[Pipe and Drape theme plays.]
STEPHEN FALA: I’m Stephen Fala, and you’re listening to Pipe and Drape, the only podcast that spotlights the creative minds behind the Theatre For Young Audiences industry. Every two weeks I sit down with a theatre professional to hear their pipe and drape stories. These are the stories that take place behind the pipe and drape scenery in the theatre for young audiences world. Theatre for young audiences (or TYA) inspires young minds by entertaining audiences with topics big and little in any and every setting. My guests have mounted shows small enough to fit in a minivan to productions so big they travel by caravan, and on this podcast we discuss the ways theatre for young audiences helps all artists and theatregoers make this world a better place. Thank you for listening with me today.
[Instrumental from “Final Scene” - The Knuffle Bunny (Original Cast Recording) plays.]
STEPHEN: Hi everybody! I’m here with composer, music director, orchestrator, and choral conductor Deborah Wicks La Puma. She is one of most produced Theatre for Young Audiences artists working today, with her work being seen across the globe and enjoying both popular and critical success. Her awards include an Off-Broadway Alliance Award, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, the Robert M. Golden Award, a National Endowment for the Arts’ New American Works Grant, a Helen Hayes Award, two Parent’s Choice Awards, and an iParenting media award. Her work has been commissioned and premiered at The Kennedy Center, Cornerstone Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, South Coast Rep, the Alliance Theatre, The Theatre at Boston Court, Childsplay, Bay Area Children's Theatre, Imagination Stage, and Olney Theatre. Her arranging credits include TYA hits such as The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Mo Willems' Knuffle Bunny, and Joan Cushing's Miss Nelson is Missing, and Petite Rouge. She is the composer behind the musicals She Persisted, based on the book by Chelsea Clinton with playwright Adam Tobin and Gail Carson Levine’s book Ella Enchanted which was a huge favorite among my peers when I was in elementary school; and she frequently collaborates with children’s entertainment creative Mo Willems. The Wicks La Puma/Willems duo created Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus: The Musical, Elephant & Piggie’s “We Are in a Play!”, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Experience, and the animated adaptation of that musical titled Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Underground Rock Experience which premiered on HBO Max last June. Her music directing and orchestrating credits include institutions like the Guthrie, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Repertory, La Jolla Playhouse and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In May of 2023 Deborah served as a mentor and curator for ten new writing teams while music directing the Song Slam Cabaret at the Theatre for Young Audiences/USA National Festival and Conference which is where we officially met. Deborah, welcome.
DEBORAH WICKS LA PUMA: Thank you, Stephen. It's such an honor to be here. Thank you so much for asking me. And I'm exhausted after you read that introduction. Oof.
STEPHEN: Yeah, you know what? I couldn't leave anything out. I was like, they need…for people who…for anyone who doesn't know, they need to know it all. [Laughter.]
DEBORAH: It's a lot. It's a lot.
STEPHEN: You have really taken the musical theatre world by storm and it's so, so cool to see your shows popping up in every corner of this country and beyond. I mean, my mother has taken her kids to see your shows and they've been produced in so many places and in so many ways. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, for example, seeing the pictures of it being performed out of a bus by Bay Area Children's Theatre. So, so cool.
DEBORAH: So, so great. So fun. What an innovative idea. I love that when they, they called and they're like, is this okay? And I'm like, yes. Why did we not think of this before? This is, this is a brilliant idea. I'm so glad that that pigeon is getting done. You know, it's sort of emerging from the pandemic. There was a time there where, I don't know about you, but I just felt like, are we ever coming back? Are we ever gonna, and Pigeon it premiered right before the pandemic started, so it was in November of 2019, so it was really just getting on a roll. It was on a national tour and then was called back in March of 2020. So it just felt with everything being shut down, your heart just crumples, you know? But now things are starting to come back and it's so joyous to see pigeon getting done all over the place. ‘Cause I know Pigeon is a beloved character because the pigeon needs things, the pigeon wants things and the pigeon says it. And a lot of kids and adults really relate with that.
STEPHEN: The very first line on the recording… Like, I related so much to Pigeon as soon as this started, ‘cause nothing was going his way. I was like, every adult in the audience, every kid in the audience is…they’re on board [Laughter.]
[A selection from “I Never Get To Do Anything” - Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus plays.]
DEBORAH: Exactly. [Laughter.] And you know, I remember when we were writing the show, you know, the promise of the premise of doing a show about Pigeon is the moment in the book where the kids get to say no to the pigeon, right? Because all the adults in their lives say no to the kids. Right? You can't do this, you can't do that. And the pigeon is again, just the kids' hero. So, so they wanna feel like the grownup and they wanna say no to the pigeon. I remember when we were writing it, we were trying to figure out like, how do you find a positive way communally to have the kids be able to say no without having the whole show fall apart, without losing the audience completely and without like, being horrible to the poor actor who's playing the pigeon, right? To have three hundred kids all yell, “No!” So what we did is we put it in a song, right? So when he sings the song, “Can I Drive the Bus?” there's a sung response from the the other actors in the show, [sings] “No, no.” “Can I drive the bus?” “No, no.” So then we encourage the kids to sing it and so they can, they can sing along, they can still say “no,” but again, we sort of structured it within a song which has a beginning and an ending. So we know when the moment is done and how they can participate without hopefully letting it go off the rails too much. But that took a while to figure out. That took a while to figure out.
