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[0:00] Martín Acuña: Hi, everyone. I am Martín Acuña, and you are listening to Backstage Talk.

[0:17] Martín Acuña: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Backstage Talk. Today's guest is Philip David Stern.

[0:24] Martín Acuña: He has composed original music, scores, and orchestrations for live theater, film, television, concerts, and dance. He is also the founder of New York Stage Originals, a company dedicated to creating new stage theatricals. His latest work is Stone Crossed. This musical tells the story of two young lovers whose lives are changed forever when they inadvertently cross the divide. Falling instantly in love, Stoney and Jewel discover that they are more the same than they are different, despite what they have been taught to believe and start to question what has been painted in stone. Will these stone-crossed lovers choose a shorter life together over a longer life apart? We only have to see it on stage to know. The 2021 studio concept album features Broadway favorites such as Antonio Cipriano, Christina Alabado, Alex Bonello, Celia Rose Gooding, and Telly Leung, among other amazing artists. Philip, it is an honor to have you over. Welcome to Backstage Talk.

[1:33] Philip Stern: Great. Thank you for having me. So great to be here.

[1:37] Martín Acuña: First, Philip, I want you to tell us a little bit about yourself, about your background, how you ended up in theater, and yes, basically who you are and all your work, because you have a lot under your belt.

[1:48] Philip Stern: Yeah, I have a very sort of eclectic, diverse background, and that was purely by chance. I started in Canada. I'm Canadian and American, but I started in Canada as really studying as a youngster classical composition at the World Conservatory in Toronto and under Samuel Dolan, who's a Canadian. He really was a serial 12-tone composer, and I kind of fell into pop sort of on the side with bands, as all kids do.

[2:40] Philip Stern: As we all do at some point.

[2:43] Philip Stern: That's right. Everyone has been in a band, and so I was in a band and I was writing songs, or what I thought were songs, and that's another subject, right? What is a song? So I actually, at 20 years old, I wrote a song for Toronto called Toronto's You and Me, and it won a Toronto Song Contest, and that was kind of my first song that was out there. I was kind of straddling songwriting and classical composition, because at the same time, I started writing small little symphonic things. My Canadian sort of side was that, and I started writing later on for film and TV. I have to say, I'm not one of those people who says, oh yeah, I was taken to Broadway shows as a kid, and that's how I learned it.

I actually never really thought too much about musical theatre as growing up, and I knew about it. I went to, like, Funny Thing Happens on the Way to the Forum. I know I love Guys and Dolls. I joined a cabaret and sang in a cabaret, but it was kind of peripheral, my musical theatre background. It was kind of not something I was seeking, and so when we moved to New York, I thought about studying jazz, so I did the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop and still was not really in musical theatre. I did some film and TV work and such, but my first musical that I did was a version of A Christmas Carol called Scrooge, and we did that. That was a 40-minute one-act thing that I later expanded into two acts to be a full kind of concert, almost oratorio musical theatre, a very weird hybrid, and I say it's kind of a weird hybrid because I didn't really come up with the tradition, come into the tradition as a lot of musical theatre composers do at all.

