or, the magic of “yes, and…”

Much is afoot. I’m music-directing the fall show here at American University.

Those are words I definitely never imagined I’d write.  I’ve never done anything like this before, never even had the desire to try.  I mean, I have music degrees, I've done tons of musicals - classics and brand-new works alike, I coach others for roles, I live and breathe the music for my solo shows. But be the actual human responsible for teaching all the music and the deep student preparation required, playing rehearsals and crafting the musical life of a whole production? Excuse me? So when my AU colleague and director-friend Aaron Posner asked if I’d do it, I was shook. 

My first thought was, no way - I am totally unqualified. My second was I have so much going on: my many AU voice students, a Musicianship 1 class - new to me, with fluid weekly preparation dependent on the knowledge students already possess or, as the case may be, don’t quite yet. Second thought: what about my own shows, my onstage life, time with my Silver Fox? How would this all work?  

And that third thought?: Well, why not?

The musical itself is Shakespeare’s As You Like It: the Bard’s pastoral treatise on love, time and transformation set in the magical Forest of Arden, adapted by Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery for the Public Theater in NYC. With music and lyrics by Taub (also winner of the 2024 Tony for Best Original Score and Best Book for Suffs), As You Like It was created for The Public’s “Public Works” program. 

Public Works “exemplifies The Public's long-standing commitment to putting community at the core of the theater's mission. Public Works seeks to create a space where we can not only reflect on the world as it is, but where we can propose new possibilities for what our society might be.” 

New possibilities: how fitting. Living a life in the theatre without learning to say “yes, and…” instead of flat-out “no” is impossible, even when impossible is exactly how you might describe the task(s!) at hand. That’s not how any of this works. 

“Love is merely a madness…” As You Like It, Shakespeare

Aaron promised help: Manny Arciniega, a brilliant percussionist and music director here in the DMV, and one of kindest-hearted people ever, would be co-music director with me. He would arrange the As You Like It score to meet the abilities of our onstage band, coaxing students who aren’t gig musicians into a successful pit orchestra in full view of the audience. Just name a percussion instrument - vibraphone, marimba, djembe, cajon, bongos - Manny plays it expertly (not to mention guitar, bass and piano- what??). He also has a way of imparting his knowledge with great love and care, but also in such a way that each member of his merry band knows exactly what to do and wants to take responsibility to do that thing.

Choreographer Nikki Mirza is also a DMV multi-hyphenate: playwright / director / performer, and she’d be doing our show while choreographing the fall musical at Catholic University. Nikki has a way of elevating simple, accessible movement into sparkling storytelling. She also reminds students constantly that figuring out how to keep track of many things at once is a necessary life skill, not just one vital for musicals. 

And of course there is Aaron: acclaimed playwright, director and Artistic Director of our theatre program. He's a big-hearted guy with a deeply brilliant mind who sees the biggest and the smallest picture all at once. “More amazement!” is his rallying cry. He is forever fostering collaboration and encouraging the “yes, and…” in students, and in us. He is also quite often nothing less than very direct and exacting. As he should be. And he loves, loves, loves this play. 

The production would become a Forest of Arden in itself - a place where we could challenge our student-actors’ ideas of what a musical can be and what they can accomplish, leaning on the ideals of Public Works of a theatrical community built on joyful possibility. A cast of 34-ish musical theatre or theatre majors and minors - many of them double majors in Poli Sci, Econ, etc - would serve as both players and ensemble, and some would also comprise the band. Dance majors would sing. Singers would speak Shakespeare. Actors with no musical theatre experience but a lot of gumption could end up singing solo.  

And someone like me might find themselves music-directing. 

“Part of going to Arden is realizing how much you have to learn.” - Shaina Taub

When I was in college, I had to accompany my friend-for-life / baritone-at-the-time / now-opera-conductor Bob Wood on Schubert’s “Heidenröslein;” he graciously coached me through it, doing the same as I struggled with our Sight-Singing/Ear Training classes and Conducting, a class that struck terror in my heart (cue Beethoven’s 5th).  So I knew who to call to prepare for As You Like It.  

Bob pointed out that I’d have to get inside the music and consume every vocal line and lyric, just as I’d seen him do many times since school. While I’d lead and cue singers as we rehearsed, it wouldn’t be anything like junior year when we had to conduct a Strauss orchestral work for our final and I miscued the trumpets every time; there’s no space for a true conductor in our As You Like It setup - baton-waving trauma avoided.  My work would be limited to the learning, once I learned it myself. 

