Before the Ball

"Transfems and transmascs and enbies, oh my!" I keep talking about "non-binary" this and "gender-fluid" that... I figured I ought to give you a quick primer on all the gender-related terminology I'll be using throughout the rest of the podcast. And then, since this is me we're talking about, the "quick primer" devolved into a whole exploration of the rich world of gender and why it's so important that I'm writing a whole musical about it. You shouldn't stop at the word of a cis guy when it comes to any of this, though. Maybe Burke, Schuyler Bailar, and Alok Menon are just three of the many gender-expansive educators out there providing resources to help navigate what may feel to some of you like a new, alien world beyond the binary of male and female. For further reading, check out the novel Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters and the Alicia Roth Weigel's memoir Inverse Cowgirl. Special thanks to Nick Myers for letting me include instrumental arrangements of our songs "Anthem" and "Jenny" as background music.

What do you send an author's agents to convince them to let you adapt a novel into a musical? To start with, a couple songs from the proposed adaptation! But how do you decide what should be a song? How do you write a song like this in the first place? And most importantly, how do you present it to the author and her agents? You can't just send them sheet music! (Honestly, I wouldn't even send musicians only sheet music.) What ends up on the page is only a fraction of the story; it's the people who bring it to life who make the real magic. In this case, I reached out to Jayke Workman to sing Dex's first song, "A Moment," and to Meagan Reyes to sing Delia's first song, "Back to Us," and the two of them aboslutely blew me away. Check out their other material on YouTube and Spotify, and also listen to the official demos they recorded! Go to cinderellaboy.com, or go to the Spotify playlist directly at cinderellaboy.com/playlist.

Sure, lots of people read webcomics and serial novels. I just decided to turn my favorite into a musical. Because that's a totally normal thing to do, right? Get a copy of Cinderella Boy from Riptide Publishing, or read it for free online on Tapas. Follow the musical's progress @cinderellaboymusical on Instagram and TikTok, and check out the latest news and resources at cinderellaboy.com. Want more new musical theater by trans artists? Check out my friend Truth Future Bachman (they/them), creator of Farmed, Shapeshifters, and Luna and the Starbodies and one of my favorite emerging writers. Follow their Instagram too for all their latest news and upcoming shows!