[5:11] Philip Stern: I didn't really, when I wrote Scrooge, the producer, at first we thought that it was supposed to be a ballet, so I had all these, like, motifs, and I was, like, sort of developing it, like, motivically, not thinking, oh, song, song, song, song, song, and so then when the producer said, no, no, this should be a musical, I said, what? Okay, so I went back and I used some of those motifs, so it kind of is this very strange hybrid, this first musical I wrote, of being more of an orchestral recapitulation of motivic elements, and so over the years with Scrooge, because it kind of found a little bit of an audience and we started touring it, I started, oh, okay, musical theatre should have actual songs, like, so I actually started developing it into more, with more spots where there was actual, you know, moments, emotionally heightened moments that needed song, so it does have two or three actual songs in it, but most of all, Scrooge is a very unusual, and I think, I don't think I could write it again if I tried, and I think that's kind of cool, because you, people get all these ideas of what a musical is supposed to be, and I had no idea what a musical was supposed to be, and so I think I could never write in that way again, because it's kind of being, you know, okay, you gotta have a want song, you've gotta have this, and this, this is what makes a musical, so I think it was really interesting for me that I didn't come up with, come into that tradition, that may be a really bad thing, because, you know, I think it, it can make the struggle harder, you know, when you're trying to write a musical, when you don't really, when you haven't really studied the form, so I came to it in that way, through jazz music, through classical music, and writing sort of from the outside of the industry, I wasn't really inside with, you know, with folks who I could, you know, call on to say, you know, you know, what, how do I approach this, so I was kind of coming at it from this filmic, motivic thing, so over the years, like, we started this company, my wife, Lisa, and I, Lisa Hopkins, and we started this company called New York Stage Originals, and we, we started touring Scrooge, and then we created a tap dance show called Tap Kids, and I started developing other stuff that could be toured, I created the summer night stream called Dream, and slowly, I kind of was kind of, because we were living in New York, you know, kind of seeing more shows, and getting more used to the form, and sort of developing more what is kind of, what I would say is more expected, I guess, or not expected, but more traditional sound for musical theatre.

[8:43] Philip Stern: Yeah, exactly, yeah, and I, and that, saying that with a grain of salt, because like, we all know that can be many things, like, and so, but with the, with the, with the construct of, you know, you know, this, more of, more thinking in terms of the actual structure, being able to, you know, think about points in musically where, you know, song is warranted, or, so anyway, I, I'm trying to lead up to Stone Cross here, how that happened, I wrote a show called Young Dr. Jekyll, actually, Dream, let's go back to Dream, because I started doing the workshop here up in Vermont, and went great, and with, with students, high school students, and college students, and then we said, oh, let's do another workshop, let's do our Young Dr. Jekyll.

And so I had to show Young Dr. Jekyll. And I found it, like, oh, we have to write a whole big group number now, because we have this whole group of kids who needs new material. So started, started kind of changing the piece a bit to fit, like this group of kids, so they have stuff to do and stuff to dig their teeth into. And so after that production, I thought to myself, wow, it's really challenging to find material that's diverse, has a message. So, and can have, like, enough interesting characters to kind of keep everyone's interest and involvement in the show as actors, so they can, so they have a lot of material. So I started after that Young Dr. Jekyll experience, I started, well, I should create, create something that is colorful, is, is has a message, a universal message, can, can be cast with, with a universal cast.

And then I started thinking, well, I should put it, you know, back somewhere with an open palette, in a time frame that's, you know, we don't really know much about, that's very simple. So I thought of the, you know, the back and back in the stone ages, would be a great, a great time and space for this for this open palette.

[11:09] Philip Stern: Exactly. For this world, that seems in our minds sort of simple. But yet, I wanted to create a space where the environment, the earth was a part of the story, and where the earth could be a metaphor for stuff going on today. So the earth, the story has this fault line, which divides the two sides. And that's kind of like the West Side Story kind of thing, Romeo and Juliet. And the earth kind of speaks in the show, there rumbles, and there's also a glacier that's melting. It gets upset. They all think it gets upset.

[11:58] Philip Stern: And so I wanted to sort of create an atmospheric metaphor for a character, and I felt like, you know, if you can put it in a rocky landscape where whether it's hot in the day, it's cold at night, and extreme temperatures, and they're all struggling to survive to find food. And so that's kind of was the sort of place. And then the Romeo and Juliet structure felt so natural for the show to have, you know, Stoney and Jewel, and they're all the characters are named after rocks, like basalt and feldspar. I guess in my hindsight, I could have delved deeper into the character names. I was trying to kind of create sort of character metaphors for their, you know, for their names, for their, like, what a, you know, what type of stone is basalt, what type of stone is feldspar.