STEPHEN: Did you workshop that moment with kids in the room to get it just right and contained?
DEBORAH: We did, we did a couple of drafts of it. So we did our first draft and then the Kennedy Center who commissioned it and premiered it, they also developed it. They're really good at that. Shout out to the Kennedy Center. And so they brought in young kids for our first reading and we had them in front. And and I actually, the first time I wrote it, I wrote something too complicated, which is, is kind of my Achilles heel. I love harmony. And so I tend to write just tons of harmony. And if you know, like Elephant & Piggie’s “We Are in a Play!” we've got the squirrels, which are like the backup singers, and they do three part girl group harmony. Like that is my jam. I love it. So in Pigeon, when the bus driver and then the other bus passengers were singing, [sings] “No, no,” I had something really complex. I had three and four part harmony and it was really cool and it built and it was jazzy. And then we're like, okay, then no, that doesn't work. Kids have no idea where to jump into the water on something like that. So I made it unison, you know, just, [sings] “No, no,” just that. So that it was very, very clear and it repeated exactly the same way each time. And that way it was really clear. And, and I, one of the things I love about TYA is just figuring out how to onboard the audience in there in a super clear way so that they feel taken care of and they can really enjoy it without being like, am I supposed to clap here? Am I supposed to sing here? It's like, no, no, here you go. Come on in, let's do this. And, and then they can relax and have a good time. But it, yeah, it took a few times.
[A selection from “Let Me Drive The Bus!” - Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus plays.]
STEPHEN: Oh yeah. I love that you do that…that you worked it in in there because I think it's so tricky for kids watching a show, cause they're told to sit still and be quiet and they don’t…they're still learning. Like, when do I clap? Yeah. So I that's that's brilliant that you were able to work it into the composition to make it like be a musical moment that has a clear, beginning, middle, and end to it.
DEBORAH: Yeah. It's all about structure. And I realize that I, Mo and I are both structuralists, like we live and we talk within that, that world. And, you know, for example, when we were adapting Elephant and Piggie, you know, he has this whole canon of beautiful books. And so what we did is, is he laid them all out, all the books that he had written on a giant conference table, and we were trying to find an arc for the story, right? Because they're all little anecdotes. So how do you create one sixty-minute piece? So what we did is we just played like shuffleboard with the picture books and we're like, okay, here's this story about the elephant who can't dance, and here's some ice cream and here's a bird on your head, and which ones fit? And how do you build a structure? And we played with that for about a day until we sort of got like, okay, this book can lead to, this book can lead to this book. And and it was fun because both of our brains sort of work that way in terms of building the scaffolding first and outlining, and then you dive in and you create the, the individual moments.
STEPHEN: I'm so curious about how you find out what is the sound of this piece you have. I mean with this, you’re working with a living writer, which is awesome. So you guys can be like, well, what if it is this and this? And then with that one? It’s all these different segments you're putting together. And how do you decide when am I doing my Beethoven reference? When am I doing “beep boop bop” to make these different stories come together in one cohesive piece?
DEBORAH: Yeah, there's a lot of discussions right at the beginning about that. So with Elephant and Piggie, that was the first show that we wrote together. So I met him working on Knuffle Bunny, and by the way, it's pronounced [hard K sound] “Knuffle Bunny” now, you know?
STEPHEN: Oh, thank you.
DEBORAH: Cause I had, I had to set that to music [Laughter.] It's like K-nuff-le, it's three syllables. Anyway but we met at, I was the arranger on Knuffle Bunny. And then he fell in love with writing for TYA. Yay. And he said, “Now I wanna do this with Elephant and Piggie.” And we had such a good time working on Knuffle Bunny that, that he asked me to write with him Double, double, triple yay. So anyhow, as we jumped in there, he was raised in New Orleans, so he loves jazz. He has a very sophisticated musical taste. And so he sent me a whole playlist of jazz that he loves. And so that's what I was responding to. And it's like, what is it about jazz that really fits these characters? And what we decided on is like, jazz is very improvisational. It has a lot of made up words. It's got scat in it. And so it's very, very playful. And that is exactly right for the story of two friends who are meeting to play together.
[A selection from “Lucky to See You” - Elephant & Piggie’s “We Are In A Play!” The Album plays.]
