AMY CLARE TASKER

I’ve been telling people lately: I didn’t mean to write the book, music, and lyrics for Ukulele Days all by myself, and I hope I’ll never do it again.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really proud of Ukulele Days, I’ve loved working on it, and I’m so excited to take the next steps with the show in 2024. It also makes sense that I’m writing something so niche on my own, especially considering that I had the idea during the 2020 lockdowns, and before I’d connected with the musical theatre community in London.

On the other hand, there can be something lonely about writing a whole musical all on your onesie, and something magical about clicking with a well-matched collaborator. I don’t want to embarrass Tom James McGrath too much with my appreciation and praise, so I’ll just say that I’m really glad we were assigned to write a 10-minute musical together at the end of our first year of the Book, Music & Lyrics workshop. We’ve been great friends and a great team ever since.

On the night we presented our 10-minute musical, Tom mentioned that he was working on a new idea about Joanna of Castile, and had a showcase opportunity at the end of August. Would I consider collaborating with him on it? I said, yes, definitely, let’s keep working together, and who is Joanna of Castile?

Over the next six weeks and two days, we wrote, rehearsed, and presented a 30-minute version of the show for the SIAMSA Variety Night, produced by the Irish Creative Collective. It was a whirlwind summer of rewriting lyrics in my dreams, and waking up with Tom’s haunting melodies in my head. (You can listen to some demos on Soundcloud here.)

Riding the wave of enthusiastic feedback from the SIAMSA performance, we decided to look for opportunities to develop the show into a one-hour musical for fringe theatres and festivals. If we could create a 30-minute show in six weeks, could we double it by next spring? Let’s find out!

We’ve got some exciting news coming soon about the premiere of The Queen is Mad in 2024…

Meanwhile, I can highly recommend:

• Finding a collaborator you click with and throwing yourselves headfirst at opportunities to create and present work.
• Joining the Book, Music & Lyrics workshop to hone your skills as a musical theatre writer and find a tight-knit community. Applications open around June each year.
• Connecting with Mercury Musical Developments (MMD) to hook into loads of opportunities for networking and support for new musicals.

Oh, and I’m happy to report, Ukulele Days is not so lonely anymore. Tom joined me in rehearsals recently as musical director, along with four fantastic actor-musos, director Nicky Allpress, and dramaturg Tricity Vogue. We presented a 40-minute excerpt last week as part of the Musical Bites concert reading series at The Other Palace… but that’s a story for another blog post (coming soon)!