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Introducing The Infinite Creative, a newsletter for those who are creative, curious and constantly looking for opportunities to learn and grow. Read what I’m learning and thinking about when it comes to being more intentional, productive and impactful as a creative - one idea per day.
My guest on this episode, Timothy Huang, writes musicals. When I say that, I mean he writes everything. The book, the music and the lyrics.
Tim was my guest on episode 17 and it’s a pleasure to welcome him back to talk about what’s been happening with his show American Morning since we last spoke.
On June 19, Tim releases a brand new recording of American Morning on all the platforms you go to find music. He describes it as half cast recording, half concept album. For my money, this recording celebrates the show’s history and imagines its future. Tim has captured everything he’s learnt about the show so far and demonstrates how it can sound when it goes to a full production.
We don’t discuss it in any detail here, but I highly recommend you go to timothyhuang.net and read the incisive and insightful articles and blog posts Tim shares there.
Links and show notes from this episode:
Glossary -
Previously on Studio Time:
Find Timothy's published sheet music online at newmusicaltheatre.com and contemporarymusicaltheatre.com and listen on soundcloud or at his website timothyhuang.net
SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Matthew Carey
Hi Tim and welcome back to studio time.
Timothy Huang
Hi Matthew, thank you so much for having me back.
Matthew Carey
You're the first return visitor.
Timothy Huang
I can't be. Really? Oh man, that's awesome. Oh, sorry, I just turned my head because I'm there's, since the time we spoke last, we've had an addition to our family have a little baby. She's in the next room and my wife is sort of in a holding pattern with her while we do this, but I can still hear them to the baby monitors. So I turned my head to lower the volume of that, and I rammed my head into this microphone. So sorry about that.
Matthew Carey
No worries. One of the reasons why we jumped on to talk today is because of one of your other productions, American Morning. But I did want to congratulate you and Laura on your joint production. How old is Haven now?
Timothy Huang
Haven is just under four months and she's really quite a remarkable baby, we think. Just a very kind soul. She's very patient with us because we're first time parents. There are certain things that we will get better at as we get into it. But she doesn't seem to hold any grudges when we when we fall short, which is very kind of her.
Matthew Carey
You should enjoy that now while you can.
Timothy Huang
Thank you. Yeah, we will.
Matthew Carey
Let's talk about American Morning. Since we spoke, there's been a couple of developments in the life of that project. Why don't you catch us up on what's happened since we last spoke?
Timothy Huang
Yes. So the Prospect Theatre Company, in conjunction with three independent producers that over the last 10 years of the show's life I have sort of developed a relationship with, jointly decided that they wanted to host a production. The timing was a little weird because we weren't sure where all of the money for this production was going to come from. By the time Prospect was supposed to pitch it in their season to their Board, we still didn't know. So we had secured a space because Prospect as a theatre company doesn't have their own theater. So we'd secured space and said, "Okay, in six months we'll figure out how we're gonna pay for this." Then a couple of really well timed coincidences sort of happened and we weren't really able to establish what that model was going to be in time for the Board to okay it. So what we wound up doing, since we had the space, was we made some lemonade. We turned it into a workshop production. Essentially, it was a production with the only difference being, it wasn't an extended run, and press were not invited. So we had full stage values. We had costume design, we had lighting design, we had stage design and we spent those two weeks fine tuning the piece. The last time we spoke, it was already sort of at this place where the only thing left to do was get it on its feet and see how it does. And that's exactly what we did. The hope of course was to get enough interest to see another iteration of it to come. It was really, really well received. And by the end of that run, what wound up happening was - some of those individuals that helped get the workshop off the ground, decided to go in on this album project with me. We recorded a concept album. We use a lot of what we learned in that production and put it into the text. Then I brought on my good buddy, Alexander Sage Oyen who is himself a fantastic composer and songwriter. He had all these amazing ideas with orchestration, and we kind of split the difference. It's not really a cast album and it's not really a concept album. It's kind of both and it's kind of neither. But that comes out on digital platforms, June 19. So that's sort of where we're at now. We have this cool album that will hopefully serve as a tool for the next iteration.
