I don’t usually post personal updates on this blog, but this one has a fandom theme too. And it’s too amazing not to share.
This is not a sob-story. In fact, I would “Choose no other life than the one I’ve lived,” to fittingly quote C.S. Lewis, because it has made me who I am, and without the death of my sister, the things that have been going on lately would never have happened.
A lot of people claim Harry Potter as their “gateway drug” into the fandom life. That was not the case for me. Mine was Narnia. When I was little, my younger sister died and in response to the grief I didn’t know how to handle, I buried myself in books. My dad had an old copy of the series from when he was a boy (he was missing Prince Caspian, though, so I bought my own copy later), and I flew through them in days. This was only a few months before the first of the Narnia movies came out, and I was in love. I listened to the soundtracks, I acted out the scenes, I drew fan art (which I still have), and wrote fan-fiction. I was so obsessed with it that my mom actually considered therapy. I was nine years old.
I grew up, and Narnia grew with me. I collected miniature replicas from the movies, and I learned more about C.S. Lewis and his other works. When I hit middle school, I started branching out. I read Lord of the Rings, Little House on the Prairie, I watched Star Wars. I was a hard-core fangirl. But Narnia was always my first love. Everything I did, it all went back to Narnia somehow.
As I was nearing the end of eighth grade, the year before high school, a friend of mine informed me that her theatre group, called CYT (Christian Youth Theatre), was putting on a production of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. If only I’d known then how much that one conversation would change my life forever.
I immediately called them and asked when and where and how to audition. Unfortunately, they didn’t have exact dates for the auditions yet, and the next we heard of the play was through a flier that told us the dates and locations of the performances. Undeterred, I bought my ticket and my dad and I went to go see this production.
Don’t get me wrong! The show itself was amazing! Sets, costumes, props, acting, singing, dancing, all of it was top-notch! But the story itself I felt was misrepresented, and that was discouraging for me. I have never found anything more saddening as a fan than to see something that I love taken and used by someone who doesn’t understand it.
But here’s something about me you need to know: if I see something that isn’t right, it is in my blood to try and fix it. So I stewed on this horrible play for about two weeks, and you know what I decided to do? I decided to make my own play of Narnia.
Only one problem: I knew nothing about theatre and had no idea where to start.
One night I was lying in bed on a warm June night, trying to fall asleep. My window was open, and it was windy out, so I could hear the trees rustling, and see the flash of leaves in the moonlight, and it was beautiful.
And out of nowhere, the first two lines of a song popped into my head. It was pitch black in my room, but I grabbed a sheet of copy paper off my desk and wrote it in pencil. And that’s when I thought: why not make this about Narnia.
And the song just came, line by line, two verses, then three.
When I woke up the next morning, I had a tune and a name.
By now I had decided that if I was going to write a stage play, I better know what stage plays are actually like, so I auditioned for a production of Aladdin Jr. and got in as a townsperson. So now I knew what a script was supposed to look like, and the things that they are supposed to account for during a production. I got to see how lighting, costuming, dancing, and music all fit together from the inside. I was about 14 years old now.
And then I wrote my script. Slowly, because I was new at this and I didn’t know how much of the book I should put directly into the script and how much I could paraphrase, but slowly it came together. My family moved, and I was in another production - Beauty and the Beast, in which I played one of the Silly Girls. And then another production of Peter Pan as a pirate. This was a time of learning for me, of writing and rewriting as things came and changed and evolved in my head.
Then I did Wizard of Oz. I auditioned and got the part of Dorothy. This was my first lead role and it gave me a better glimpse into the world of character arcs and what is important to an actor when portraying a character. But also, my dad was the Music Director for this production, so I got to see what his role was like, the kinds of things he needed and was able to help him put together music tracks for the kids to sing with during rehearsal, which was my first exposure to any sort of musical editing software.
My mind kinda exploded. I would finish editing the tracks for Oz and then open a new tab and tap out the tune for my songs on the keyboard. I wasn’t the best pianist in the house, but I was competent enough. The computer would record it and let me edit it until it sounded like what I wanted, and then I’d layer it with different sound effects. Eventually, seeing how long it took me to get it how I wanted, my dad offered to help me. The two of us sat and worked through Tumnus’s song on the piano until it was perfect. Then I recorded my own vocals and it was done.
