WHISPER HOUSE: Kyle's Blog - 'Adventures In Development'

Grammy and Tony award-winning songwriter and composer Duncan Sheik returns with his new album WHISPER HOUSE, which hit stores on January 27 from Victor Records/Sony Music. WHISPER HOUSE marks Sheik's first solo album since 2006's critically-acclaimed White Limousine and comes on the heels of the success of Spring Awakening. The idea for WHISPER HOUSE came about when actor Keith Powell (30 Rock) approached Sheik about developing a musical theatre piece with him.

Following a trip Powell took to New England, a story began to emerge centered around a lighthouse, and up-and-coming young playwright Kyle Jarrow, already an Obie winner for A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant, signed on to create the book. BroadwayWorld is excited to bring you Kyle's exclusive WHISPER HOUSE Blog following the show from it's inception through the tentatively scheduled Broadway Production in 2010, now continue the journey with Kyle to WHISPER HOUSE!

This past weekend, I was having dinner with someone and we were talking about the length and arduousness of the development process of most musicals. It got me thinking about the process of "show development" in the theater-its pros and cons-and how this has figured into the creation of WHISPER HOUSE.

WHISPER HOUSE has actually had a pretty short gestation process. We had a one-week workshop in May 2007, in which we focused solely on the book and story elements. Then another one-week workshop the following May, where we integrated the songs into a new draft of the script. We'll do a two-week workshop this summer, and then we'll move into production in the winter. All in all, the process has taken a bit over two years. By musical theater standards, this isn't long at all. I think this is because, well, musicals are just damn complicated to make. There are a lot of elements that need to come together, and work together, to make one good.

One of the frustrating limitations of the theater development process is how text-focused it is. It may seem strange for a writer to complain about focusing too much on the text-but movement and staging are also huge parts of a theater piece. Especially a musical. And the development processes of most shows (readings, workshops) traditionally don't incorporate staging. Or if they do, very little. Thus, they sometimes give a limited sense of what a show will be like in full production. A lot is left to the imagination. Which generally falls somewhere between scary and exciting.

The question we get asked most about WHISPER HOUSE is "what happens during the songs?" This is a big question for all musicals, really. In Whisper House, there's no choreography-at least not in any conventional sense-and because the workshops we've done so far have been text-based, without much staging, this question has only been explored hypothetically so far. Keith Powell, our director, has a lot of very cool ideas on how to bring the songs to life in the staging, by incorporating design elements as well as movement. It'll be exciting to see how those ideas develop in the workshop this summer and rehearsals for the subsequent production. However, it's interesting to me that staging is the last element to find its way into this (and just about any) theater process. I wonder if that limits the kinds of theater pieces that get created. I wonder if an alternative development process-more movement-based, like the workshop process more often followed in the experimental theater world-might open up some possibilities. Seems like something worth considering, at least.

-Kyle Jarrow

Kyle Jarrow is a writer and musician based in New York City. He writes for the stage as well as film and television, and he plays in the bands The Fabulous Entourage and Super Mirage. He won the prestigious OBIE Award at age 24 for his Off-Broadway hit A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant, which has subsequently been produced all over the country. Kyle's play Armless won the Overall Excellence Award at the New York International Fringe Festival. Other plays include Love Kills, Trigger, President Harding is a Rock Star, Rip Me Open (co-writer), Hostage Song (music & lyrics), Gorilla Man (script available from Samuel French), and the upcoming Big Money (with Nathan Leigh) and Whisper House (with Tony-winner Duncan Sheik, record now available from RCA/Victor).

For more information on Whisper House visit: www.duncansheik.com/whisperhouse

For more information on Kyle visit: www.landoftrust.com

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Photo of Kyle by Sarah Sloboda