I had joined MMD just two weeks before the Stiles + Drewe 2024 Best New Song prize deadline.  

As a comic book creator writing my first ever musical with UNFOLDING (a project I jokingly refer to as my mid-life crisis), it felt a little insane to enter the competition at all, but why just dip a toe into madness when you can belly-flop? 

When, months later, I saw an email entitled ‘Stiles + Drewe song prize’ in my inbox, my first thought was ‘How lovely that MMD take the time to thank people for entering’. 

After all, I was new, unknown, and fighting imposter syndrome with every fibre of my being. I’d been creating in a bubble, as many of us do, with no real frame of reference for whether what I was writing was, in fact, any good. Surely, they’d made a mistake. Maybe someone else had my name? Maybe they got confused…maybe…maybe I was okay at this??

Insert several months of self-doubt and excitement on perma-rotation and you’ll have a good idea of the interim months, but let’s skip ahead to December:  When I entered a building of strangers and left a room full of friends.  

The Other Palace that I stepped into as a complete outsider was a world of smiles and talent. Warmth and creative excitement. I arrived knowing just one person (performer and friend Allyson Brown, singing Lydia Shaw and Edward Court’s ‘Invisible’), but before long I was deep in conversation with fellow creators about shows, process, interests; cheesy film references with Hilmi Jaidin (‘Spread a little joy about the place’), nerding out about history with Amy Clare Tasker and Tom McGrath (‘Locked away’), feeling less like an outsider with every kind word. No one asked ‘What on earth are you doing here?’.  

I was the only one who seemed to have that question about myself.  

‘It Starts Small’ had really made it here. I was a finalist. 

It’s safe to say that actually winning wasn’t something I’d been mentally preparing for. I was just about holding myself together when my singer Stephen Rahman-Hughes and I went upstairs – where he would practice the song with MD Flynn Sturgeon on the piano.  

My wonderful orchestrator, Liz Townsend, had sent Flynn our piano part. Suddenly I was hearing someone not in my usual world, someone in London, playing my song. And hearing Stephen sing it. It was entirely overwhelming. If you’ve experienced that step yourself, you’ll know what I mean. If you haven’t yet, let me assure you that the first time someone you don’t know decides to trust your material and perform it…it does something to your insides. 

I was jelly. Flynn and Stephen asked if I had notes. I think I managed a squawk. 

I’ve not even mentioned yet how welcoming George Stiles and Anthony Drewe themselves were! To be greeted by them personally was incredible and unexpected. That even Jenna Russell (host of the evening and utter legend) was in the bar ahead of the show… I think I’d assumed a separation, maybe a waiting room for contestants. What I got was a beautiful, friendly community, all holding each other up, all supporting each other’s ideas and talent. A good summary of MMD as well as the competition.  

That evening, I was lost in the music of my fellow finalists; still in awe that I was there at all. With me were family and friends; a whole glorious entourage who had come to The Other Palace to support my insanely ambitious mid-life crisis!   

If nothing more had come out of the event it would still have been one of the best experiences of my life. To be alongside that talent and skill, to have met those people, to see the impact our music can have, to feel that support. But to win…*puffs out cheeks*…give me a moment.  

Summarising what this prize means to me is at once complicated and easy: It has changed my life. It, and that evening, gave me the confidence to try. To work harder on UNFOLDING and to ask questions of people I’d not have dared approach before. Where writing a musical before that night felt like a mad act of whimsy, now I feel as worthy of trying as the next person. No one was telling me I couldn’t, no one was assuming I’d fail.  

Perhaps my shock at winning was evident that night.  

There were clues. The way my head went into my hands when I heard George say of the winner ‘Something we’ve not heard in theatre before, a story of male—’ (I didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. My head was in my hands). Or maybe that it took my fellow finalists nudging me supportively to get me to stand up. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that I couldn’t remember how to get to the stage like a normal person, so found myself clambering onto it from the front, petticoats a go-go as I heard someone on stage react with a quiet ‘oh’.  

It took Jenna Russell promising to sing the Red Dwarf theme tune to bring me back to earth (I had confessed earlier to being a dwarfer!); an act I am so grateful for! Grateful. To her. To Stephen. To MMD. Fellow finalists. The judges. To Stiles and Drewe. 

There’s a quote from my own musical: ‘What’s the best that can happen?’.  

I urge anyone reading this who feels unsure to live by it. To try. I’m so, so glad I did. 

www.emmavieceli.com
Insta: @Unfolding_the_musical