DEMO TIME FOR BECOMING GEORGE

For more than a week, I've been working on creating a demo recording for BECOMING GEORGE. Today I've finally finished an 8 song demo that shows off some of the best songs and also might give a producer some sense of the plot. I spent the morning in a conference call with my collaborators, then much of the rest of the day burning enough copies for us to send off to a short list of theaters, artistic directors, literary managers, and producers that have already expressed interest in the project.

Trying to get a new musical shopped around is a time-consuming and frequently frustrating process. The theater business works at glacial speeds. Big theaters -- the ones that can afford to even consider mounting a new musical with period costumes -- make their decisions at least a year in advance. Well, it's already June, which means the 2006-2007 seasons of nearly all theaters are already booked. Barring winning the "sudden desperation sweepstakes", where a hole appears in somebody's season and you suddenly have an opportunity to slip under the radar, that means there probably won't be a production until 2007-2008.

Yes, fans, that means a year to 18 months before we can see another production -- and that's being optimistic! The exception to this is if a commercial producer gets interested, but even those folks are likely to try to partner with an existing theater.

Making musicals is kind of like real estate. You work for several years to design a house from scratch, build it, and paint it. If you're really, really lucky you get a first "tenant" (a theater or producer) who will rent it out. You're overjoyed! You work together for any number of months on decorating it and furnishing it -- maybe making some changes in the design along the way. Then 3-6 weeks later the show closes, the tenant moves out, and you've got an empty rental property that stays vacant for, maybe, the next 2 years.

If you think about this part too much, you go nuts. To get anywhere, you have to stay positive, concentrating on the day-to-day, step-by-step processes that have to be completed to get to the next production -- pitch meetings, networking, sending out scripts, etc. -- and hope for a really stellar next tenant.