Matthew Carey
That's really exciting that this piece is continuing to gestate and to grow. As you go into doing a new production or a new workshop like you did, what are some of the opportunities that you see from that as the writer of the piece? And what are some of the challenges in having to rediscover it or introduce it to a new set of creatives?
Timothy Huang
Oh, well, that's such a great question. I think the upside is I get to write for real people. Because I'm just sort of a one man band, as it were. I spent a lot of my time just sitting in my room alone, or at my desk, writing for imaginary people. I'll say, "Oh, this person is..." and I'll pretend cast my friend so-and-so and I sort of write to them, but they're not really giving me any feedback, because they're in my head. To have had the opportunity to work with actual people who have expressed a commitment and a desire to be there and to hold me accountable in that way... was really fantastic. That isn't something that's afforded to me as a musical theater writer a whole lot. I think a lot of that has to do with my artistic agenda and my political agenda. We spoke a little bit about that last time, of course. I really like to write stories that employ performers who look like me. And in a way that doesn't fetishize that. As a result, there are fewer opportunities, because audiences need to be in a certain place to be able to appreciate what that is. I mean, I get that. So I don't really often have the opportunity to work in a room full of people who are paid and can afford to be there and be creative and be collaborative. So that was really great. I think the downside is, I'm just one dude. So I had to rely very heavily for the Prospect production on not only my Director, Marlo Hunter, and the Prospect Theatre's, Artistic Director, Cara Reichel, but also my Music Director Julianne Merrill, who is this amazing rock keyboardist and she would be like, "Oh, I see what you're doing with this figure here, but it's a little muddy. Maybe we could change it up to this." At the time at didn't have it in my budget to pay for an orchestration and my orchestration skills are not quite at the level that I would trust myself to do it. So we wound up sitting in the room tinkering. Julianne, our Music Director, had a few friends who knew how to improvise on sight. And we went back and forth and that was really great. They really did wind up having to do more than what was on the job description just because I'm one person, and that's perennially a problem. When you're a composer, lyricist, librettist, you have to be in three different rooms at once. And still figuring out how to do that effectively.
Matthew Carey
That's a pretty intense moment where you can get a lot of collaboration and almost instantaneous feedback from other creatives - crammed into a short space of time, whereas you've spent weeks, months, maybe years writing this piece on your own up to that point.
Timothy Huang
Yes. That's exactly right. Sometimes it's very thrilling to have that immediate feedback, and sometimes it's really overwhelming. I'll tell you, to be perfectly honest, by the end of that run - just because I had been sort of in the middle of it all - I wound up looking at the "finished product," not really recognizing it. I felt like "Well, these are sort of things that I created. But I don't really...I don't know that I can really take credit for it. I don't know that I see myself in it anymore." Which was disconcerting, and maybe not the worst thing. Because isn't that what theatre is at some point for writers? To not see yourself and to see other people in it. But six months later, I found my way back into it and recognize, oh, like these were really quality changes that we made. And so it was really just about sort of being in the middle of it and not really having my bearings because of it.
Matthew Carey
I remember you telling me at the time that you were still making changes day to day, as the performances or the showings of the show were happening. So it wasn't just in the rehearsal room before you got it in front of an audience. You were still making tweaks to it day to day. What does it like now to have the perspective of some time away from that intense period and look back on it now?
Timothy Huang
I definitely still see my creative hand in it. I also see the creative hands of other people who were very much hands on with it. I enjoy the fact that we can share that, you know. I had a really interesting moment - now that we talked about it and I reflect - someone during the run said about a particular monologue that happens close to the end of the show, that it felt very much like me. The passage that they quoted back to me was, in fact, something that my mom had said to me. Repeatedly, in fact. So it was a really lovely thing to have someone say, "Oh, this is so you. Especially that" and for me to be like, "Oh, that's actually my mom. And that's kind of me too. And that's really wonderful." I would never have suspected that I would find my mother in my work in that way. It was such a lovely surprise.
