04/26/2022
Ann Richards rocketed into the national spotlight in 1988 with her legendary DNC keynote speech. It's one of the best political speeches ever made. Funny, wry, fearless. Do yourself a favor and go watch it on YouTube. 🤩
In developing our show, we knew the speech was one of the most pivotal moments in Ann's journey - yet at first we couldn't figure out how to dramatize it without dumbing it down.
How do you musicalize a speech that's so completely brilliant in its original spoken prose?
How do you distill 30 minutes of political genius into 3 minutes of stage time?
How do you pay homage to an iconic real-life performance without coming off as a poor imitation?
We actually considered just stopping the show and playing the original speech on the big screen. After all, we could never do better than Ann herself had already done 30+ years ago.
But then...inspiration struck.
On the Megabus from Austin to Houston one rehearsal weekend, our director Megan Weaver (who, yep, had recently seen Hamilton) got inspired to try adapting the speech into a rap.
At rehearsal that night, she gave Alli Partin Villines, Kirk Suddreath nd Sam Cannariato 3 pages of spoken word. Together they found a beat, a bassline, and a story-propelling tonal shift that paid homage to the great speech without trying to imitate it.
This is a rehearsal recording from our first or second rehearsal, back when we conceived it as a marching band sequence, with whistles and snares and spinning batons. In later rehearsals we decided to relax its energy by giving it a swing and a walking bassline, and turned it into a beat poem.
This isn't on the album. This is the only recording we have, aside from some fuzzy production video from the Houston Fringe Festival premiere. We gotta get this show produced live again so y'all can hear the full thing in person! 🎤✨
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