope you will consider joining us at the show. (If you are nowhere near Pittsburgh or Palo Alto, then we hope eventually LONG STORY SHORT will come to you.)

Thanks so much for joining us on this little serialized musical journey. As of today, all 15 tracks are available as a downloadable collection for $10. Enjoy!

Happy 2-song Wednesday! Both of today’s new songs are FREE for download. (As of next week the whole 15-track collection will be available for $10.)

We catch up with HOPE and CHARLES in their seventies. Charles has just complained about various physical aspects of aging, and is having trouble believing that Hope still finds him attractive. In this song, Hope reassures him of her love.

LONG STORY SHORT demo #13: “Still Love”

Flashing forward to the next song, CHARLES and HOPE are now quite elderly and they’ve decided to move someplace smaller. Tumbling through time once again, we find Hope getting sick and Charles trying to put on a brave face.

LONG STORY SHORT demo #14: “Live Like This Reprise”

See you next Wednesday, October 29 (our official opening night here in Pittsburgh) for the final demo: #15, “Letting Go.”

I’m sitting in the darkened theater, marveling at the glory of the finished set and how glowingly beautiful it looks under the lights. (Our director Tracy has started to call it “the floating jewel box.”) We are into tech, which means very long days - today is 11:30 AM to 11:30 PM - and our actors are in full costume and mics for the first time. The purpose of tech is to rehearse with lights, sound, costumes and props, and to polish all the mechanics of the show…so we proceed from light cue to light cue very slowly, making sure all the transitions are working. It can take days to get through the whole piece.

The floating jewel box

Even though in some ways our show is rather simple (only two actors and one set that never moves), in other ways it’s ridiculously complicated (the prop list and choreography of getting items on and off stage, putting on and taking off shoes and clothing, placing things inconspicuously under the bed, in nightstands and dresser drawers to be used at various times throughout the evening)…our characters have to progress visibly through more than fifty years, with very few opportunities to leave the stage or change much about their appearance. It’s the job of our ultra-organized and efficient stage manager, Patti Kelly, to keep it all under control and moving smoothly. Here are a couple of pages from her prop and costume flow chart.

Patti's flow chart, page 3

Patti's flow chart, page 4

I can’t tell you how much fun this is. People have asked me recently whether it feels odd or strange not to be performing in something I’ve written, to “give it up” to other people to do…and the truth is it’s just the opposite. It’s not as if being behind the scenes on this show is preventing me from doing something I love; far from it. it’s adding variety and balance to my life, and intensifying the joy of everything I’m doing. There was a time not so long ago when I was doing 150 GrooveLily shows a year, and was close to burning out on all of it: playing, singing, writing…when it became a never-ending relentless grind, it just wasn’t pleasant or even very creative anymore…but now that I have the ability to be selective about when, where and how often to perform means that it’s always a joyful experience, something to get excited about and look forward to. (At the moment, I am really looking forward to doing some concerts next month in Maine and New Hampshire.) Also, I am learning so much from our actors; watching them add layer upon layer of interpretation to the songs and the dialogue is extraordinarily inspiring. As a musician who does some acting but is not a trained actor, I am awed by the way Ben and Pearl can zip in and out of character, finding comic beats and accessing their rawest emotions with equal alacrity.

We are delighted with both of them. Brendan stumbled upon the remarkable Pearl Sun during his short tenure as orchestrator for GODSPELL (which was scheduled for a Broadway revival earlier this year but got cancelled at the last minute); he emailed me from the audition room saying “I JUST MET OUR HOPE!!!” and after checking her out for five minutes on YouTube, I completely agreed. We didn’t even bother holding auditions because we knew Pearl was perfect.

Pearl

We had the good fortune to meet Ben Evans in June of 2007, when he was our Charles in the very first reading of the very first draft of the very first 30 minutes of this show. He was a NYC actor that happened to be starring in a show here at City Theatre at the time - so Tracy suggested him and his equally talented wife Julie Dingman Evans for the reading. (She’s terrific, but not Asian so we couldn’t consider her for the production.)

