Musical Workshop Part 2 — Ideas For A Musical

Posted in Drama Workshop Videos (transl.: English) | 1 comment

How to find suit­able story ideas for a musical

His­tor­i­cal sto­ries, biogra­phies, inter­est­ing nov­els, news­pa­per reports, cur­rent events…the list of pos­si­ble sources for story ideas is end­less. How­ever, we should never for­get what exactly had caused our ini­tial excite­ment for a cer­tain topic…(Michael rec­om­mends writ­ing it down, imme­di­ately). This par­tic­u­lar rea­son for our orig­i­nal enchant­ment shall appear over and over through­out the entire devel­op­ment of the musi­cal. It is the seed for our con­tin­u­ing cre­ative energy in a poten­tially very long process.

Of course, there are many more great sto­ries than actu­ally usable story ideas for a musi­cal production.

How to pick the right ideas for a musical

• Does our idea lit­er­ally “scream” for a musi­cal presentation?
• Can music say what words can’t?

Michael cites his pet project — a musi­cal about fly­ing: “The sto­ries of peo­ple and their fly­ing machines, their dreams, suc­cesses and dis­ap­point­ments strike me as the per­fect musi­cal mate­r­ial. The con­cept of fly­ing like a bird is best expressed with music.”

Some of our great ideas for a musi­cal may not depend too much on a musi­cal inter­pre­ta­tion. In those cases, how­ever, the music might serve as a guide to the mys­ter­ies of a secret gar­den…the real­ity behind the real­ity. Isn’t that what we’re all after? Or should be, anyway?

If our story ideas con­tain ele­ments whose char­ac­ter­is­tics can’t be suf­fi­ciently con­veyed through words or actions but “scream” for a musi­cal ren­di­tion — then we have found highly suit­able ideas for a musical.

Watch the video here!