Gordon Leary

159 posts

REB+VoDKa+DEMO, part 2!

REB+VoDKa+ME

The entirety of (the current draft of) REB+VoDKa+ME is now recorded. Give it a listen!

This combines our two sessions with 24 amazing singers:

Ally Bonino, Jack Brinsmaid, Jackie Colquitt, Jessica Fisher, Holly Gould, Hanako Greensmith, Sam Heldt, Angelina Kelly, Kelsey Lake, Adam Lawrence, Lily Lester, Allison Lian, Evan Maltby, Lauren Marcus, Elexis Morton, Matthew Oster, Sam Paley, Angela Pardini-Gomez, Allison Posner, Katie Rodgers, Daniel Saulle, Libby Servais, Rich Silverstein, and Emily Walton…

Plus our two amazing engineers, Chris Gilroy and Andrew Zinsmeister!

A Decade of Collaboration

Other Stuff Updates

Ten years ago today, I sent Julia an email.

We’d written a few songs together at warp speed after grad school that we both liked. So when my friend Jeremy Gold Kronenberg told me he was looking for a short musical to direct for Prospect Theater Company but only had 6 weeks to develop it, I asked Julia if she might want to apply our speed songwriting skills to a full project. We cranked out a 35 minute musical and loved what we wrote together. So when I read an article the next month about a group of high school girls in Gloucester, Massachusetts who were rumored to have made a pact to get pregnant together, I asked Julia if she thought it might be our first full-length musical.

Now we’re getting ready to start our seventh full-length musical next month while we’re out of town rehearsing for the world premiere of another show. And in the intervening decade we’ve been lucky enough to build a network of actors, singers, musicians, directors, designers, and friends to help us explore limitless empathy, terrible decision-making, building legacies, and growing up.

Here’s to what’s to come in the next 10 years of our collaboration!

2018 Interstate 73

In the News Writers Group

Another year, another new project!

I’m proud to be a member of the 2018 Interstate 73 Writers Group and excited to get started on a new project with Julia. We get to join (clockwise from the top) Michael R. Jackson, Eleanor Burgess, Daniel K. Isaac, Emily Feldman, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Gary Winter, and Amina Henry for a year of creating! Read all about them here.

More details about the new project will be coming soon, but for now we’re just basking in the talent we get to observe for a whole year. Thanks to the wonderful folks at Page 73 for including us in this year’s group!

Something New, Something Fun, Something Blue is Something Done!

Readings Something Blue

After a little over five years of off-and-on writing, we now have a first full draft of Something Blue! And we had the honor of hearing it outloud for the first time with some wonderful new friends – director Sash Bischoff and actors Robbie Collier Sublett, Rachel Flynn, and Ryan Everett Wood.

What started as a challenge to write the smallest show we could imagine became a three-person, hushed, complicated, human musical.

We’re already on to rewrites for the next draft, and we’re looking forward to sharing the show sometime very soon!

DGF Writers Alliance Grant

In the News Production The Loneliest Girl in the World

I’m so honored that the upcoming production of The Loneliest Girl In the World has been awarded one of the inaugural Dramatists Guild Foundation‘s Writers Alliance Grants. The grants provide “$5,000 to a nonprofit theatre’s production of a new work and another $5,000 directly to the writer being produced.” According to Playbill, “DGF selected writes whose work ‘pushes boundaries and shows tremendous promise’ and theatres with ‘superlative ethical standards in supporting the livelihoods and careers of writers.'” Julia and I started writing together thanks to our time in the Dramatists Guild Fellows program, and we’re thrilled for their continued support!