Exciting Concert!

At our Public Theatre debut

Sometimes I wonder how I'm still able to fill my days now that I don't work nine hours a day at a job. I mean, I'm certainly not in class for that long. I don't spend that long writing short stories. So what am I doing? Well, truthfully, even though I had to move to another country to do it, I finally get to work on me and Steven's musicals a large portion of the day. And that feels great!


So the past few weeks, I've spent a lot of time skyping and emailing with Steven to refine a lot of our songs for a cabaret-friendly setting in preparation for this super fun concert! 


It all started last spring when Nikole Vallins approached Steven about doing a concert with all his work-- including Rosie's Broadway Kids stuff, etc, in addition to all our work. Marc Bruni is directing and super champion of Steven (and me, via Steven) Henry Aronson is music directing. 


I'm so happy that for once, Steven won't have to play the piano at his own concert. That he can finally sit in the audience and hear all the work-- see how far we've come in the nearly 10 years since we started working together. (There's even a song from Byzantium-- the first show we ever worked together on, back at Rice.)


There's a reworked "Your Next President," (but it has a new title) that I'm very proud of, a reworked "Villain's Girl," the new lyrics to "Come With Me" that I've been refining for about 5 years, haha. And that beautiful Nic & Alix stuff. Man. 


Super cool folks are singing-- Orfeh, Will and Stephanie Gibson-Chase (woot!), Randy Harrison from Queer As Folk, current Wicked Glinda, Katie Rose Clarke, and of course, tons of our friends who've championed us from the beginning. 


It's invite only, or I'd tell all you New Yorkers to go-- but truthfully, many of you will be there anyhow. Not just because so many of my lifelong friends I met while doing this work, but because I think it's a bit of a vortex, and it's very easy to get sucked into the direction Steven wants to go, so even if you had nothing to do with musicals before, you do now (Aly). 


It's breaking my heart that I can't be there myself. It's extraordinary, what it costs to balance your life. What you have to give up to get the other things you need. I've never been satisfied with the idea that I couldn't be in more than one place at a time. I suppose I'm a bit emotional today. I wouldn't call it buyers remorse, but it's something like that. 


The good news is, I think I'll be able to spend a rather large chunk of time in NYC this summer-- and finally with no job-- we'll see what kind of trouble we can cause with Nic & Alix. 

this is my favorite picture of Steven: when we took crowbars to our own set at Minetta Lane. Classic.