#on my annual Newsies Is The Best Thing Ever Created

[just-a-silly-little-gay]

i don't remember if i just texted my friend last time or if i made a post but im making one now bc i don't want to interrupt her lesbian pining

anyway i hath once again watched the broadway recording of newsies followed immediately by the 1992 movie and i just,, jack and davey are SO MUCH GAYER in the movie (this is not to say they aren't gay in the broadway version bc they are its just so much more pronounced in the movie)

[broadwaycantdie]

Disneyland / Part 1...The Journey! - Newsies (Pride) Month . Day 9

( all ) + ( modern ) + ( hc story )

a/n: oh my do i love a good road trip // also sorry this is split up, i just ran out of time but i wanted to give y’all something

( this is part one but imma post the second part soon, so this is the journey and the next part is them actually at disneyland )

warnings: mentions of intimacy // minor cussing

background: Every year the newsies all get together and go on their annual Disneyland trip. They drive from Manhattan to Anaheim because it’s cheaper than buying 20+ plane tickets. They also have a collective jar in the lodging house that everyone puts money into to help pay. Davey plans the whole thing for months and somehow things still go wrong. It’s never not a wild ride with their family. But every year they still enjoy it.

——————————————————————————

it’s damn near impossible to squeeze everyone in one car unless they rented out a bus which didn’t fit into budget

but

they also couldn’t afford another car

so they just piled everyone into one van

that’s right

29 people in one van

davey bought a van a few years back that could fit everyone semi-comfortably before they had so many people

it was a big van, made for seating 18 people technically

but new people kept coming and they made a vow to never turn down someone in need

they also added partners and siblings and whoever else

so it was tough fitting 11 more people in an already packed van, but they did it

was it safe? no.

was it comfy? no.

did it work? sure.

they had curtains on the windows so police wouldn’t see in

and blankets and pillows on the floor for everyone sitting and laying and sleeping

they also put up a sheet across the back of the first 3 seats to create a wall between the adults and the children

also cause Jack is paranoid of the police finding out

but they keep it up high enough to slide snacks under the gap whenever people asked

Darcy drives most of the time since he is the best driver

Bill and Davey sit next to him in the two front seats and give directions

Jack sits on the floor between Davey’s legs and guards the snacks

they don’t stop at hotels

cause dear god that’d be a whole other budget they can’t deal with

so they just switch between the four people in the front driving and go continuously

occasionally stopping at rest stops, food places, etc.

the back is where it got crazy

the first row consisted of Crutchie against the window, Buttons in the isle seat, and Kenny on the floor next to them

behind them was Katherine against the window, Sarah in the isle, Smalls and Sniper in the gap, and Finch in the single seat on the other side

the third row was Specs against the window with Romeo in the isle, Henry in the gap on the floor, and Jojo and Tommy Boy sitting on each other’s lap sharing the single seat

behind them was Albert against the window and Elmer in the isle, with Bart and Myron in the gap, and Mush and Kid Blink sharing the single seat

then the back row

oh my the back row

Spot sat against the window behind the single seats with Race on his lap, Hotshot sat on the opposite side with Mike halfway on and halfway off his lap, and they stuck poor Ike in the middle

bless his soul

and Les just randomly found spots on the floor wherever he could fit himself

the ride was eventful, to say the least

there were a lot of games played

the people on the floor played uno, go fish, and other card games

while the people in the seats played i spy, the alphabet game, word association, would you rather, 21 questions, never have i ever, and the oh so popular “shut the fuck up, i’m trying to sleep”

they played punch-buggy for a bit but that had to stop on account of everyone getting hurt and Davey yelling at them

Davey also counted his lucky stars he set up that sheet because everyone’s favorite game is padiddle

everyone played—except for les cause he was too young, also if you were asleep you automatically didn’t count cause that’s only fair—and it was insanity

the people on the floor would fly up as soon as they had a chance to make sure they were safe

it was their only continuous game throughout the entire trip

the worst time of all was during hour 22 when everyone was going crazy and they all started singing

the look in Davey’s eyes was priceless

he didn’t even know how to react

he’s just glad he didn’t have to be back there

god bless his ability to drive

in the front—while Darcy was driving—Bill would rest his head on Darcy’s shoulder or place a soft hand on his leg

nothing too distracting

they couldn’t risk an accident

Jack could fit his whole body in front of Davey’s seat

for how packed it was, it was a pretty spacious van

but when Jack got tired of laying he would sit up and rest his head on Davey’s seat between his legs

