Hi Sweetie, It’s Me! Good Shabbos!

Last night (a few years behind the craze, as ever), I finally watched the series finale of HBO’s marvelous The Deuce. After a day of shooting her film, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character observes this:

You know, the thing about making movies is you begin imagining 100 percent of what you wanna say. Then you write the script, and you hire your actors, and you gather your crew, and you try to hold on to as much of that as you can, like 90, 80 percent. Or, today, someone had an idea, and the scene became more than I ever could have thought. You know, so I think the process is really…saying goodbye to what you first imagined, and saying hello to what you discover.

This resonates with me pretty hard generally as an artist, but also specifically because Danielle Durchslag came to me in 2020 with the idea for a three-minute a cappella aria for a museum show, and instead, we now find ourselves creating a short musical film, Good Shabbos. This project marks my first direct collaboration with a filmmaker and a long-awaited return to anything that explicitly calls itself a musical. (Though, as we have been saying, “it’s also not…not an opera.” If you are familiar with my philosophy about operas vs. musicals by now, this won’t come as a shock.)

Good Shabbos tells the story of the relationship between a wealthy Jewish doyenne and her queer, progressive, adult daughter, dissolving over the course of one Jewish calendar year due to conflict over zionism and homophobia. The audience learns of their dynamic and separation exclusively through the sung Shabbos voicemails the mother leaves to her child between two sets of High Holidays. Each voicemail is a new, original song, with lyrics by Danielle and music by me.

At this point in my life, to quote Louis in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, “I’m an intensely secular Jew”. But my early background was very informed by Jewish education, and I am grateful to be able to grapple with this aspect of my identity through this project. Figuring out this score has shaken many old songs from the deepest crevices of my memory and led me to learn new ones, and I’m mashing them up with other influences to make for some pretty weird showtunes. And Danielle has given me a formidable list of cinematic classics to absorb: everything from Cries and Whispers to The Lion in Winter to Mommie Dearest and back again. It has been a profound but also hilarious ride so far. Here are just a few of Danielle’s quips I wrote down from our recent work sessions:

"Look, we could talk forever about terrible people we have witnessed at cultural events."

"I keep my entire Bat Mitzvah in my phone, I don't know about you." 

(to the tune of the chorus of "Single Ladies") "If your suit is from Escada, then you paid too much."

RP: I wish I was kidding.

DD: I wish I was surprised.

"It never comes out of my head like...whoever came out of Zeus."

“It’s a cross between ‘Kiss Me’ [from Sweeney Todd] and ‘Physical’.”

"When Patti LuPone is onstage surrounded by people who are not Patti LuPone, things occur."

We are in pre-production now - stay tuned for more info and updates in the coming months!