An interview with Paul Gordon, writer of the upcoming Festival show Analog and Vinyl, about revisiting his musical roots and just how different developing Analog and Vinyl is from working on his 2006 Festival show Emma. Interview conducted by NAMT's Program Intern Audra LaBrosse. NAMT: Analog and Vinyl marks your second time as part of the Festival. What part of your experience with Emma in 2006 drew you back?
PAUL GORDON: The Festival is such a wonderful opportunity, not only to
show your work to a large theatre community, but it also allows the authors to
see their work in an entirely different light, as we are required to present
the essence of the work in 45 minutes. This forces you to truly identify
what's important in your storytelling and make hard choices. With Emma,
the big discovery was having the character of Emma break the fourth wall
through narration, a device we use today that never would have been discovered
without the Festival. The Festival directly led to many first class
regional productions of Emma and a possible Broadway future.
NAMT: Has the Festival
process so far revealed or refined anything about Analog and Vinyl?
PG: Absolutely. When you condense your script to 45
minutes you learn things about the storytelling you didn't know before. My biggest challenge with Analog and Vinyl was trying to balance the
songs between the two leading characters. Once I cut the script down, the
character of Harrison was short changed on songs at the beginning of the show,
so I decided to write a new song just for the festival called "My
Mythology.” Now I can't imagine doing the show without that song. The Festival
has already improved the show and we're not even in rehearsals yet.
NAMT: Tell us a bit about the
genesis of Analog and Vinyl.
PG: Analog and Vinyl's original title was: “Analog and Vinyl: A Jukebox Musical of Songs That Nobody Has Ever Heard of
That Were Never Hits.” (Too long?) A few years ago I decided to
write a musical based on my own catalogue of pop songs that I used to perform
myself back when I was a singer-songwriter playing clubs around Los Angeles. I
wrote the first draft of the show as an exercise for myself to see if I could
write a jukebox musical. Since I did not have access to a famous music
catalogue, I decided to use my own, which I own and control myself. So I
took one song and