Matthew Carey
That's interesting that you mentioned that. As I was thinking about this process for you, and that in the last four months (and the nine months leading up to that) you and Laura were making a new creation as well. I was thinking about the idea of fatherhood of a child versus being a writer of a piece. It struck me that there are some parallels there in that you're constantly questioning whether you're making the right decisions, the decisions that are best for the work. And you know that you'll constantly be tweaking and looking to make your inputs into the work, just like you will into Haven's life. Certainly now but even as she grows older, and she's a teenager, and maybe into early 20s, and onwards. But you also know that eventually she has to stand on our own two feet and survive in the world without having you there all the time.
Timothy Huang
Wait, does she though? No, no, she she doesn't ever have to do that for the rest of her life. Never. I think there's definitely parallels there. Personally, and I'm not trying to paint with a very broad brush, but just to speak for myself - with parenting the stakes are far higher than writing a show. It doesn't feel quite the same in that respect. And I only bring that up because I used to liken being the father of theater to parenthood. And I see now that maybe I didn't have all the information, but I wouldn't begrudge anybody else for saying that. I just have decided for myself that I'm not probably going to be doing that anymore.
Matthew Carey
That's fair enough. Our world keeps opening up with every new experience, doesn't it?
Timothy Huang
Yeah, I guess it does. I mean, I think the one thing that that they both do have in common is in both there's a certain discipline involved of being honest with oneself. I have to be mindful of how I behave and what I say and what I do. How I treat other people, and how I treat my daughter. All those things, they sort of need to be in line. I can't really justify away hypocrisy in that sense. In the same way, as a writer you really have to be honest with yourself about whether or not what you've created in this particular 20 pages is vanity or if it's really integral to what you claim you're trying to be writing about. That's hard for me. It's a very hard thing to be like, "This thing that I think is really, really awesome. This passage here, these two lines, we need to cut them because they don't hold on a dramatic weight." It's always been traditionally very hard for me. So I noticed that between these two things, one cannot tell lies to oneself.
Matthew Carey
Having the skills to be the book writer, the guy that writes the script, as well as the lyrics and the music for your show must come with its challenges, but a certain amount of pride that when you've got something to show you've done it all. So then to hand that over to other people, and make space for their contributions to it requires your ego to let go of what was once all yours.
Timothy Huang
It does, it really does. And it's gotten so much easier over the 20 years that I've been doing it, too. I think as you grow into your community, and as you attract the people that you should be attracting, a certain amount of trust gets built. And so at this point for me, it really is just about being heard and understood. Then being willing to kind of let go and see what else happens. I'd like to think I've gotten much better at it. In this case, it was if memory serves, it was not that difficult.
Matthew Carey
The production that you did with the Prospect Theater, with Julianne and the band - it sounds like that was a big step musically. Composing it I picture you as being one person at the piano, slaving over making decisions about every note. Then you handed the music over to a situation where it was a small band and they were able to do their thing with the music. It wasn't necessarily note for note anymore, there was an opportunity for interpretation - let's see what different people can contribute to this. Going from being a solo act to being in a band for a moment.
Timothy Huang
Yeah, you know, I didn't play in that band so I was more of a spectator to that. But it was really fun to see the way Julianne kind of conducted and led that group. This is really interesting, you know, we had a very tiny budget so we just could afford her, a violinist, a bass player and a drummer. The violinist and the drummer had, among other things, played for musical theater before. But the bassist had not. At least that is my understanding. They were somewhat new to what that scene was. And it was really interesting to see the way they saw collaboration and what they were bringing. I found that as often as it contributed, it also distracted. They were offering their instrument as another character, and sometimes you really just need music to support the characters on stage. But oh, to be reminded that a musical instrument itself can be made more of a contribution than just underscoring a song lyric was pretty eye opening. It did kind of unlock something. I think when we went back to make this album, I did not look at those charts, because a lot of that was made bespoke to those players and to that space. And in addition to getting newer and some older voices for the recording, than those who were in the show last May, we were also not super limited in terms of who could play what because Alex Oyen plays a lot of different things. He was just like, "Let's go crazy." And he threw in a mandolin over here and he threw in...like he just was a kid in a candy store. And so we went for like full on sonic diversity with the album which I think is really cool and kind of neccessary when you're trying to create this hybrid cast album/concept album.
