An Interview With
Clay Zambo

Post Modern Living

 

You wrote the songs for Post Modern Living.  Do you work alone as a composer or do you and Richard sit down together to decide on where the songs will go, what they will be like, etc.; what's the process like?

Richard and I talk a lot about how music should function in each installment of the Modern Living series; then I go away with a scene he's written and do a first draft of a song, and sometimes a demo recording. Following that we meet and work things out in a room together. The story always comes first.

You have worked with Richard previously.  How did the two of you get together?

We met on a project called Downtown Dysfunctionals, for which he was the bookwriter and I was one of several composers and lyricists. The idea was to have a "serial musical" with a new episode premiering every few months; unfortunately, the company folded after the second episode, but it was one of the most delightful experiences I'd had as a writer. When he called to talk about the Modern Living series, I was eager to work with him again.

I know you are a member of BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and your degree is in theatre, so how much other formal training do you have as a lyricist and composer or does a great deal of that just come naturally?

My degree is in theatre because the school I attended—Ohio University's Honors Tutorial College—had a very flexible theatre program that allowed me to study as much music as I wanted.  Although the degree says theatre, the transcript is pretty music-heavy.  It really was a degree in composition-and-playwriting before such a thing existed elsewhere.   The BMI-Lehman Engel Workshop is an incredibly valuable program; it's where I stopped being someone who called himself a writer and became a writer.  It's my second family, really.  And as valuable as the classroom is, most of what anybody knows about writing for the theatre is learned in rehearsal and performance.

What is your opinion of the current state of musical theatre and who are the composer/lyricists you most admire?

I think the musical theatre is as healthy as it's ever been.  As far as I can see, there are more people writing in more styles, and writing on more diverse topics, than ever.  Of course it's challenging to get a show on in New York, but there are lots of places to work, and to get one's work in front of an audience.

If an angel came to back you financially, what is the musical you would most want to write, who would you work with and where would you want it to play?

I won't mention its title, because I don't have the adaptation rights—and I don't want somebody else to snatch them up! But there's a novel I'm incredibly fond of, a picaresque and joyous coming-of-middle-age story. I haven't met the right bookwriter yet—and I know it's too big an adaptation for me to do alone. It feels like a Broadway-sized show. I hadn't thought about it until just recently, but I think Norbert Leo Butz would be perfect as its leading man.

Interview with Clay Zambo was conducted by NYTE Small Press April 2011

Read more interviews with the playwrights