DEBORAH: So we knew we wanted to be jazzy, we knew it, it, it should have some elements of improv, some elements of scat in it. And the nice thing is that the Kennedy Center had live music. They were gonna do it with live music. So I was able to pick, okay, I need, I have the budget for four musicians and we've got jazz and go. And so that's, that's where I was able to start with, okay, we've got one read player, drums, bass, and piano. And that really narrows the world down, right? So, any other elements you need in there need to be provided by the actors need to be sung. Yes. So the conversation really starts with what is the musical world that they're living with? And we usually just do a playlist and we start from a Spotify playlist. We've done this now for every single show we've written. So for example, for Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: the Rock Experience. We made a massive playlist of all the cool rock songs that we liked, that we both liked. And then we would go through it and Mo would be like, ‘I love this song,’ and I would say, ‘I love this song,’ and he'd say, ‘I don't love this song,’ and I'd say, ‘I don't love this song.’ So then we would whittle it down. And what's nice is that as a composer, a lot of times I can have a hard time talking to collaborators about music because playwrights often don't feel equipped with the right language to talk about music with confidence, right? They'll say, ‘I like that song, but I don't know anything about music or it,’ and it's always couched with, ‘But I don't know anything about music,’ which isn't really helpful, right? So when you make a playlist, I can ask very specific questions about what is it about that song that you like? Do you like the tempo? Do you like what the singer is the style that the singer is in? Do you like what the brass is doing? Or whatever. It's just a, a touchstone for us to really start conversations about how to build the right musical world for it. And we found that super, super helpful. So with Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, I mean I save all of these playlists because they are great playlists. The one we did for Pigeon, it was also swung, there was a lot of swung stuff up, but it was all about brass because we knew we were gonna have a three-piece brass section for the show. So it's like, choose every favorite song you have that has brass in it. So that might be, you know, “Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder, or “Almost Like Being in Love” sung by Frank Sinatra. God, that's a great, that's a great song. Anyhow so, so these are these wonderful playlists that we make and it's fun to just sort of soak that in and I listen to it while I'm cleaning the house, while I'm vacuuming and just soak it into my pores and then I go jump at the piano and see what comes out.
STEPHEN: Do you feel, ‘cause a lot of TYA shows are canned and not too many of them have a live orchestra, do you find that freeing knowing, oh, it's going to be recorded so [you] can put in whatever instruments [you] want, or you know, are you writing every piece as if it could be done with a live orchestra at any second?
DEBORAH: I've really gone, in my career, I've gone the full spectrum on this, on this question. My honors thesis in college was a full musical. And I orchestrated for twenty-seven pieces. I, it was a huge orchestra. It almost killed me. But like, I just wanted to do that. I wanted to go big. And then I got into “the real world.” And you know, no one has the budget for that. It's just not reality. I find that actually having…I would rather have a small live orchestra than have a recorded twenty-piece orchestra. And I have actively advocated for theatres to prioritizing hiring live musicians because again, I believe that musical theatre is really so impactful when you've got live actors, live musicians, live audience, everyone is creating and experiencing the art together. That is when it's at its most magical, that is when it's at its most real. So my dream is to win the lottery and start a foundation, you know, the La Puma Live Music Foundation where I just give away grants to theatres and say, here, hire that band, do it. But until that happens, until that happens if we can't have live music, and sometimes, for example, Pigeon, we knew it was gonna go on tour, so we knew that financially that was just not gonna swing for us to have a live band on tour. So I'm like, okay, well I can have a larger band ‘cause I know it'll be recorded, but I wanna hire live musicians to record the tracks. So that’s sort of one step adjacent from having the live music where I still get to interact with, with musicians who are wonderful and talented and can bring themselves to it and create something unique and special. We record that and then that's what goes out with the piece, sort of the rung below that is when I need to create tracks, you know, here in my studio at home and it’s a lot of computer midi tracks, and that's what I started with, right? And that was back in earlier days when the computer sounds were not so fabulous. But, but I've sort of learned like, okay, you can’t have canned string and brass. They sound awful in midi. If you have the money you pay to hire someone to come in and record that live so that it sounds good. But, but other instruments, piano, bass, you can, you can get away with a computerized version of it. And it doesn’t sound too bad, but I have strong opinions about that. It’s so difficult and we’re all trying to thread the needle between creating great art and making it sustainable and being able to afford it. And theatres play that game all the time. But every one of my published shows I do have tracks so that it can get produced by theatres that don't have the resources to do otherwise. But I also offer all of the orchestrations so that if they wanted to hire people, they could do it or schools. And what I love is sometimes I've found some schools will just create their own orchestrations. Thanks to the internet, nothing is secret anymore, right? [Laughter.] And I can't remember what show it was, but, but they had added all these instrumentalists, like it was, it was a school show. And they're like, you know what, we got a kid who plays guitar, so we're putting guitar in this. And I'm like, you go, I love this. That's great. Please take it and run.
STEPHEN: [Laughter.] Did you grow up playing a bunch of different instruments? I mean, I know you, you traveled a lot as a kid, so I don't know how many like bassoons you can bring across the country with you [Laughter], but like, did you, did you grow up playing something from each section?
