I was making tea in a barn, in the middle of nowhere when I heard the news. A big, dusty, beautiful barn with wonderful people, who gathered around me to tell me the application I’d made for a commission to write a show had been successful. I truly didn’t believe them at first. And then immediately burst into tears, of course.
I had only joined MMD in March. I pitched for BEAM in 2022 and gained a lot from the experience, so I MMD had been on my radar. Then, I saw an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. An all-female musical theatre writing retreat called the Writer’s Barn. When I tell you my 2024 moodboard said, “Go on a retreat, meet new women, maybe get some playwriting done.” Call me a witch, I’m a total manifestation convert.
My good friend, Keia, from the Barn, has written an amazing post detailing the experience, so I won’t go into detail, only to say what a transformative, peaceful and creative week it was. Instead, I’m going to focus on one specific thing that happened at the retreat – the breakdown in front of the hot water urn.
To understand why I was crying in front of an urn, you have to know how I got there. Two months before the Writer’s Barn, MMD released information about a commission by the School Musicals Company, to write a show for 11-16-year olds. Over the past few years, I’ve been a musical director for a number of youth theatre companies, teaching singing to hundreds of young people in the UK and overseas. I love teaching and my years as a children’s singing teacher have taught me a lot about young voices. As it happened, I had a title for a show in my overflowing notes app for about a year, but I hadn’t ever had the plot. Hazel Hill and the Spitfire That Saved the World was a title that wrote itself when I read the true story of Hazel Hill, the 13-year-old mathematical genius who, alongside her father, Fred Hill, engineered the eight-gun Spitfire plane that won the Battle of Britain in 1940. A story centered around a child who was described as “naughty” by her teachers, whose brain worked a little differently, who was a whizz with numbers. Seeing the commission, I knew this was the opportunity to get this show going. Even if I didn’t get it, I thought, I’d still have written a synopsis and gotten a good idea of musical style.
I spent a full day story mapping, coming up with a narrative, vague ideas of characters. I expanded the original story to include a weekend mathematics club for Hazel to pitch her ideas to, developed the school “mean girl” antagonist and gave her a backstory, and figured out my protagonist’s main desires and misbeliefs. And suddenly, I had a story. After that, the songs started to come out – a little 1930s/40s jazz influence, a little 80s synth to keep it upbeat and fun, rooted with contemporary piano and lyrics. I wanted to make sure the songs weren’t “dumbed down” for a younger audience, that they had age-appropriate vocal ranges but still focused on deep storytelling. Once I had a couple of songs, I just had to record the piano demos. I don’t have much in the way of equipment at home; a piano, a computer and whatever else I can find around the house. So when I got to the dance break section of my Act 1 finale demo and needed drums and percussion, I grabbed the first box I could find, created a beat and pitched it down on Garageband. Friends, you’ll be thrilled to know the first version of ‘Eight’ from Hazel Hill and the Spitfire That Saved the World was played on piano and Movicol laxative sachets.
I submitted the two songs, one scene and synopsis needed for the application and waited to hear back. And then I did. So now we’re up to speed, with me finding out I’d got the commission at the Writer’s Barn.
After I got home, I had an interview with Tom Kirkham, the company’s co-founder, which was so lovely. I can’t explain the feeling of meeting someone who sees the same spark in your story that you do, the person who says, ‘Yes, this is going to work and I will work on it with you.’ It’s a real ‘pinch-me’ moment for a writer. We talked through the show, timescales, what was needed from me, and I got to work. Since then, I’ve been doing my best to write a brand new show in four months. I’m two months in and 50% done with my first draft, bang on schedule. One thing about having such a short timeframe to work in is that there is no room for perfectionism. You have to just get something on the page. As a recovering perfectionist, this has been both my biggest task and greatest blessing. My usual writing process is to figure out what I want the song to do and then spend three months getting 60% of the way through eight different versions of lyrics and melody, scrapping it and starting again until one night (usually at 1 am), I come up with something that I like. But with time ticking, I’m now doing my best to run with the first idea, knowing it won’t be the final idea.
I had a meeting with Tom a few weeks ago to show him what I had so far, and felt the need to put disclaimers in front of every song – ‘this isn’t my favourite’, ‘there’s some lines in here I want to change’. But, as a fellow writer once said to me, ‘It’s a first draft. It’s meant to be imperfect. So just getting it done is perfect.’ I’m doing my best to take that into the room with me when I write.