Rutland Herald article

Our article in the Rutland Herald came out on Thursday, and we couldn't be happier with it!  It's always interesting to see how a 30-minute conversation becomes an article, and I think (aside from sounding like the wide-eyed new writers we sometimes sound like) the nice conversation we had with Jim Lowe turned out well.  And hopefully it will warm some local people up to the show who might have been scared away by the warnings about language and sexual content...

Read it below!  (It continues after the jump...)

‘Pregnancy Pact’: Weston premiering timely and poignant musical

By Jim Lowe
August 23,2012

In 2008, Time magazine reported that after a rash of pregnancies at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts, nearly half of the girls admitted to a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. But is this the stuff of musicals?

Next week, Weston Playhouse Theatre Company will open the world premiere production of “Pregnancy Pact.” With book and lyrics by Gordon Leary and music by Julia Meinwald, the new musical will run Aug. 30-Sept. 8 at the Weston Playhouse.

“Pregnancy Pact” follows six teen girls, and a couple of their boyfriends, as they attempt to find a solution to their loneliness and fear. Their contemporary rock-style songs represent their feelings.

“Because the phrase ‘pregnancy pact’ kind of stuck in the collective consciousness,” Leary said, “we were interested in going beyond that term and really thinking about what would motivate the teenage girls to do that.”

“I think about songwriting as moments of emotional exploration and coming from emotion – so that fits for me exploring music that can be gritty,” Meinwald said. “When people hear ‘Pregnancy Pact,’ I think that some people expect it to be a farce, they expect it to be a piece making fun of the girls rather blithely. It’s not what we wanted to do.”

In fact, “Pregnancy Pact” is anything but a silly, frothy musical about teens.

“It’s very provocative in that it’s asking the audience to listen to people who they probably have strong preconceptions about,” Joe Colarco, who is directing, said. “But in the end you do care.”

“The cliché – and I think all clichés are true – is I need somebody to love me,” he said.

The creation of “Pregnancy Pact” began three years ago when Leary and Meinwald, who had only collaborated on songs previously, were looking for material for a full-length musical. The Time magazine piece provided them with an inspiration.

“We actually tried to stay a little distant from the events in Gloucester because we wanted to be inspired by the event but really create our own story,” Meinwald said. “We don’t want there to be any confusion about misrepresenting those girls.”

Leary and Meinwald started writing songs even before they had characters, to say nothing of a plot. 

“We started writing songs to explore different sides of the story,” Leary said. “We felt that with teenagers music is a big part of life. We felt like we would understand the tone of the story best if we knew the music inside the girls’ heads. It’s an interesting way to explore characters.”

Most of the show was written while the two were participating in the Fellows Program at the Dramatists Guild of America in New York, which they began in September 2009. 

“It was a different way of writing, for me as a book writer, to not have everything mapped out from the beginning,” Leary said. “That way we could experience all of the complex things as we went – and not have to lead to an expected ending. We weren’t writing towards wanting to have a ‘moral of the story.’”

“In fact, we were consciously trying to avoid ending with a moral,” Meinwald said. “I think what we were most interested in conveying strongly was the fact that there are girls who feel lonely and afraid – it’s a caution about that state of being.”

Not that far from their teen years themselves, Leary and Meinwald drew upon their own experiences. Leary has five very young nieces and nephews from two sisters.

“I emailed my sister and asked her for seven short phrases about the best things about being pregnant,” he said. “That’s where the song ‘Hummingbird Heart’ came from.”

Leary had experience as a summer camp counselor and currently teaches at New York University, giving him access to current teen language. 

“The opening line is ripped directly from Eighth Street,” he said.

“We listened to a lot of pop music that would feel right in these girls – a lot of Pink, Miley Cyrus, Kelly Clarkson,” Meinwald said. “I wanted to internalize that because it feels very ‘of the world.’ I hope that there is enough of that in there that it evokes those girls and that mood.”

Last summer, “Pregnancy Pact” went through something of an overhaul while the two were at the Yale Institute for Musical Theater.

“After that we sort of laid out a plan of what to do for the next year before we got to Weston,” Leary said.

“Pregnancy Pact” is now in its three-week rehearsal process at Weston Playhouse. For the director, the first challenge was to make the audience care about these girls.

“Luckily the writing is so strong and honest that I think you care – and it’s cast very well,” Colarco said. “You like the girls. You want to understand them. They’re written really well so you understand their emotional pain. To me the show is about loneliness and family.”

“These are not dumb girls – they are very smart,” Colarco went on. “You can’t write them off. They’re very different from each other, but they’re all outcasts. They need each other.”

There have been challenges, like making the complex scene where the girls first make the pact – some enthusiastically, some reluctantly – work.

“It was a really perfect example of a rehearsal of a new work where you’re figuring it out, the writer’s there, you make little adjustments,” Colarco said. “I always say our job as directors is to make what’s on the page work, and show the writer what doesn’t work. It’s been a great process so far.”

Rich Silverstein, the music director, has been involved with the project since, appropriately, Mother’s Day 2010, when he played for the first reading.

“What I think Gordon and Julia have done is a deceptively brilliant take on the music these girls might be listening to,” he said. “From a distance, a lot of these songs might seem like something Kelley Clarkson might be singing on the radio. And the lyrics don’t sound like carefully formed musical theater lyrics because they’re using a lot of colloquialism.” 

“The music is deceptively complex,” Silverstein said. “There are dissonances and uses of motifs that are very interesting.”

And, after Weston?

“We would live to take it other places,” Leary said. “I think the audience is such a vital, key ingredient that we’d love to see what it’s like in other communities.”

“Everywhere!” Meinwald said.