We did a couple of the songs, one of them the opening number for the show, and on this one I went to town singing different harmonies, and my dad loved it. He is trained in music and sent it out to a few people so they could hear it. One of his friends who is a pretty big-time producer (he even has had his music performed at Carnegie hall), wanted to buy the song from me and use it as a sort of high school show choir song . But I said no, because he wanted it separate from the script, and I couldn’t stand that. I was 16.
One thing felt certain to me, though. I was ready to see this thing published. So I looked around and tried to find out where I could go. But it soon became clear that there was only one place I could go. As far as publishing material, there’s only one publishing house that has the rights to Narnia. I sent it, and was rejected.
I was upset, understandably. But I wasn’t ready to give up. This didn’t mean I couldn’t find a way to have the show performed, it just meant I couldn’t publish or make any money off of it. I was willing to put in the work, I just needed to figure out how to do it.
I did have a homeschool group do a recording of a few of the songs and play it during the intermission of their own Narnia play, which was fun, but no one had yet seen my script. And I didn’t have a theatre group that was able to do anything for free.
At this point, I decided that the only way this was going to be put to stage was through a miracle. I don’t know what all my followers believe, but I’m a Christian, and I believe in the power of praying. So I put my script on a flash drive, along with all the mp3s of the songs I’d recorded, and I prayed over it. I asked God to do what he wanted with it, and if He wanted it to sit in the bottom of a file cabinet until it rotted away, that I would trust Him.
And then I left the flash drive sitting on my desk. For years.
I didn’t do much with the script. A tweak here. A scene change there. I was waiting for something to happen. I tried to orchestrate some of my songs. I failed massively. But I kept praying over it. I wrote my own novel, a space fantasy, and published it online. I kept reading, tried to write more songs and other musicals. Nothing really worked. I graduated high school, took a gap year, tried freshman year at a college a few hours from home with a music composition major, failed massively, survived an abusive relationship, and came back home, physically sick and feeling utterly defeated. I was 19.
I was never diagnosed with depression, but I couldn’t write. I couldn’t read. Couldn’t bring myself to do much besides stare at the wall or binge Netflix. Whatever was the path of least resistance.
I took a few months to recuperate, and then I got a job at a pizzeria as a cashier. Within a year, I was an assistant manager, and was able to start paying back some student loans.
Last fall, I decided to try school again. I enrolled in online classes through a Christian college that my dad had attended a while back. It’s hard work, but doable, and I enjoy it (I actually found out today that I made the Dean’s List).
Through all this, my flash drive sat collecting dust on my desk.
But two weeks ago, my dad was asked to fill in as a pianist for a quartet that his friend is in. They traveled down the East coast, and while on the tour bus, one of the guys started talking about his time playing Tumnus in a Theatre company out of Los Angeles. Apparently, this guy has connections in the film industry, Disney and everything. My dad played Narnia’s Glory for him. And apparently, the whole bus went silent. I wrote this song when I was 14, and a bus full of professional musicians was floored.
By utter chance, they ended up at a little theater, which had just a couple days before opened their new production, The Chronicles of Narnia: the Horse and His Boy. They toured the theatre and apparently one of the guys there is such a huge Narnia fan that he has a massive collection of props from the film: I’m talking, the Pevensie’s Gifts (all of them), the costumes from the film, one of the witch’s Dresses, the Stuffed Aslan that was used on the stone table, and the actual wardrobe (which he is planning to use in a production). All of these things are housed in the theatre.
While on lunch, they met up with a guy who my dad didn’t know was on the board of the theatre. But while they were in the car, Narnia came up, and the guy asked to hear my music. My dad played it.
The guy immediately made arrangements for me and my parents to fly out there next month, watch the Horse and His Boy and meet with the artistic director of the theatre. This man told my dad he would fund the musical.
This is the only theatre in the world that is allowed to produce and perform their own productions of Narnia, permission given by Douglas Gresham himself (Douglas actually attended the first couple performances of The Horse and His Boy). The only theater on the planet.
I am 21. Not even 10 years since this whole idea was conceived, and here I am, my music and script going to be put to stage.
Do not apologize for your obsessions. They are part of the structure of who you are and they can bring light to the people around you. Do not let people douse your fire. Work hard and do not give up. Be patient. Prayer works. Learn when to rest and when to push forward, but you will get there if you simply do not give up.
