opinions, diatribes and harangues

I prefer Sondheim the composer to Sondheim the lyricist.

I like his lyrics, but there are other lyricists I prefer.

But the dramaturgy hinges on him writing both -- for me, at least.

-

I'm really not keen to play male roles.

It's not a passion of mine, while the female thing is something I've always wanted to try.

But now I've tried it, and ... mixed feelings. I hate acting, and I'm not letting anyone touch my lyrics.

I think my brand of snark is what NZ musicals need to connect with the audience, and for better or worse that's precisely what I've proven with the demos. It's funny: I hate it when people take the piss out of musicals, but yeah I tend to be quite sarcastic. 😀

Daffodils, I haven't seen, but I'm not into jukebox shows. That's just another genre.

-

The problem with the Welly crowd is that you're all too nice. That's why most of the band is music school dropouts rather than pros.

Whereas I'm not nice, and that's because nice doesn't cut it at the high levels of art music.

Build an edifice of sounds like mine, then bitch about my attitude. 👍 -

I'm protective of my sound because I hated music school. That's something very real for me. I loved Burnside, but NZSM was never quite as much fun. I feel like my Burnside teachers would have supported my musicals ambitions more than my uni teachers did. Honestly, if I wasn't so talented, the uni wouldn't have thought musicals were worthy of study imo: I'm not the first NZSM grad to write a musical, but I was good enough to get an NCEA scholarship, which is bloody hard.

Plus because I did the gay rights thing, I got the short end of the stick re: homophobia.

Which made me very defensive, because yeah I've always preferred girls, but I'm bi. 👩

-

The Dakumentary is fun to watch because I was having fun while I made it. A perverse fun, but fun nonetheless.

It's sort-of annoying clarifying how little I care about most people, but it's not because I'm a psycho. It's just I love writing songs. I have an active imagination, and opera is a great way to capture that. -

I'm definitely on-board with Sondheim's "songs are a form of teaching" philosophy. So yes, my work is intended to promote social cohesion.

Writing is the medium I choose to do that through, though obviously it helps my message that I can sing.