DEBORAH: I didn't actually start playing until I was nine years old, which is pretty old for people who dedicate their lives to music. But that's, that's when I finally convinced my mom to give me piano lessons. I'm the youngest kid, so my brother and sister came before me and they got pushed into piano lessons and they did not love it. And so my mom was just tired of saying, “Go practice your piano.” So when I came along and I said, “I wanna do it too,” she didn't believe me. So it took me a long time until I convinced her. And then I finally got my piano lessons. So, so I really just played piano for most of my life. And then when I got to middle school, I happened to be in the U.S. in middle school and and the very nice band teacher asked me to play bassoon So that's where I learned how to play the bassoon. God bless it. My my parents really didn't love me practicing. They made me go down to the basement into a closet. They called it the Lovesick Moose. Now it turns out one of my children is actually a very fine bassoonist. She has surpassed me way, way beyond that. She makes the bassoon sound good. I don't know that I did I tried the violin for about six months and then I couldn't handle it. It just…I couldn't make a nice sound on it. [Laughter] Hurt my ears. So again, hats off to violinists and string players everywhere. So it wasn't until I got to high school that I was in a very, very small school in Lisbon, Portugal called the American International School. And our music room was small and it, but it had like five instruments. It had a piano, it had a bass, a guitar and drums. And so that's all I had. So I just learned all of them and not well, not well, but enough, enough. And we had an amazing at least we thought we were amazing high school band. We called ourselves technical difficulty because every time we went to do a gig, an amp would blow up or something would go wrong. We played all the rock hits of the 80s.
STEPHEN: That's great.
DEBORAH: I do a really good Pat Benatar.
STEPHEN: [Laughter.] Oh my God, we love a cover band [Laughter.] Did you switch instruments throughout the, did were you all rotating throughout the, the concert?
DEBORAH: We would rotate a little bit, yes. So I could play, I could play the bass line on “Can't Get No Satisfaction,” which is [hums the bass line.] I could do that. And I think I played drum on some 50s tune. Yeah, pretty, it's pretty basic stuff, but really fun. Really fun.
STEPHEN: Do you find a certain genre where you, you pull a lot of your inspiration for when you are like creating scores?
DEBORAH: I mean, I am a child of the 80s, so I feel like some of my sensibility goes back to that. That's why Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed was maybe the easiest show ever for me to write. It just sort of fell out of my body. But I remember when I was in grad school, my teachers pulled me aside and they're like, Debbie, this is all great. You're doing lovely, but can you just pick a sound? Like what do you actually sound like? Because every assignment I would get, I would try to put it in a different genre a different style of music. And I still like doing that. And it’s just fun. Like, I love analyzing what makes individual styles and genres of music tick. Just last week I was writing a a song for Mo for another project and I wrote three different versions of it because I don't know why not, you know, so here's a jazzy version, here's a funky version, and here's like the theme park version of it, and what do you, what do you like? And so for me, I love that challenge. So I do have sometimes a hard time narrowing myself down to a specific sound. Maybe people who have listened to enough of my music would be like, no, no, you've got a specific sound here it is.
STEPHEN: I feel like you're like diving into like every different genre with all of your shows. [Laughter] Say like right now, you have three different versions of this song. Is there a world in which you get into workshopping the show where you bring all of them in just to be like, ‘Hey, let's see which one of these works with the team that we have?’ How much is narrowed down from your conversations with other writers by the time it gets to that workshop where you have different performers and instrumentalists making this piece heard?
DEBORAH: You know, the thing about workshopping musicals, it's, it's a really heavy lift to workshop musicals because it often takes so much rehearsal time to just teach the music. And I remember working with many playwrights who are just like, ‘Ugh, we haven't even gotten to the script yet. We spent the first two days just learning the songs.’ So you kind of have to go in ready. I feel like when there's been a spot where we’ve had multiple options, we always have to choose just one first that we go in, we rehearse, we try it, knowing though that we've got in our back pocket, here's version A, here's version B I've done it where I might do a rewrite and in the room I'll just play it and sing it at the piano so we can hear it in context with everything else rather than try and teach the singers to do it. Because you just, you know, often you just don't have that much time to try every single option unless you're really, really lucky. But it's always good to have to have backup, right? And regardless, it makes you ask the right questions of like, why do we think this song will work better? What is it about the tempo that we need right here? What is it about the range that the singer's singing in all those good things?
STEPHEN: Are you ever influenced by, with your style, by the singers themselves that are in those workshops?
DEBORAH: Yeah, I mean the singers, and again, this is why I love working with actors and I love working with live musicians because they bring so many ideas, they know their instrument as singers and as instrumentalists more than anyone else. And when they bring those ideas, that's when it gets really, really fun. I am a singer myself, but you know, I've got a certain range. I tend to write everything in the key of D for me and then when I get to other singers, I get to transpose it into something else and hear it in a whole new way and understand it better. So there have been, I mean, pretty much every single show, whatever actor has done the development for it, a little piece of them is in there. Whether that's in a way that they may be slightly modified, a melody or something like that, or the way that they phrased something, we're always responding to those artists. And I mean, that's the collaborative dream, right? That you're all in a room, you're creating it together. That's why COVID sucked so bad, [laughter] because we couldn't be in the same room. But, but when you're in the same room, the vibes are all there and, and you just build off of each other.
[A selection from a Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Underground Rock Experience commercial plays.]
STEPHEN: Naked Mole Rat came out on HBO, like right as we were coming out of that. Was that a big COVID project? The adaptation?
