Interview: Playwright Ryan Sequin is Excited to Present Original Musical UNRAVELING MAGICIANS at Bay City Players!

The Bay City Players will debut Unraveling Magicians, an original musical by native Ryan Sequin, in a staged reading on September 23rd and 24th in Bay City. Adapted from a medieval Welsh folktale, Unraveling Magicians tells the story of a magical and royal family thrown into turmoil when a curse is cast upon one of their own. In an attempt to lift the curse, the family must resurface old wounds and finally acknowledge how deeply dysfunctional they have become. Despite distraction of power, the revelation of secrets, and a little wayward magic, is it possible for the family to remain intact?

Sequin has been writing Unraveling Magicians for over ten years. "I have been slowly working on it and it is very different from ten years ago then it is today," he said. "The ability to lookback at what I did right at the beginning, understand how far things have evolved, and how much they have gotten better - makes me very proud just seeing that progress."

The original medieval Welsh folktale has been in his life for only slightly longer than when he started writing the musical. "My family owns a storage facility where we rent out storage units to people. If you have ever watched the show Storage Wars, it is like that, but completely less glamourous. There is nothing awesome in these units," Sequin said. "Like the show, every once in a while someone abandons their belongings or stops having contact with us and we have to figure to what to do with their stuff. There was a particular unit that a renter said to get rid of everything so we were organizing it to get it ready to give the belongings to charity and it had a lot of books inside. My dad found this book, and just based on the cover, he thought I would enjoy it. He gave it to me and it ended up being the illustrated copy of the collection of folktales. I ended up only reading one of them, the one that my musical is based upon, so it was completely by chance that I came across the story, but I fell completely in love with it."

No stranger to the arts, Sequin graduated in 2011 with a degree in broadcast and theatre from Central Michigan University and currently attends Saginaw Valley State University pursing a second degree in music performance. Unraveling Magicians is the first musical he wrote by himself, but he has helped in the writing process for another original musical. Theatre and music have always been a big part of his life and he plans on continuing that with the creation of his own musical. "After the debut staged reading, I would like to start submitting it to new musical competitions throughout the country and record a cast album," he said. "Hopefully, someday in the near future, I would like to actually have a fully staged production with all the bells and whistles: orchestra, costumes, set pieces, and all that jazz."

Unraveling Magicians is a very musical heavily show. There are nineteen musical numbers and many of them are big group ones. "There is a lot of sound in it," said Sequin. One of his favorite parts of having the staged reading is finally hearing other people sing his work. "Up until about two months ago, all I had were these recordings of just my voices singing all songs - all the ensemble parts, all the lead parts, everything - and as much as I like my own singing voice, it was so refreshing to hear the songs out loud by a group of actors. It's a feeling I hope I continually experience because it's just an amazing to hear something that you had a mental idea of what it should sound like and then to actually hear it is a completely different world," he said.

There is no charge for Unraveling Magicians and the staged readings are open to the public.

Unraveling Magicians will be performed September 23rd and 24th at Bay City Players in Bay City. For more information, visit www.baycityplayers.com.

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