and Davey would pet his hair and hold the side of his face

or he would sit upright, leaning his back against the seat and have Davey play with his hair or lean his head back far enough for Davey to place a kiss on his lips

none of them even wanted to think about what was happening in the back

Specs read almost the entire time

Romeo would cuddle up on his lap and beg for attention but Specs would just pet his hair and continue on

they exchanged kisses every time Specs finished a chapter

both Mush and Kid Blink as well as Jojo and Tommy Boy periodically switched who was on whose lap for comfortablilty

they also sometimes just sat on the floor or hovered above the tiny gap between the wall and the seat for extra space

every time Elmer slept he’d curled his legs up on the seat and place his head in Albert’s lap

Albert just rested his head against the window and put his arms around Elmer, holding him

at one point they forgot other people were around and during one of Elmer’s special dreams he starting rubbing up on Albert’s thighs until he woke up to do more and saw Myron’s disappointing glare

Sarah and Katherine held each other a lot

Mush and Kid Blink exchanged more than a few kisses but what’s new

Jojo and Tommy Boy were saints to be next to because they just wrapped their arms around each other and kept to themselves

everyone was pretty tame with their relationships in the van

except for the back row

that’s why they got put in the back, so no one had to look at them

Hotshot and Mike were actually the tame ones

only in comparison to Spot and Race

Mike sat mostly on top of Hotshot

they were always touching

most of the time they just held each other

but other times they wanted more

they would makeout and grab around but nothing too crazy

they kinda knew the time and place

whenever they started doing anything Ike would just slide down to the floor and play cards with Bart and Myron

but Spot and Race

oh god

Race sat on Spot’s lap pretty much the entire time, only adjusting to sit more comfortably or sleep

sometimes Race would drop down to the floor and wrap himself around Spot’s legs

there were certain times when everyone was asleep

with the exception of whoevers turn it was to drive

usually the entire van slept at night cause they didn’t want to ruin their sleep schedules that bad

though they did take naps throughout the day

but there was one time when everyone was asleep except for Spot and Race

so they did what any dumbasses would do

suck dick in the back seat

yup

race ‘dumbass’ higgins dropped himself on the floor and tested how quiet they could be

no one woke up and they didn’t dare tell anyone

when they finished, Race wrapped himself in Spot’s arms like nothing happened and went to sleep with the rest of them

they stopped at so many mcdonald’s, 7/11’s, diners, and random rest stops

the first stop—hour 4—they found a rest stop and a few people had to pee so some people got out and stretched while others slept inside

they got back on the van and left

it took 18 minutes for them to realize they left Crutchie

“Buttons! How could you not notice your seat partner was missing!”

“that is not my job, I was asleep”

they turned around and picked him up

after that Davey made an alphabetized list of everyone and took role before they left any stop after that

it also became a joke within the group

after what felt like the car ride of a lifetime, they finally made it

at 10 o’clock at night

and seeing the disneyland sign was like arriving at heaven’s gates

when they got out so many boys flipped and jumped and ran around

just because they were so happy and they finally didn’t have to sit in a car waiting anymore

they were like children

they are children, but still

they got to the hotel, checked in, got their rooms, and slept for the night

but the next day was when the real fun was going to happen

part two of them actually at disneyland coming soon

[kaitkerrigan]

Hand in Hand: How to Make a Wedding Song

Have you ever watched the glorious Lindsay Mendez sing Hand in Hand? If not, you should start here. Then, you should consider jettisoning this post altogether and just spend the next few hours falling down a Lindsay Mendez-shaped rabbit hole. 

I’m actually surprise by how many request I’ve gotten for a deep dive on these lyrics. 

I’ll start by saying that an occupational hazard of being a writing duo who has a lot of friends in common is that you often end up writing songs for your friends for their weddings. You can thank the marriages of our friends for songs like “Berkeley”, “Beautiful Things,” and a brilliant and hilarious song that you don’t know that composers Brian Lowdermilk and Chris Miller wrote called “There Are No Words” for my wedding to my lyricist husband Nathan Tysen. And of course, it’s also where “Hand in Hand” came from. 

Brian and I wrote "Hand in Hand” for our long-time collaborator Danny Goldstein (who went on to direct Lindsay Mendez in Godspell on Broadway). And believe it or not, I was the first person to sing the song at the rehearsal dinner. In fact, “Hand in Hand” and “Berkeley” were performed by me for the first time just two weeks apart. Brian and I went to three weddings in four weekends. Don’t worry, we also performed “Say the Word” at the third wedding. 