Matthew Carey
Great. Let's talk more about that process of making the album. When was it recorded? Tim? Was it recorded pre pandemic?
Timothy Huang
Mostly, we had scheduled in all of our principal players. At the time, they were all in their various shows. One of our leads Josh Dela Cruz was in Canada. He's the current star of the TV show Blue's Clues. So he was out of town for a long time. Then we scheduled around his break. What ended up happening was our last principal, our good friend, Thom Sesme, came in. He was in the middle of Unknown Soldier at Playwrights Horizons, and he's also a teaching artist. He was just very, very busy but found himself an afternoon to come and sing for us. He came in and we wrapped to all the principals. Then we were going to go back and have ensemble voices come in and do a couple of things. Then the pandemic hit, and we were unable to do that. So we found ourselves in a little bit of a bind. Except not really - because we collectively had so many friends who can record from home, who have decent setups, who know how to do that, who know how to isolate a vocal and send you a dry track and trust that we'll finagle it if it needs to be finagle and or that we'll allow it to be as natural as it can be. And so one and a half tracks were made remotely.
Matthew Carey
I was wondering, given the time that you're releasing it. How much of it was pre recorded before this happened and how much you had to find creative ways of making it happen during the pandemic.
Timothy Huang
Yeah, well, we knew that Haven was due in mid February and my goal was to get it all done before she arrived. That did not happen.
Matthew Carey
What was the process of working with Alex on the new arrangements and orchestrations like? What was the process of your collaboration there?
Timothy Huang
Alex and I've been friends for a long time. We are each other's very big fans. So he has known of this show for a long time, as much as I've known of his body of work. So the minute I approached him about it, he was like, "I've been waiting for you to ask me to do this for such a long time." He had so many different ideas. We talked about them and when he went too far left or right, I would say, "Great, let's hear it. But here's what I can't lose, dramatically speaking. Here's what I can't lose, aesthetically speaking. If you can achieve that with whatever else that you have in mind. I'd love to hear that." And that's basically what we did. There was only maybe one or two examples of something that he did that just I really needed to know what his logic was, what he was trying to achieve, because it was really as out of my realm of experience. Then when he contextualized it for me, it was all good. So we talked about a lot of that before and he was always very, very forgiving about that. He'd be like, "So this is what I did. It's just a first pass. Tell me what you think." He would play it for me and I would love it. And I would say now "Go crazy with it." And it was really just, I should introduce you, you should have him on your show because he's amazing. He's amazing. He's amazing.
Matthew Carey
Well, your previous recommendation, Thom Sesme and I had a fantastic conversation. So I would certainly take a guest recommendation from you, Tim.
Timothy Huang
That's very kind.
Matthew Carey
If I remember the recording that you'd made previously of this material, was the vocals with just a piano. Is that right?
Timothy Huang
Yes, that is correct.
Matthew Carey
And so in this new recording, which you're releasing on June 19, there's drums, there's guitars, there's other keyboard sounds, what other instruments have you and Alex added?
Timothy Huang
I know for one track he threw in a mandolin. There was one track where we outsourced a trumpet solo, because we just thought that would be cool. There's a lot of electronic stuff that I'm not really sure where his sound bank is coming from. But there's a lot of electronic stuff.
Matthew Carey
When you first told me about it, you talked about how you were leaning a lot more heavily into genre in making this concept album. Tell me a little bit about what you mean by that.
