30 Days Of NYMF: Day 15 MY SCARY GIRL
By: Gabrielle Sierra Sep. 29, 2009
My Scary Girl
By Kyoungae Kang, lyrics and book
How can I make homicide funny? I had often heard that it is not easy to create a good horror musical. That was my first fear when the Korean producing company Musical Heaven asked me to adapt the film My Scary Girl in the winter of 2006. My collaborator Will and I wanted to write something that was both entertaining and meaningful so we knew it would also be a challenge to find that balance with the material.
Contrary to my concerns, writing the piece was a lot of fun. While musicalizing it, we tried to keep the charm of the original film, which was a mixture of two genres: horror and romance. Consequently, when we finished the first draft (written in English) in February 2008 and had the first reading in New York (directed by Max Williams), we called it a "Horromantic Comedy."Since the initial reading, My Scary Girl has been on a "scarily" great journey. It was selected for a workshop opportunity in the States and won first place and received a full production at the 2008 Daegu International Musical Festival (DIMF). In March 2009, it opened at Choongmu Art Center in Seoul, Korea; one month later, the honor of winning "Best Original Musical" at The Korea Musical Awards became the Scary Girl's. On top of that, we received the incredible news that My Scary Girl was chosen as the first participant in the NYMF/DIMF production exchange program.
Will sometimes says that if I had not come to New York to challenge myself to write musicals, none of this would have happened. I sometimes think that if I did not have Will as a collaborator, this would also be true. With NYMF close at hand, I think, above all, if it weren't for each of the amazingly talented actors and wonderful staff members involved in the show, My Scary Girl could not have come this far. Now I'm nervous and thrilled at the same time as I hope that the meeting of a Korean musical and a New York audience will be as special as the meeting of a Korean writer and an American composer has been.
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