Pumice is another, you know, character side character. So they're all named after rocks, and we have a quartet of lovers. The two, Stoney wanders across the fault line and meets Jewel, but he is not supposed to go across the fault line. So the whole thematic element is about asking questions. So when they meet each other, they question why they can't kiss. They start to question, and they take a chance because they've been told they'll get a disease if they might, if they die. And the disease thing was actually pre-COVID. I had no idea that there would be this pandemic going on, so that's either a good or bad thing, I don't know. But it just fits into the musical, I know. So yeah, do you want me to continue talking about that? That's kind of this sort of storyline thematic stuff, or do you have...

[14:10] Martín Acuña: I actually want to go a little bit back into the creative process. Where did you actually start? Did you start with music, or did you start with the book? Because you just said that you started thinking about this time and space in which it could fit any cast and it could be performed by any performer.

[14:40] Philip Stern: Yeah, that is my question on the creative process. Yeah, so I started actually, and I'm trying to think back. This is 2018, I think I started looking at how Romeo and Juliet would be in the Stone Ages. And so I started just plotting. I really actually started plotting out the book first, which is kind of unusual for me because I'm sort of one to like go on the keyboard and like slam out, oh cool melodies and, you know, and sort of start in the wrong spot. So I actually tried to discipline myself. Yeah, like being a musician, like the normal thought process would be music first, story later. So for this, for Stone Crossed, the challenge was the other way around. I started by the story, and that started playing music.

Yeah, I started with the story, and I started sort of thinking of the characters and who they were and what this world was like. And then I started thinking about their human traits that we like. You know, like we hear about how Europeans came to North America and they wiped out all the buffalo, and it seems to be this pattern of causing extinction. So I thought, going back in time in my head, they got rid of the woolly mammoth, and so they were hunting mice. All that was left are mice. So in fact, the show used to begin with a song called "It Was Just Mice," and they were mice, mice so bad. Okay, so anyway, so as you'll hear, the beginning changed a lot. It was the beginning used to be more about the struggle for survival, and that's how they crossed the fault line because they were hunting and hunting each other's territory.

Though Stoney, the main character, ends up being a vegan. He's a herbivore, and his father is like, "How did this ever happen, my son? He's a herbivore." So you're in, and that John Rua sings that song on a father's job. He's trying to teach him how to hunt. So yeah, so my creative process began with the book, and then in the summer of 2019, I really started just sketching motivically. And I actually tried not to write songs per se, and I guess I was going back to my old sort of ideas of like motivic development. So I had this opening theme idea, this kind of world sort of on the verge of like something like lava and steam and stuff. And I started developing motivic themes, and those slowly morphed into songs.

Like Stoney's I Want song is really the same as Tony's in West Side Story. He sings out there, so he sings in the second piece, he sings, "Just out of reach," where everything he doesn't know what's there in front of him, it's all out of reach. I can see it, I can, you know, but it just slips away. And that harkens back to this being a coming-of-age story, a coming-of-age Stone Age story, really. That's what this musical, another thematic element I kept thinking about was this coming of age in the Stone Age. So I started writing that and similarly plotting about his best buddy, Tough, who has a condition. He doesn't sweat; he is a panther. So he had never known what it's like to sweat, but he drools everywhere. And that's where you inserted the late motif of... it's really kind of cool.

[19:18] Martín Acuña: Yeah, that's an interesting one. I think it's like the third or fourth song, and I loved it.

[19:26] Philip Stern: Oh great, yeah. And that's really where, as a writer, I started wondering about tone and how far one can go because the show does get really serious in the second act. Yeah, Stoney has this whole operatic, pop-operatic thing at the end where he's mourning Scrooge—I mean Jewel. That's interesting, tone-wise, I think, and I'm always learning. I feel like it's all that shaping, like sculpting, knowing how if the sculpture works, like when you're adding something that becomes kind of lighter and sillier. Do you know what I mean? Like I started to wonder, that's one piece that I wonder along with number 10, "Magma Drama," if the tone was getting too young-sounding. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I just was worrying more about, is it consistent? Is it consistent enough, or do I need... and then you go, do I need to even worry about that? This is musical theater, you know, anything goes, right?