Timothy Huang
If I understand my former self correctly, I think what I meant by that was - I really wanted to keep the soundscape to be wholly of the now and wholly from the west. So very frequently in musical theater there's a question. In musical theater writing, I should say, there's a question of "Well, what is the music of this character?" That's a very valid question to ask in terms of process. When we're not careful, though, frequently, at least from my experience - when somebody asks me that question it's sort of a code. It's a code for how can we ethnicise this person more? How can we fetishize their culture in music? Because that's what people want to see. I don't subscribe to that. I feel like the flip side of that is, it would be like me saying, why does this character... Well, here's something that happened earlier this year. An editor of mine had said, "Oh, you know, we're publishing this short musical of years where one character is a Latina and the other characters is Korean American. Does the character have to be Latina? Because it's not really anywhere in the script?" This a legitimate question. It's a fine question to ask. And ultimately, they honored the author's choice. They didn't quite understand why I elected to do that though, and it's quite simple. Just because this character isn't saying something like "ay papi" doesn't necessarily mean that they have to defend their character - who they are and what their culture is. So many characters from the musical theater canon are just default white. We never asked them why they're default white. So what I'm trying to do is just make sure that that is a two lane highway. You know, it goes both ways? Early on in this process I got a lot of feedback about that. "Oh, well, if they're from China, even if they're living in contemporary New York City, what's their music?" Well, it's still contemporary. Have you not heard Chinese pop? It's a very real thing, I'm sorry that you haven't had any exposure to it. And I'm sorry that so much of that is influenced by what's happening in the West. But that's what it is. And so if I understand what I meant correctly, then I think what I was trying to say is, "I just wanted to make it very contemporary," because that is a luxury characters who look like these don't always get to have and I wanted to afford them that luxury.
Matthew Carey
I understand that. And I applaud that. I think that's great. Maybe that ties into a question that I was wanting to ask you. In terms of creating a musical language for a show, how important is it to create a musical language or a musical world that's unique to you, or unique to that show - versus how much you want it to resonate with what audiences are hearing out in the world at this particular time?
Timothy Huang
That's an interesting question. I've never really thought of it that way. First and foremost, it's what music best serves what this character's intention is at this particular moment. I imagine if I made a point to not listen to any new music for a decade, it might come out sounding stale or dated. In fact, that has happened before, where I've noticed "Oh, this feels not so great." But I don't know that I necessarily start out by saying, "Oh, I'm going to create this soundscape and do this and do that." I was working on a short one act this past quarantine, about an historical figure who was Cuban American. Throughout the entire thing I found myself not really embracing any particular style. There's a little bit of vaudeville and there's a little bit of contemporary, and a little tiny bit of Gilbert and Sullivan. Then sort of as a footnote, the last number, after the drama itself has been resolved, have them sing this crazy Cuban Bongo-mania crazy thing. Mostly because I didn't want an audience to be like, "Oh, shouldn't there be genre music in and why isn't there?" I kind of want to be like, "Okay, well, I will scratch that itch. But only because I feel obligated to and because you probably don't think that I can do it." I'll send it to you. You can tell me if you thought I did it okay. But it was sort of an afterthought, and I felt kind of pressured to do it. Does that answer your question? I don't know that I love to. It feels very cart before the horse to me to do it that way.
Matthew Carey
I do think that makes sense. I guess examples I was thinking of: there are some contemporary musicals that seem very rock-focused or pop music-focused or of course, borrow heavily from hip hop and those sort of music influences. Then I think back to Sondheim, who is maybe a case unto himself. He has developed a musical language that is recognizably his own. And I don't think it ever sounded like the pop music that he grew up with. It was like he appeared on the landscape with a language of his own musically.
Timothy Huang
Yeah, that's pretty cool that he did that. I think a few people have been able to do that, because they're just exceptional minds. I don't know that I'm one of those exceptional minds!
Matthew Carey
What I love about considering your work, and certainly the conversations we have, are these ideas that you're working with about ethnicity and race. How that plays into the work that you you create, and how diverse characters are represented. I've got a friend who's currently working on developing a new business for their parents' Chinese Canadian restaurant. She is trying to find a balance between what it's like to be a person of Chinese descent or background living in Canada, what it means to be there now, and also holding on to some of the proud history that comes with being Chinese. If you find yourself in that situation, how do you strike the balance? How have you thought about that balance, Tim, because I believe you were born in America, but your parents were born in China.
Timothy Huang
My mother was actually born in Japan. They're both culturally Taiwanese. So they were they were raised on the island of Taiwan, which, you know, depending upon who you ask, is China or not. If you ask my parents, they would say not. If you ask me, I would say not yet. But you know, we don't have to fight about it. That's okay.
