I have not blogged in about a year and a good amount has happened in my little musical theater life. At least one leap that has meant that in not very long I will be flying out to New York. And not as a tourist. I will try and wrap it up in one concise and short blog post. Namely this one.

Earlier this year R.C. staged a public reading of our musical Zombie Wedding in San Francisco. That public reading gave us the elbow-nudging power to submit ZW to some of the big American musical theater festivals, namely the “Chicago one” and the New York Fringe Festival. We got selected for the New York. Was not expecting that I have to say.

Because of that big shot-in-the-arm we took a long hard look at the show. We cut a song. Wrote four new ones. Took out some themes and polished the lyrics up a little. It was a lot of work and the months flew by, fast becoming weeks and then days. And right now I find myself  re-introducing myself with blogging so I can properly document this once-in-a-young-lifetime experience of having a fringe show opening in the heartland of musicals. That’s right, its just around the corner.

In four days time I am boarding a plane that will whisk me away from the quiet humdrum of Heathrow Airport and into the buzz of mid-afternoon Sunday in New Jersey. That’s where the plane arrives. I’m actually staying with ZW’s lyricist in Manhattan for the last week-and-a-bit of the rehearsals and the opening night. There are five performances of ZW spread over a couple of weeks so It would be a major upheaval to stick around in Manhattan for more than one performance in addition to the rehearsals.

Now I’ve never been to the United States before, let alone New York, so the whole experience is going to be fantastic. Fortunately ZW is opening in New York for my trip so I don’t have to break my self-imposed rule of never visiting a city unless I have had a musical performed there. So far it’s been an inexpensive doctrine to adhere to, but that looks all about to change…