DEBORAH: Yeah, amazingly, we, we had a meeting, a launch meeting for that in March of 2020. So like, we were meeting for lunch and there was sort of this talk about like, oh, do you, well, do you think things are gonna, I don't know what's gonna happen, what is this thing they're talking about? Like, it was just about to fall on top of us. Thank God though that we had that project ‘cause we were able to continue through the entire pandemic. So all of my work on that was done remotely. I was able to work with the singers and record the singers who were in studios in New York and in Nashville and in LA and I was here in my garage in lovely Placentia, California, you know, waking up at 6:00 AM to work with the actors in New York who are on a different time zone. But it was such a thrill and it was such a gift because at a time where we were feeling so isolated and just worried about theatre ever coming back, I had something artistically to move forward with and to move on and I was working in television for the first time. So it was a learning curve in terms of how to do that. You know, in theatre we have a couple weeks of rehearsal to teach and to learn the song and try things out and see how it works in TV or, or movies. The way we were recording it, it's like you meet the actor, you have twenty minutes to teach it to them and you record it right then and that is what you're gonna use. So all of your discovery process has to be completely compressed into, ah, now you only have to get it once, so you don't have to worry about, well that's a really high note and I wouldn't do that to you at 8:30 AM/in the morning like you do on a TYA show, right? You have to worry about your actor's longevity. But here you didn't have to worry about longevity. You just had to get it once, but you had to really mean it like, there's no going back. That's, that's the choice that you made. So that was, that was fascinating.
STEPHEN: It's funny that you mentioned doing it like the time of time of day, like performing, you know, actors doing it at 8:30 in the morning ‘cause like, I've had that where it's like an A flat at like 9:00 in the morning and I'm like, oh, okay.
DEBORAH: Right. I have to wake up at 4:00 AM and start warming up. Yeah.
STEPHEN: It's like we'll just see what we…the kids will get what they get, but we make it happen. What are some things that you keep in mind when you are composing for shows that will tour? Like what are some factors that come into play where it's like, okay, well this is…the casting might be limited, the set, the other things that I'm not sure of, [Laughter] you know, or like how the show might change because it's traveling?
DEBORAH: I mean, as a writer you just wanna make sure that the…again, you're not demanding too much of your actors because you know that they're gonna be under different kinds of stresses on the road. And, and health is so important and, and sometimes hard to maintain when you're on that schedule. And again, I try to make sure that the ranges are specific and castable, right? So that you're not having someone who spends their entire character in a baritone range and then suddenly has to sing a high C or something ridiculous like that. At least not pretty right? If you know it's a character thing, then great, but I really think about the characters a lot and what I'm demanding of my singers to make sure that they can do it consistently. And if I'm asking them to do something difficult, it's gotta be for a really good reason, a really good reason. So for example, in Pigeon, and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, there's a teenager character and in the song called “Panic at the Bus Stop,” he has to sing about how he's panicking. And so I thought it would be funny if there was…if he did a huge octave jump where his voice could crack. So he has to do “Panic” and he has to sing like a high C it's hard, it's really crazy, but it doesn't have to be pretty, and it's part of his character, right? So it works if he does it beautifully and it also works if he does it terribly because that's part of the character and you're a teenager and your voice is cracking and it's, it's all great as a music director. I think that's partly it because I'm also, I'm not just a composer, I'm also a music director. So I've had to teach actors these parts and not only my own parts, but for other shows. And so I'm very cognizant of when actors are like, ‘Ugh, this is so hard.’ Or like, ‘Why are they making me do this?’ Or, ‘What is the point?’ So you have to meet it, you just have to meet it and hopefully not make your actors hate you. Right? [Laughter] you have to give them love, give them some love.
STEPHEN: Yeah. Not only that, it's like, there's usually only like six actors, so it's like a power hour of vocals. And it's fun because you are kind of going nonstop and it's like…I’m a baritone, so like I'm always looking at range to see like how…what’s sustainable here?
DEBORAH: ‘What are they asking me to do?’
STEPHEN: Exactly. And I feel like it's like every contract I send my friends like a picture of my score and I say “goodbye” because it's like a new higher and higher each time. But the the good part is that like there is…I have to stay like vocally active for the duration of that show. So I'm always working my instrument. I don't get cold, so I'm not like going in after not singing for like an hour ‘cause it's like a three hour show, you know, it's a right compact. It's like a short little bit where it's a lot of music in a short amount of time.
DEBORAH: It's a sprint. Yeah, really it's a sprint. And I do, I really do think about, about the actors and the baritones. God bless you. [Laughter.] Well, there are roles that I know that I've made some demands on. So my apologies to anyone who has played the pigeon because the pigeon is very hard because it's also a puppet role. So at least in most of the productions that have been done, it's a tenor role. So it's high, it's a puppet role. So you're also like singing through a puppet, which is very hard, very physically demanding. And of course the pigeon is on almost the whole time. So it's a super, super difficult role and, and hard to cast for a tour. And here's, here's just a little theatre story for you. I was doing, I was casting a tour for the Kennedy Center, which was a children’s opera. And I remember this young singer came in, he sang his face off, God, he had an amazing audition. He sang “Gethsemane” from Jesus Christ Superstar, which if you don't know that you should go listen to that, but it's, it's this huge rock tenor thing and it's got these screaming high notes. Anyway, he goes up for like the big high note at the end, and then he dropped to the floor, boom. And we thought he was like making a joke. So we all started clapping and we’re like, yay, that was great. Yay. And then he didn’t get up and it was silent, like, what is happening right now? And I walk over to him, I’m like, oh my God, what has happened? He had passed out. He had passed out. He sang that high note and he had passed out, anyhow. And then he came to, he opened his eyes and he is like, ‘Where am I?’ [Laughter.] I'm like, you're at an audition, you're okay. Anyhow, he hadn't had breakfast that morning and he was this the most talented young man, amazing performance, but we could not hire him for the tour because it’s like, you gotta take care of yourself. You have to eat breakfast, you can't pass out on stage, you know, please don't do these things to you yourself, actors, please take care of selves. It was, I will never forget that moment. Oh my gosh.
