The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

My second full time job (other than Elephant Larry), is working at the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at Tisch School of the Arts. What does that mean? That means, for the past four years, I've got to meet over 100 composers, lyricists, and bookwriters, all vying to write the next big musical. So far, that's been a goal that most of them have not really met.

I'm happy (actually pretty giddy) to tell you that it has, finally, happened.

Rachel Sheinkin, who was in the very first class I ever worked with, has collaborated with Bill Finn (who teaches at the school, and wrote the Tony award winning "Falsettos), to write a new musical called "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," which premiered last night Off-Broadway.

To, as it turns out, GLOWING reviews.

I've already read/printed out a couple of reviews this morning ('cause that's part of my job), but the most important one is the New York Times. In case you're not familiar with theater, you can get great reviews in every paper in the country, but you get a bad review in the Times, and your show is closing tomorrow. Get a good review in the Times, and you're running forever.

Turns out, the Times LOVES the show. And, in particular, which makes me happiest of all, they have enormous praise to heap on Rachel's work on the show... I was a little afraid that when you're working with one of the few superstar composers of our time (Bill Finn is basically one very small notch below Sondheim or Lloyd-Webber in musical theater buff's estimations), you'll get overshadowed. As it turns out, they liked Rachel's book better than Bill's songs.

In any case, nothing funny in this post, I'm just very proud of Rachel, and wanted to share.

Sharing is fun!