In this panel discussion, the speakers share practical methods for creating feedback audiences and maintaining momentum while developing new musical works. They begin with simple tactics like hosting a party to showcase material, but emphasize more structured approaches: appointing a friend or acquaintance as a "producer" to set concrete deadlines, organizing incremental readings—first with a small circle of friends to gauge whether the material feels like a show, then scaling up to theater readings with formal deadlines. They highlight the role of mentorship and programs such as BMI, noting that weekly deadlines from these sources keep writers productive and prevent self‑imposed stagnation. Throughout, the speakers stress that external feedback and accountability are essential for moving a piece from a personal draft to a polished, stage‑ready work.
Chapters
Once you have the book, you have some music, talk about some of the different steps that people can take to have other people hear it. The simplest is having a party, free drinks and food, come see the show. But what else have you done to help cultivate feedback audiences?
Well, this is, I think, one of my biggest pieces of advice in that sense would be find someone, anyone, tell them they're producing a reading of your show. It doesn't matter if they want to be a producer or not. Just tell them you're producing a reading of our show and have them make— force them to give you a series of deadlines that you're going— that you have to meet. Okay. And then something— somehow, at least for me, that works like magic. The moment somebody says— doesn't matter if they're my best friend, but they say, you gotta get this, you know, this final song in by Tuesday. Oh my God, someone's waiting for me to get that in. And it happens. And then if there's that reading, then, you know, then suddenly you have like a step one that you can then evaluate and get to a step two and then find either the same person or someone else and say, okay, you're producing another reading or you're, you know, whatever, something that's going to give you another step in the process. So for our next musical, we basically had someone do that for us. We had a reading for like six friends. It was just to hear it out loud. It was just to find out if it sounded like a show or like nothing. I think we were pleased to find out it sounded like a show.
Like a show.
Not quite a show, but like a show. And now we're basically doing the same thing but on a slightly bigger level. We're actually asking a theater to do a reading. Give us a deadline. Tell us when we have to get this to you by. And they're, "Sure, yeah." Deadlines are everything.
'Cause if you're just writing for yourself, I mean, that's great, but you're gonna cut yourself breaks. And I had a mentorship before BMI with Craig Carnelia, who was great and who is a very busy guy. So I would see him every like 2 months or so. And when I was asking him, as that mentorship was sort of wrapping up, like if he thought BMI was a good idea, he was like, yeah, if only because that's a weekly deadline. And you're just going to have more stuff. And he was absolutely right. Deadlines are everything. There's nothing to do with quality or anything, but just something to keep the work coming.
Yeah, you'll get it done and you'll get it to a place of good quality eventually, but I don't start until I know someone's waiting for me.
Well, it's not going to be perfect the first draft. It just doesn't— there's going to be tons of mistakes and you just kind of have to know that.
So yeah, I think the best advice is trick yourself into getting deadlines somehow from someone. You know, and then invite, you know, I'm sure that had I reached out to you, we would have gotten coffee with me and given me feedback 5 years ago and maybe come to, you know, an earlier reading if you were available. And there are people that will take coffee with you and will, you know, I think everyone likes to be a mentor. I think people, I think it's rewarding to talk to people that are getting into this business and go out and meet those people, make those connections, go to, you know, theater parties at theater festivals and I mean, it is a lot of networking, but you need to have those names so that you can eventually invite them to see your show. Because you don't want to just continue to do reading after reading for your 6 friends. Because that's not going to go anywhere. You'll burn out eventually.
