Damn bugs!

I’ve been officially bitten by that musical bug again. A quick bit of background first. I was dropping my wife off at work while I was in grad school and was listening to NPR’s Morning Addition on the way home. My wife, at the time, had a 45 minute commute to work (and remember I live in a rural area, so that’s quite a distance, not the three blocks if you live in LA). So while I was driving home I heard a story about the lack of new musicals being created. There was a lot about how the cost was prohibitive, that it was almost impossible to break into the business, etc., but what stuck with me was here was an opportunity. I love to sing, I enjoy writing, so it seemed a natural. All I needed was an idea. By the time I got back to school (I was working on PhD in physics at the time.) I had come up with my idea. I would place my whole musical inside a company at the middle management level. Why, you may ask, would you ever want to do that? The answer is simple; everyone can relate in some manner or form with dealing with management. It is a universal “evil” that I could lampoon. So, without giving too much away yet (though I might publish chunks of it here for feedback) my main character gets promoted to middle management and thinks he’s made it. This gives me my fish out of water and allows the other characters to play off of him. I was excited. I wrote a few of the songs and got to writing my outline. I love my outlines. They really get me focused and ready to go. I finished my outline in a couple of weeks and then my hard drive died. I was devastated. Luckily the songs were in a different notebook, but all the work on the book (the story and play portion of a musical) was gone. I couldn’t get up the energy to start it back up, that and my thesis needed to be written, so I put the whole idea away and said maybe some day. Occasionally I would take it out, dust it off, look sadly at it, and then file it back under ideas. Now it’s back out and I think it will have a better chance at surviving, and I can thank going to “Once Upon a Mattress” for giving me that bug.

By the way, if someone has a good idea for a name of a musical about middle management please let me know. If I use it I can name a character after you, so how’s that for motivation. Of course that means people need to be reading this. Oh well, you never know. I’ll leave you with a bit of lyrics from one of the numbers (and this is copywrited, so I’m not worried publishing it.) The tune is very marchy (think 76 trombones marchy)

Don’t be a yes man,
But never say no!
Push away the paperwork
As far as it will go,
And put off doing work,
For as long as you can,
And you will be a great middle man (or woman)!