In this portfolio I will analyse and evaluate the development of a piece of original music theatre called ‘The Turning’ that I have conceived and devised whilst working with my group, co-composed with Chris Penny. I will be discussing the specific role I played as co-lyricist, co-composer and musical director and the way I navigated this role throughout the creative process and research and development week (R&D).
Our piece is a gothic comedy that tells the story of Flora, who is turned into a vampire in order to save her life and her journey of discovering and navigating the immortal world of vampires. My initial pitch for the show took inspiration from ‘What we do in the shadows’ and its satirical form of comedy.
Before beginning our production process, we assigned roles within the group to determine where to focus our energy. I had pitched the original idea of our piece so as well as working on the music, I also had the job of overseeing the group’s progress to make sure that the piece was heading in the right direction.We tried to make sure that as a group we were consistently sharing ideas to make sure that we were all on the same page about the plot and soundscape. However, about halfway through the project, we noticed that the music and script felt quite separated. We combated this by writing some underscore for a few of the scenes that borrowed musical themes from different songs in the show.
I had a very clear vision for the sound of this show from the second that I pitched it. I was really invested in making sure that the world we were building felt supernatural, spooky, gothic and uneasy whilst also being quite sensual and seductive in moments. We wanted to build a sound world that would be accessible and enjoyable to the audience whilst also informing them on how to feel.
Chris and I have very different backgrounds in our music writing experiences. Chris brought in lots of classical and romantic influences such as Johann Sebastian Bach (figure 1) and Hugo Wolf (figure 2). whereas I tend to lean more to writing indie/rock or folky style songs. I was inspired by the sound of 80’s and 90’s gothic rock with bands such as The Cure (figure 3), Bauhaus (figure 4) and Siouxsie and The Banshees (figure 5), specifically the distorted guitar tones these artists use. We began developing our ideas by sharing musical influences and creating a joint spotify playlist, we had a lot of back and forth sending each other hours of music.
(https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4fPlU402dvv46gA8wYFOTt?si=ZbW0wqe4Tii5vholFiGPug&pi=_86Cba5mQIGl4 )
When discussing this difference early on in our process we noted that we wanted to find a way to fuse these very opposing genres together.
Through our research I discovered the German musical ‘Tanz der Vampire’ (figure 6)! and loved the large scale pop/rock opera style of it and how it painted a picture of the spooky vampire world. Another song we were both inspired by was ‘fascination street’ by ‘The cure’ (figure 7) !!!!!and the way it uses heavily distorted guitars, delays, reverb, gritty bass and eerie retro synths which combined, create an unnatural sounding effect and I loved the way that this music disorientates the listener.
We deciphered that we would be able to accommodate both our writing styles in a way similar to this and would be able to add lots of rock elements over the top of the more classical and orchestral music.
Bach’s ‘Fuge in D minor’ (Figure 8) has become a song that is stereotypically associated with vampires and because of this, so has the sound of organs and harpsichord. In our overture and opening song ’But not us’ we used organs and harpsichord as it’s recognizable for the audience and subconsciously brings them into the world of vampires. We added an electric guitar with heavy distortion, reverb and chorus that builds the sound and makes it have a darker and edgier feel
Adding this brings the traditional sound into the modern world. Merging these different eras of music together worked well dramaturgically for our show as these vampires have lived for hundreds of years and will have heard many eras of music, so it makes sense that in their world they would all co-exist.
Chris and I talked a lot about embedding tritones into the music as much as possible. A tritone is an interval in music that spans six semitones that creates an unsettling and tense sound. The tritone is also known as’ the devils chord / the devils interval’. During the middle ages, composers were banned from using this interval as the unnatural and dissonant sound of it was considered evil ‘ it was so distasteful to the church that no one dared to integrate it into their music. Tritones are incorporated throughout our entire score. Although not always completely obvious, their presence helps to create the atmosphere that we were wanting for the piece. .
As the original idea for this show was heavily Inspired by the comedy of ‘What we do in the shadows’, Chris and I spent a long time watching the show for inspiration. The song ‘who will come first on the wedding night’ (figure 9) really stuck with us. We couldn’t stop singing it for weeks and loved how catchy and frankly ridiculous it was. One night we had bad writers block and decided to try and take the pressure off and write something much less serious, thus ‘i want to fuck my vampire wife’ was born.
