In This Room. In This Moment.

It can feel like each day I spend working on my Dalí project, the less I know about what writing a musical requires. I've looked to "The Craft of Writing Music Theatre" by Scott Guy as a reference. The concepts below are his. The examples and reflections are mine. The implications are for us all.

The lead character in a musical needs an unwavering want that can generate action.

“To be happy” is too vague. A character needs something they can actively pursue, protect, win, lose, or destroy themselves trying to achieve.

• In Mamma Mia! Sophie wants to find her father so he can walk her down the aisle. In doing so she hopes to understand where she comes from and know who she is.
• Elder Price wants to become the Mormon missionary who changes the world so he can finally feel exceptional and worthy.
• Sweeney Todd wants to punish Judge Turpin for destroying his life, to heal his humiliation and stolen humanity through vengeance.

Big wants require repeated attempts.

A musical sustains itself because the lead character keeps trying — failing, adapting, escalating, recalibrating — scene after scene.

The action loop focuses on the tangible. What can the character do — in this room, in this moment — to move them towards realising their goal?

• In "Honey Honey" Sophie is reading her mother's diary from the year before she was born, seeking clues to who her father might be.
• In "You and Me (But Mostly Me)" Elder Price seeks to establish himself as the destined hero of his partnership with Elder Cunningham. He is asserting himself as the pair's leader.
• Sweeney's action loop is perhaps the most visceral as he repeatedly lures vulnerable customers into his chair, gains control over them, and turns that intimacy into punishment.

Each scene and song needs a 'temporary goal' that advances the story.

Those temporary goals sit inside the longer arc of the unwavering want.

The meta question beneath the surface:

Am I willing to examine my own actions with the same rigour I’m applying to the show?

To ask:

What am I doing in this room, in this moment, that moves me towards the life and work I say I want?

We don't have to be in a musical to reveal our true unwavering wants. The repeated action loops of our lives do that for us.

Side-note: I have wondered if Dalí is likeable enough to be the lead character in a musical, but I'm strangely reassured that neither Elder Price nor Sweeney are men I'd choose as friends. Dalí may be narcissistic like Price, but he's not murderous.