Plane To Canada - Ship To Ithaca

When I started writing Odyssey The Musical, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll work on it for a year and then see what happens.’ Little did I know that within two months, it would have dates for its first preview on a Canadian stage in a university I was only visiting for a year, that is Victoria College, University of Toronto. As brilliant and exciting this was, it was a little nerve wracking considering it was not actually finished yet, let alone scored and finalised for stage. And now two weeks away from opening night, I’m thinking the same thing. That’s not to say it isn’t finished (and yes, you should definitely come and watch it!) but it has not been such a smooth ride as one might think. Our optimistic thoughts of having auditions in November with a full cast before Christmas and ready to roll by January were only a little hindered when testosterone proved hard to find. When we did find ourselves an Odysseus and a full cast, the demand of the role, the reality of school work and the offer of another leading role in another play left us quite without our own lead.

Behind schedule and buried deep in midterms and assignments, VCDS and The Odyssey Team took longer than expected to find an Odysseus using up our time through Christmas and the beginning of January. We had no full cast, no read through completed and no score finished. I had never realised, perhaps naively, the difficulty of completing a year study abroad whilst putting on a musical from scratch. Often, it seemed like the gods were against us in almost everything; our dance chorus (eventually cut), the slow scoring and time being quickly eaten away by exams and papers.

Of course, there was the very slight adjustment of our male lead to a female lead, that is to say, me, changing the entire outlook of the musical as I had ever imagined it. I had never thought when writing it that I would be singing the lines of Odysseus, addressing my men and sleeping with various divine women whilst returning to Ithaca. But on the plus side, I know all the lines, which sped the process up somewhat. Our optimism was slowly crushed by reality, but the rehearsals were still keeping our hopes up. For me, I could excuse almost any tragedy with the overwhelming truth that this was my musical being brought to life before my very eyes and I was on every edge of the field watching it grow. The difficulties we faced each day left me drained and regretting placing my hands on a keyboard saying to myself ‘I’m going to write a musical today about The Odyssey’. But then, when I think about it, and I mean, really think about it, this is one of the greatest opportunities I have ever been dealt, and a student group putting on a new musical, amidst the climbing pile of work from a leading university was never going to be an easy task. The balancing of priorities was never a specialty of mine and it seems I have not changed. But, with two weeks to go until this unbelievable journey comes to an end, I wonder what other toils can be given to us and how truly spectacular the destination will be.

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