The Paradise Lost showcase is now closed, and the post-mortem with the cast is tonight. But in the meantime, some general thoughts on what I have learned by doing this.

1) I learned to accept the result of my work as it is, not as I want it to be. This is not to say that I don't want to continue to improve our musical - I do. But once the thing was on its feet and running I had to live with the parts that weren't perfect about it. On many nights the imperfections overshadowed the rest of the piece in my mind, and those were very hard nights for me. David, our stage manager, will tell you that up in the booth at the sound board I was practically in tears. But by the end of the run I managed to see the good things about the show also, and to just accept it as it was and turn my knobs.

The flip side of this is a kind of emotional disconnect for me, and that's something I'm concerned about. I don't feel connected to or invested in the show at the moment, because I had to turn that off in order to survive 16 performances. Frankly I have no idea how professional actors manage to stay 'in' the performance for that long; I guess that's why they're professionals. But if you asked me, right now, to get you excited about Paradise Lost, I couldn't do a good job of it.

2) I focused too much on writing the music in V4 and not enough on improving the story structure. Rob and I did improve the structure from V3 to V4, but not enough. A musical must be a complete package, dramatically, and ours is still too much of a concert and not enough of a drama. Improving the story structure will be our primary focus for V5.

3) Many people like how I compose music. This is the first time I've ever had real evidence that a majority of people like how I write, and it is certainly encouraging. But, with #2 above, the music must have a stronger dramatic structure in order to work for the crowd that sees Sweet Charity.

4) Actors want to be supported. As a producer, I have had the best success and commitment from my cast when they see and understand that my job is to support them in doing the best work that they can within the limitations of the production. When we decided to let our original musical director go and hire a new one 8 days before previews began, I was concerned that the cast would lose faith in the production. Instead, they began to respect the production more because they saw that I and the other staff would not allow anything to stand in the way of them looking, acting and sounding their best.

This goes for direction as well. I had an opportunity to observe another director at work on a play during the time I was in New York, and his style of direction couldn't be more different than Rob's. Rather than allow the actors to 'play' and participate in creating their characters, this director dictated all the actions and emotions of his actors, down to the very smallest details. At no point did he allow his actors to truly understand or be 'in' their characters, because he was too busy telling them how to move. As a result, the actors were cowed, submissive and unwilling to take dramatic risks. They spoke their lines how he said they should speak, moved how he said they should move, and remained uninvested and uninterested in the meaning and implications of the action on stage. Needless to say, I don't think this is the best way to create a piece of live theatre.

5) I will probably never be a successful commercial producer. This is OK, because that's not what I really want - my dream is to compose, not produce. I don't have the financial discipline and operational ruthlessness that a successful for-profit producer needs. On several occasions David reprimanded me for spending money to compensate people when I didn't have to, or to provide small luxuries to the cast that they didn't really need. I don't feel bad about it, but it does help me clarify what I am and am not good at in the theatre world.

6) I learned to trust the people working with me... when they deserved it. The musical director situation was a real challenge on this front, since I give him my trust to do the right thing for the show and he let me down. However, when Jeremy came in to the production, I had to trust him by necessity, since interference in how he wanted to work would have proved disastrous. But, as with letting the show be as it was, I eventually learned that, with all the production staff, I just had to let them do their thing and stay out of their way. Fortunately all of the staff were competent, and almost all were very highly committed to success and professionalism. In one instance (besides the original musical director) a member of the staff was, while competent, not really committed to professionalism, and in that case the rest of us had to pick up the slack. Fortunately, while inconvenient, this was not crushing.

I guess the lesson here is that if I'm going to ask someone to do a job, I need to let him do it until he proves he can't or won't, and then act quickly to fix the problem.

7) It will not be perfect. But it can still be potent - and we can all imagine how it can be better at every stage. This gives me hope that some day in the reachable future this show - or another like it - will be able to speak powerfully to many people.