Word Crazy

Early bird: $450 | Regular: $500

Tuesdays, 7pm-9:15pm ET

Starts March 8

Maximum students: 10

Ten-Week Online Course

The goal of this course will be to acquire a foundational knowledge of the craft of lyric writing, while continuously and simultaneously exercising the muscles needed to become more confident and impassioned about what is being put onto the page before us.

As with any great art form, we are influenced and inspired by what came before us, by what unexpectedly changed our lives for a moment, by what made us suddenly imagine the world differently, and by asking how and why that happened.

As a means for uncovering the answers to the “hows” and “whys,” each week, we will spend the first half of class reflecting on the lives, philosophies, and words of important musical theatre lyricists: from Irving Berlin to Oscar Hammerstein II, from Stephen Sondheim to Fred Ebb, from Lynn Ahrens to Lin-Manuel Miranda, and many more. We will combine delving into these artists work with studying the craft of lyric writing: learning about song form, rhyme, rhyme scheme, scansion, structure, phonetics, repetition, and prosody. We will examine how others did it, while simultaneously uncovering how we do it.

The second half of the class will involve the presenting of your own work, which will be the result of weekly assignments and prompts. All of the writing assignments will be in the context of writing for the musical theatre and will require specific character, situation, and storytelling choices. That said, the first several weeks of assignments will involve completely new and original writing, not material or subject matter you may be already exploring or in the midst of developing. There will come a point when the option will be given to work on existing ideas or projects; however, the work will still need to fall within the boundaries of the particular assignment, which may be a particular form of song such as Verse-Chorus, a genre of musical theatre song such as an “I Want” song, or a devised structure such as an extended sequence. The lyrics will be read aloud in class, not accompanied by music.

Requirements for this Class

The purchasing of any materials for this course is not required. The only requirement is a familiarity with musical theatre as an art form, a general knowledge of the overall canon, and a passion for exploring how it’s all brought to life

Expectations for this Class

You will be asked to generate new material and present your own work, which will be the result of weekly assignments and prompts.

After Completion of Class

There is an expectation that, by the end of the course, you will have written first drafts of approximately eight song lyrics