Danny and his wife Melissa are strong equal partners. They’re socially conscious, hard-working, and incredible advocates for each other and for the world they believe we can make. They’re also classy AF. Chris Gatelli (choreographer of Newsies) choreographed their first dance and it was whimsical and gorgeous. And really - that was the tone we wanted to hit.  

Writing a song for a wedding is the literal inverse of writing a song for a musical. When you write a song for a musical, you’re looking for the tension in the number. In musical theater, there are very few love songs that are statically about love. They are about forbidden love, they are about love and the inverse. The “almost love song” is a classic. If I loved you. Only make believe I love you. That supposition is my favorite kind of love song. It’s seductive. It teases out the feelings of the two characters. 

Conversely, when you’re writing for a wedding, there cannot be any conflict. Suggesting conflict suggests derision, which suggests divorce. Wedding songs are kind of the bane of a musical theater lyricist’s existence. They’re boring. 

So what do you do? You create other tensions. One kind is not understanding the love two people have - the tension between you the writer and the subject of the song. Or you get playful. I was already writing one of the former kind of song with Berkeley. 

Bet you’re not one of the - wait, 1700 people have  saw this video: 

So we needed to get playful. We went for the most classic musical theater style in the American songbook - the standard 32-bar AABA. 

Rodgers and Hart, those pithy Gershwin bros, and Cole Porter all loved an AABA, so does the BMI Musical Theatre Writing Workshop, where both Brian and I studied. Brian and I never write them.  

A big difference between this structure and the pop structure that Brian and I spend a lot more time in is that there’s no “chorus” in the AABA or, one could argue, that the whole song is the chorus. The hook (the title) “hand in hand” is the only repeated phrase in the whole song. 

Modern pop music is about the catchiness of music. Catchiness is built out of repetition. More often than not, your favorite pop songs have verses that have lyrical structures that resemble choruses. There are words that are repeated, the phrases feel like they could be hooks. The building blocks of songs have essentially gotten more compact and oaken. 

Conversely, the AABA is a lyricist’s genre. It’s about cleverness. It’s about how many different ways you can get to the hook. Because musicals in the 1920s and 30s were barely musicals compared to what we would call a musical today, they were less dramatic, less about tension. 

Songs like “You’re the Top” used to live in prime spots in musicals like Anything Goes. I don’t know if you remember the context for that song, but I do because my dad played Billy in a community theater production and I watched it over and over again. Billy is a stowaway on the ship, and once he’s safely undercover, he and Reno and Billy celebrate their platonic friendship by singing about how much they like each other. Seriously - that’s the dramatic action. 

I think Brian likes Cole Porter about as much as I like Ira Gershwin, which is to say not a lot, but if I like some of Porter’s lyrics. I think most of Anything Goes is pretty awesome. I also like Dorothy Fields and Betty Comden and Adolf Green. All of them share a jaunty wordplay that I normally eschew because I’m not a clever writer. I don’t like drawing attention to myself. 

But there’s something about the twitter-pated nature of love that makes you feel like you can dance on air, which verbally translates to wordplay. I was thinking about the mix-up of love - the way your heart feels like it’s in your throat, your stomach is in your feet, etc, and I decided to take those aphorisms and make them feel new. 

A

I taste the sunshine,

you see, you feel the sunshine, but what about when it’s a day like yesterday - 80 degrees after weeks of gray cold wet - and you’re drinking your iced coffee in the park with the person you love best? It feels more like drinking the sunshine in than basking in it. 

I reach for the moon.

Well, obviously, you can’t but there are those nights when the moon feels so big clear and round that you could. Have you ever driven with the harvest moon in your rearview mirror - talk about an object feeling closer than it appears. 

I’m hearing sparks fly. 

You watch sparks fly but it also feels like you’re hearing it - the whirlygig of the chemical reaction. 

It smells like June. 

It feels like June on those 80 degrees days, but the smell of June is something too, isn’t it? That smell of new green growth, fresh grass, the perfume of flowers? 

All of my senses mix up and expand, 

Your senses are on overdrive - making you feel more, your senses trying to create a sensory record of that feeling of being in love. 

When we walk hand in hand. 

Do you remember the first time you held hands with someone romantically? I do. It was a boy at summer camp when I was 14 years old. It was the last day of camp and I suddenly realized he liked me when we were watching the final recital and he carefully moved his hand over mine. We went outside after the recital, violin cases en-tow, and we walked over to a little pond in an alcove and we kissed. 