Matthew Carey
Sure. How do you honor their background then?
Timothy Huang
That is a very good question. It's challenging for me because a lot of that background was kind of kept from me and given to me in bits and pieces just through family tradition. So I was never consciously making connections between those things and a culture, just those things in my family. And so 50% of that is "Just my family" and the other 50% of that is, "Oh, this is a cultural thing." And you know, somewhere in the mix is, "This is the thing that is a direct response to the Chinese occupation in Taiwan." And "This is another thing, it's a direct response to having had my childhood in Japan." It's all over the map. And I think that, like in all cases, when you're sort of writing about a place or a time that is not intimately familiar, you need to approach everything like a student. You have to ask questions. You have to know what your assumptions are. You have to be able to articulate that those are assumptions and why, and then fact check. A couple years ago, I was writing a piece about a Chinese church because when I was a kid growing up, I went to a Chinese church. What happened was, they didn't own their own building yet. They were a fledgling church, and they were sort of putting plans towards building their own sanctuary. In my mind, I remember it happening a lot faster than most things get built. I didn't know where this money came from, how it happened...and I was really curious about it. So my mom was like, "Well, why don't you call Ben Chu?" (sp?) And I was like, "Oh, yeah okay. Ben, of course, was the deacon at our church whose two children I grew up with. He sat me down and walked me through this. So much of it I completely got wrong, and much of it was right. He said, "In fact, we we had a 10 year plan. And what we did, was we achieved it in five. Here's how we did that." So I think it's just really about knowing what your assumptions are. Having access to the right research, to the right resources, and being able to ask questions and being prepared to know, maybe if something you're attached to is wrong, to get rid of it. In regards to your friend in Canada, I think it's really fascinating that she would look at those three things because I remember reading an interview with Joe Haj, the current artistic director at the Guthrie, who is a director himself. He's always looking at directing through three very specific lenses. The lens of the time period that the play is set in, the lens of the time period that the play was written in, and the lens of now. Finding, not necessarily a balance, but a reason to justify all three of these things. If these things can all point you to why something should be directed or produced now, then that's his way in. Up until I read that interview. I never really thought about it in those terms, just what those particular lenses are. Time of creation, the time that itself is set in and the time of now. I think that that's it's sort of a similar thing.
Matthew Carey
That is interesting. I'm going to take that away and try that on with some different pieces. Certainly with American Morning, you mentioned that this has been a show you've been working on for maybe 10 years. For those people that are yet to go back and listen to our previous episode, American Morning is the story of two immigrant cab drivers in New York who are living lives that are similar in some ways, but are having two quite different experiences of what I would call the American dream. It seems to me that right now, the American Dream is being questioned a lot. As you're considering the world today. Tim, how do you feel like your show is relevant or not?
Timothy Huang
The maniac in me would like to take credit for the things that are happening in the world today, the Civic unrest and all of this unconscious bias being thrown in people's faces and them responding very, very badly to it. I have no control over how people respond when faced with the truth of their ugliness, but I'm a lot relieved that we've come to a tipping point where voices that are ordinarily marginalized will no longer be. There's a critical mass. I would never say that there is a causation there. But I would absolutely say that there is a correlation. The itch that I was trying to scratch with this, is very much an itch on many people's minds. I think. So yeah, it's really weird. Ever since the last presidential election, it seemed to me that like my show was only going to get less and less relevant because we have now like a seven minute news cycle where he just keeps doing crazy shit. We have to pick our battles and we have to make choices as to what's going to be emotionally exhausting for us this week and forget about anything else, even though there's so much ugly and so much atrocity. And yet, here we are. The week the workshop production closed, an article came out in The Times about how these taxi drivers are sold the bill of goods and how some of them resort to suicide, because once they get entrenched in it, they realize that they're indebted servants. They're never going to get out of it, and that was 10 years after the first article in The Times that caused me to write about it in the first place. I wrote another piece, that's also not been produced yet, essentially about marriage equality. It's set in Japan. They don't really have marriage equality laws there. It's about how we choose to look at hotbed topics in the present and whether or not we see what the right side of history is. The impulse to write this came before the SCOTUS decision before we even had a marriage equality laws in the US. As soon as that happened, I thought, "Oh, great. My show is completely irrelevant now." But then I realized, we're still debating about female reproductive rights and Roe v. Wade was like how many decades ago? So it's funny that you think something is topical, and then you find out that it's actually kind of ahead of itself. But the truth of the matter is, we're always just really nasty to each other. That's what it is. I don't know that we necessarily cultivate in this culture anyway, a language for empathy, a language for understanding what the other is? I think we're such a large country, that it can be very easy to believe that the things that we see immediately in front of us are the only things that exists. That's always been a problem.
