North Hollywood, California
Well, Act II is on its way. Leo and I haven't gone over the entire treatment, Lord knows, but we did agree to combine the first couple of scenes into one. See, although the musical is comprised of shorter scenes, there are currently 45 of them in Act II (make that 44) which is just a little too long for comfort! It's just that they're almost all important; even Leo, who had a much easier time making suggestions to consolidate Act I, had a tougher time knowing what to chop from Act II. So today I combined them in the treatment and I'll take a whack at writing it probably 3 October. I didn't realize we had off 2 October for Yom Kippur; as I am in the midst of readying my entire web site for an overhaul, I'll need that time to get as much done as possible. Besides, why start writing from home now? :)

Late last week I went over some possible corrections to Act I with Leo. He vetoed several cuts I was actually willing to make, and we explored some continuity issues. He's starting to experiment with some musical ideas, so his biggest thing is making some syllabic changes to the lyrics so they'll fit the songs easier. I generally have no problem with that as long as it doesn't change the context of what I'm trying to say, and as long as it's appropriate to the period and Maud's personal history. Example - I had young Maud referring to her grandfather as "Grandfather"; Leo said it would flow better in the first song if we said "Grandpa". Although I'd read the journals, it never felt right to me that Maud would call him "Grandpa"; it seemed too casual and indicative of a warmer relationship than they had, so I wasn't sure. Wouldn't you know I looked it up in the journal and from the get-go she was referring to him as "Grandpa". Leo wins! Actually, we both win when it sounds right. We'll still have to make more lyrical adjustments, but I made the dialogue changes on Monday. There are still a couple more things that need to be rephrased, but basically this draft of Act I is done and about to go in front of "the family" for their approval. Oh - I also finally made some changes to the song So I Say Farewell yesterday. It's during the scene where 16-year-old Maud leaves her father to move back to Prince Edward Island; Leo thought it would be more effective to have Hugh be a part of the song instead of Maud performing it all. He was right; it just took me several weeks to finally get around to adding those lines. We'll have to see what he thinks of it. Other than that, Act I is good to go!

And now we tackle Maud's life as a minister's wife. The only difference between starting Act II in comparison to starting Act I was that, with Act I, I sat in front of the screen and wondered if I could really pull it off. By now, I might be a bit anxious about tackling the more complex part of Maud's life, but I know that the words are gonna come from somewhere. They did before, and they will right up to the end. I feel really good about what I've written so far and, depending on how much of this version ends up on the stage in two years, I hope you'll like what I've done!