Night’s never lonely And gray days are fair.  Your shadow follows me everywhere.  Tell me it’s crazy,  And I’ll say it’s grand, ‘cause we’re still hand in hand. 

The game continues above - all of the cliches are busted into pieces with this feeling of having your hand - nights aren’t lonely, gray days are beautiful. It’s not me and my shadow - it’s me and your shadow. It’s not crazy, it’s amazing. 

B My heart flip-flops,  my breath short-stops inside me,  When you’re here beside me,  Where you should always be. 

It’s a mistake to think that a B section is like a bridge. Bridges, generally, show you another side of the story. Sometimes, it’s a “but” or “however”. Think of “I’m not trying to make you a wife here...”. I love a bridge. But a bridge is not a B section. B sections are not reversals. You can kind of think of the entire AABA form as an extended chorus. It generally repeats the hook about as many times as a modern chorus (three times) and when you look at the melody of a modern chorus in pop music - it’s often in an AABA or an ABAB format. So if you think about the B section in those terms, you get a better sense of what you need out of the B section - which is PERFECT for a wedding song, by the way. It’s simply about taking the idea further, or going to the side. In our case here, the B section moves a bit more inward. The singer talking about the WORLD feeling different until the B section and the singer talks about the physiological changes that happen inside her own body. 

Then, the final A section has to feel bigger than ever. The change in her makes the changes in the world feel even more seismic. 

A Clouds are below me And I’m in the sky.  I’m standing still let the world fly by,  You say you love me,  and you understand so say you’ll wear a matching wedding band.  Say we’ll be hand in hand.

One of the coolest things that happened with this song happened a few years  after we wrote it. Lindsay Mendez sang it at the annual NYCLU Broadway Stands Up for Freedom benefit in support of gay marriage rights. Danny directed the benefit and he and Melissa were so excited to have their song co-opted for the cause. Since then, that’s always what I think about when I hear this song. Funny - because putting this song into the context of gay marriage rights gives it that telltale conflict that it lacked as a straight marriage song. Its buoyancy is defiant and worthy of a musical. 

Finally, in case you came here because you’ll be working on “Hand in Hand” in a class and you need the dramatic context, here it is. The song is featured in The Bad Years, but even there it’s a “source” song. Sadie, a singer in the house band, sings it using Sawyer as a prop, activating a love triangle between her, Sawyer, and her boyfriend who is also a bandmate. 

[newyorktheater]

Britney Spears, 20 years ago

Will Roland in Be More Chiil

Cast of Mean Girls

Andrew Barth Feldman in Dear Evan Hansen

Isabelle McCalla and Caitlin Kinnunen as high school girlfriends in The Prom

“I’m not a girl, not yet a woman…I’m in between,” Britney Spears sang some two decades ago, and it could almost be the new anthem (gender-adjusted) for Broadway. The opening of Be More Chill this week adds yet another to the New York stage shows that focus on teenage characters (mostly portrayed by non-teenage performers), many of which attract a large teenage audience. These include Dear Evan Hansen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Mean Girls, and, yes, ok, Wicked. (The Prom has a dual focus; and the audience for, if not the characters in, Frozen skew younger.) Teen angst has made its way Off-Broadway as well, with Superhero.

Shows about teens and tweens are hardly new: 13, Bye Bye Birdie, Carrie, Hairspray, Matilda, Newsies, School of Rock, Spring Awakening come to mind. But we’re seeing a particular trend now, and not an especially welcome one. It’s of course a good thing to broaden the demographics of the Broadway audience, and at least one of these shows is widely viewed as of high quality.  Yet their focus is largely on angst and on stereotypes.  How accurate or fair are the depictions of teenagers in these shows?  Yes, high school may be a time when some people are trying out identities, and too many of them might like to assign reductive labels to their classmates or even to themselves.  But surely this is not the full picture, nor a constructive one. As I say in my review of Be More Chill, the actual high school students we see regularly in the news are  taking the lead in attacking such crucial  problems as climate change and gun control — problems that have stalemated adults.

Incidentally, “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” along with “Baby One More Time,” Spear’s first pop single when she was 17 years old, are likely to be two of the 23 songs from her repertorie that will be in the new musical “Once Upon a One More Time” aiming for Broadway, announced today.  The book, thankfully, is not about teen angst. (For more details, see Week in NY Theater News, below.)