STEPHEN: [Laughter.] Wow. I mean that is…that’s an important lesson for people. It's like you have to be, because you are gonna have those early mornings where you're eating a Cliff Bar in the back of a van that doesn't have heat and you have to put your set up and steam your costumes before you sing that high note at the end.
DEBORAH: Exactly, exactly. There's a lot of demands And I've been on tour myself a few times and back in my younger days but I started with a, you know, a van tour called Library Theatre in Washington, DC and we, we'd be out in the snow, we'd be pulling platforms out and putting them up and it was rough. It was very, very demanding. So hats off, hats off to everybody who does that
STEPHEN: As a music director, what are some of the vocal workouts or things that you do to make sure that your cast maintain health and the, and the performance that they are giving during the short rehearsal process over the next couple of months where the show will grow, things will, will change, but they need to maintain the element of health, safety and a good performance.
DEBORAH: And a good performance. Yeah, I actually created a vocal workout CD, you can get it on my website, but it's, it's called Vocal Workout. And it was exactly for that because actors would be driving to rehearsal or driving to a show and it's like, here's something you can pop into your car and you can sing while you’re driving so that when you arrive at rehearsal, you’re ready to go. Because so often that's like the first thing to go out the window when things get crazy is that time to just do your deep breathing, make sure that you're singing your scales and, and, and warming up your instrument. ‘Cause it's so important. I try to have that time for people to warm up at the beginning and if not, you know, here’s your backup. Make sure that you're singing at home, you know, the usual stuff, just lots of liquids, blah, blah, blah. But I always make up a…I like to make a cheat sheet for my actors before I leave a show. ‘Cause you know, most music directors, we music direct the show opening night or opening afternoon or whatever it is, and you say, yay, God bless and Godspeed. And then they're like, okay, she's gone. Do whatever you want. No, but I have a list of like, ‘Remember cut off on four and measure 57, our favorite spot in rehearsal,’ and just a little sheet that they can go back and look to. And then I like to have one person in the cast who is sort of the vocal captain, like a dance captain where if there's a question, if it starts to get shaggy, they can go back and say, all right, when is our cutoff or what's happening there? Because it's hard for a stage manager. Some stage managers are really good about making those notes and putting them in the performance reports of, you know, cutoffs are getting wonky or, or whatever. But some sage managers, again, don't feel comfortable making those musical notes. So I try to have someone around who can at least ask and if all else fails, bring me in. So on long tours, sometimes I've been able to go out and see the show on the road and make notes and just scare everybody again and get them thinking about all those things that music directors think about, like cutoffs, [Laughter.] we love it. Dynamics.
[A selection from “Time To Get Dressed” - Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Experience plays.]
STEPHEN: Changing gears just a second…you recently directed and put together the Song Slam Cabaret for the TYA/USA Conference. For listeners who don't know, this is an organization of theatre for young audience theatre-makers across the country. And it's a branch of an international organization called ASSITEJ. And at the conference we premiered lots of new work, talked about important in embed, set the industry, and one of the performances was this cabaret, which you led and it was ten songwriting teams that were selected from, I mean like, you know, we received so many submissions for this. So many people came out and were like, I want to do this. And then even after the deadline, we’re still getting more submissions. And then we had an evening where this new work was performed. So I'm curious about what you look for in in new material in like in these writers that are, that are coming out and creating.
