In this assignment I intend to cover the process that I developed as an individual embodying the roles of both composer and lyricist while developing a piece of original musical theatre. I will discuss how the choices I made as a creative impacted what I learnt and how additionally the project’s overall affordability and marketability would be affected within the current theatrical climate.
The piece that I helped develop was set in the early 2000s. The story was intended to reflect the current issues we as a team see in society as more and more young girls fight against each other on social media instead of challenging internalised misogyny and gender biases. Our main characters were four women with varying levels of power within the entertainment industry as they explore their complicity in oppressing each other in the public eye. Before the songwriting process began we as a group had thoroughly established a plot, characters and where in the narrative songs were appropriate.
On this project I wrote a total of four completed songs that were involved in our showing. As I took on the role of both musical composer and lyrics simultaneously, I had advantages and disadvantages towards my process. The first thing that I encountered was that I had to learn to develop a close relationship between the composition and lyrics together and evolve an understanding of how to balance creativity with narrative cohesion. To get myself started, I decided to explore how I wrote lyrics, melody and accompaniment separately to learn the best way of marrying them together.
LYRICISM
When first approaching lyrics, it was always of a high priority to me that no matter how commercially pleasing an accompaniment may sound it had no value if I sacrificed what the characters were really trying to say. Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Content Dictates Form’ Theory was a strong motivator in why I wanted to begin by using the story as my guide in structuring and developing my songs. This logic has inspired me especially as a solo composer to form my own methods in order to help me achieve narrative and musical cohesion.
Beginning with what eventually became the song ‘For Better or For Life’, I wrote my lyrics in a form most similar to poems. This gave me a strong rhythmic structure to develop the journey of each song from. I intended each verse or stanza to have a different theme or question that the character needed to fulfil in order to continue singing. I highlighted this to myself by writing what I called a ‘song sketch’(Figure1, Figure 2), outlining the characters emotional arc of the song by unit.
After my initial attempts, I began having my first reflections on how effective this had been and discovered lyrical refinement was a lot more difficult. In these images, you can see the many self corrections, questions and blanks that I left for myself to rectify as I went along. While there is nothing ‘wrong’ with many of the lyrics that didn’t make it into the final song, the need for structural clarity meant cutting ‘vague’ lyrics that didn’t feel truthful to the characters objective or personal attitudes . It was in fact as I discovered that the individual choice of words and their meanings had a direct impact on this.
Figure 3, shows some early lyric drafts, most of which didn’t make it into the show. “I found a man with eyes that burnt my soul in two” included very hyperbolic words such as ‘Burnt’ and ‘soul’ which to me both felt too visceral or even spiritual for a character that I knew was more defeated and cynical at this stage in the story. To rectify what could be put in place of these lyrics that I cut, revisiting and editing the song sketch (Figure 4) is what would help me gain more clarity on how to move these lyrics forward.
It was because of this that in the later version of the number I realised that adding an introduction before the A section was necessary for this character as she justifies her outburst, earning her the song. By creating these changes I was able to understand better the jigsaw that a song really is lyrically, having to juggle with the unknowns of my collaborators material and the context that I already knew. Pinning down the writing team on a que line for the song is what I believe made the placement and context for the song all the more justified and afforded me to be more blunt and direct. These final lyrics were informed by this (Figure 5).
It was from these more developed lyrics that I then began to visualise the musical inspiration that would follow and build a tone round the lyrics I created. Some early inspirations included ‘Franklin Shepard Inc.’ For Merrily We Roll Along and ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’ From Company which both embody the conversational nature that I wanted the song to convey. Though different in pacing and tone both showed some relation to my own lyrics in terms of character reflected in Kerry’s cynicism. I opted for the slower tone of “The ladies who Lunch” that ended up informing my accompaniment.
This method of writing the lyrics first was initially the most practical and as seen in these examples gave me the opportunity to reap the benefits of putting story above all else. However as time went on throughout the project I had to begin to adapt to both the time constraints and also the demands of different characters within the story.
ACCOMPANIMENT
Figure 6
Setting a musical tone became equally as important as the lyrics and with that came the contrasting need to prioritise establishing the musical language of a character. In some cases this applied before I as a writer felt I could fully grasp what the characters needed to say. The first time I realised this was going to be necessary was transitioning out of the opening number (serious in tone and key) into our most bubbly character Nancy’s I want song. Because of this I decided that transitioning into a different and major key helped establish this change most prominently and therefore planted the seed of Nancy’s main motif before I had any lyrical ideas. (Figure 6)
It was the success of this and establishing an archetype that prompted me to follow a similar method in the case of our main perceived villain within the story and shaped many features of this solo both in tempo, style, structure and arc.This had its benefits as the time constraints of the project meant that I could establish an atmosphere that helped define how the song may be performed by an actor. The lyrics followed as an extension of this. While it worked in some respects I also felt I achieved less successful results than I had in other numbers.
