I approached the first day of the “Now You’re Talkin’” Workshop with no small degree of trepidation. The lead-up week had been a whirlwind of activity. Thankfully, Stage Management had started working and had taken some of the organization and set-up pressure off my plate. The Timeline I’d drawn up weeks earlier had been adhered to and, on that level, I felt at ease. But I was nervous about the process itself. The cast of 13 had been contracted and were ready to go. Since the project had been confirmed so late in the season we had to scramble a bit to find folks who were suitable AND still available, but between bringing folks in from Toronto and signing on some local folk, we had our contingent. Alan Lund was, much to my pleasure, our Director. Bob McMullin was our Musical Director and Arranger, and David Warrack was being brought in as the “Creative Consultant”.

            As all this moved closer to reality I had found myself thinking about all the “ifs” that had taken place to get me here: if, eighteen months ago, Leslee Silverman had not off-handedly asked if I was interested in writing a show for her; if, all those years ago, Jack Shapira had not felt the need to start pilfering money from his Company; if, just a short while ago, MTC had not initiated a “loyalty clause” for its employees; if Jack Timlock had not quit his job as Production Manager at MTC and started working for Rainbow; if the relationship between me and my Dad had been different; if all those things hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be about to walk into a roomful of people who, for the next two weeks, would be focused on saying the words and singing the music that had come out of my head! It was serendipitous to the max!!

            The evening before we started, Pat Dawson from Toronto, who would be playing ‘Elaine’, had come to my apartment to listen to the music she was to spend the next while singing. She told me that when she had accepted the contract she had no idea what she was getting into. I’d always had reservations about the script. To me it was the weak element in all of this. Despite the fact that I’d written them, the words people were to say sounded even to my ear, stilted and unnatural; but Pat seemed to think it would work out just fine. She told me she had been nervous about what the music would be like. When she heard the demo tape that evening all her fears, as she put it, “evaporated”. “This is real music” she said. I felt a bit less apprehensive with that statement hanging in the air.

            The following afternoon, we began. My stomach was in knots. As I approached the big rehearsal studio on the fourth floor of Artspace I felt sick and uneasy. That would be my state for the next two weeks. The elevator ride up would bring on the feeling of nausea and it was only after an hour or so that it would disappear. Stage Management had made the space very comfortable and efficient and while the whole cast wouldn’t be with us until the following evening, the Equity cast was there and being social when I walked into the room. I felt a little bit jealous of them. They only had to learn some songs and some lines and it was just another job to them. On the other hand, I had a pile of things to worry about not the least of which was all those songs and lines being exactly right and real. Alan and David wouldn’t arrive for a few days, so I was basically in charge, familiar territory that served to distract and calm me down a wee bit. We launched into a sing-through of the music.

            My ear had grown very accustomed to the demo tapes and the sound of Andrew, Nancy, Andorlie and me singing the songs. I must admit to having a startled reaction to these “new” voices. I could feel my back muscles and glutes tighten as a note or phrase wasn’t sung right or a chord was played incorrectly. My orchestrations had been music program computer-generated and were lush and large. Hearing a lone acoustic piano playing exactly the notes I had written down on the page was a jolt. But what else did I expect? These folks hadn’t lived with the material for the year previous and I couldn’t fault them for not knowing how it was “supposed to sound”. I quickly came to the realization that we were dealing with a skeleton and that the flesh would be added in the days to come. The great thing about this first meeting was that they liked the material … they really liked it!

            Two of the out-of-town cast members (Robin Blake and Tim Seabrook) were staying at my apartment and that evening we spent hours discussing the script. They challenged me about storyline and character relationships and to my amazement I found myself reveling in my attempts to defend what I had written. I discovered that my ego wasn’t getting bruised. I wasn’t being defensive but instead, began to internally assess the material I had given them. Judging from our exchanges, some clarification was required. Those conversations lay the groundwork for my approach to the whole experience.

            The next afternoon was taken up with more music and some of Bob’s arrangements. I could hear what wasn’t working and knew there would be a lot of changes in the time to come. This was to be a process for me more than anyone else and I had to get it into my head that I was going to be called upon to make major alterations, deletions and additions. I thought I was ready. In the evening we skipped the music and concentrated on the script. The cast applauded at the end of the reading. There were no challenges, no questions. It was now just a matter of getting the right words down on paper and laying a foundation for everyone’s awareness of what was to happen in the days ahead. That was the first night I’d not been up at 3:00am setting down changes to a scene that had started to wander through my head or trying to clarify the intention of some lyrics.

