Often it’s a long slog and it’s just that core handful of people having to wrestle with ‘how do we solve the problems, how do we make the narrative as tight as it can be, how do find where all of the best emotional moments are?’ It’s a long time until you put a production team around you to help you with that, so it’s a more intimate experience.” On the other hand, there are many fewer people contributing ideas and thoughts, which means that you have do all of the heavy intellectual lifting yourselves, and there’s a much longer gestation period. So, many fewer voices in the room, which makes it more individual and more focused. “Theater, it’s usually a three or four person group, rather than that many people all involved at once, it’s the composer, the lyricist, the book writer and maybe the director doing much of the creative heavy lifting. READ MORE: Shore actress, 10, makes magic in "Matilda" And it’s usually a two- to three-year process in which everything just sort of rockets toward the final production. It’s a much longer gestation period, in which any given week somebody can come up with an idea that changes the game somewhat. Everybody is at the top of their game and everybody has a contribution to make. You’re dealing with story artists and background artists and the writers and performers. “For a movie, an animated film, the process is driven by the directors and there’s so many artists involved. “Where it differs is in the macro sense of how the entire piece is put together,” he said. While the process of writing songs for different avenues can be different, Slater says the essential parts of songwriting are constant. Many of my friends have taken their kids to see it and say ‘thanks, you’ve just gotten me involved in guitar lessons.’ The kids want to pick up an instrument themselves in order to do what they just saw.” One of the most gratifying things is watching kids come out of the theater when it’s over so excited and so thrilled by what they have seen and so ready to identify with their lives. ![]() “I think the fact that this is a real-life story and it takes place in a world that they can really identify with makes it riveting in a way that they don’t with other shows. It’s not written to be a kids’ show, it’s written to be an adult show, but it treats the kids and their lives with a seriousness that I think kids really appreciate,” he said. It sees the world through the kids’ ideas without pandering to them. ![]() “I think it’s because the show really does take kids seriously. READ MORE: M圜J sponsors indie panel at Hub City Music Fest Slater says his two children, 13 and 11, identify with “School of Rock” most out of all the works he has collaborated on, and feels other kids agree. He says it’s that power that attracted Webber to the material in “School of Rock,” and served as an inspiration for the piece. He just did an enormous amount to sort of indoctrinate people to a love of the art form.” Often I’ll go to see current revivals of shows that I saw back then and come out thinking, ‘it was so much better when Elliot did it.’ He did some wonderful, wonderful things. But it was a fantastic program when I was there and many of the musicals that (Taubenslag) put on as I was growing up are still amongst the most clear and most moving theater experiences I’ve had. “I didn’t really get involved in the Drama Club until I was a junior, and I was involved mostly as a writer and not a performer. “Just having a place to go where it’s an outlet full of creativity and an outlet for being able to express yourself,” he said. He correlated his work on “School of Rock” directly to the impact of performing arts in his youth. READ MORE: George Street Playhouse presents "My Name is Asher Lev"Īnd where he is is at the top of his game, with a hit musical, “School of Rock,” debuting on Broadway this season to rave reviews, new show “A Bronx Tale” making its world premiere on the Paper Mill Playhouse stage in February, finishing up a second season writing songs for ABC’s “Galavant,” starting work on a new Disney Channel animated series, “Tangled: Before Ever After,” set to debut in 2017, and readying for the world premiere of a musical he wrote with his wife, Wendy Leigh Wilf, which is ready to run at Asolo Rep in Sarasota next year. So again, I owe quite a bit of where I am to East Brunswick.” That was literally the spark that got me on this path. ![]() I worked with him shrinking it down to six roles from the 30 or 40 that they did at school and it ran off-Broadway for quite a while. “Elliott’s son Michael said ‘I can see this show being done off-Broadway.’ And he put together an off-Broadway production using professional actors. The show, “How I Survive High School,” performed well at a drama competition, which led to a professional turn.
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