Workshopping a Song - Part Two
A week or two later, Eric and I presented a re-write of our song, "Full Of Life," after considering the comments from our colleagues in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. I had made the lyric changes suggested, Eric had dramatically altered the music of the "Bridge," we'd added a verse at the beginning to get us into the song, and took Maury's suggestion about the ending. When we presented the song the second time, the workshop applauded and gave us accolades. And not one of them made any jokes about the idea of writing a respectful musical about the Donner Party.
That rewrite of "Full of Life" stayed pretty much intact all the way to our premiere production. We did insert four lines of spoken lines near the end of the song to work in some exposition and move the plot along, and we added the other characters on stage to join in the song at the end, but the lyric itself only had one more change before opening night.
In rehearsals, we changed a pronoun in the final "A" section of the song, from "We" to "I" at the suggestion of my Co-Director Michael Laun. He pointed out that the characters were making a very personal choice, and though they were singing together in a vocal number, they were individuals. They were each speaking for themselves, not collectively for the group. It was a valid point, and the lyricist was happy to make that improvement. Here, then, is the final version of the "Full of Life" lyric.
It was just one comment after hearing one song from our yet-to-be-written new musical, but that one comment from Maury Yeston really did set us on the path to finding the heart of our show. When we staged the number, the children were very visible: Tamsen cuddled her little Frances, Margaret clung tightly to the three Reed children, and Peggy Breen comforted her newborn baby Isabella. For these mothers, it was about the survival of their children.
Other people wondered: how could anyone make the decision the people of the Donner Party made? For us, for our musical, we believed their decision was made by considering the world beyond the immediate moment, by considering the future they would be forfeiting if they made any other decision but the one they made. Interestingly, Maury's suggestion about the ending of this song also influenced us years later, as we were thinking about how to end the whole musical: the idea of an ending that was bigger and went farther than the immediate story found its way into the show's Epilogue.
The Donners and their companions didn't make a horrible, gruesome choice. They chose a glorious, abundant future for themselves and their children and their children's children's children. They chose Life. And from the moment we presented "Full of Life" in the Workshop, Eric & I knew we'd chosen the perfect subject for our musical.