Julie

A month after the reading, Ben and Julie left New York and traveled for a year, on a fascinating environmental road trip called YERT which took them to all fifty states. Three months into it Julie got pregnant; so they finished up their trip, and repaired to Julie’s hometown of Louisville, KY to have their baby. We held auditions in New York for Charles, and were having trouble finding an actor with the specific combination of qualities we needed: leading man, funny, Jewish, slightly nerdy but very appealing, in addition to being able to sing well in our pop-ish style. So we called Ben in Louisville, 3 days after his baby daughter Bailey was born, and offered him the part.

Ben

In the delirium of new fatherhood, he somehow agreed to do it…

and now he, Julie and 12-week-old Bailey are here with us in Pittsburgh. Ben is doing a Herculean job of mastering his role as well as being a new dad.

Ben & Bailey

At the moment, my role is to watch the proceedings, occasionally to sit in on violin, and to try to keep the whole chess game of the script and score in my head. (”Is this working? Is Hope’s character likable enough compared to Charles? Is each of them singing enough? Does the audience get ahead of the story at any point?” etc. etc…) As a naturally detail-oriented, rather obsessive person, I don’t take to the big-picture stuff terribly easily - but I’m getting better at it. This is my first experience writing dialogue (in every other show I’ve been involved with, there has been a bookwriter whose purview is the spoken text), and at first I found it terrifying, kind of like being in a giant superstore with way too many choices. I mean, give me a thorny lyric problem and I’m all over it - it’s an incredibly fun, engaging verbal puzzle - but dialogue? I could write ANYTHING! It doesn’t have to rhyme! There’s no meter! Ack! It’s easy to become paralyzed by indecision when there are no rules and no parameters. Now I’m much more comfortable, though I still feel like a bit of a script novice. Luckily, everything I’ve had to write has simply had to fit in with David Schulner’s existing (excellent, snappy) lines of dialogue, so it’s been more of a job of imitation than of creation from whole cloth.

Brendan’s role at the moment is to hide out in the dressing room with his computer and studio setup, and crank out orchestrations as fast as possible. All the actual songs are done…but arrangements of underscoring and certain scene change moments have to be made on the fly (it becomes clear during tech how long a certain costume change will take, for example, and that determines how long the transitional music must be). Luckily, Brendan has become a deft double-handed arrangement guru.

Brendan orchestrating in the dressing room

As I watch this evening, it’s amazing to see from out in the house what a huge difference a tiny change can make. To make our heroes appear to be in their mid-twenties, C.T. puts Hope’s hair in a ponytail and pulls Charles’s shirt out of his pants. Instant youth. Andrew David Ostrowski, our wonderful lighting designer, adds a bit of flicker to a light cue and suddenly it’s obvious that Charles and Hope are watching an invisible TV. Brendan asks one of the musicians to pluck the strings with a “floppy finger,” and right away, the song is completely in the pocket. Things are starting to gel, and it’s a great feeling.

Bren & Val enjoying being behind the scenes

Happy 2-song Wednesday! After a tumultuous quarter-century of marriage, children and an acrimonious breakup, we rejoin CHARLES and HOPE as they tentatively start dating each other again. Older and wiser, they resolve to do a better job this time.

LONG STORY SHORT demo #11: “Introductions, Fragile As Love Reprise”

By the time we reach the next song, CHARLES and HOPE have been back together for quite a while. Charles’s father has passed away, and this fact has brought their own mortality into sharper focus. Our heroes have settled into a comfortable, harmonious companionship in their later-middle years, and during this song we leap forward through their sixties.

LONG STORY SHORT demo #12: “What Was That”

See you next Wednesday, October 22, for demos #13 & #14: “Still Love” & “Live Like This Reprise.”

Brendan and Val joined KDKA’s “Pittsburgh Today Live” to talk about the show and sing “It Happens In A Moment.”

