Woven: The journey of a new musical from beginning to… beginning.
On the 27th of March 2026, an audience watched excerpts from our brand-new musical, Woven, for the first time. This was the culmination of 6 months’ work, and yet still only the beginning, demonstrating the difficulty and effort associated with creating new work. Nonetheless, it was a highly enjoyable and worthwhile process which I will detail in this essay in four stages: the ‘concept’ stage, the ‘making’ stage, the ‘testing’ stage, and finally the ‘evaluation’ stage. Through outlining this process, I will argue that the show’s professional future faces many challenges but can be achieved with continued passion and commitment from its creatives.
Stage 1: Concept
I define the ‘concept’ stage as one in which ideas are generated, plans are formulated, and research is conducted to help prepare for the making of material.
When I joined the project, the initial concept for the show had already been provided – a tragic love story set during the industrial revolution which would explore themes of class and technology. However, growing that concept into a full show required a team of people with clearly defined roles. Choosing these roles was an important place to start to prevent discussions from becoming chaotic and also to make the work more efficient. I agreed to be the composer but, like everyone else, began with a greater focus on the story rather than the music. It was difficult to begin making any material before the concept and story was solidified as this would be integral to the success of every person regardless of if they were composing songs, writing scenes, or choreographing dances. As a result, this stage of the process lasted longer than many of us had anticipated but ultimately laid the foundation for everything else to work later on.
Nevertheless wanting to get a headstart, I spoke to Lara about what kind of score she envisioned for the show and we decided it should be a folk score suitable for our 19th century English setting. I researched various songs in this style from Cecil Sharp’s 1916 collection of 100 English folk songs and noted things I wanted to mimic. For example, there was something satisfying about the way many of the ballads repeatedly named characters which I thought would be fun to try. I also took inspiration from Sharp’s conclusion that the aeolian mode was “commonly used by the English peasant” (Sharp, 1916:15) as a starting point for songs sung from a working-class perspective. When it became apparent that a lot of action would take place in the pub, it also made sense to incorporate diegetic elements to the show’s score using an actor-musician ensemble. I also feel that this could become a selling-point for Woven as actor-musician shows are currently receiving a surge of popularity (Robinson, 2026).
Stage 2: Making
As the composer, my ‘making’ stage was simply defined – write some songs! In practice, however, that was not without its complications as I initially underestimated the extent to which the composer has to collaborate with everyone else on the team. For example, I needed the book-writers to provide the detail of narrative and character before I could write any songs. One thing I kept pushing for with every draft of every scene was clearer intentions within the characters to provide a more useful focus for the songs, making the point that “characters sing because they want something” (Moore & Bergman, 2016:72). In the end, we did not share an explicit ‘I want’ song, instead using our limited time to focus on ensemble songs which actually turned out to be more helpful as a starting point to build the musical world as they were not generally tied to any one character but rather the setting and the themes of the show as a whole. However, it would be nice to have another look at writing more character-driven songs in the future, using what we have since learned about the characters.
Another challenge was working against the clock. I was worried that working to such a tight deadline would threaten the integrity of our artistic process if crucial developmental stages were rushed. Because we had taken the necessary and important time to improve the story, I was not left with much time to write songs ahead of the sharing. However, thanks to the musical exploration I had already done, I had plenty of ideas I was able to transform into songs quite quickly.
The first was the opening number which I dubbed ‘Drink’. Our lyricist, Naima Lilburn, had already drafted lyrics in an appropriate folk ballad style. Working with the lyrics, I noticed that there needed to be more variation to fit with a more interesting musical structure. We agreed that in order to create something cohesive we would have to meet up and work methodically line-by-line, marrying music with words. It was agreed that by becoming a co-lyricist, I could better help to achieve this.
The meeting took almost 3 hours and we did not allow ourselves to leave until the song was completed. Being in the room with the lyricist was helpful for both parties because I could tell her when the music needed to change. For example, during the chorus (at bar 27) I decided to briefly change from G major to the relative minor, E minor using the harmonic scale with a raised seventh for extra interest. I explained that this needed to be marked with a shift lyrically and suggested that the key change represented the word “although” leading us to the final lyric, “although we spend all day inside a dark and dingy dump” inspired by the song ‘Poverty Knock’, a folk song which also discussed poor working conditions in factories, collected by a weaver from Yorkshire (English Folk Dance and Song Society, 2020).
We followed a similar process for the third song, ‘Riot’, which did not take as long as we had both done the foundational research, which meant that the lyrics that had been written for the working-class protester at the beginning of the song matched the E aeolian mode I had chosen for the music. Because this was the last song we wrote, I wanted to play with recalling material from earlier in the show. As we found ourselves in G major again for the chorus, I repeated the change to E harmonic minor (at bar 17) from the opening number and made slight lyrical adjustments. This aided the narrative by making the score feel cohesive and continuous, while still feeling like a new moment.
I also had the idea to write a diegetic song about the temperance movement that the ensemble could use to mock the character, Frances, who had come to warn everyone about the dangers of alcohol. In keeping with the ballad style I had researched, I invented the story of a man called Walter Crow and centred the song around him.
