As a writer, I have a hard time deciding what medium is my favorite. Clearly performing arts is my favorite, but there are so many of those! And I love all of them. So I end up dividing my attentions between writing for film, television, and stage. As yet, my writing partner [also life partner] and I have only had our musical theatre produced. We’re working on the rest day by day.
I do feel connected especially to work as a lyricist. Other writing fires me, but nothing quite fuels me like the puzzle of perfect rhythm, scansion, prosody, rhyme, all in alignment with careful storytelling. As a viewer, nothing quite HITS me in the gut like musical theatre, either. In watching a new show yesterday (Soft Power, by Hwang and Tesori) I found myself agreeing with the characters’ opinion about the effectiveness of musicals as a “delivery system” for message. There’s something so captivating about the way musicals are told — perhaps the sincerity of the characters singing their truth, combined with the universal language of melody?— that their ideas find their way into your heart and cement themselves there.
Nevertheless, I’m a media slut. No pejorative intent there. I just can’t stay true to one medium. I’m a polymediaist. And proud.