We’ve settled into the vibrant South Side of Pittsburgh, where we are living and working all month until our opening night on October 29. We’re right in the heart of this extremely lively neighborhood; from the lovely new City Theatre loft apartments where we and our actors are staying, we can hear Steelers fans cheering on Monday nights at the bar outside our windows. Good yoga classes and good coffee are steps away, as are playgrounds and the Monongahela River. The weather is glorious and the leaves are starting to turn; it’s a beautiful time to be in western Pennsylvania.

And for what seems like the first time ever while working on a show, I’m actually getting to see something other than the inside of a theater. As a writer and not a performer on this one, I’ve done most of my hardest work already. I check in on rehearsals every day, and do rewrites as needed with Brendan, but it’s a relatively civilized schedule, and I’m finding myself surprisingly un-frazzled. (This will definitely change when we get into tech next week.)

It’s a gratifying but also slightly unsettling feeling to realize that people we have never met have been working on our show for months. In addition to our wonderful director Tracy Brigden, who has been with us from the beginning, there are newer members of the team whose work is just now being introduced to us. It’s like receiving gift after amazing gift: “Welcome to LONG STORY SHORT. Look what we have for you!”

The set in progress

Neil Patel, whom we’ll meet next week, is the set designer, and his concept is gorgeous: a diagonal room with floating ceiling, with pools of light on the stage outside the room for the four musicians. The room, with a bed in its center, never changes—all the action takes place there—but it’s spare enough that bringing little items in and out can suggest the passage of time and even different locations. The musicians bracket the room, simultaneously separated from and closely involved with, the action. I think it’s an elegant, intimate design that will work beautifully.

We also got to see a “timeline” of the costume sketches. C.T. Steele, our costume designer, has quite a task here: as we leap forward through over 50 years of Hope and Charles’s relationship in our show, there are very few opportunities for either of them to leave the stage long enough to change clothes…so he must create a strategy of artful layering for both actors, where their costumes not only work for however old the characters are at any given moment, but also suggest aging without being overly blatant. (For example, Hope can wear a scarf around her neck when she’s 30, and then wrap it over her shoulders as a shawl when she’s 75.) There won’t be any wrinkly makeup, or greying powder in the hair, or anything like that in our show—so the costumes must progress subtly and convincingly through the evening, conveying a lot without drawing much attention to themselves. It’s also never clear exactly what year it is in LONG STORY SHORT…so we don’t want an audience member thinking “she’s wearing giant shoulder pads! It must be 1982!” I don’t envy C.T. his job, but I do greatly admire what he’s done. He’s clearly put a lot of artistry and expertise into his designs, and I think they’ll be terrific.

C.T.'s costume timeline

Speaking of terrific, we could not be more excited about our two actors, Pearl Sun and Ben Evans. (I’ll tell you more about them in my next entry.) Meanwhile, we had our first band rehearsal last night! Music director/pianist Doug Levine has been with us since we did our initial reading at the Momentum Festival last June, but we had not met our violinist, cellist or percussionist before. (Actually we’ve still not met some of them, since there are subs for each chair; the only musician scheduled to play all the Pittsburgh shows is Doug.)

Doug

How did Pittsburgh get to be such a hotbed of talent?? I was stunned and amazed last night to hear these local players sightread their way brilliantly through the (not-quite-finished) score. As just one example of the quality of the LONG STORY SHORT world-premiere band, here is a video clip of our outstanding violinist Eunice Keem playing a Paganini caprice. I’m so inspired, I’m going to go practice some scales.

Eunice plays Paganini Capriccio #17

Eunice and Barney

Barney, RJ and Doug

The costume shop

One of Hope's costume pieces

When we last left HOPE and CHARLES, their relationship had disintegrated into bitterness and rancor after more than two decades of marriage. We’re now at the top of Act II; more time has gone by, our heroes have been legally separated for a while, and HOPE feels ready once again to brave the dating world.

LONG STORY SHORT demo #9: “Empowered”