Gregory Bossler

As soon as you’ve completed one musical, start the next. Don’t wait for a reading or a production — or anything. Of course, continue to pursue those avenues, but particularly if you’re a new writer, you need to keep your muscles primed by creating one short original musical after another. Short because you’re learning how musicals work (and how you work), and original because you don’t yet have the reputation to convince copyright holders to let you adapt their works, nor likely the money to afford a sufficient “option” time to complete the project.

So, when you’re stuck without an idea for your next project, where do you turn? There are two basic choices to help guide you. One choice is whether to write an original or an adaptation. As noted, new writers would be best served by developing an original idea. (When you’re ready to write a full-length, you might then consider adapting a work in the public domain, which we’ll talk about in a bit.) The other choice is whether to base your story on fact or on fiction.

First, let’s consider an original musical based on fact. These are usually stories rooted in some personal memory. Examples of shows with autobiographical roots include Avenue Q (Jeff Marx’s work experience with Sesame Street), The Last Five Years (Jason Robert Brown’s romantic experience), Tick, Tick … Boom! (Jonathan Larson’s experience as a writer), and [title of show] (Hunter Bell’s writing experience). Notice that these examples are all early works by new writers.

You might also consider an historic event (as did Come from Away, The Scottsboro Boys, 1776, and Titanic) or public figure (as did Assassins, Six, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and Evita). Whether personal or public, history has already provided you with an ending and a series of domino events leading to that ending.

Next, let’s look at an original musical based on fiction. These are stories of your own imagination, your own “what if.” What if an average American family adopted an alien? That’s Bat Boy. What if my grandmother won the lottery? That’s In the Heights. This option may be harder than the first, because you have to invent all the domino events in your plot, but you also don’t need to feel obligated to the historical record. As with an original musical based on fact, a news story may provide the spark, but the imaginative what ifs are all yours.

Before we talk about adaptation, let’s talk about copyright. As of 1998, U.S. copyrights are good for the life of the author plus 70 years or, for a corporation, 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication. Anything beyond those parameters becomes part of the public domain, and you don’t need to ask permission to adapt the work. In practical terms, this means that new (and/or poor) writers who can’t come up with an original idea should look for a public domain work to adapt. Project Gutenberg is a good site to begin your search.

Now, let’s look at a musical adaptation based on fact. These are usually from a published biography. Other suitable nonfiction works in the public domain are rare. One spark for Urinetown was the economic tract An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus, but the show is more “what if” than fact. Most fact-based adaptations are by established writers who secured rights to a memoir or biography like Fun Home, Gypsy, Hamilton, and Mame.

In the past decade, jukebox musicals have narrated the lives of musicians using their musical discographies, think Carole King in Beautiful and the Four Seasons in Jersey Boys, but even if the dialogue isn’t from existing material, securing rights to the songs is something only a Broadway producer can afford.

Finally, let’s consider a musical adaptation based on fiction. Musicals based on plays are the most frequently successful shows. There are also countless public domain pieces to use, from the Greeks (Lysistrata Jones) and Romans (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) to Shakespeare (Kiss Me, Kate and West Side Story) and 19th-century drama (Spring Awakening and Sweeney Todd). And don’t overlook operas, which have inspired shows from Miss Saigon to Rent.

Adapting the prose of novels is harder, but older books have provided strong bases for Man of La Mancha, The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, and Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. Public domain stories and fables are also worth considering for short musical works — but be aware that, even if the original work is in the public domain, the translation might not be. Translators own copyright in their expression of the underlying work, just as you will own copyright in your adaptation of the underlying work.

You may be able to secure rights to a new play or novel if you know the writer, or if the title is obscure, but as with jukebox musicals, it is usually only something a Broadway producer can afford. This is even more true of films. The first sound feature was in 1927, so most films remain protected by copyright. There has been the occasional movie that’s entered the public domain on some technicality (like It’s a Wonderful Life), but this is rare.

Also rare are adaptations from other forms of literature. The poems behind Cats and cartoons behind You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown are the exceptions that prove the rule. One of the biggest challenges is that both forms are inherently non-narrative and episodic, lending themselves more to a revue structure than a book musical.

In the end, your choice of original or adaptation may be based on your financial realities, but your choice of fact or fiction should be based solely on your creative passion.

This is the last in my Making Musicals series. I’ll begin with overviews of the dozen essential stage musicals you should know — and some related side roads. As I noted in the very beginning of this series, “You are what you eat,” Tom Jones said, “so be curious.”