DEBORAH: Yeah, we had, we had fifty-seven submissions and we had decided ahead of time we were only gonna do ten songs so that it was a nice discrete evening and we had so many strong applicants, so many songs that were so good. We sort of had a finalists of seven other songs that we played as house music while people were coming in because it was just good stuff, really great stuff. There was a wonderful panel of folks that decided what was gonna be that listened to all of these songs and deliberated over them. And we knew going in, you know, we had certain criteria which was, I mean obviously it needs to be a good tune, but like, is it saying something unique? Is it innovative for TYA, is it catching a certain vibe that’s in TYA right now? What can we learn from it? And so in many cases what our discussions were like, okay, this song is about mental health, there were a lot of songs about mental health, let’s make sure that we include one of those in here. There was a wonderful song that was a theatre for the very young and we’re like, okay, we know we also wanna represent theatre for the very young, ‘cause that's a very important part of our field, so yay we’ve got this beautiful song that we can put in there. And then my role was, you know, while they were talking about my role was to think about the whole evening of making sure there’s variety in those songs, that there’s a flow to those songs and that we have diverse representation from the creative teams. I made a whole graph by gender, by location in the US, you know, just so that we really get a nice cross section of all the work that’s going out there. We had a huge amount of folks submitting from New York, which was awesome, but we’re like, okay, but we also need to make sure we’re representing other geographies around the country. So we were really cognizant of all of that. Young writers, established writers. Yeah. So it took us a little while to get all of that, but we had such an embarrassment of riches that it was fun. It was just hard to say no to all the people who had applied with great, great stuff. It makes me think about when I was starting, I feel like TYA, this was like thirty years ago right when I was starting and Karen Zacarias and I wrote our first piece, TYA was going through sort of a change in terms of wanting to hear more diverse voices and trying to make space for that. And I feel like we're in a similar space now where we’re just sort of taking it up to the next level of visibility and awareness of trying to be open for new voices. So when Karen and I started, TYA was really going, it was operating under the radar of adult theatre, right? I didn't even know TYA existed during my graduate program at NYU. Like they didn't really even speak of it. I got out into the wider world and was just trying to find a job that that was where the opportunities were coming. So I feel like the doors were open for people that were willing to do TYA back then, and if you knew what you were doing, you were gonna get that work. Now I feel like it's much more competitive and I see that in these young writers that are applying to Song Slam, that the landscape has changed and it is much more competitive just like with adult theatre, which is thrilling in a way because that means there's a lot of amazing work being done out there and you have to really know what you're doing. But there's, I think there's more artists out there than there is space for them to be seen. So that is one of the reasons why I created the Song Slam because I just wanted all these wonderful writing teams to be seen by the national organization.
STEPHEN: What are some themes that you are hoping to infuse into your future work and collaborations as you are either writing original stories or you know, reworking existing books or plays for a live audience?
DEBORAH: You know, so much of TYA, and there's been a lot of discussion about that, about the tyranny of the title in TYA, great alliteration right there, but how the most successful things are book adaptations. And I know Karen and I wrote ten pieces, then musicals together and by far the most successful ones were book adaptations: Ferdinand the Bull and Ella Enchanted. Not that the other pieces I think were any less than, but theatres just, they need to be able to sell that product. They need to be able to tie it into curriculum with the teachers. So I get it from all sides, you know, why we're in this situation where book adaptations are leading the way. I think it's interesting. One of my mentees from my Maestra Music, shout out from maestramusic.org, it's amazing for female musical theatre artists. I mentored this young woman named Julia Riew, who went big on TikTok because she wrote like a Disney princess song for a Korean Disney princess. And so now she's getting all these wonderful commissions and she wrote an Alice in Wonderland adaptation and she's doing something kind of from the opposite. I believe she is taking her adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and writing a book for that adaptation and getting that out there so that it's like, oh, okay, we've switched places where the musical will come first and the musical, I believe is already premiered and now she's writing the book to go with it, which I think is fabulous. I'm like, yes, let’s, why don't we try that and see if that works. Yeah. But as with anything, it's like, what is as a creator, whenever I'm pitching or thinking of ideas, it's always how are we gonna be able to sell it to teachers? What is the hook in for teachers? What is the hook for that development director who needs to sell tickets to this? So if it's not a book that they can tie to directly, is it a historical moment? I'm always cognizant of we need to make sure that it's got something there because it's a whole lot of work to create a show. And if you can't sell it, then it's just depressing. It's sad when it sits in your piano bench. So no, we create things for them to live and be out there. So you wanna set yourself up for success. We're always thinking about that ahead of time. [Laughter.] You know, one of the things, again, I didn't even know that TYA existed as a genre until I started until I got outta grad school and I went, I moved to Washington, D.C. and I was just trying to find any job in the theatre and TYA was was the only place where I was getting a yes. And so I just kept going back there ‘cause that's where I was getting the jobs. And then the more I worked in TYA, the more I loved it and the more I appreciated what it did. And my favorite thing about it is efficiency. It is the most efficient storytelling on stage anywhere, right? I think of it like a bonzai tree. It encapsulates all of the giant majestic tree, but in a small, tiny size and you have to trim it and every single aspect of it is precious and important. And if it's not, it gets trimmed, it's gone. Right? So, you know, you tell a full and complete story with arc, with songs, with character development and you've got forty-five to sixty minutes to do it. So I respect it for that because it demands clarity and precision. And of course it's, audiences are completely honest. They will tell you what they think, they will not be polite. And you get a real, real reaction out of kids. And if you are vague in your writing, if they don't kind of understand what's going on, they'll get wiggly. And if your slow songs are too long, if you go into that second verse where we kind of already get it, they will start rustling their programs and they’ll ask if they can go to the bathroom, you know, right away. And they also, you know, young audiences, they cheer for the weird and the crazy ideas. They embrace it. And so many times adults might say, oh well that's, that's too out there. Or it's hard for kids to understand or whatever. And you know, kids are so open to accepting the world as they experience it because so many things are new about the world. So you say like, you know, purple cows on the moon, sure, let's go there. And I love that and as a writer it allows me to also think like, what if we suddenly started playing kazoos? Yes, let's do that. So it's, it's the aspect of TYA that just brings me back to it. And, and the reason why I've committed really my entire professional career to TYA and I can't wait to write some more.
