I have to do it. I have to write about the education of writers, because we don't have it in the UK yet.
Don't get me wrong, there are people making a real effort to provide for new musical theatre in the UK. Here's what we have, to my knowledge:
Mercury Musical Developments
Craft Seminars
I teach one-off sessions for them quite a lot, as do other people, but they are one-off sessions. They're often poorly attended because not everyone lives within reach of London, and because a lot of people who want to write new musicals don't know that there are things they need to know. I mean, they don't know why they need to know them. Or they think they already know them. So they don't go.
Besides, a one-off session is easy to miss due to having dinner with a mate, or the footie being on, or the rain. A whole course of sessions, much harder to miss for the same sort of reasons. You have to actively say that you do not want to go on a course of Musical Writing 101, and for that you need much more of a reason if it really is something you want to do.
MMD is not at fault for this. They just don't have the money to do anything else right now. But they listen. They do listen. They let me go to board meetings and they agree that teaching craft is really important, and they thank me for my enthusiasm and they try very, very hard to find the money for a full course.
I love them, but they don't have the answer right now.
Goldsmiths College, London
MA in Musical Theatre
They run a musical theatre course that splits into two strands: producing and writing. The producing side is currently lead by the lovely Chris Grady (who does other things to support new musicals, see below). The writing side is currently lead by the lovely Julian Woolford and his writing partner, Richard John.
As far as I understand it, the course is either one-year full-time or two-year part-time. I'm not sure if writers are lead through any craft 101 classes, but I suspect not much of that goes on because there isn't time, and they don't have the resources.
The whole course is overseen by Robert Gordon, a delightfully warm and enthusiastic supporter of new musicals whom I met for the first time the other day, to talk about this very thing. He would, if he could, set up a whole institute for the study of the writing of new musicals. That's what he's trying to do, in fact, but he's struggling to find the funding even for a summer school, let alone a full-on institute.
Speaking of summer schools;
Theatre Royal Stratford East
Musical theatre writing summer school
Under the guidance of Philip Hedley, a summer school has been run for many years to encourage and facilitate the creation of new musical theatre that features contemporary themes and contemporary music.
Assisted by two of the finest musical theatre writing guides in the world, Robert Lee and Fred Carl from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, this course has resulted in material that has gone on to have a professional future, and substantially enhanced the catalogue of British Musical Theatre, going a long way towards shaping what British Musical Theatre could be.
But not far enough. Because it's a summer school, and there's only so much you can do. And because they have funding that I presume is tied to various hoops through which they must jump. It's certainly my understanding that not everyone with any kind of work would be eligible to join the course.
Chris Grady Dot Org
Month of Sundays
The lovely Chris Grady - he's a friend, can you tell? - runs a course of classes that happen on consecutive Sundays (and one Saturday) across a month. I've lead one of those sessions, twice now, and whilst you can get some stuff done in one day, it's just not enough time to properly address Craft 101. With time limitation, you have to do much more telling than showing, which is just not good guidance for creatives.
Again, Chris would do more if he had more money. He's constantly trying to do more, even as I write. But he needs funding.
And of course, understandably, no-one shares. Everyone has a little tiny pot of funding, and either they won't pool it for fear of losing it entirely, or (more likely) they can't pool it because it's been given to them, and them alone, and they already had to jump through however many hoops to qualify for it in the first place.
To my knowledge, no-one has ever said, "Here's some money that is specifically for guiding writers and composers in the study and development of the craft of writing musical theatre, the discovery and development of their individual own artistic voices, and the exploration and development of British Musical Theatre."
But that's what they've done at NYU, with American Musical Theatre. It's exactly what they've done. And not only has some global commercially successful musical theatre come out of it (the book of 'Wicked', for example) but also - and frankly, more importantly - hundreds of artists have not only developed their artistic voices, but also found out more about who they are as people, and how they fit into their families, their friends, their communities. (Even their countries, if you want to get all American about it.)
They've become more accurate and confident communicators, more generous and willing collaborators, and they are now more open to, and more likely to, and more able to incorporate creativity into everything they do. In and of itself, new musicals aside, that is a great achievement for the NYU program. An amazing achievement.
So British writers can do what I did, and go to NYU, and study the craft. Except they'll be studying in an atmosphere of AMERICAN Musical Theatre. Not British. They'll be studying at the Mecca of American Musical Theatre, in New York, the home of Broadway, and in the company of American writers and American guides.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. I love American musicals, and I loved my time there, but there are British writers - hundreds of them! - who would love to be writing new material for British Musical Theatre.
And it doesn't exist.
I know, Stratford can point to shows it has nurtured, and rightly so. That is British Musical Theatre, but it's localised, and it's not widely publicised, and it's one venue, one show at a time. What we need is a change in attitude towards new musicals - hells, a change in attitude towards musicals generally would help.
Andrew Lloyd-Webber has helped. No, come on, he has. The fact that the musical theatre reality TV shows have been so very popular has really helped the genre.
