Aurora's Blog

Okay, well, since we’re still catching up on all things 2018/2019 [since I was gone], why not get into some stuff I drafted during BMI?(!)

So here it is as I wrote it at the time, starting with stuff from 1st year (and more posts coming after this!)

So. In the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, for year 1, the final is to do a 10-minute musical on whatever you want. (The term “10-minute” is used pretty loosely, as many are more like 14 or 15. The truer goal was kind of 13 or under, basically. Mine was like 15. Whoops.)

3 composers quit throughout the year for various reasons. So a few of us who are normally lyricists in the workshop got to work alone(!). I super volunteered, because I’d been dying to write music & lyrics again. And alas, I got to work alone.

I chose to write about domestic violence/sexual assault. That was the only thing really in my heart and brain at the time, so I just went for it.

You know? I had all these ideas the first time around for all these possible 10-minute musicals. And I even had a few now as well. But none of them felt right (or really even possible right this second) to me.

Back in the olden days, when I first did BMI, I had all these ideas for potential mini-musicals.

But this time, it was pretty clear to me this was the only one…

I flirted with a couple of other ideas, but over and over again, I kept coming back to one on domestic violence/sexual assault. I just wasn’t out of that headspace yet. And I kept going back to the same room at the same time of my old class – which is where I met the man who changed my life (in a not good way).

So, if I had to write a whole mini-musical? I didn’t know how to do it about anything else.

At first, when I ran the idea by people here and there, no one necessarily super immediately thought “oh yeah, that’s a smart idea.” But I guess I didn’t care.

[And I think there might be something too that…. I always talk about my improv teacher who told us to get As and Fs, but don’t you dare get a C. And I think this moment crystalized that. I could’ve gone for a safe choice and gotten a solid C, but instead, I chose something that most definitely could’ve ended up as an F, but thankfully, it didn’t. And it feels so good to get that A. (I’ve gotta try to remember this for the future.)]

And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow!