OK so here's the rundown of what has happened since the last time I posted... over a month ago...
I wrote a song that I actually like for "I Cannot Love You." I have to revise it heavily, but the idea of it no longer makes me want to beat my head against my laptop.
We updated to Draft V! Or Draft V.2, I suppose. Here's what we changed (I'll put a star next to things I mentioned wanting in my last post):
1. Two more full cast numbers *
2. Creepification of the ghost scene *
3. No more doctors *
4. New lyrics and a pretty song for Annabel
5. More tension between Roderick and William
6. More uncertainty regarding the insanity of Madeline
and 7. Madeline now gets the following line: "As it turned out, the crow didn't really love me. So I killed it." ***
I don't know why I wanted that last thing so much- it just seemed like the kind of line that, were I given the chance to act it, I would love.
After getting the new script, I set to work on one of the full cast numbers near the end, which Mr. Cirves calls "Serenade" but I call "Music of a Dream," because the word "serenade" is not uttered once in the song. I came up with a reasonable draft, but it needs heavy work.
The real accomplishment of the past few days has been getting all the material together to send to the Fringe! I am happy to say that I sent it UPS this morning, just inside the deadline for early application. I leave you with the cover letter that sits on top of the application. Normally I would say "if you see any problems with it, let me know," but since I already sent it in, I really would prefer not to hear that something is terribly wrong.
COVER LETTER for THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
Roderick Usher wants to live forever. He intends to do this, as he explains early on in the show, through music. We have the slightly less megalomaniacal goal of producing the story of Roderick Usher in the New York International Fringe Festival for all to see. We intend to do this through a musical: a dark, vibrant, soul-searching musical based on Edgar Allan Poe’s brooding tale of a man at the end of the line (in every sense of the word).
Most people can guess that at the end of The Fall of the House of Usher, a house falls down. Many, too, have read the story and know that it begins with the arrival of an old friend who has come to comfort Roderick Usher in his sickness. But why are these men friends? What does the story tell us about the nature of friendship? And further, how do our early influences affect who and what we become? We attempt to answer these questions by creating a first act that gives a dramatic--and at times, comic--back story to the tale. We add Annabel Lee, the title character from Poe’s famously eerie and tragic poem, as the beautiful wife of a young and confident Roderick Usher. Our narrator, William, is invited to Usher’s house due to his musical talents. What happens in that house between these three and Roderick’s twin sister, Madeline, sets the stage for the horrifying and tragic conclusion.
We frame the entire musical in the form of a story being told by William to a stranger, some ten years after the house falls. Since each of the four main characters in the show is a talented musician, every song is played organically by the characters. In other words, they are playing their own music and they play only when (with the exception of dream sequences) it would make logical sense for an actual musician to share a song. Because of this, we learn about the interior thoughts of the characters through more than just their lyrics-- we understand them through the music that they write and through the way they choose to play it. We can hear, as the show continues, the influences that the characters absorb from one another’s music and personalities.
Life is complex, beautiful, and occasionally tragic. We want to put this complex view of life on stage with a unique and edgy (and sexy) Poe adaptation. What The Fall of the House of Usher can bring to the Fringe is a passionate testament to friendship and music and the potentially destructive powers of the past. We wrote this show because we saw in the original story a world that would look and sound spectacular on stage. Now that it is written, we want nothing more than to see it performed on stage. Since Brent Cirves is a high school drama teacher and I am an undergraduate student of music at William and Mary, the summer-- specifically around the time of the New York Fringe Festival-- is when we would be most able to throw all of our time and energy into a production. If you give us the chance, we will make this show every bit as incredible as it demands to be, and we will happily work until we collapse like Usher’s House.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read through our application materials. We hope you enjoy our House of Usher as much as we enjoyed creating it.