            I’d not seen Alan since the summer. We’d spoken on the phone a couple of times after my show had been chosen for the Workshop and he had a few questions, specifically about the ending; but he’d said that we could deal with all that when he got to town. Now, here he was. He was brought up to speed quickly with regard to the schedule and he and I and Kevin Bowers, our stage manager, sat for the afternoon and went through the show. He reiterated how much he liked the music and that became my emotional fall-back point of reference for dealing with the script. If he liked the music, I could deal with his qualms about the book. I had re-worked the ending a bit since our conversations and he told me that I was going in the right direction. I could see that all his recommendations were sound and right; his background and expertise in what an audience would keep up with would serve the piece well as we went along. First hurdle jumped!

            But there was a lot of tension at the evening rehearsal for some reason. I was running the read-through and reading all the stage directions, of which, and much to Alan’s chagrin, there were far too many. I had crammed the spoken lines in between staging and attitude suggestions. “I can’t find the actor’s words with all these directions!” he would say over and over again. The spontaneity of the evening before seemed to have evaporated and people were beginning to “perform”. That would be a problem down the road too … the “workshop approach” versus the “performance approach”. And I was tense too! With all the paper and music laid out in front of me I had, apparently, a very noticeable scowl on my face. At one point Jack Timlock, our Producer, came over and whispered in my ear that I should “lighten up”. People had noticed me “thinking” as they put it and had commented on it. To me, this was serious work. Perhaps I was being too serious.

            The hardest part was making decisions! I didn’t want to make decisions. I wanted to be led, guided toward choices, to be given easy options. I needed Alan to know that he was in charge and that I was just an instrument working for the betterment of the show. Timlock made the analogy of a tailor making a suit for a customer; Alan was the tailor doing the cutting and sewing but I, as the customer, was to choose the material and what kind of lapel and cuff I wanted. It calmed me down and actually made some sense. Alan joined our conversation and it was probably good for him to hear this analogy too because I don’t think he was quite clear on how we were to going to proceed either. That made a huge difference!

            I discovered that once “we” decided (and it was a group effort including the actors) what needed to be said in a scene it took me only minutes to come up with a few more lines or lyrics to clarify the intentions. Alan would then stage the number and the dialogue to see what we had. He was hell-bent on getting the form established, creating the structure on which to hang the content. Time, as always, was the enemy. Sitting and talking and analyzing bogged things down – something I’ve always felt even with established material – and while some might think it worked for a “straight play”, a musical required an “on your feet” approach, getting it, in Alan’s words,  “punched into shape”. We had only a few days before David Warrack arrived and needed to get something ready for him to see. It was a bit of mayhem but very productive.

            The phone rang. “Rii-iichard, its Irrrr-ving” Oh, mercy, what now? With the density of the workshop the outside world had disappeared completely and my mind was laser-focused on the process and all its inherent turmoil. I had been asked to host Edmonton Opera’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gala happening in a few weeks and Irving was now on to me asking how the script for the evening was coming along. I was to host as ‘Count Orlovsky’ from “Fledermaus”, introducing the singers and musical numbers chosen for the celebration. I told him I had been working on it (which wasn’t true) and would send it off to him that afternoon. Hanging up, I dashed to my computer and, in an hour, had created a loose script that would suffice for the moment. I was quite pleased with myself if only because I’d managed to compartmentalize for a few minutes and switch off the workshop mode. I dropped the “script” into the mailbox on the way to rehearsal.

            Back at  the studio, the tension was getting worse. Because we were facing the Warrack deadline, Alan moved further into a production mindset. It was as if Opening Night loomed before him and he was starting to panic. The evening before David’s arrival we were in the thick of staging. Alan was constantly snapping his fingers at Stage Management giving them the lighting cues as if they were the most important element. Our frazzled pianist had his head buried in the music most of the time and would miss a cue from the Musical Director for a number to start. This would drive Alan NUTS! On top of that, our lead performer, whose experience was primarily as an opera singer (I don’t know why he was cast … well, I do know actually, but it doesn’t matter anymore), was having great difficulty with the emotional dialogue exchanges with ALL the other actors and was unable to give Alan the depth required to make that dialogue real. Alan didn’t know how to persuade him to be vulnerable and open up. I forced myself to stay out of the directing aspect of the process and while I could have given the actor some hints, I remained in my seat. As all this tension built, the fire alarm in the building went off! Could this get any worse?

