E. Lockhart's Blog

Show Tunes. You know you love them.

Even though Marc Acito claims, below, that no one else has written books about theater geeks
(Ha! and since I know you've already read my Dramarama, go right now and read Maryrose Wood's My Life The Musical),
I love him and his video (below) anyway.

Have you busted into song lately?

Shouldn't you?

This morning, I sang on the street: "I'm quick on the trigger. With targets not much bigger than a pinpoint, I'm number one! But I lose all my luster when I'm with a bronco buster. No, you can't get a man with a gun!"
It was a good way to start the morning, though possibly embarrassing to my companion.
Sing it out, people. No shame.

(Dramarama comes out in paperback this May, by the way. And Acito's Attack of the Theater People is the sequel to How I Paid for College, a truly awesome theater geektastic reading experience, though full of many ADULT situations, for those of you not yet old enough to join the army).

Anyway, here's the video. Enjoy!

Spring Awakening

I saw Spring Awakening this past weekend!

(Warning: profanity in the video)

Sadly, we saw a cast of almost all understudies and some of the sex appeal was lacking. No Jonathan Groff or Lea Michele. But it was still made of awesome. The choreography was phenomenal. And it was such an emotional story. I also loved how the creators fearlessly mixed two time periods: it was a 19th-century story with contemporary music, and basically as long as they were singing, they spoke as contemporary teenagers would do -- and when it was just dialog, they spoke as if in the 19th century.

When people say Young Adult content is only interesting to people under 18, that's ridiculous. This show couldn't be more YA.
Also, publishers sometimes suggest YA books should avoid overt sex so as to retain a large market by being inoffensive. But Spring Awakening (winner of 8 Tony awards) has underage intercourse performed twice onstage. I admired its bravery.

(Of course, someone DIES as a result of the intercourse, so it's a cautionary tale, but the blame is straight-up on the parents, who refuse to discuss sexuality with their children, leaving them woefully ignorant and desperately curious.)

Anyway, that could be a whole essay and I am supposed to be writing something else. But go see it if you have the chance.

Skid Row

By request from a Dramarama reader -- "Skid Row" from the movie version Little Shop of Horrors.
This is the show Candie stars in.
If you search on YouTube you can also dig up some badly filmed clips from the Broadway revival with Hunter Foster, which I saw. Actually, I saw the original production off-Broadway, too. Shows you how old I am.

Blog of Marc Acito

More Marc Acito news. Attack of the Theater People is due for release April 15, 2008, which is why I haven't read it yet. Somehow I failed to understand this from his website.
But now I have discovered his blog, in which he has just set himself a task to have a new experience every single day and to blog about it.
Very good reading. With pix! and Sweatin' to the Oldies! and strange fruit!

I have a fantasy in which Acito reads Dramarama and writes me an email saying "you are my kin!" -- but I know it's not gonna happen. Probably he would read it and say, "Not enough sex in there! Also, I am way funnier than you on very much the same topic!" But a girl can dream...

Attack of the Theater People

OMG how did I miss Attack of the Theater People! It's the sequel to Marc Acito's amazing How I Paid for College.

Must. Get. Right. Now.

All you Dramarama people, these books are for you! But only if you are ready to read about some adult-type situations involving sex and creative vandalism.

xo
E

Somewhere That's Green

It's been a while since I gave you a Dramarama tidbit. Here's "Somewhere That's Green" -- from Little Shop of Horrors, the movie, sung by Ellen Green, who is made of awesome. I saw her off Broadway! Which shows that I am quite old, indeed.

This is the big number Candie sings in her lead role in Little Shop at Wildewood.

A small nice thing

Reading Rants top ten of 2007 includes Dramarama :)

All That Jazz

For you Dramarama readers,

this is the number Sadye and Demi and all the Wildewood students do their "meat market" dance auditions to:

It's All That Jazz followed by Hot Honey Rag, Bebe Neuwirth (LOVE) and Ann Reinking. From the revival of Chicago. A performance from the 51st annual Tony awards.

Maureen Johnson! Musical Theater!

Maureen Johnson, (or MoJo, as I call her in my head but not to her face), is my sometime writing partner and author of the funniest blog I have ever read.