Matthew Carey
This morning, I saw news that some of the TV streaming services are looking at pulling certain shows from their catalogs because of the way that they represent people of color. I think that it's interesting, then some people are looking at those things. And, you know, since I've had some conversations about diversity and inclusion with you and other guests on the podcast, I have found myself watching movies and shows a bit differently. I don't know whether you've seen it yet, but there's a relative new TV show called Ramy, which looks at an Egyptian American young male and his family. That is a pretty honest and truthful look at what his experience is, and it involves people of different ethnicities. It involves characters of different abilities. There are some shows that are doing that really well and I think that there is an important place for those. And I think in the theater, there's important place for work, like you're doing.
Timothy Huang
Thank you. You and I have spoken about this, how I'm not so confident that there is, but it's always great to hear somebody else who isn't me be like, "No, no, no, it's okay, there is." So I'll take your word for it. I'm still here. So there's that. I think Ramy, by the way, is a great show. That's fantastic. I'm a little torn about taking things out of the catalog, though. A couple of years ago, I think Amazon was streaming some very old Looney Tunes. As you may or may not recall, some of them were created during World War Two, and were not so nice to Japanese people. Instead of excising those from the collection, what they did was they ran a disclaimer at the very top, giving a cultural context for when they happened. Kind of insuring themselves, to say that this is not anything that we endorse, but they spun it in a way that I thought was really valid. This is part of our culture of ignorance and we don't think we should hide it. We should point it out and say that "This is a very old piece of thing that we have. Look at how disgusting it is." I thought that was really cool. But everybody's got their own opinions on that and I guess I don't fault anyone for wanting to take something out of their catalogue for misrepresentation.
Matthew Carey
I think that they might be doing some of that. The story I heard was that they're taking Gone with the Wind out of the catalog temporarily and they going to put a disclaimer, or a notice at the beginning of the film, to that effect. Then they'll put it back in. I guess there is conversation about, "We can't necessarily just take these things away and hide them under the bed and pretend that they never happened." I guess a parallel I can draw is - I visited Germany for the first time, a year and a half ago. And what I found was interesting visiting some of the historic sites there, was that they acknowledge things that happened in World War One and World War Two. They don't pretend that... they don't shy away from it. They said, "These things happened and they lead to disastrous consequences. That's what happened, and it's part of our history. So we're maintaining these sites, but we want to recognize that they weren't always used for the betterment of humankind."
Timothy Huang
I really think that that's, at least so far as I can see the healthiest way to own something,
Matthew Carey
I guess personally as well, right? If you feel like you've done something where you could have made a better choice, you can either acknowledge it and move on from it. That's probably healthier than the other option, which is to bury it and try and pretend that it never happened and hope that no one will ever discover.
Timothy Huang
Yeah, because that works so well for everyone, right?
Matthew Carey
So I hear. Tim, do you have any thoughts on parallels between the promise of the American Dream and the promise of the Broadway Dream?
Timothy Huang
There's a promise to the Broadway dream? I'm kidding.
Matthew Carey
Maybe not a promise. But there's certainly an implied promise that you do the work and there's the opportunity to be celebrated.
Timothy Huang
I'm not even joking, though. Is that something that you were told? Because literally, four years of acting conservatory at NYU, two years of Graduate School of Writing...we were always told, "If you can do anything else, you should probably do that."
