I finished writing and composing my quarantine distraction musical!

Took me eighteen months, but it's done. I wrote book, music and lyrics solo (my first time in all three roles by myself) for a musical, finally re-attempting and completing the musical of "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari" that I've been wanting to write for ten years.

I gave myself three rules to play by: do it all by yourself and don't ask for help unless you're absolutely stumped (I had to get jazz-chording assistance on two songs); no pop-rock influence because that's all I've ever written before: and pretend it's 1967 and write a show that would mostly not be anachronistic for that time period. So there are deep basses, legit sopranos, a leading man who is a baritone, and altos who occasionally belt but don't screlt.

I took as much influence as I could from people like Kander and Ebb, Cy Coleman and Jerry Herman, filtered through Kurt Weill and David Ackles's off-kilter vaudevillian elements. "What if Sweeney Todd had kicklines? What if Hello Dolly was goth? What would a Barry Sonnenfeld musical look like?" These were my inspirations, and that's how I wound up spending eighteen months writing a three-hour, thirteen-person, all-singing all-dancing Broadway noir musical comedy. I have wasted my life.

Updated On: 8/10/21 at 11:10 PM

Thanks! Sometimes you just have to build a ship in a bottle, doing something for the sake of doing it and not worrying much about if it's commercial or if people will be invested in it. And at the end of the day, if nothing else, you have a ship in a bottle.

Congratulations! That sounds like a big project. You already had me but I was hooked by "What if Hello Dolly was goth?"

Congrats! A big accomplishment. :)