STEPHEN: We can't wait to hear more. Truly. I'm so excited about like, especially this next project that you have with Mo coming up. Which can we know you super secret. Ok. Super secret. We won't say, we won't say.
DEBORAH: [Laughter.]
STEPHEN: What were some of the shows like when you were of TYA-viewing age, well for the target audience, like when you were a kid, what were some of the shows that were either brought to you or that you got to see all over the world?
DEBORAH: You know, I didn't, since I grew up in Portugal and Brazil, not as much musical theatre there, I guess now there's a huge amount of musical theatre in Brazil, which I love to hear about. But at the time I didn't have a lot of exposure to it. The first show I saw, first musical I saw was Annie, I think it was on tour and that was when I was in middle school and living in the US for two years in the Bay Area in San Francisco. And I loved it, absolutely loved it. Which will make my daughters laugh because I don't allow Annie in the house. There's no singing of Annie in the house because I've heard bad renditions of “Tomorrow" too many times and I didn't want my children to hurt their voices, so I banned it [Laughter.] But it was the first show I ever saw and I did love it. It wasn't until I got to college that I was able to work on a show for the first time and that was Jesus Christ Superstar, one of my all time favorites. Love that show.
STEPHEN: And no one fainted during that one?
DEBORAH: No one fainted. No. A lot of people probably saying poorly and hurt their voices, but no one fainted. It was college, so we didn't care. [Laughter.]
STEPHEN: I…College…I mean people are like, they're up there sweating out vodka up there.
DEBORAH: That’s right. [Laughter.] I was, I was a soul girl in the production. So that's those three part that goes, [Sings.] “Don’t you get me wrong, don't you get me wrong now,” during that part. Anyhow. And I will forever remember the smell of fog, you know, because the stage, like whoever was on the fog machine was just going crazy. So the whole place was just completely enveloped in fog. I don't think they could see any of the actors and I'm trying to sing and breathe with this fog coming in and anyway, I'll never, I'll never lose that memory. It was beautiful.
STEPHEN: That's a rock experience right there.
DEBORAH: It is. It is [Laughter.] They didn't put it in Spinal Tap, but they should have [Laughter.]
STEPHEN: Debra, thank you for, for sharing your story with me today.
DEBORAH: It was my pleasure.
STEPHEN: It was so nice to chat with you again. Is there a way for our listeners to check in and see what you're up to and a place to look for any sort of big announcement of your next project?
DEBORAH: Well I have a lovely website called crunchynotes.com and it's crunchy notes ‘cause it's music you can sink your teeth into. So that's the vibe. And I am not on other, I'm not on Instagram or anything like that, but if you know my husband Chris La Puma, aka my PR machine, you can often find out about anything I'm doing and too much about what I'm doing via Chris Puma on Instagram.
STEPHEN: Deborah’s website, Vocal Workout!, and Chris’ Instagram handle are linked in the show notes, and you can find Deborah’s songs and musicals on your favorite music streaming platform. In this episode we heard clips of the Deborah Wicks La Puma and Mo Willems collaborations “Final Scene” from The Knuffle Bunny, “I Never Get To Do Anything” and “Let Me Drive The Bus!” from Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, “Lucky to See You” from Elephant & Piggie’s “We Are In A Play!” the trailer for the HBO Max film Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Underground Rock Experience and “Time To Get Dressed” from Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Experience. If this made you want to rock out in your office, you are not alone. Musicals in the theatre for young audience world are filled with bops. When Deborah and I met in Tempe we talked about what it would be like to have a prom underscored by TYA music. In my theatre camp days, TYA and dance parties went hand in hand. One of my camp show directors at Upper Darby Summer Stage, Stacy Moscotti, ended rehearsal a few minutes early every Tuesday to have what she called a Tuesday Afternoon Dance Party. A TADP. I’d like to bring that tradition to you, Podcast listeners. Every episode I’m going to suggest a song or composer in the TYA canon for you to listen to, and have a Tuesday afternoon dance party of your own. This week, have a Tuesday Afternoon Dance Party with Deborah Wicks La Puma’s Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: the Rock Experience.
Find Deborah Wicks La Puma:
WEBSITE: https://crunchynotes.com
INSTAGRAM: @dwlapuma
SINGERS check out Debora's Vocal Workout!
Music from this episode:
“Final Scene” - The Knuffle Bunny (Original Cast Recording)
“I Never Get To Do Anything” - Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus
“Let Me Drive The Bus!” - Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus
“Lucky to See You” - Elephant & Piggie’s “We Are In A Play!” The Album
“Time To Get Dressed” - Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Experience
This weeks Tuesday Afternoon Dance Party music: Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Experience
Listen to the Tuesday Afternoon Dance Party playlist here!
Connect with Pipe and Drape:
INSTAGRAM: @PipeAndDrapeStories
EMAIL: PipeAndDrapeStories@gmail.com
Host: Stephen Fala
Artwork: Stephen Gordon
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