This song started out as a joke but we later realised after receiving an updated draft of the script that it actually fit quite well into the show, it was a ‘master of the house’ -les misarables (figure 10) moment for the story. At this point in our process the script was filled with comedy whereas the songs we had written were more serious. Adding this song as some comic relief helped to blend the score and book together. The song was written to be diegetic and showed the passionate relationship between igor and ambrosia. ‘Who will come first on the wedding night’ was such an earworm for me and Chris , and we wanted to have a song in the show that the audience would go away singing the same way. During our R&D week, we came up with the idea to add audience participation into this moment. The song is very repetitive and easy to catch on to, so by the final chorus the audience were singing along. We had great feedback from this moment and heard people singing it for days after the sharing.
As I mentioned previously, I have a tendency to write in a very folky style. The origin of folk music is that it was passed through generations orally, and intertwined with local folklore. These stories were often used as warnings or as instructions to manual labour. I was curious to see if I could take inspiration from this idea of a folk warning song. There was a gap in our script where our protagonist needed to go on her first hunt but wasn’t ready to kill a human yet. I wrote ‘Thirst within’ as a warning from Ambrosia to Flora that this is a part of who she is now, and she can’t ignore it forever, otherwise she’ll die. This song uses one repeated melody throughout it rather than a typical verse-chorus structure. This is typical of folk music that used strophic form (the same melody with different lyrics), folk music did this so it was easy to learn and be repeated. I’d originally written this song on an acoustic guitar which really leant into the folk style I was going for, but when it came to recording the track I thought that an electric guitar might be better to help tie in the overall sound of the show. The song was stylistically folky enough with the way the melody moved, so we had room to change the instrumentation to keep it closer to the soundscape of our show as a whole, whilst also staying true to the style it needed to be in.
The first draft we had of ‘thirst within’ felt super clunky when we first got it on its feet.The draft I had before R&D week separated dialogue and song completely.And after discussions we had in the room I realised that I needed to figure out a way i could blend the dialogue into the song much more, partly just as a more interesting form of story telling, but also because we had a long discussion about trying to make the vampires feel ethereal and otherworldly. I had a struggle whilst writing dialogue for this scene as we had already pre-recorded the backing track, so I had to write dialogue that managed to get the story across as well as fitting with the timing of the track. Another way I tried to build up this idea of the Vampires being these untouchable and supernatural beings was through the use of backing vocals and harmonies. I took Chris and Eleanor into a studio and we started by improvising different ideas to see if any sparked my interest. We played around for a while until I figured out exactly what it was that I wanted for the song. However, I found that I really enjoyed the process of improvising harmonies in this way and the uncertainty of where the harmony was going to land felt that it mimicked what Flora’s character would be feeling in this moment, so the version of this song that we performed at the sharing ended with our 3 characters improvising harmonies on an oooo / humming sound as we lead Flora into the unknown.
During R&D week I found space to have flora singing during this song, her singing in a folkier style at this point in the show shows that she is slowly accepting ambrosia / vampire’s way of living. Going forward with this production, I’d like to lean into the fact that we write in all these different genres and l’d want the musical language of the show to become more clear by having different genres symbolising certain themes and characters throughout the piece. In a more developed production of this I’d make sure we were re-using melody lines to subconsciously bring the audience back to earlier points in the show. Chris and I have a very early draft of Flora’s ‘i want’ song and it incorporates a melody line from the vampires opening number ‘But not us’ once again to inform the audience that she is slowly accepting their way of living. The lullaby that Jane sings to flora during the opening scene is also something that I’d want to trickle in throughout the show, It would underscore every time that we see flora and Jane interact, and as their relationship strains it would become more unsettling and un-recognisable
‘The Turning’ is a large-scale musical and has very ambitious production needs. We have a large cast and big orchestration. We would like to have good costumes, sets and also lots of supernatural special effects .The music in this piece is written for a full orchestra, including organs, harpsichords and an electric band, meaning we would need to pay a large amount of musicians to be playing this every show. According to the musicians union UK (figure 11), you have to pay each musician a minimum of £638.02 per week for an 8 show week contract. To combat this cost we would pre-record all of our tracks, many of which were written or transposed onto Sibelius, meaning the pre-recordings already exist. Much of the Pre-recording we would do ourselves but for some moments we would need to hire musicians to do this for us due to the need of more intricate technical ability. Recording rates from the music union Uk are set to a minimum of £75 – half a day or £150 – full day. This cost is greatly smaller than hiring a live band.Pre-recording takes away from the freedom of the performance but is a sacrifice we would need to make at this stage.