I overall believe that I had more difficulty writing the music before the lyrics as I found it harder to change a melodic idea once I had created it which left less flexibility if what I wanted to say with the lyrics ended up restricted by the phrasing. Examples of this that I would still like to correct in hindsight include some lyrics from this song that were split melodically in the middle of a narrative thought. The example in (Figure 7) is the lyric is “Did you really think it would be that easy to challenge all that I own…” which is split by the melodic structure, causing some of the phrasing to feel more disjointed and potentially provided an actor less clarity as they were forced to move in a different direction due to the music. This gave the song a lack of prosody that I would like to prioritise in the future.
Figure 7
COLLABORATION – THE R&D WEEK
The R&D week itself was what highlighted the issues that when writing and composing alone you can’t possibly anticipate. It was here that backing tracks had to be changed, lyrics had to be altered and tempos changed in order to pull together the full cohesion of the piece with additional direction, script and choreography. Though we all used the same blueprint of the plot structure and context, we were less familiar with what each of us had done individually. Though this did not pose any major setbacks in terms of the rewriting of material, for future, having a better grasp of what each other’s material contained could have created some clarity amongst us about what already had and hadn’t been conveyed between the script and songs.
A lot of our discoveries however mainly came though active rehearsal. What largely impacted myself was discovered through my process of creating the backing tracks for the purposes of both the rehearsals and the showing. It was here that dramaturgically, many of the instrumentals needed to be cut as it was difficult for the actors and director to fill these gaps with substantial performance material. We also in some cases needed to slow tempos for ease of performing the lyrical material and speed up what needed a more energetic feel. It was therefore concluded that the easiest thing to compromise was the composition.
I did however learn the challenges of doing this with my own limited resources. Due to not having any access to recording software, I had to play each track in its entirety on the piano without mistakes in order to create a useful, working backing track for the showing. This wasn’t very time effective and in future for ease of editing and changing this I would prefer to invest in some digital software to do this. This would have also allowed me to experiment with layered instrumental and instrumentation. Although inconvenient, the final tracks that I created were sufficient enough to rehearse and demonstrate the songs I had written.
FINANCING AND MARKETABILITY
Regarding the commercial aspects of musical theatre we as a project had to really understand our potential audience and space within the musical theatre world that our piece likely fit into whilst creating material. This includes its appeal to funding bodies and also the hypothetical costs it would have on our creative team should we put it on. In an attempt at keeping cost in mind we were making early creative decisions that would have an impact on both this and our writing process as we created. The main example of this in our case was maintaining a small cast size of four to six characters as well as transferring our own skills and also taking on the role of the performers within our piece. According to the Equity Website, the minimum weekly wage for a performer is £630.90 in this financial year. For our R&D week alone using Five creatives/ performers totaling £3,154.50 we would have spent £2,523.50 – £3,785.4 more if we had sourced actors elsewhere (Equity, 2024). Due to us fixing our cast size, my own creative process was impacted in what and how I could write my material. Ensemble numbers for example had to be orchestrated in a way that should make them appear fast paced or busy without actually being so. This was best demonstrated in the opening number as a lot of the exposition is introduced and a combination of dialogue and sung harmony is used. I personally attempted this by using a combination of underscoring and instrumental changes, alongside my other creative’s movement work and fast pace scripting which aided this in the product of our sharing.
Additionally, the content and themes of our musical itself had to be thoroughly evaluated in the early stages of our process, allowing us to determine whether our show would be desirable to audiences and therefore potential funding bodies today. It was for this reason that we chose to write about topics surrounding feminism and the controversial misuses of public media, both pressing issues of the 21st century.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, I have learnt over the process of creating my own work not just the difficulties of creating in depth composition and writing that aids the overall intention of a performance but the practical aspects of collaboration, rehearsal and finances that have an impact on how a show is written, staged and produced. My main take-aways are the importance of flexibility between lyrics and musical composition as well as adapting well and quickly in a room of other creatives. These are all needed to create a strong piece of collaborative work.
Bibliography
Equity (2024)New Equity-ITC agreement 2024-27 announced. Available at:https://www.equity.org.uk/news/2024/new-equity-itc-agreement (Accessed: 20 April 2026)
