2 Views of Emerald Man
by Janet Cole Valdez (book & lyrics) and Kim Vasquez (producer)
JANET: It started when my single, childless friend Marty got the call. "Are you sitting down? Maybe you'd better. This is your son." "But I don't have a son." You do now." OK, I know – interesting but not remarkable – until he told me that the son had been tossed out on the streets at 15 by mom's biker boyfriend – and the kid responded by giving himself an entirely new identity. "There's a musical here somewhere," I remember saying. So I did what anyone would have done: added superheroes and Don Quixote to the mix, sprinkled liberally with the theme "who's really crazy?" stirred the pot with the most kick-ass rock composers I could find, and voila! Here we are putting up
Emerald Man in the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Of course, that's my side of the story. There was also the tiny matter of "How the hell are we going to put up a musical from 3000 miles away, with no money, no team and no New York contacts?" Enter Kim Vasquez, to save the day…
KIM: The last thing I wanted to do was listen to another musical. I already had a handful of them, which I was asked to produce. I was also in the middle of another project, but figured I would pop in this CD, just to get it over with. I was plugging away with my project, when something started grating at me. I threw my things down and asked, "What is that noise?" God, it was driving me nuts. There was this song bursting out of the CD player, called "If I Put On This Ring." I was like, what the…this couldn't possibly sound as good as I think it does. Holy s***, I better listen to this. The
Emerald Man music stopped me in my tracks. It was so fresh and it really pulled at my heartstrings. Anything that grabs me like that tells me to at least give the artwork a chance. OK, I'll produce it, damn it! So I called a colleague of mine, Dan Markley and said, "You need to listen to this show. I'll get it on its feet, and you're going to pay for it!" Dan's response was, "Ok, call them in," meaning
Kris Stewart and
Isaac Hurwitz of NYMF. So I emailed Kris and Isaac, saying I was seriously interested in these writers, and the rest is history.
Emerald Man is literally moving from script to full production because this is the purpose of NYMF and the Next Link project: to help get these amazing new shows moved from the page to a possible commercial run.
Emerald Man opens September 12th at 37 Arts, Theatre C. The show has music by Marc Bosserman and Tom Valdez, book and lyrics by Janet Cole Valdez, directed by
Josh Prince, and musical direction by
Shawn Gough. Tickets are available at 212-352-3101 or
www.nymf.org.
