.
Drew Fornarola is a composer, lyricist and playwright living in New York City. Writing credits include COLLEGE The Musical (NYMF Award for Excellence in Writing, Richard Rodgers Award finalist); Uncle Pirate (Vital Theatre Company); The Adventures of Claudio and Luís (opening July 2010, commissioned by the New Musical Development Fund); Vote for Me: A Musical Debate (commissioned by Aged in Wood Productions); and Thucydides. Drew is a recent graduate of Princeton University and member of the BMI Workshop.
The OOB Festival (OOB): Where has life taken you since last year’s OOB Festival?
Drew Fornarola (DF): Things have stayed busy! I opened a new children’s musical at Vital Theater with bookwriter (and Samuel French author) Ben H. Winters in January, am working with Marshall Pailet on a new musical commissioned by Washington D.C. based producer Charlie Fink, and am developing a full-length play with Thucydides collaborator Scott Elmegreen. I am also, like the vast majority of my fellow playwrights, continuing to work fulltime during the day, which is one of the things a lot of theatergoers forget when they see new works in New York and elsewhere. Most of us are trying to figure out how to juggle fulltime theater with fulltime “traditional” employment. It can be done, you just need to learn how to get by on four hours of sleep! It’s a crazy existence, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
OOB: Thucydices is your second collaboration with Scott Elmegreen (you guys’ also paired up to pen COLLEGE: The Musical). What is your collaborative process like?
DF: Scott is an outstanding collaborator and a great friend. We started writing together when he was 18 and I was 19, and I think that shared history has allowed us to develop a great rapport as collaborators. We tend to have long meetings where we brainstorm in as much detail as possible, and then go our separate ways to draft sections of a project, which we then pass back and forth by email, using a system of colored text to suggest changes. It’s a little strange, but it works for us! Scott and I have a play and a musical in development, both of which I hope will be on their feet soon.
OOB: Our readers might not know this, but you worked on another notable Samuel French publication, Buddy Thomas’s NYC-fringe hit Devil Boys From Beyond, which you composed original music for. In fact, you do a lot of composition for musicals. Can you talk a bit about your career as a composer and your relationship with music theatre?
DF: Some have asked (ok, it was my mom, haha) how it is that a polo shirt-wearing Catholic kid from North Buffalo winds up scoring a drag show in the West Village, and I answer that Devil Boys is simply a great play, and when someone asks you to be involved with a great play, you always, always say yes! It was also an opportunity to work closely with Buddy Thomas, who is both my agent at ICM and has become a very good friend. He’s one of those people (like me!) described above, balancing a big, fulltime job with a very productive career as a playwright. He’s put together a really cool show, and I was thrilled to be a part of it.
Musical theater has always been where I felt most at home as a writer, and where I had my first successes in New York. Thucydides was my first foray into plays, but I enjoyed that a great deal as well. I will certainly continue to work in both genres, and I think my efforts in each will improve my work in the other.
OOB: You are a fairly recent (’06) graduate of Princeton. Talk a little about your experience as a playwright just coming out of college. Do you have any words of wisdom for writers who are thinking about making the transition into the professional playwriting world?
DF: It’s a great time to be a young writer in New York. Tons of theater gets produced, there is a vibrant community of young artists here that push and inspire each other, and there are lots of people looking for and supporting young talent. Still, it’s a big challenge to stand out. I would recommend that young writers get involved in as much theater as possible, in whatever capacity they can, and whether paid or not. Theater in New York is a remarkably social business, so it’s critical to meet as many people as you can. It’s also important to show up at the various birthday, opening, closing, congratulations-you-got-a-tour and hurray-you’re-back-from-tour parties that happen every night in the city. In addition to making great friends (theater people are a lot of fun) you are guaranteed to make valuable contacts, and probably even get a job or two. Between the parties, your fulltime job, and writing every day, it’s a tiring but remarkable existence!
OOB: Finally, any new project coming up? Any last words or plugs?
DF: Yes, indeed! My new “video game musical” with Marshall Pailet has a reading in DC in May, and then a workshop production at the DC Fringe in July. (Info on that at: http://www.newmusicalfoundation.org/)
Info on all of my other projects is available at www.drewfornarola.com , and COLLEGE The Musical has its own site, www.college-themusical.com . What did we ever do before the internet?!
Finally, I’d like to say that Scott and I had an amazing experience at the Samuel French OOB Festival last year, and that it has proven to be one of the very most important weeks of our career to date. Thanks to everyone at Samuel French, and I can’t wait to come see the new batch of plays this summer!