This spring, graduate students from Temple’s musical theater collaboration master’s program are premiering two brand new musicals. Goblin Market debuted on March 21, and Mystic Rapture will debut on April 25. The shows are the culmination of nearly three years of work, and the experience students gain producing new works is often a main reason why they enroll in the program offered by Temple’s School of Theater, Film and Media Arts (TFMA). 

“Our program is the only one doing what we do, which is getting directors, lyricists, composers and book writers into the room for a really thoughtful and process-oriented mentorship throughout their three years,” said Steven Gross, head of the MFA in musical theater collaboration program. 

The program’s current cohort of six students includes two directors, two lyricist-composers and two book writers, who are responsible for crafting the narrative structure that ties the musical’s songs and scenes together.  

They arrived on Temple’s campus in the fall of 2022, coming from a variety of backgrounds. Dylan Cole, director of Goblin Market, has already been working professionally as a director for years. Jesse Hampsch, the show’s composer and lyricist, comes to TFMA’s program after earning a master’s degree in choral music, and Brandi Underwood, Goblin Market’s book writer, comes to the program with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. 

The cohort spent their first three semesters in the program learning the foundational building blocks of musical theater collaboration. By last January, they were broken up into two teams of three, and they began combining their varied backgrounds, interests and expertise toward the common goal of producing a brand-new musical. 

Students in the musical theater collaboration MFA program work with undergraduate student actors from Temple's musical theater BFA and BA acting programs. The creators and actors fine-tune the production through a series of workshops and rehearsals. (Photography by Joseph V. Labolito)

Goblin Market is inspired by a poem of the same name written by Christina Rossetti in 1859. “As she’s writing this poem, a woman comes into her life, Elizabeth Siddal, who famously modeled for a bunch of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood back then,” Underwood said. “They fall in love, but through the complications of that time period and the patriarchy, Rossetti is pulled between her want of a career and publication, and her newfound queer love with this other woman.” 

Hampsch suggested the group rework the poem and Rossetti’s experience into a musical, and Cole and Underwood were on board. 

“I liked the poem a lot. ‘It sang’ is a phrase we use,” Cole said. “It jumped off the page at me.”  

As the show’s book writer, Underwood began researching Rossetti, investigating who she was, what she stood for and how those themes supported the story they were trying to tell.  

“The poem took on this new interpretation in the 1970s as this queer love story,” Underwood said. “As I was plotting it out, I was really thinking about the stakes for these characters from a modern-day angle.” 

The cast and crew of Goblin Market held a dress rehearsal on March 19, giving them one last opportunity to make adjustments before the workshop premiere on March 23. (Phography by Joseph V. Labolito)

From there, the group began the heavily collaborative process of turning an idea into a musical. 

“Jesse and I worked closely with Dylan for a year, just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what stuck and what didn’t,” Underwood said.  

“There was a little bit of building the plane as we were flying it,” Hampsch added. “This program requires you to rely on each other simultaneously for material and ideas and creative output. There’s a lot of trading and waiting and generating and trying to find the unified idea.” 

"We’d spend hours just going back and forth, co-writing and bringing up anything that we needed to talk about. And that was the turning point in the collaboration," Underwood said. (Photography by Joseph V. Labolito)

By last December, the team was ready to begin staging the musical, using undergraduate actors from TFMA’s musical theater BFA  program. While Cole led the process as director, he worked closely with his creative partners throughout. The team did a December workshop of the musical, which is when it really began to evolve. [node:sidebar_text]

“This is where it 100% shifted, because actors and directors bring a completely different thing to the table than writers do,” Cole said. 

The team spent most of December meeting almost every day for four hours rewriting and fine-tuning. Throughout January and February, they moved closer to a completed show through a series of read throughs and production meetings. 

“It was a constant circle. We write a scene, we write a song and it doesn’t work,” Cole said. “Then we’d bring in the actors, and it wouldn’t work again, so we’d rewrite. It was a constantly flowing circle.” 

By March, they were down to a tech rehearsal, where the cast and crew worked out the show’s technical elements, like lighting and set changes. After a final dress rehearsal on March 19, the show was ready to be debuted to the world on March 21. 

The Goblin Market crew built the set and lighting ahead of the show's tech rehearsal, a key step where cast and crew work out details related to lighting and set changes. (Photography by Joseph V. Labolito)

Writing, producing and performing a world premiere of a musical in 18 months is unheard of in the industry, Gross said, but the process provides a valuable and rare experience for the students in the program, as well as the undergraduate actors they work with. 

“You can’t write or create in a vacuum,” he said. “This experiential focus is beneficial for the show’s creators, as well as the actors, because there is constant feedback. The actors ask questions and advocate for their needs, and the creators then have to hear this and make sure it functions.” 

“As directors, we don’t get to do this very often—start on the ground level of a project,” Cole said. “We usually come in when a full draft or score is written. The experience gave me another tool in my tool belt as a director and choreographer. I’ve gotten to wear more hats than I usually do, which is something that I thoroughly enjoy.” 

“The art coming off of the page has been so invigorating,” Underwood added. “You don’t get this kind of experience in any other program. Being able to get your feet wet and just do it, trial by fire kind of thing, I really loved that aspect of the program.” 

Mystic Rapture is set during the Great Depression and follows a young girl’s journey as she runs away to join a magical side show. The new musical will premiere in Randall Theater on Friday, April 25. (Photography by Joseph V. Labolito)