FUN HOMEās Superpower
This is a reprint of an essay I wrote for The Dramatists Guild Magazine in the Spring of 2014. I went into āFun Homeā at the Public Theater prepared to fall hard. I have enormous talent crushes on all of the artists involved so it was not very surprising that I loved it and it was one of my favorite productions of the season.
āFun Homeā is a musical and musicals have an extraordinary ability to make you identify with someone whoās different than you - even more than a movie or play. Thatās one of the reasons why I like them. I sit in a darkened theater and Iāll go with you on any joyride you want to take me on. Iāll identify with a dog or a fish or a dictator. Iāll search until I find my protagonist and when I do, Iāll stick with him, because letās be real, itās usually a him.
Over my many years of theater-going, Iāve identified with orphans, a very loud stage mom, salesmen, plenty of sociopaths, even knights and kings. I have almost nothing in common with any of these people but in that darkened theater, Iām game. Until āFun Homeā, no one ever asked me to go with a little girl who was trying to figure out her sexual identity as she comes of age. But Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori did, and I went. Their song āRing of Keysā opened up young Alisonās world to me - a little girl standing in a coffee shop identifying with a kind of adult woman that she didnāt know existed and immediately wanted to become when she grew up. With disarming candor, she sings,Ā
āYour swagger and your bearing and the just right clothes youāre wearing. Your short hair and your dungarees, and your lace-up boots and your keys - your ring of keys. I know you.āĀ
My eyes filled with tears and I felt gobsmacked that Iād never seen this kind of character musicalized before. Was this the first song ever written from this perspective about this feeling?
Writers are always trying to make something that feels new but, in the commercial hubbub of Broadway, we inevitably fall back on tropes and stock characters and we rarely write moments, songs, or experiences that havenāt been written before. That āFun Homeā is an adaptation of the brilliant Alison Bechdelās writings and illustrations doesnāt undermine the point. Musicals make you identify with someone who is different than you. Thatās their superpower. What we musicalize should be used to broaden the scope of the audienceās empathy.
Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori wrote a character that has no exact blueprint in musical theater. They put me in the ill-fitting docksiders of a little girl whoād prefer lace-up boots. As writers, thatās our job. We have to write the songs that havenāt been written. We have to write the things we donāt know how to write. Thatās where the most exciting work comes from. āFun Homeā taught me that.Ā
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