            We dutifully filed down to the Lobby. Alan was fuming now. “All this wasted time!” “Dammit to hell!!” He paced back and forth getting more and more angry. It had been a false alarm. By the time we were back in the rehearsal hall he was fit to be tied. (I found out later in the evening that one of our cast had been having a cigarette in the stairwell and had set off the smoke alarm. I didn’t say anything.) In the hurried exit, Bob, the Musical Director, had the presence of mind to grab all the music from the piano and his podium but had mixed it all up in the process. It took forever for him to sort it out. Now he was frazzled as well and I had to step in to cue the pianist for the little transition stings that Bob still hadn’t retrieved from his jumbled score. Somehow, we managed to limp through the rest of the evening.

            David Warrack was a well-established composer and Musical Director from Toronto. He had produced any number of shows and had studied with Lehman Engle, a titan in the world of Musical Theatre who was later known for his mentoring of young lyricists and composers, all of which, for me, was credit enough. He struck me as slightly aloof and our introduction was somewhat perfunctory. He sat at a table a distance away from us as we began the run-through of the first Act for him. I’d thought it had gone rather smoothly for only a couple of days work. Not knowing the protocol in these situations, I hung around for a bit after the run and hesitantly asked him if he had any suggestions. What a stupid question! He launched into what I took to be a rather aggressive commentary on what he had seen, a barrage of “you should cut this”, “that needs to be changed”, “this doesn’t make any sense” and “what does this mean?” At one point, he went over to the piano and started hammering out a rather turbulent jazz-waltz tempo which he thought should be the way one of the songs should be done instead of the way I’d written it. That immediately got my hackles up. But I listened. After all, this sort of input was what he had been brought to town for. I didn’t understand until later in the week that I certainly had the option of simply saying “No” and that would have been the end of it. At that point, however, I was feeling a bit defensive … actually a LOT defensive. We broke for dinner and I went home and stomped about my apartment trying to rationalize the things he’d said, trying to get my head around what I considered to be an assault. How was I going to deal with this for the rest of the week? I needn’t have worried.

            That evening, we ran through the show. To my eye, again, it wasn’t too bad. There was still work to be done of course, but we were on a path that had fewer and fewer bumps. The cast was released and for the next two hours, Alan and I sat with David and went through the show. He’d taken pages and pages of notes during the afternoon. In my stomping break at the apartment, I had decided that I was going to be open to whatever he had to say and I took out a fresh pad and started to write as he spoke. It was an excellent session. I think he realized how aggressive he’d been in our afternoon encounter and was now being considerate and affable in presenting his thoughts. He talked about things that could be implemented right away and other things that might be put into action somewhere down the road, like additions to songs that might give the characters some more dimension or advance a plot point a bit more. He surprised me at one point by telling me that I was an excellent craftsman when it came to “making the rhymes” as he put it. He was a purist, a trait that had been instilled in him by Engle. He called me on rhyming “clothes” and “toes”, a “pop” rhyme to be sure, and I was impressed that he’d caught it. That cemented our relationship and my respect for him!

            In the course of that conversation, I was charged with writing two new songs that would replace monologues and give greater insight into the internal thinking of two characters (‘Elaine’ and ‘Matt’), and an Ensemble number that would end the Act and bring ‘Don’s’ conflicts to a climax. ‘Matt’s’ song was a snap. It was called “Dad Look Around”, a glib assault on his Father’s conservative views. I dashed that off on our free day along with the new song for ‘Elaine’. She is lost in the middle of the acrimony between her husband and son and, at the start of the second Act, sits at home singing to her husband’s voice on the radio asking “Where Do I Go From Here?” This was my favorite song to date and bringing the material in the following day, I discovered that they served their functions very well. The problem lay with the Ensemble piece I had to come up with.

Writing within parameters is easier than writing without them. Fortunately, David and Alan had set specific character details for me to address and the words (and music) came without too much stress. Writing to create an “effect” was not easy. What a character says can be given greater meaning in how it is delivered, especially in musical terms. I arrived back in the rehearsal hall with some ideas about combining snippets of songs we’d already heard juxtaposing them against each other in a mélange of sound and emotional confusion. It was called “The Conflict” and happened in ‘Don’s’ head. In the sequence, all the caller’s voices are jumbled together, his son and wife making demands of him raising to a crescendo until he screams for them to “Stop!” and launches into, for want of a better word, an aria called “Do We Really Care”. The cast became my guinea pigs as I pieced together a little of one number with a little of another. The pianist was my accomplice as we had them sing various incarnations of the idea. It was exciting work, building parts as we went along, adding bits of text, changing chord sequences to create a dream-like mood. To my ear it was wonderful!

