New Year, New Workshops
Greetings to all from my couch on this snowy day 2026! Thanks to the momentum you provided in 2025—whether participating in one of my productions, attending our house concerts, exploring my catalog including the songbook compilations, checking out my YouTube channel, donating to my album fundraiser, enjoying my pictures of Rosa the Felonious Chonk on social media, connecting with me at the National Opera Association conference, or Zoom beverage dates for mutual moral support—I feel inspired to keep writing into the void to process personal and national chaos. It has been meaningful to take time to excavate some long-dormant aspects of my compositional voice and reconsider my artistic process and priorities. Accordingly, as you can see, I’ve given my website a thorough. long-overdue makeover! I hope you’ll go spelunking here and discover more in-depth information about my works and adventures past and present much more easily.
Though the news is undoubtedly more depressing and terrifying by the day, I do feel creatively alive and motivated to give something back to keep you going. I am writing new tunes, preparing a third songbook volume, planning our album recording, and curating new house concerts; I can’t wait to divulge all these details.
I am also pondering ways to share my lyrics online weekly or bimonthly, whether that’s here, Substack, or elsewhere. (…bearing in mind, of course, the possibilities of theft and everything being thrown into the AI woodchipper…) While I’m lucky to have had a variety of works produced over the years, so many were one and done situations, and there’s a lot I’ve been sad to relegate to the trunk. I can unearth some of these while keeping myself honest and plugged into my community by sharing new ideas on a rolling basis. If I’ve learned anything in my professional life, it’s that regular opportunities to fall on my writerly face in front of an audience are what keep me striving consistently to improve. If this intrigues you, let me know how you’d prefer to receive these updates!
As all those plans fall into place, I am ready to roll up my sleeves with you right now during your choice of two workshops I’m offering:
You’ve already heard me rave about my experience teaching The Year That Never Was: Devising a Holiday Special at Princeton University with co-conspirator Michael R. Jackson. While we originally conceived of that class as an exploratory phase of our own new original musical aiming for a professional production (still true!), we also stumbled on a uniquely engaging curriculum to teach the craft of musical theatre writing.
Kate Tombaugh, Alan Johnson, and I are down to take our show on the road to you, expanding upon our recital set and bringing aspiring performers, composers, and lyricists into the songwriting process with the hands-on experience of I Have Songs: Writing Sideways.
I would be proud to bring these offerings to your classroom or arts program. You can read more about how they work by perusing my WORKSHOPS page.
Happy spelunking,
RJP
