Sweetie Tanya

I'm writing a play that will go up at the Darkroom Theatre in January. It's a musical serial killer comedy about sexual harrassment in the workplace called "'Sweetie' Tanya, the Demon Barista of Valencia Street". As the title indicates it's a loose riff on the fantastic Sondheim musical, "Sweeny Todd", although in the end I expect that the show will actually bear only a superficial relationship to the source material. If anything, Sweeny Todd will serve as a substrata of the play, offering a variety of in-jokes for those who enjoy such things.

I was hesitant to approach a single musician to score the play, as the last musical I wrote has been indefinitely derailed due to life happening. (It took me three years to write the first draft, and the composer has had a variety of life altering events happen since then)

So I had the idea of contacting a variety of musicians and asking them each to contribute a song. Top of my list was Rachel Efron, who has played before a couple of my other shows. The opening song is a direct riff on Sondheim's score, but the second song was one that I immediately knew I wanted Rachel to write. I hadn't heard a word from her in about six months, but I fired off my proposal and the lyrics for the first piece I had written, letting her know that I was in no way committed to those particular words.

She got the email after returning from a trip and immediately went for a walk. When she returned from her walk, she had "A Fearful Thing to Dream" completed in her head. I went over to listen to it last night.

If every song is this good, this show is going to go very, very far. She had taken the mood of what I had written and a few of the images and core phrases and created something infinately more haunting and beautiful than anything I could have conceived of. And to make it even better, she asked if I wanted a second song and played me a melody that she has in her head that needs some words. It was light and fun and playful and I am going to use it for the middle of Tanya's killing spree.

I have the lyric outline ready for the next song "I Know I Shouldn't" and will be passing it on to the next composer in the next day or two.