Events of the past year have been driving me to put a finer finish on The Very Last . . . Mountain Lion, and work to improve my playwriting skills. First, I finished a few short 10-minute plays last year and submitted them to an array of opportunities, two of which paid off. My short comedy, The Talk (clueless dad tries to make the dreaded father-son sex talk more accessible by wrapping it in rap, to son’s horror), was a finalist in the Racine Wisconsin Snowdance Comedy Festival, and after 25 sold-out February performances, won the audience-voted “Best in Snow” grand prize (out of 654 entries). And yesterday I learned that another short play of mine, The Colonoscopy and Its Many Teachings (an aging man’s reaction to the indignity of a medical probing leads to a bit of probing of his own about life, marriage and the great beyond), is one of five winners in the Durango Colorado Arts Center’s 10-Minute Play Festival, to be performed whenever the coronavirus decides it’s OK to open theaters in Colorado.
As for the Mountain Lion musical, I completed the Berkeley-based Musical Cafe’s table-reading program last December (after another table-reading and script overhaul in September), and took the invaluable feedback home where it resulted in another modest rewrite. After that second layer of varnish, I submitted the show to several venues for consideration, and am waiting for responses. The most interesting nibble so far is from Apples & Oranges Arts, a New York theatrical accelerator, which holds a semi-annual virtual shark-tank program allowing selected creative teams to pitch their musicals to theater producers and other industry insiders. I made the final round of interviews, at which they expressed strong enthusiasm for the show, but we agreed that it would benefit from adding an honest-to-God composer to the team to energize and punch up the score. They were kind enough to refer me to composers they thought might be a good fit.
But before reaching out to them, and with fingers crossed, I pitched the opportunity to the best composer I’ve ever worked with, Jon Kull. Jon is probably best known for his exceptional orchestration skills, having worked on nearly 200 TV and movie scores (recent examples–The Mandalorian, I, Robot, Black Panther and Mary Poppins Returns. See https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003179/). But I was blown away by his composition talents on two small projects he and I collaborated on last year in L.A. And despite his busy schedule, he agreed to come in as a co-composer. I am really delighted to have him involved!
So, we now begin phase three–an in-depth reconsideration of the score, in which songs may be rethought, reconfigured, or rejected and replaced. Though this will take several months, I’m certain that his musical talent will elevate the show and be worth the wait. Stay tuned!
The Very Last One and Only Highly Endangered Mountain Lion in Pennsylvania 