(Credit: Becky Fantham on Unsplash)

Next week, I go into rehearsals for a new musical! It's called "Have You Met Stan?" and it's a tender two-hander about two queer immigrant men reflecting on their relationship and their place in the world. With a mix of pop and folk music, it has some really lovely things to say about feeling othered and searching for the place you fit in.

Most of my creative working time over the last few weeks has been dedicated to preparing for rehearsals, as we're having a short, intense time in the room before we head out on tour. As I said at the beginning, I'm not going to lay out the steps of my prep strategy, because I don't really have one. My approach varies depending on the show.

For this, I read a few drafts of the script as I helped the writer refine it since its workshop outing at a festival in 2024. As I read those drafts, I kept notes about my initial thoughts and key themes. I also kept notes from conversations I had with the writer about how he saw the characters and the story.

A couple of weeks ago, I got my hands on the demo tracks and that really opened up the world. Similar to my opera work, I think that in musicals, a huge amount of storytelling exists within the music, and it can't be ignored or treated in isolation. I re-read the script a couple of times whilst playing the demo tracks, and I started to see the world of delusion that Sean builds for himself.

With new plays, I make sure I understand characters, themes and settings, but I go into rehearsals with very little staging prepared. For opera, I will have loosely blocked the whole show. For this, I'm aiming for a happy medium. The show isn't a dance show, so we haven't got that pressure, but I think if I have an awareness of key moments and a general shape, we should be able to hit the ground running.