WRITING THE SCRIPT #4
For the past two weeks I have been working on the script, rewriting and editing the story with Alice and Mady. We are ferreting out sections of dialogue that weigh down the action and choosing specific scenes to be musicalized, or, turned into a song. For instance, in Act 1, Scene 3, Arthur and his sidekick, Anabel, an old cow, are thrashing about in the Dreadful Wilds, lost and afraid. They are attacked by various wild animals, the same creatures we sing about in the Dreadful Wilds. To consolidate this scene and the song, we have the townspeople singing the second half of the The Dreadful Wilds downstage as Arthur and Anabel struggle though the wilds on their journey. This keeps the action alive. Additionally, there was a lovely ballad sung by Arthur that absolutely brought the action to a screeching halt. As much as we all loved the words and music, for the good of the show we knew we had to kill this song. I don’t know if we will be able to use it later in the show (my gut tells me probably not) but to be a good editor, you need to be ruthless.