Her new book, Girl at Sea, is full of adventure and fun and jellyfish. It was a Booksense summer pick!
Maureen is an awesome writer and I am reading that thing right after I finish re-reading Harry Potter 6.
Which is obviously necessary and not fun or anything.

Below, the Dramarama interview! With Maureen! And funny, funny lyrics!

1. You were in a play in high school, weren't you? Tell me all about it.

Not actually in high school. I went to school in the city and lived in the burbs—I had no transport for the rehearsals so I couldn’t even try out. Insane, but true. College, yes. Lots of them. The first play I was in was The Good Doctor by Neil Simon. I played the insane dentist, the much-abused governess, and a scheming minor Russian official named Ivan Ilyitch Cherdyakhov—meaning that I played a man 2/3 of the time. After that, I seemed to play a lot of the comic (or “crazy” parts), like Ouiser Boudreaux in Steel Magnolias.

Most of my theater career was spent as a dramaturg, which is basically a play editor. In my case, it was more of a cast and crew babysitter. I put out fires (literally), chased down actors, and once had to tell a stage manager, five minutes before curtain, that our conductor was stuck in traffic twenty miles away, and that the band was being overseen by the conductor’s eight year-old son.

2. Give me song lyric that makes you laugh. Preferably from a show, but I'll cut you some slack if whatever you quote is funny.

From “As We Stumble Along” from The Drowsy Chaperone:
It's a dismal little world in which we live.
It can bore you till you've nothing left to give.
Seven overrated wonders, seven underwhelming seas.
Six excruciating continents.
Antarctica, oh please!
But you mustn’t let it lick you
this planet oh so bland.
Keep your eyeball on the highball in your hand.

3. If you've seen a show on Broadway, what was your first one? Whom did you go with, who was the star, what did you think of it?

I’m not actually sure what the first Broadway show was. I know which “Broadway” traveling company show I saw first was, though. It was Annie. I was totally, 100% obsessed with Annie when I was little. I had no singing or dancing ability, but that didn’t stop my dream to play one of the orphans. I thought about that night and day.

4. What's your showbiz fantasy?

My dream is to wake up with a singing voice worthy of Broadway, period. Drop me in any cast, and I would be a happy little monkey. Maybe Mamma Mia. I was also obsessed with Abba, so I already know all the lyrics.

5. Which Broadway diva are you, deep inside? And why? Ethel Merman, Carol Burnett, Nell Carter, Kristin Chenoweth, Bernadette Peters, Julie Andrews, Bebe Neuwirth, Audra McDonald, Carol Channing, Mary Martin, Barbra Streisand? Or someone else?

Can I have Mae West? I love her for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is this quote: “Ten men waiting for me at the door? Send one of them home, I'm tired.”

6. Write me a nice little song lyric for the book you're promoting right now. Please.
(note: this is not for Girl at Sea. This is for MJ's book for NEXT YEAR, Suite Scarlett)

There’s a hotel in New York
Where you can come stay for the summer
The hotel is kind of broke
And that’s kind of a bummer

But the hotel is where the Martins live:
Scarlett, Lola, Marlene, and Spencer
I can’t tell you more, the book’s not done
Did I leave you in suspense(r)?

(Probably not. I didn’t give away that much. But if I wrote lyrics that were too good, my editor would call and yell at me for writing songs about the book instead of writing the book. But it’s called Suite Scarlett, anyway.)

Musical Theater! Tanya Lee Stone!

Tanya Lee Stone is my friend. We went on book tour together for two weeks and we still like each other after!

Also we're gonna be on an NCTE panel (hello, English teachers!) in November to talk about sex in YA novels! Which is something I know lots about. And so does she. And so do Laurie Halse Anderson, Lara Zeises and Brent Hartinger know lots about it, and we are all going to talk TOGETHER. So that will be fantastico.

More importantly, Stone's novel A BAD BOY CAN BE GOOD FOR A GIRL is a really fun and easy read that is also extremely thought-provoking and librarians tell me it won't stay on the shelves. (Well, the one librarian at ALA who thought I was Tanya and not myself said that -- but she was VERY excited to meet me/Tanya!)
Also, just becauase I know some people are scared-off by the title: this is a deeply moral, nonjudgemental and well-considered book. It's about three very different girls who date the same player guy and how the choices they make shape who they want to be. About empowerment.