In conclusion, the development of The Turning has been a valuable exploration of collaboration, musical identity, and dramaturgical cohesion within music .The R&D process highlighted both strengths and areas for development.Through my roles as co-lyricist, co-composer, and musical director, I was able to shape both the sound and narrative of the piece, whilst learning how to adapt my creative instincts in response to the needs of the group and the material. I was able to create a distinctive and cohesive soundscape that supports the supernatural and comedic tone of the show. Overall, the process of writing this show has significantly developed my skills as a collaborative artist and musical storyteller.
Reference list
FIGURE 11: Agreement for Musicians Working in UK Theatre (excluding the ‘West End’ of London). (n.d.). Available at: https://musiciansunion.org.uk/MusiciansUnion/media/resource/Rates%20and%20agreements/UK-Theatre_MU_Agreement.pdf?ext=.pdf.
FIGURE 1:bach, john sebastian (2026). Spotify. [online] Spotify.com. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5aIqB5nVVvmFsvSdExz408?si=WuYL-ZFzRly1iCWk9YGFJQ [Accessed 29 Apr. 2026].
FIGURE 4: Bauhaus (2026). Spotify. [online] Spotify.com. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5N5tQ9Dx1h8Od7aRmGj7Fi?si=535nOx2LToy5pjRtUnTwkg [Accessed 29 Apr. 2026].
FIGURE 10:Ooobaby Muscal (2017). Les Misérables ” Master of the House ” Thénardier & Madame Thénardier. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VW-8UubQH0.
FIGURE 5: souxie and the banchees (2026). Spotify. [online] Spotify.com. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1n65zfwYIj5kKEtNgxUlWb?si=0tZl1bIpQ46t_OARieYpeQ [Accessed 29 Apr. 2026].
Spotify.com. (2026). Spotify. [online] Available at: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4fPlU402dvv46gA8wYFOTt?si=ZbW0wqe4Tii5vholFiGPug&pi=_86Cba5mQIGl4 [Accessed 29 Apr. 2026].
FIGURE 6: Tanz Der Vampire (2026). Spotify. [online] Spotify.com. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7npl9FSrAFH2Nm32OdjypR?si=-ppbttCySnOQMG0Cv9HRGg [Accessed 29 Apr. 2026].
FIGURE 7: The Cure (1998). Facination street.
FIGURE 3: the cure (2026). Spotify. [online] Spotify.com. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7bu3H8JO7d0UbMoVzbo70s?si=-XVrqxTHQCuoReJt4g36NA [Accessed 29 Apr. 2026].
FIGURE 9: what we do in the shadows (2026). who will come first on the wedding night. [online] Youtu.be. Available at: https://youtu.be/R9RDEl7bTVE?si=9t_Cv4t-_XACUMQ- [Accessed 29 Apr. 2026].
Wiederhorn, J. (n.d.). The Devil’s Chord: The Eerie History of ‘Diabolus in Musica’. [online] www.fender.com. Available at: https://www.fender.com/articles/chords/the-devils-chord-the-eerie-history-of-diabolus-in-musica.
FIGURE 2: Wolf, H. (2026). Spotify. [online] Spotify.com. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3JvFTHGx6J55BUnjL8l04T?si=2cevZGPBRayPXowzFA5r-A [Accessed 29 Apr. 2026].
FIGURE 8:Youtu.be. (2026). Available at: https://youtu.be/ho9rZjlsyYY?si=jQWnxIjOxHJGw_3G [Accessed 29 Apr. 2026].