Matthew Carey
No, I guess it was a term that, that I was just trying to coin right now. But if we look at it a different way, the American dream - and in Australia, it's not that different - there's an idea that if you show up and you do the work, you'll see the rewards. How did you grow up thinking about that and is your perspective on that different now, with your experience?
Timothy Huang
I definitely think that I've heard that before. And I think I'm probably at one point believed it. I couldn't even tell you when I stopped believing it, but I'll tell you my choice to no longer believe that idea has led me to be a more creative person. This quarantine happened. Everyone stopped working. But I didn't. I didn't stop working because I was never afforded the luxury of having my income be solely from creating art. I've been marginalized from that for 20 years. So I have a job, a corporate day job, that I'm able to do from home, thankfully. So I still had my revenue streams coming in, which had always been the means to the end of creating more theatre. So my dynamic here never changed. I never stopped writing, I never stopped earning. And it's only because I am still perpetually marginalized from the industry in that sense, you know, great. So okay, that never panned out for me, but at the end of the day, I wrote a one act. I pitched a song for a TYA piece, I recorded an album, I released another album earlier during the pandemic as well. It's made me a more creative person. But as to your first question about whether there's a correlation between that and the American Dream, of course, I think that it's the same idea. That if you put in the work you get where you're going. We never really take account of what that standard is, what has defined that standard, and if it has an unconscious bias. Or whether or not personalities account for any of it and all these other things that stem from essentially... You know, this is a very long conversation. I do you think that there's a correlation. I don't know when the last time I believed that was, but I stopped trying to buy into that a while ago, and decided that I was just going to keep doing my own thing until I had to stop.
Matthew Carey
That seems to me that - by disengaging with somebody else's idea of success - you were able to free yourself up to be creative in the way you wanted to and redefine what being successful in terms of creating the art you want to make is for yourself.
Timothy Huang
I mean, I think that's a very encouraging way to look at it. I still have to work 40 hours a week. That's on top of the full time job of being a writer who doesn't always adapt things, but creates things from scratch. It kind of sucks. But yeah, I mean, I'm still here. I think when we reset the theater industry though, after this pandemic, I would love to just have a job. Have a job doing that so I wouldn't have to go to my day job.
Matthew Carey
Is that the Timothy Huang dream? Is it hanging on until you could be an artist full time?
Timothy Huang
No, the Timothy Huang dream is to have a half a dozen or a dozen more really, really hit IPs creating their own passive revenue. So I don't actually have to work and I can play Nintendo Switch all day. That's my dream, hang out with my daughter and my wife. I wouldn't say no to teaching. I've really gotten to love teaching writing and songwriting and stuff like that. I've done a couple of jobs here and there this past year. I would love to do more of that. So long as people continue to want to hear the musicals that I'm writing, if not afford to see the musicals that I'm writing, then I would probably continue to do that as well.
Timothy Huang
Great. Well, I wish you well in your Nintendo Switch dream. But in the meantime, I'm really grateful that you're sharing your art and you're sharing your experience and your wisdom and insight with me and the listeners of Studio Time. From June 19 where can we find the recording of American Morning?
Timothy Huang
Well, it should be on Apple Music. It should be on Spotify. It should be on iTunes. It should be on Deezer. Pretty much all the big ones. You could probably find it on YouTube. I've released two other EPs off of the same platform and I keep being told they would be on Pandora. I haven't been able to find them. So probably not Pandora. But anywhere else. Yeah.
Matthew Carey
Great. And if people want to find you or read more about you and what you're working on, where's the best place to find you online Tim?
Timothy Huang
Honestly, the best thing is to type my name comma musical into Google. There aren't that many musical theater writers named Timothy Huang. That'll take you to my website, that'll probably take you to my Facebook and my Instagram and all that stuff.
Matthew Carey
And then there's information about musicals and lots of photos of you and your daughter, which is great.
Timothy Huang
Yeah, she's pretty awesome. Thank you to Laura, and to Haven for loaning you to me for this hour. And I look forward to talking to you again.
Timothy Huang
Thanks for having me again. I really love your podcast and I'm so honored that you've had me on not once but twice even. It's really great.