The Week in New York Theater Reviews

THE B-SIDE: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” A Record Album Interpretation

In “The B-Side,” three men sing along with an album on a record-player —  or, as people prefer to say these days, a vinyl on the turntable. But there’s a reason why the Wooster Group’s encore presentation of its simple and odd hour-long piece, first performed at the Performing Garage in 2017, is filling St. Ann’s Warehouse every night. The album is “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons”…

Austin Scott as Alexander Hamilton and Carvens Lissaint as George Washington, the new cast members of “Hamilton” on Broadway.

  Hamilton on Broadway 2019: New Cast, New Clarity

I recently saw Hamilton again on Broadway, during a rare open captioned performance, and it was a revelation in several ways.

  I would love to see this show but there are not enough OC performances for those of us who want to attend. It’s nice to pat yourself on the back about access, but the reality is that an occasional Wednesday OC performance with limited tickets is not access. #captionallshows

— Dr. Petrified Tree Sap (@a_joy_martin) March 9, 2019

The Cake Review: “This is Us” writer on Christian baker’s Lesbian wedding dilemma

In “The Cake,” Debra Jo Rupp (the mother on “That 70s Show”) portrays Della, a Christian baker in North Carolina who refuses to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding. If the story is inspired by the Supreme Court case decided last year, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, playwright Bekah Brunstetter, who is a writer for “This Is Us,” makes it personal in several ways…One of the future brides, Jen (Genevieve Angelson), is the daughter of Della’s best friend, who died five years ago. Della, who is childless, views Jen like a daughter…Bekah Brunstetter has told interviewers that she wrote “The Cake” as a way to explain her support for gay rights and same-sex marriage to her parents. Her father, Peter Brunstetter, is a Republican politician from North Carolina who supported an anti-gay state bill that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Be More Chill on Broadway

Somebody wrote “NYC Loves BMC” in chalk on the sidewalk outside Broadway’s Lyceum Theater, the new home of “Be More Chill,” the high energy, high decibel pop-rock musical that stars Will Roland as a self-proclaimed high school “loser” who swallows a pill containing a supercomputer and becomes cool. I tweeted a picture of the scrawled public love note; the tweet was retweeted nearly a hundred times. “Be More Chill” has some seriously devoted fans, most of whom seem to be 15 years old. It’s a thrill to see such teenaged enthusiasm for live theater.  I wish I could share more fully in their ardor for this show

  The Week in New York Theater News

The first annual Rave Theater Festival is asking for submissions. Artistic director @kendavenportplans roughly 20 plays, musicals, multimedia, and cross-disciplinary projects, as well as family shows, which will each receive up to five performances, August 9-25, 2019 at Clemente Sito Velez Cultural and Education Center on the Lower East Side.

Simpsons theme song composer Danny Elfman will make his Broadway debut by composing music for “Gary: The Sequel to Titus Andronicus.”

Twenty-three of Britney Spears’ songs will form the score for a new Broadway-aiming musical, “Once Upon a One More Time” with will have a try-out in Chicago from October to December of this year. “Once Upon A Time… Cinderella, Snow White, and the other fairytale princesses gather for their book club, when – oh, baby baby! – a rogue fairy godmother drops The Feminine Mystique into their corseted laps, spurring a royal revelation.” The Times reports that the run at the Chicago theater “had been set aside for “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” a Michael Jackson jukebox musical that canceled its Chicago plans on the eve of an HBO documentary detailing abuse allegations against the pop star. That show’s producers say they are still hoping to come to Broadway.”

The Arts Are Good For You

Three articles that show that the arts are a good thing.

Article 1, by Isaac Kaplan in Artsy:  Arts Sector Contributed $763.6 Billion to U.S. Economy—More Than Agriculture or Transportation, New Data Shows

Article 2, by Tom Jacobs in Pacific Standard:  How arts can help struggling science students do better

A large study released last month found that Florida middle-school students who study music, theater, or visual art subsequently get higher overall grades than their peers.

Article 3 by Robert Ruffin in HowlRound (from 2018) We Need Theatre to Exist, and Maybe Research Can Prove Its Necessity

A new Broadway By The Year, musicals of 1943 and 1951, will be presented at Town Hall of March 25th, “created, written, hosted and directed” by Scott Siegel — for whom 2018 was not a great year, having gotten into a bad bicycle accident. Here is an article about his accident and his show in the Times, written right before the last Broadway By Year, last month.

Alexa’s new skill lets you scour Ticketmaster using your voice

  Robert Barry Fleming has been appointed artistic director of Actors Theater of Louisville, the theater that brings us the annual Humana Festival. He’s been an actor, director, choreographer, arts administrator (at Arena Stage and Cleveland PlayHouse), and championed or commissioned such shows as Dear Evan Hansen and Sweat.