Stage 3: Testing
Finally, came the exciting time to test our material in a room with actors and musicians. We prepared for the week by setting clear aims and scheduling sessions that would work towards this. With limited time, we decided it would be useful to focus on segments from just the first act with the aim of assessing its narrative flow and developing the actor-musician element of the score. We split the group into the music team and the book team to work separately on these aims before bridging them together with the cast.
In the music team, we spent some time going through each of the songs with the musical director, Tuuli Jaarinen, who had created orchestrations for us. As the composer, I worked with her on creating changes in the room when problems arose. For example, we found that the key change I initially wrote at the end of the opening number was difficult to play for the instrumentalists in the room. Our teacher, Matt Bugg, advised that moving up a semi-tone is challenging – particularly if dealing with actor musicians rather than sole instrumentalists. Resolute that the double chorus needed a key change to offer variation and symbolise the increasing merriness of the ensemble, we considered the option of staying on the D major chord, thus modulating up a fifth.
This presented a new problem as the cast would have to sing a lot higher. We experimented in the room, with most people continuing singing the unmodulated melody while RJ Gaulton, our lead with an impressive tenor range, improvised a higher counterpoint.
This fixed several issues at once: firstly, that a show called ‘Woven’ ought to reflect weaving by using counterpoint in the score; secondly, that our lead was previously indistinct in the opening number which failed to best contextualise the incoming scene; and thirdly, that the double-chorus needed variation at the end which was still easy to play. On the third point, the variation we had found also inspired us to change the orchestration so that there were moments where the singers were only accompanied by percussion which successfully added to the actor-musician, folk style we were aiming to explore.
Stage 4: Evaluation
With the sharing complete, it came time for an essential part of any process – evaluation. We de-briefed as a group about how the week had gone for everyone and happily, everyone felt very encouraged that a week of hard work was rewarded with warmth from our audience. We sent out a feedback form to collect their opinions alongside our own reflections. Some responses are shown below.
I largely support the comments and am especially pleased that the music was well-received. I am hesitant about thinning out lyrics as I think much of what made it difficult to follow owed to the lack of microphones and actors forgetting lines which would not be applicable to a fully-staged performance. I do agree that some cliché text could be removed and I think a useful next step now we’ve tested out the material would be to think about the show’s own identity in a way that does not feel like it is mimicking other musicals, such as Les Miserables.
Following discussions with the group, others were also keen to continue working on the piece. I suggested that if this did happen, I would be more comfortable being the sole composer-lyricist as I found the collaboration between myself and the lyricist particularly difficult when I had such clear ideas about lyrics in my head when writing the music. This point was understood and was a reminder about the importance of honest communication when it comes to this kind of work. In the past, I have felt held back by a sense of politeness that hindered the improvement of the work, but I am glad that during this process I have found a way to have these conversations respectfully with all of my colleagues.
It should be acknowledged that continuing a show of this scale in a real-world context comes with several challenges. For example, one of the key takeaways from our week was that having an ensemble, which we initially attempted to avoid, played an important part in building the atmosphere of the show, making moments such as the riot scene particularly effective. However, if we were to do the show professionally, keeping the ensemble would mean having to pay many more actors on top of the costs of venue hire, rehearsal space, advertising, and so on.
One benefit that did become apparent during the week was that because the ensemble work was so effective, we got away with spending very little on the set, managing to establish key locations by simply using tables, chairs, cups, drinks, and other easily-sourced props to accompany the ensemble acting performance. Saving money on the set could prove to be a way to make our production more financially feasible, and environmentally sustainable.
If it was still too much money to pay upfront, an interesting possibility would be toning down some of the show’s themes and pitching the show to British Youth Music Theatre who are based in Leeds and look particularly for “ensemble-driven storytelling” about “real-world issues” (British Youth Music Theatre, n.d.), both of which suit Woven.
Ultimately, the future of Woven is uncertain, but the process we have followed has led to important discoveries which puts the show in a good place to continue for as long as there is passion for the project. While challenges, largely financial ones, remain, the last 6 months have taught me that working together can lead to brilliant solutions, often out of nowhere. The show has come a long way and this is still only the beginning.
Bibliography
British Youth Music Theatre (n.d.) Submission Criteria. https://britishyouthmusictheatre.org/open-submissions/ [Accessed 30 March 2026].
English Folk Dance and Song Society (2020) Poverty Knock. https://www.efdss.org/learning/resources/beginners-guides/50-fun-with-folk/2853-poverty-knock [Accessed 25 January 2026].
Moore, T. & Bergman, A. (2016) Acting the Song, 2nd edition. Allworth Press.
Robinson, H. (2026) The actor as musician. Drama and Theatre. 29 January. https://www.dramaandtheatre.co.uk/content/features/the-actor-as-musician [Accessed 2 April 2026].
Sharp, C. J. (ed) (1916) One Hundred English Folksongs. Oliver Ditson Company.
