At long last: a how-to book written by someone who actually knows how to. It hits so many nails on the head I could barely get through it for the sound of all that hammering.
—Larry Gelbart, Award-winning co-librettist, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and librettist, City of Angels
For its practitioners, musical theatre is an art, a passion, and a lifelong love. But it's also a complex landscape involving not merely principles of craft about book, music and lyrics, but also principles of collaboration, script/demo presentation, project/production development, venue, business, and—everybody's area of uncertainty—politics.
In The Musical Theatre Writer's Survival Guide, award-winning musical dramatist and teacher David Spencer provides a guide-to-the-game that helps you negotiate all those aspects of the business and more. This professional handbook will walk you through:
- getting your name and your projects into the hands of producers, instead of the rejection pile
- choosing the right producer, agent, or director, instead of surrounding yourself with people uninterested in your work and your career—or interested for the wrong reasons
- bringing your vision to life through stage-savvy writing, instead of watching it sputter due to flaws in craft
- living a happy, healthy life in musicals, instead of dying a slow, showbiz death.
If you're taking your first steps, Spencer's counsel, anecdotes, and instructions will save you years of blindly stumbling about without results. Likewise, if you've been around the block a few times, The Musical Theatre Writer's Survival Guide can rescue you from the kinds of career-stalling traps, bad habits, and false assumptions that lead to dead ends.
