The long road to the stage
The composers of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice have posted the story of the more than seven-year (so far!) journey of writing their musical on their MySpace page.
Lindsay’s work extracting the dialogue from the novel showed us how many conversations Austen left to the reader’s imagination. While Austen was extremely detailed in creating scenarios, often times the conversations were told from the narrator’s third person perspective, rather than from a first-person dialogue.
Because of these two revelations – the love of the Janeite and the brilliant voice of the author – we knew we had to take great care in HOW we chose to tell the story – in song and on stage.
Without making any immediate decisions, we started with the characters. We looked for moments and turns of phrase that revealed who the characters were. We began to hear and play with musical motives and themes that could tie into text-phrases and translate the characters into song.
What we had already learned from our years of working together is that working on a musical requires patience, dedication and a whole lotta LOVE. What many people don’t realize is that it can take a minimum of five years to complete a project. In order to continue and not lose heart, we must love our material. Already, we have been living with Pride & Prejudice for seven years. And we still LOVE the novel and our work with Jane Austen.
They’ve also posted several demo songs from the musical on the main page–check them out. The songs are delightful. We can’t wait to see this on Broadway!