Anyway, BAD BOY is now out in paperback, with a cool new cover. You can buy it here from Books Inc, home of Not Your Mother's Book Club.

(A digression: By the way, I am traveling and my rental car has Satellite Radio. Did you know there is such a thing as an ALL BROADWAY STATION? Lordy me. I just discovered it. It is channel 77, at least over here on the east coast where I am. I am late to the party, I am sure -- but it is so fun! The announcers are VERY campy. At least the main one I have heard. He says things like, "Fab-uh-lus, fab-uh-lus, Bernadette Peters sounds just Ah-mAH-zing, doesn't she?" Anyway. If you've got the satellite radio and you like Dramarama, show tunes and all that jazz, go listen up!)

Okay. Back to Tanya. She was all over the Musical Theater Interview, and she was Eliza in My Fair Lady! And she has very interesting things to say about Idina Menzel, which I think you all should read.

The Dramarama Musical Theater Interview -- with Tanya Lee Stone

1. You were in a play in high school, weren't you? Tell me all about it.
Oh yeah! Liza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. My brother told me it was best when he kept his eyes closed, though, because I sounded awesome but I look petrified. Sad, but true.

2. Give me song lyric that makes you laugh. Preferably from a show, but I'll cut you some slack if whatever you quote is funny.

For anyone who actually has a B.A. in English (Like Me!)--From Avenue Q:

What do you do with a B.A. in English,
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge,
Have earned me this useless degree.
-----
Now of course, I'm happy to add that working writers are living proof that this ain't true--but it still makes me laugh!

3. If you've seen a show on Broadway, what was your first one? Whom did you go with, who was the star, what did you think of it?

Oh my god, the horrors. I was 12 years old and the show was Piaf. PIAF! My stepmother took me and I'll never forget the scene where one prostitute was checking Edith Piaf for a item that could only be described as a mistaken member of the crustacean family, and I turned to my stepmother to find out what the heck was going on. Um, that show was for mature audiences, which I was not.

4. What's your showbiz fantasy?

Performing opposite Mandy Patinkin in...anything.

5. Which Broadway diva are you, deep inside? And why? Ethel Merman, Carol Burnett, Nell Carter, Kristin Chenoweth, Bernadette Peters, Julie Andrews, Bebe Neuwirth, Audra McDonald, Carol Channing, Mary Martin, Barbra Streisand? Or someone else?

Idina Menzel. I'll stop everything to watch or listen to her.

I love Idina because she is so just who she is. Growing up doing theater and being of Russian Jewish descent as well, a piece of me always felt a tiny bit self-conscious that I would never be the perky blonde with the perfect nose. I adore Idina in part because if she ever felt that for a second in her life, it never comes through on stage. She is all that, and then some, and all of her emotion comes flying out of her mouth. She sort of epitomizes the whole "take me as I am" motif. And the voice says it all. I mean, wowza. If I could sing like that...I'd never stop.

6. Write me a nice little song lyric for the book you're promoting right now. Please.

to the tune of Wicked's I'm Not that Girl (first part hardly changed at all--sorry, it's just such a good fit!)

Hands touch, eyes meet
Sudden silence, sudden heat
My heart leaps in a giddy whirl
But he's a bad boy
And I'm a good girl

Don't dream too far
Don't lose sight of who you are
Don't remember that rush of joy
Cause he's a bad boy
And I'm a good girl

Ev'ry so often we long to steal
To the land of what-might-have-been
But that doesn't soften the ache we feel
When reality sets back in

Shark smile, pulls me in
But she who's easy, she wins him
Turns his head with a sexy grin
Now that's the girl he chose
And Heaven knows
I'm not that girl

Don't cry, stand strong
Don't you let him string you along
You need a boy who can see your light
This is not your fight
You're not that girl.

P.S. from E: Here is a really unattractive picture of (from left to right) Tanya, me, Simon Cheshire and Jen Bryant. I feel compelled to tell you we are all much better looking than that, and that my boobs are not really that big, either.