30 Days Of NYMF: Day 12 THE TOYMAKER

THE TOYMAKER a new musical
By BRYAN PUTNAM, book, music, and lyrics
A good friend once described creativity as a river that is flowing just above our heads, constantly moving, always changing, that we can reach up into and grab onto whatever happens to be floating by at that moment. Creating a new stream of ideas that when nurtured, can carve their way into a raging river of their own. Thanks Julia!
So, as I write this article, I find myself thinking about that precise moment in time four years ago when my curious hands reached up into that flow, and a playful, meticulous tune trickled down my arm and across the piano leaving me with the very clear visual of a toy maker carving a toy.
Here it is over four years, three readings, several honors, and an amazing cast demo recording later, and that simple tune has matured into a full-out musical theatre piece, comprising twenty-three songs, a tremendously talented cast and creative team, and headed straight towards a world premiere in NYMF as The ToyMaker, a new musical. Great moments along the way...sitting in a recording booth watching musical director Kenneth W. Gartman consult with orchestrator Josh Clayton as a full orchestra perused their music and Christiane Noll (Ragtime) singing to herself in the isolation booth...the York Theatre and Bouwerie Lane readings, being accepted to NYMF and many, many auditions. Every moment invaluable.
Back in Wilmington, NC, my business partner in EMPYREproductions, Melissa Garno and I, who had created the company to mount the world premiere of Trouble in Shameland, set out to do a developmental workshop of The ToyMaker. I would sit for hours each day at my "office" (Port City Java coffee shop), and multi-task on my new laptop, going between book, composition and research. Interestingly, most folks assume I wrote The ToyMaker after learning of the history of Lidice (a small Czech town destroyed during WWII). But, the concept actually came from that one fragment of music growing into an idea of a young woman, unable to have a child, who after learning of a childless toymaker and his wife in the past, goes in search of a toy that he made. At that point I had never even heard of Lidice. When I did finally google "small Czechoslovakian village, turn of the century" all that came up was "Lidice, Lidice, Lidice, Lidice" As I read those accounts, it became clear that I was no longer writing a musical on a whim. This history was a heart-wrenching, tragic yet beautiful account of a village destroyed by war, that I have since found, many people have never heard of. So...new characters were born, and a life and real purpose was breathed into the piece! With the help of so many folks along this journey, I feel we are telling an amazingly universal story about a contemporary personal journey, creating a deeply moving portrait of love, family, and friendship.