Online stories: StoryNights on Zoom
StoryCraft 101
StoryCraft 101
StoryCraft 101
A
Heart
To
Feel
What
Is
Why This Music?
I didn’t set out to write a musical.
It was 2016. I was listening to Pandora when Sarah Jarosz’s rendition of Shankill Butchers started playing. All of a sudden it hit me - that's a Fitcher’s Bird song.
Everything changed.
I started hearing songs for Fitcher's Bird everywhere. Old songs, new songs, songs I had to find, songs that found me. It was all coming together rather quickly.
A song written for one purpose became something else entirely in Fitcher’s Bird. With a woman singing it outside
a locked door, it transformed into a song of fear, longing, defiance, grief, desire - or something I hadn’t known was possible.
Sometimes the song changes the characters.
For example, Jack - one new song uncovered his desperate need to belong, to find something larger than himself. Another brought out the temptation, hunger, and seduction of being offered exactly what he thinks he needs. Jack was becoming someone more complex - and more real - than I had imagined. The songs did that.
Because Jack changed, the story changed.
This has been one of the strangest and most exciting parts
of working on Fitcher's Bird. The story has been
talking to me through the songs - showing me
things about the characters I hadn’t seen before,
showing me what the story wanted to become.