But new musicals?
There are companies offering opportunities for the staging of new work, in many ways. MMD offers readings and workshop opportunities. Chris Grady runs the George Street festival of musicals in Edinburgh. There are all kinds of smaller companies offering writers the chance to put their work up on its feet. Which is great. It really is.
Except for two things. First, it's almost impossible for those producers to find work that is sufficiently competent in terms of writing craft, because no-one teaches the craft to any degree of usefulness in the UK. And second, the writers have to be left to their own devices in the actual presentation of the work, because said producers can't raise enough money to pay for professional actors, directors and so on, so the writers are given an empty space and a time slot, maybe some lights, and some publicity, and that's it.
That's not it. I mean, that's great. But the writers are busy directing their own work - which they don't know how to do, even though it is possible, but it's a skill, and it can be taught! I can teach it! Except no-one is offering me much opportunity to teach it, other than one-off sessions, which really isn't enough time to guide people to understand the process for themselves so they can put it into practice without a guide being present when they go through the process themselves.
They never have a guide present. So from whom are they learning? How do they know what you can learn from a reading, from a workshop, if they have no writer with more experience to help them? Or give them a director with experience of helping a writer develop their work. Which is a skill, a different skill for a director than directing an existing text. It involves some dramaturgy. And where are the dramaturgs?! Again, a different way to learn, but just as powerful a guide in the writing process as another writer, or a director.
You just need someone who knows more about the process of developing new writing than you do. Someone who knows what the writing process is about. Someone who can bring some objectivity to it for you. Otherwise you can have all the readings and workshops you like, and you'll never grow.
It's not your fault. You just don't know what you're doing.
I didn't know what I was doing when I was given the opportunity to work with a bunch of drama students for an afternoon. But I very much wanted them to get something out of the process, and to know how much I appreciated what they could give me, and then I had to figure out WHAT they could give me, and what I could give them, and the more I thought about the process itself, the more I discovered about my own writing, and about the creative process of actor-and-character, and about collaborative theatre as a whole.
And I could share that. Given writers, given a space, given some time.
We could teach the craft! Lyrics 101 - what is AABA, how does it work, what can it achieve as a dramatic songwriting tool? Book 101 - how do your choices about the revelation of information affect the audience's emotional experience of a story? Music 101 - what is prosody, how does it work, and what can you do with it to tell a story?
We could guide people in the process of collaboration! We could enable people to hear and give constructive critique in order to benefit their own work and the work of other writers! (And to save their souls from the damnation of self-criticism!)
We could help people find and develop their own creative voices! Not voices they copy from America, or from the past, but voices that are truthful, from the town they live in and the people they know. From the fish & chips and the loving of the underdog, to the stone-clad beaches that you can't sit on, and the writing of a stern letter to your MP. From the green and pleasant to the dark satanic.
There are currently several British writers on the NYU course, and one of them told me that she wasn't sure whether to stay in America after graduation, or come back to England. Which would be better, in terms of musical theatre writing? I despaired, because I know what the sensible answer is: stay there. There's more opportunity. More support. More of a foundation.
But I said - come home. Your voice doesn't come from there, it comes from here. It can't echo there, but it will echo here. You speak this language, your heart beats this rhythm, your voice sings to England. Come home.
And I thought, well, everyone else is trying to raise funding, jumping through hoops by talking about broadening the industry by offering more opportunities of exposure for new work, but the new work has no guide and the writers have no guide, and all we're doing is filling the market with work that's too raw and confused and directionless.
They're all working really hard, but no-one is filling in the foundation. No-one who is a writer is helping writers full-time because nowhere is letting us do that.
So I don't have a choice now. It has to be me, and it has to be soon, and I don't care who it is or where it is or how it is, I need three things in my life:
- To eat
- To have shelter
- To guide
So I'm going to get a job. In a bookshop. In a library. As a researcher. I don't care. And while I'm doing that job, I'm going to be there for writers of musicals. So come home to me. And to everyone else who is trying to make things happen for you, but since there's no foundation for writing, no home for the craft of writing itself, no safe place prior to the audience getting their emotions into it... I will be that home.
I will make sure that you have a home to come to.
PS: This is not a new idea. I proudly inherit this role of being the British home of musical theatre writing from George Stiles. When I got back to Blighty after NYU, I was desperately alone and lonely, so I managed to get George's number through a friend of a friend, and I called him.
"Hello." I said. "You don't know me, but my name is Jen and I write musicals. I just got back from NY and I'm amazingly lonely. Please would you be my friend?"
And he said yes. But George is a bit busy these days, and although I know he absolutely is the friend of everyone who writes musicals, he also has a career to pursue that is frankly more successful and time-consuming than mine. So drop me an email and I'll send you my phone number and be your friend, in lieu of George Stiles. (I'm not quite as talented or lovely, but I'll do my best.)
