Southern California native, Ryan Scott Oliver, is creating his own unique niche in the world of contemporary musical theatre. He is currently workshopping a brand new musical he has written titled JASPER IN DEADLAND that will receive two performances on August 5th and 6th in Pasadena, and will see a newly-revised version of his musical, OUT OF MY HEAD, open in Los Angeles on July 29th. Here he talks about the intricacies of his writing process and about creating a life in musical theatre.
Did you always know you were a writer?
I think I started tinkering with it in seventh grade but by high school I knew that it was something I had a huge passion for and that's when it became the main focus. I was always very creative and I found that writing, whether it be text or music, was something that really held my interest.
Do you think growing up in Southern California in the land of entertainment contributed to your creativity?
Actually, no. Hollywood and the notion of the entertainment part of LA was really foreign to me because I'm from Pasadena and Sierra Madre, which is very suburban, and there's really no art in my family. My first major exposure to music and theatre was in a musical theatre camp when I was in fifth grade. That was when I realized how much I enjoyed it. Then, about eight years ago, I became artistic director of that organization, which is now called The Pasadena Musical Theatre Program, so it's been a full circle experience.
What made you decide to take over PMTP?
One of my skills, in addition to being a writer, is that I'm a good producer and I think that when you're dealing with high school kids, what they need is a leader, more than necessarily a visionary. They need somebody they trust that can put them in the best light and teach them how to become young professional adults. I respond to that because when I was younger, I was always anxious to go to the next level. Many of my big breaks were due to concerts and events of my work that I self-produced, and that's what we do at PMTP. We try to teach kids to make their own life.
Are there teachers that have had a big impact on you personally?
Absolutely. I would say there are four in particular that have had the biggest impact. The first is Gayle Bluemel, the teacher who started PMTP. She made me see how you could love an art form and how an art form can bring life joy. I also had a music teacher in middle school named Cindy Abbott, who is coincidentally the music director now at PMTP, and she had an intensity and a strictness and a passion for the work that said that it's not good until it's right. And that's very much something I believe in. Then in high school I had a teacher named Stephanie Vlahos, who taught opera. She was a major visionary and she taught me that theatre wasn't necessarily licensing shows from MTI. It's not just OKLAHOMA. Theatre can be weird and strange and creative. You can take something familiar and make it new and that had a huge, huge impact on me.
And at UCLA I had a teacher named John Hall, who ran the musical theatre workshop there. John was a performer and what he did better than anybody else was his method of direction, which was a performance in itself. When you were in rehearsal with him you were laughing and having the greatest time. He could be hard on you but you never took it personally because you knew that he cared and you knew that he was doing it to put perspective on the situation. Because of him I don't baby the students I work with. I want them to know the reality but still have some fun in the process.
You mentioned intensity. Much of your own writing has an underlying intensity in it. There is a grittiness to the stories you explore. Has that always been there or did your teachers help bring that out in you?
I would say my parents are what brought out the intensity in me in the sense that they're both really, really hard workers and very passionate about making a lot of life and work. And I've always been attracted to the darker things in life, though I'm very much an optimist myself. I believe that in songs I've written like "The Ballad of Sara Berry" or even "Lost Boy," which are about terrible or sad things happening, that the character is either so motivated toward becoming something in life or so intensely desperate for it that they do bad things. Or, conversely, they make the best of being dealt a bad hand.
I think that ability to extract what is hidden within a character is one of the most exciting things about your work.
