Recording is a Team Effort

Just a handful of the amazing individuals who are helping turn this album dream into reality!

I spent the past weekend at 25th Street Recording in Oakland with the Four Immigrants cast, musicians and creative team to record the original cast album for the show*. To be honest, going into the weekend, I was feeling fairly anxious. I have recorded two cast albums before, and both of them demanded so much time and attention that my impression of the recording process was that it was always mentally draining. So, I braced myself for a similar experience this time. I'm delighted to say that, while the recording sessions were definitely still demanding, the entire process actually went very smoothly and with minimal hiccups.

It was immediately clear to me that this was because I had such a great team of people around me. We were fortunate not only to have the entire cast back, but each musician in our 6-person ensemble had played in the pit for the show as well! This enabled us to jump right back into the material even after almost half a year had passed since the last time we performed it. Perhaps the biggest help was that I had a team of people to help take on some of the administrative and decision-making roles. For my past albums, I wore the hats of producer, manager, and music director combined. For The Four Immigrants, we split up these responsibilities among five people, and, by doing so, were able to keep things focused, organized and on track. This made a world of difference. Having a team of people you trust. Working with them and leaning on them. This sense of relying on others to help us get through to the end is, interestingly enough, one of the major themes in the show as well. I'm so grateful to all of the individuals who lent their skills, talent, time, and funds to this project. I wouldn't be able to do it alone.

*We are still trying to raise funds to help with the final production and distribution costs of the album. If you would like to make a donation, click here.

FOUR IMMIGRANTS makes "Best of 2017" Lists!

Over the holidays, I was honored to find out that The Four Immigrants made it onto a few "Best of 2017" Theatre Lists:

• Bay Area Reporter
• Palo Alto Weekly
• VMedia
• The Conical Glass

A very nice start to my 2018! And this weekend, we're heading into the recording studio to work on the cast album! More on that later!

My Year in Review!

A shorter version of this year-in-review was e-mailed to my Newsletter recipients earlier this week. I can often be hard on myself, focusing only on what else I need to achieve, and staring at task lists and check boxes in order to feel like I'm getting somewhere. I can feel like I'm falling behind or failing or not doing enough. So these kinds of reviews help me see the things that I have accomplished, and remind me to take a moment and be proud of my work.

--

I want to start by acknowledging that for many of my friends and colleagues, 2017 has been a very difficult year. I know too many people who have felt the ripple effects of political policies that seem to strengthen messages of hate and bigotry, rather than freedom and diversity. Additionally, there seems to have been an onslaught of natural disasters this year that continues to this day with the Southern California Fires.

Still, in the face of these trials and traumas, I have also seen amazing creative work flourish around me. I am honored to be part of a theatre community that is committed to being bold and unrelenting in its story- and truth-telling. 2017 has also yielded much fruit for me in my writing endeavors. Here's just a snapshot of highlights by month:

JANUARY
Bad Kitty On Stage! opens at TYKEs in Rochester, NY
Conducted in-class workshops for Story Explorers

FEBRUARY
World premiere of Story Explorers at Bay Area Children's Theatre

MARCH
Invited as a Guest Speaker at UC Berkeley to discuss Story Explorers
Helped out as a "Resume Doctor" at the Theatre Bay Area Conference

APRIL
Workshop of The Four Immigrants at Playwrights Foundation

MAY
World premiere of Step Up Crew begins touring Bay Area schools
Bad Kitty On Stage! opens at the Gifford Family Theatre in Syracuse, NY
Table Reading of Song of the Nightingale at Town Hall Theatre

JUNE
Rehearsals for The Four Immigrants begins at TheatreWorks

JULY
World premiere of The Four Immigrants at TheatreWorks - my first LORT Production

AUGUST
First Table Read of Inside Out & Back Again at Bay Area Children's Theatre

SEPTEMBER
The Song of the Nightingale opens at Town Hall Theatre

OCTOBER
Taught a "Song-aturgy" class at Musical Cafe

NOVEMBER
The Four Immigrants receives the Theatre Bay Area Award for Outstanding World Premiere Musical

DECEMBER
Workshop for Inside Out & Back Again at Bay Area Children's Theatre

Now onward to 2018!

Playwright as Arranger

The process of writing the stage adaptation of Inside Out & Back Again has been a unique challenge for me as a playwright. Thanhha Lai's book uses a series of poems to tell the story of Hà and her family. In early discussions with Bay Area Children's Theatre, we decided Lai's poetry was so beautiful and vivid that we didn't feel it necessary to create new text for the stage version. All of the spoken words (with only a handful of exceptions) in the play are taken directly from Lai's text.

My role in creating the play could be likened to that of an arranger of music, taking what already exists and re-organizing it to suit the needs of a play. In order to create my first draft, I typed the entirety of Lai's book word-for-word into a document I called "Source." When I decided which portions of Lai's text to include in the play, I would cut it from the "Source" document and paste it into my script document. I did this to keep track of which segments of the book I had already used, so as not to repeat myself in the script. I have cut, spliced, re-ordered, and re-contextualized the original poetry to try and create a version of the story that plays out well on-stage.

Some slight word modifications have been made. Since I wanted to avoid the feel of an overly long monologue from Hà's perspective, portions of text have been given to other characters in the story. Things like pronouns and verb tenses had to be changed to accommodate these different voices. But for the most part, any new text that I do contribute to the story comes in the form of stage directions – describing setting, gestures, reactions, visual cues to help accentuate and potentially convey more than what words might allow.

This method of building a script has had both its limitations and advantages. On one hand, sometimes I have wanted the poetry to provide words that it simply did not, and I've needed to find creative solutions to those problems by either re-contextualizing what is there, or by trying to go about it without words.  On the other hand, I have not had the problem of typical "writer's block," where you must generate words yourself, but can't seem to find them. In this case, all the words are there, and it's up to me to place them where I need them.

The result will hopefully be a piece that highlights Lai's beautiful poetry unpacked and opened up in a stage experience that will transport the audience along with Hà and her family.

A special performance of Nightingale

For the most recent production of The Song of the Nightingale, Town Hall Theatre had received a few grants to put on student matinee performances for local elementary schools. These special daytime performances would be an opportunity for children, many of whom may not have seen a live performance before, to see a shortened version of the show. Unfortunately, one of those schools - Shore Acres in Pittsburg - could not attend due to air quality warnings in the wake of the Sonoma County fires last month.

Actors Minseob Yeom, Chris Juan, Pauli Amornkul, Isabel To, and me performing at Shore Acres Elementary.

The lovely folks at Town Hall decided to coordinate and reschedule with Shore Acres to do a special on-site visit. We polled the cast to see who might be available, and once I knew who we had, I created a 20-minute reader's theatre presentation of the show which featured 5 musical numbers. We had no set, no props, no band (save for me on the keyboard), and minimal costumes. However, as soon as we began to narrate the story, we could tell we had the kids' attention! As Artistic Director Susan Evans put it, "They were rapt!" It was a delightful sight to see the faces of the kids light up and stay so engaged. Of course, this makes sense. Nothing is more powerful at painting the picture of a story than a child's own imagination. Even though they didn't get to hear all of the songs from the show or meet all the actors or experience all of the production elements, they still tracked with the story of the little bird who saves an entire kingdom with her song.