Writing a play is hard, apparently.

Trust me, I checked.

To make my Modern Musicals 315 class count as a graduate level 515 class, I told Dr. Nelson that I would write a musical.

I'm not sure exactly why I thought that was an appropriate thing to say. I must have still been jet lagged.

"write a musical"!?!?!?

Andrew Lloyd Webber writes musicals (and purchases all of my favorite paintings so I can't see them, I've recently learned). I... I wake up late and and whine to Jacob and pop my zits and eat too many digestives and get love handles and get hangry and fall asleep all over the place. I am lamentably ordinary and am sick of all my clothes and rarely shave my legs and procrastinate everything and don't know how to manage money. I am one big human flaw. I don't write musicals.
But, for what it's worth, I'm trying.

In other news on the theater front, we're having a marvelous time. Jacob has seen more musicals since we've been here than in his entire 32 years combined (I think he saw...two before this. The two he came to see me in).

So, here's the run down on just a sampling of the plays I've seen in Jolly Old London:

There's nothing like seeing the Phantom of the Opera to make you want to lose weight and take voice lessons.

(No pictures, whoops)

There's nothing like seeing Carmen to make you glad you're not a terrible hussy with a death wish.

 It was Jacob's first Opera, and he hated it (we're working on this). But sitting in the Royal Albert Hall alone is a sublime experience (Side note: the Royal Albert Hall is just a quick skip through Kensington Gardens from our flat. !?!?).

This place is BIG.

There's nothing like seeing The Lion King to make you feel not only inflexible, but entirely incapable physically.

 

There's nothing like seeing Wicked to assure you that something, at least, is better in America.

Though Americans, perhaps, go a little insane waiting at the stage door in the freezing rain to meet West End stars .

There's nothing like seeing War Horse to bring back all of your girlhood equine obsessions (including, but not limited to: horseback riding lessons, a Breyer Horse collection, notebooks filled with Learn to Draw Horses attempts, multiple homemade stop animation videos starring Playmobil horses, etc.) and make you practice, incessantly, moving and sounding like a horse. 

Sue me.

And there's absolutely nothing like seeing Les Miserables  to convince you that you should NEVER attempt to write a musical.

 (I joined in their crusade...)

But guess what?

I'm still going to do it. And as terrifying as it is, I actually really like doing it. Every time I run breathlessly to my computer because some dialogue magically worked itself out in my mind or a character's back story writes itself because the character knows more about their life than I do... wow. Those moments are delicious. And a little addicting. And even though I'm beyond self-conscious to let anyone read my soul-baring, nonsensical crap script, I am more fulfilled by actually finally attempting to do this than by most other things.

So I let Jacob read some scenes. I work at the piano where I know everyone can hear, but I just do it anyway. I'm trying to write music. I'm trying to write stories. And even if they turn out as bad as I fear they will and they never speak to a single soul... at least I did what I've always felt, at my deepest depths, that I was meant to do. 

Love, drafts, and more drafts,

Banana