With the release of the Original Cast Recording of DOGFIGHT this week, I'm reminded of when I first decided I wanted to write for Musical Theater...
by Alexander Sage Oyen (Composer/Lyricist)
I started writing songs when I was twelve. I wanted to be John Mayer (and, yeah, I still kind of want to be John Mayer… maybe more like Ben Folds now) and I wanted to write pop tunes.
Actually, when I was twelve I was on a reality television show on VH1 called In Search of the Partridge Family. It was a show about casting a show based on the fun 70’s show, The Partridge Family, which starred David Cassidy and Danny Bonaducci. I got 3rd for the role of Danny.
(Also...Emma Stone was on the show and she’s the coolest ever. I’d give you video content, but I will never let the video content be released).
My parents both come from a theatre background and I remember, after I lost on Partridge Family, being in the car with my father and him saying, “Why don’t you audition for a show? That could be fun!” My reply was sassy and curt- “Why would I ever do theatre? That’s lame.”
Well… fast forward five years. I’m seventeen now, and I’m in my junior year of high school. For the past three years I’ve been in the theatre division of my high school’s performing arts magnet program. Oh, how the tables had turned. And I had just started writing musicals. I had gone from a chump who thought that theatre had no business in my life to a chump who thought he had something to say about theatre.
That’s when I found some bootlegged demos from a new musical that had just opened and closed on Broadway. The show was called GLORY DAYS (Also, this was in the days of Myspace music pages and that’s where I found the stuff. I actually miss Myspace music. Or like… not really). GLORY DAYS is a wonderful show written by James Gardiner and Nick Blaemire about four high school friends who come back to find that not everything is exactly how they left it. The score is so wonderful and so damn catchy. I decided that I had to contact Nick, the composer/lyricist, and make him hear my stuff...