So I spent the musical bulk of my summer in the Arden of Shaina’s charming score, figuring out what was necessary to play and what could be (mercifully) omitted. Normally,I’d be working on setlists for solo shows or music new to me for one-off concerts or audition repertoire.  Post-preparation, I’m still not the greatest pianist (you can check out my unedited public playing here and here) but taking a break from social media and writing let me improve enough to help guide our cast through the show. 

And what a marvelous cast we have - I will say that auditions were pretty inspiring. There is so much singing and acting talent at American University! Oh, and just wait till you hear the band.

I’m their biggest fan. And sometimes their roadie…

Side note - all that talent is something that gets overlooked by the university, I feel. Yes, AU is geared towards politics and history and all the requisite classes for a career in leadership  - we are in the nation’s capital, after all. But the faculty bench is seriously deep in the performing arts: theatre, dance and music all have gifted players getting strong work from students. Double majoring at our school is normal - really it’s just another way to say “yes, and” - so many students view the programs as a way to prepare for the possibility of multiple professional tracks.  Enrollment in the voice area alone is absolutely packed, but there is no full-time position for even one voice professor, and that’s the opposite of how it should be when musical theatre is a popular major and students taking voice lessons number close to 100.  It’s musical theatre, which requires singing, which needs to be taught, and taught well. Just saying. We have a marvelous new university president, Jonathan Alger, and I am hopeful that on his watch attention to AU arts will be paid.

They say not much happens in As You Like It.  There’s a ton of action in the beginning and at the end of the play - characters are divided, then reunited, true love is found (of course) and all that was broken is mended - but in the middle the characters kind of hang out in the magical forest; they toss around ideas on love, philosophy, each other. Like actual college. Or play rehearsal. To the inhabitants, time moves slowly, but actually everything is happening at once. You take a ton of classes, agonizing over some (Conducting) and delighting in others (Physics for Poets was a fave of mine!). You meet a ton of new people, some whom you don’t vibe with and others who become friends for life. And maybe you even start to see the kind of person you will be in this world as you try on different versions of yourself. It’s four years and many late nights of seemingly nothing and actually the magic of everything. You leave changed.

The As You Like It score does a lot of the heavy lifting for our story - the action of the non-action lies in the music. Shaina mixes idioms: pop, folk, good old standard-practice musical theatre, choral anthems and rap to create her magical world. All that thinking and loving and philosophizing is fleshed out in the singing; Shakespeare’s prose gives way to verse as the story heightens, and gives way again to exuberant song when pithy verse can no longer contain the character’s emotional lives. Our Forest of Arden explodes with intense musical life.

At the start of rehearsals I was honest with the students, too honest, maybe, telling them from the beginning that music directing is new for me. That I’m steeped in my own magical mini-college of preparation. But I want them to see that I, too, have to challenge my idea of what it is to be a musician; I have to take risks and make mistakes. And I did, and do - so many mistakes. You know that saying - like being thrown into the deep end? It’s been like that, only I knowingly jumped in feet first when I said yes.

It’s heady stuff and like any educational experience, full of trial and error, suspended time and sudden successes. I find myself constantly amazed that I am part of bringing the show to life. I’m surprised by the “yes, and” effect of it all as I try different musical ways of being alongside the students. I, too, am changed. Oh, don’t get me wrong - I’ll be back on the boards myself soon enough. But working from this new vantage point with so many multi-hyphenates and double majors and upright bassists who sing has me constantly thinking about how there is no one way to do things. An artistic life is, of necessity, one of possibility. More amazement, please.

Say “yes, and…”  Five stars, highly recommend. 

More to come.

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Get your tickets here.
Come be the public to our work, and enjoy some much-needed time in Arden.  

As we know, the Arden of Asheville NC was ravaged by Hurricane Helene this fall. This town is an artist’s haven, a place where those who are artistically inclined set down roots and create, to the great benefit of the rest of the nation. And it’s also where my son lives. Climate change and the lack of earlier interventions continue to wreak havoc and devastation, and hurricanes like Helene and Milton show us what we might be in for. If you are looking for a way to help, here are some options:

BeLoved Asheville (Asheville, NC)
Appalachian Funder’s Network
Operation Airdrop (Concord, NC)
colbertlateshow.com/hurricanehelene
American Red Cross
World Central Kitchen