Daryl_Roth – Producing with a Purpose. Theater producer for 31 yrs “Marvel action hero” – Paula Vogel. One of the few female producers on Broadway…she chooses work by women, LGBT folks, and people of color not usually seen as commercially viable

Daveed DIggs is back in New York, for the play White Noise at the Public Theater, and he’s happier to be here than last time.

The last few years I have had not a great relationship with New York, but this time feels really good. The Hamilton experience here was so intense, and it became a pretty stressful place for me to be. That was a show that, at the bottom of it, it’s a bunch of friends getting together and making rap songs. I was involved with that show for a long time because my friend wrote it and asked me to come along for the ride. Everything on the inside of it felt very small, and everything on the outside of it felt very big.

…I love performing in smaller houses. I think you get a different kind of connection there. I’m excited to be doing any play, period, after spending a couple years being in front of a camera. This is a very welcome return. You get a different kind of intimacy in a small space, and I think everybody gets to know each other a little better.

As much as I loved performing on Broadway, I don’t care if I ever do that again. I like telling stories in places where everyone is part of the storytelling.

Oskar Eustis and Suzan-Lori Parks chat with one another about their new collaboration as director and playwright, White Noise, It begins: Oskar Eustis doesn’t believe in giving audiences a heads-up. “When you have a trigger ­warning, you’re implying that people need to be protected from pain,” says Eustis, the artistic director of New York’s Public ­Theater. “I think real art says, ‘No, you don’t. What you need is the chance to face it.’”

If you’re working on a play– especially a new one– and you’re not checking in with your ushers on a regular basis during previews, you don’t actually know how it’s going.

— Evan Cabnet (@evancabnet) March 11, 2019

Thanks Broadway Twitter for having my back. Being a working parent in any profession is really challenging. I never want to disappoint audiences as I am beyond grateful to them, but the health of my family will always come before my job. Thanks to those who understand that 💛

— Laura Benanti (@LauraBenanti) March 11, 2019

.@FosseVerdonFX cast includes: Sam Rockwell as Bob Fosse & Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon@kelli_barrett as Liza Minnelli@biancamarroquin as @Chita_Rivera +@BranUran as Dustin Hoffman @TheTylerHanes as Jerry Orbach@ethansaslater as @joelgrey Premieres on FX April 9th. pic.twitter.com/lvokxwZUFl

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 11, 2019

If you’re an aspiring playwright, this thread by @MikeLew4 might change your life. https://t.co/WouQGQXNUh

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 8, 2019

My favorite line: “Get that EXT/INT shit outta there! Dead giveaway your “play” is a pilot.”

Play Formatting PSA: In undergrad one of the 1st things Donald Margulies did was teach us proper play formatting. Which felt like a huge bummer. Shouldn’t it be story first? Who cares about formatting?! Don’t you see that l WILL CHANGE THE FORM, WITH THE POWER OF ART? 1

But now that I’ve done a ton of reading committees, I can see he was right. In the same way you wouldn’t show up to a job interview dressed wrong for the job, when I’m reading a ton of plays my first cut rejections boil down to, “Does this manuscript LOOK like a play or not?” 2/

And the most screwed up thing is that published plays don’t look like manuscript-form plays, so you can’t just learn by picking up an acting edition at the bookstore or your submission’ll look weird. To wit, a thread about formatting. ARE YOU EXCITED?? 3/

A full-length play is approx 100 pgs in length (50 pgs per act). Sure your length may vary. You may have a lean 75 pg straight-through-no-intermission piece or a 120 pg 2-act that “should read really really fast”

Now the formatting nitty gritty! *character names in all caps & centered *dialogue left-justified *in-dialogue stage directions like “(she exits)” should be in parentheses and italics *longer stage directions should be tabbed in and (optionally) italicized 10/

New scenes get their own line (i.e. “Scene 1”) – bolded and numbered *Get that EXT/INT shit outta there! Dead giveaway your “play�� is a pilot. *Start a new pg for each scene *End the act on an all-caps “END OF ACT 1” “END OF PLAY” etc – and bold it too cuz that feels GREAT 11/

Teens Take Over Broadway (but is it real?). A Britney Spears Broadway musical? Hamilton Reconsidered. #Stageworthy News of the Week “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman...I'm in between,” Britney Spears sang some two decades ago, and it could almost be the new anthem (gender-adjusted) for Broadway. 2,063 more words