WHISPER HOUSE: Kyle's Blog - DEL TORO, JOHNNY TREMAINE and More

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!

The Origins of Whisper House...

The funny thing about writing is you never know where you're going to end up when you start. (Come to think of it, I guess most things in life are like that.) Whisper House began with a conversation with director Keith Powell-he proposed putting me and Duncan Sheik together to work on a musical, and he thought it'd be cool to do something that included both ghosts and lighthouses. That's a pretty broad job description, and it fell to me to figure out how to devise an interesting story that could support some kickass Sheik tunes.

At first, I thought about doing an anthology of maritime ghost stories-short little tales linked together by songs. A structure along the lines of the show Shock-Headed Peter. What I realized pretty quickly is that this kind of episodic format usually doesn't do a great job of delivering a satisfying emotional impact for an audience. I did half of a draft along these lines, and frankly even I got bored reading it. So the next step was to cast about for a through-line story for the musical.

Around this time, a friend described to me the plot of the movie Pan's Labyrinth, which I hadn't yet seen. (Side note: Guillermo del Toro is pretty much a God in my book. The Hellboy movies are amazing; well worth checking out if you haven't seen them.) What sounded exciting about the story of Pan's Labyrinth was the idea of examining darkness and violence through a child's eyes-a perspective that's both ironic and incredibly poignant at the same time. Thinking back to books I read as a young adult, I realized that many of my favorite ones had a similar focus. Novels like "Johnny Tremaine" and "The Devil's Arithmetic" spring to mind.

I started thinking it might be interesting to use a child's perspective to explore the treatment of foreign nationals during WWII. At that time, the US Government viewed Japanese, German, and Italian nationals living in the country as an assumed threat-restricting their travel, curbing their rights, and often detaining them without trial. Especially in coastal areas, places where one might find a lighthouse. In many ways, this WWII-era policy was similar to the Bush administration's policies toward foreign nationals from Muslim countries. Seemed like this could opportunity to say something about the world today, through a historical lens. And using the perspective of a child felt like an interesting way to explore the fear that we all feel in times of war. Often, we turn to government institutions to "parent" us and make us feel safe. And of course, war and death have a natural thematic connection with ghosts. This line of thinking, eventually, led me to the story for Whisper House.

When I finally saw Pan's Labyrinth, I realized it's not much like Whisper House at all. But what both pieces share is a fascination with the way children use their fantasy lives to escape from and process trauma. Even though I'm not a child anymore, that still resonates with me. After all, this world can be frightening, uncertain place. In the face of that, we're all a little like children. 

-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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Masterworks Broadway Newsletter: www.masterworksbroadway.com

Photo of Kyle by Sarah Sloboda