            To Alan’s ear it was something else altogether. He was very much of two minds about so many people on stage singing so many different words all at the same time. He thought that we would lose the audience if they couldn’t understand what is being said. But by this point in the show they’ve heard all this before and I thought they would know the intent of the juxtapositions. Perhaps it was my Opera background but to me it was wonderfully dramatic. We broke for dinner and a large contingent headed out to a nearby restaurant. Hungry, I went with them but brought the new music jottings with me. It was this hour that stands out in my head as the essence of the whole experience. There I was, crammed into the corner of a banquette with a bowl of poutine and a Diet Pepsi, the music and script spread out before me, trying to block out the noise of folks surrounding me talking and laughing, frantically writing down, in some formal way, what we had cobbled together that afternoon, bracketing the music and text, writing new chord structures for the transitions, adding a few new lyrics to push the intentions forward. For a moment, I left my body and was looking down on the scene. It was like I was in one of those old “my-Dad-has-a-barn-let’s-put-on-a-show” movies where the composer is desperately trying to write a new song in the midst of people loudly rehearsing lines, production assistants dashing about, designers running in and out with costume sketches for  approval and stage hands yelling back and forth at each other. But this was REAL, and it felt so complete and encompassing and utterly satisfying!

            We headed back to the rehearsal hall to a first-time sing-through with the band. It was a strange sound to my ears. The combination of piano, bass and drums along with a trumpet, a trombone and a guitar sounded somewhat sparse and exposed, far from the lush orchestral soundscape I’d created on my computer. But everyone dove in with gusto and the addition of this new musical element served to buoy the cast. Alan was antsy as we worked through the arrangements despite his obvious desire to get into more staging. I stood as far away as I could get in the room and, with my head down, listened with the strangest feeling of detachment, as if it wasn’t my music and words being sung. It was an incredible objective feeling which surprised me but felt good at the same time. We tackled the staging of the Finale of the Act and changed notes in a few places and a few lines to address Alan’s demand that everything be understandable. It was wonderful considering I had written it down only an hour previous! The cast was incredibly accommodating and energized. It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. There was nothing more for me to produce, no more rhymes or music or concept. It was pretty much over for me.

            The following morning, we moved into the performance space at the RWB Studios. The acoustics in the room were spectacular. The crew had set up the “scenery”, such as it was, and we began the run. At a break, Alan and David came over. “Richard!” they said as they sat down on either side of me. Oh, Lands, what was THIS!! “You want me to re-write the second Act, right?” says I. It was simpler than that. They wanted to do away with the intermission! The first Act was 47 minutes and the second only 30. They thought a break would diffuse the tension we had built after Don’s breakdown in “The Conflict”. But it would also necessitate ‘Elaine’s’ new song (which I loved!) being cut. In my head a small argument took place as I quickly assessed the implications to her story and the flow of the show. I really couldn’t find a reason not to acquiesce and the intermission (along with the newly completed song) was gone! We broke the news to the cast and they seemed to agree that continuing the action was the way to go. We did a few adjustments with the orchestra and waited for the afternoon presentation!

            There were about 40 people at the invited “showing”. Most of them were from the various theatres around town, producers and directors and such. I was disappointed that Leslee, who had started this ball rolling eighteen months earlier, wasn’t available. It also surprised me that there was no representation from the Board of Rainbow Stage. But I let that all go as I stood up to give a bit of a speech about what we had done for the past eleven days, what they were going to see and to invite them to an informal discussion following the performance. And we began. I didn’t get a sense of nervousness from the cast. I think the morning run had dissipated a bit of the cast’s energy but it all went very well. There were laughs where there were supposed to be laughs and applause all the way through but I found myself ignoring the audience. I wasn’t sitting there waiting for them to react. I had long since conditioned myself to the “workshop mentality” and took everything in stride.

            The response following was incredibly positive, especially about the music. “Everyone is a playwright” and folks had comments and suggestions about development in that regard. It was also suggested that the piece had been too “production oriented”, that the text was getting lost in the “performance context”. Alan pointed out that a musical is a different breed from a straight play, that an “idea” is addressed differently in a straight play. The input was all very constructive and helpful. David talked about the process and that developing a musical was a very complicated and fraught journey for everyone involved. He thanked the company for maintaining under times of duress and then said that he “took (his) hat off to Richard Hurst for his incredible bravery and courage” and that I had set the tone at the outset with my caring and being so much at ease in the process. Little did they know!

            And that was it. I had been an exhausting two weeks, satisfying beyond measure! I found that in saying goodbye to Alan and David I was happy that I was working in a world that supported and encouraged a neophyte such as myself. The foundation was respect for the process and each other. It wouldn’t be the last time I would find myself struggling to maintain those qualities!

            But there was no time to rest on any laurels. It was back into the world of Opera, Divas and Big Singing! And a little more Shapira thrown in just to spice things up!