The Romantic Movement
Summer of 1967. High school students gather in rural Florida to study classical music in the heart of the Vietnam War and the release of Sgt. Pepper. Will the college-aged Resident Assistants survive a summer of babysitting high schoolers? Does studying music even matter during a time of war?
While I was at Juilliard, my teachers asked me to write something personal, auto-biographical even, since I'm pretty talented at burying any autobiographical elements of my work in fiction. We broke for the summer, and I realized as much as I'd written about music and musicians, I'd never written about my experiences in band growing up. I wholeheartedly believe in the value of learning how to play an instrument, and even though most of my friends from high school band aren't professional musicians now (though many are!), our lives, our values, our relationships - they were all shaped by our time together playing music.
Characters
4 women, 5 men
Setting
A small Florida college. June 1967.
History
May 2022 - World Premiere at the Dobbins Conservatory at Southeast Missouri University
June 2021 - Winner of the inaugural Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival at the Dobbins Conservatory at Southeast Missouri University
August 2014 - Reading at the stART Osceola Summer Program in Florida (for an audience of a few hundred teenagers...best experience ever)
“No one talks to me at my school. But that’s because I’m weird. Which - do you think I’m weird? I actually wish I were weirder. Or not weirder, but more exciting. I wish I could be a weirdo who doesn’t care what people think, but I’m a weirdo who deeply cares what people think. So I should, I should stop trying, shouldn’t I? I should be as weird as I can. Except I’m not that weird. Just not normal enough to fit in.”