[20:40] So when I started writing pieces like that, I really sort of was trying to think about the character arcs of all the characters, like Tough, and telling the story and involved, like keeping the story moving with a side character too because he's a really—I really love Tough because I really relate to him. And so, you know, hiding a condition and being stood up for by Stoney. Stoney is this—we portray him as a big tough guy, but he's actually a pacifist. Yeah, and I think that's really interesting too, not stereotyping the characters. We also, I also like was really interested in strong female characters who control their destiny. And I feel like, again, I was trying to write material that could be dug into by anyone, or by anyone, but in particular because at the time I was thinking about workshops.

And so Jewel actually goes to Stoney in the beginning of the second act, and usually in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo goes to Jewel. So I was trying to reverse stuff. And I also, she—the girls actually start to really question in just like normal—not just like normal—which is a song. Anyway, the Jewel and her cohorts, they—Jewel is supposed to be married to Basalt, but she's going, "It just doesn't feel right." But they're saying, "Go along with it, you know, it'll be fine." But she's questioning already. So the whole theme of asking questions and these girls who are strong, they're hunters. So at the beginning, one of the characters, side character Pumice, comes in with a rod of mice. She's a hunter, you know, like really cool, and they're very strong.

And so that is another theme that I wanted to reverse character stereotypes and reverse this overall concept that we have of female characters having to be stereotyped in a certain way and also male characters in a certain way. And in fact, we suggest a relationship between Felspar and Basalt at the end. There's all sorts of ways it can be played and played with these characters. So, and I love this idea of reversing characters and having, like, turning around the stereotypical characters because one can listen to that through the cast recording, like through the music and through the songs. One can feel that, like you just said, Stoney is portrayed as this really tough guy, but in the end, he's a pacifist and a sweetheart. And he ends up standing up for his friends, or Jewel and her cohorts are this really strong...

[24:26] Philip Stern: I actually started getting blisters as the song goes. So I started incorporating a lot of guitar and I felt like it's sort of the tone started to feel right to me. So guitar bass. And I have a sort of progressive rock background too. So I started thinking, well, I shouldn't really be afraid to like, you know, delve into like stuff that, you know, resonates with me and might resonate with these characters. I started actually thinking, oh, I'm going to keep all the instruments natural, they're going to all be like this can be no electronics, you know, it's gonna be real pure, like natural, you know, everything with skins and nylon strings and everything, you know, but that ended pretty quickly when I added trombones, electric guitars.

And then it's like, oh, okay, look at this palette of, you know, it transcends time, you know, the stone, it's the stone ages. But, you know, we're talking about a story that should transcend sort of trying to be a purist. It's a universal story. So it works with electronic instruments. Yeah, it just works. Yeah. And I like I was, you know, I've been in the studio with, you know, other shows, like Scrooge, where I've had the whole orchestra in front of me. But this is in the pandemic, this was totally different. And I just treated it like a pop record. So it started up pretty simple with me having tracks I'd used in, in a work in the workshop, that was part of this whole development process.

And I took those tracks, and I started they were kind of my basis. There were a lot of MIDI drums, which I replaced with live drums, there was a bunch of bass, which I got, you know, bassist to, you know, cover all so I did have a I had one full two, like one and a half day session in New York pre pandemic with the drummer and bassist, and we laid down a ton of tracks.

[26:44] Martín Acuña: I wanted to ask you actually, about the cast recording you did, you all did this through or during the pandemic, right?

[26:53] Philip Stern: It actually started slightly before the pandemic in February of 2020. With Antonio Cipriano was actually the first in the studio. And he actually recorded in three different places because after the pandemic, he went to he was near Tennessee. He was in North Carolina. So he drove up to Tennessee. He recorded some more there. And then he ended up in LA. And he recorded more there too. So. So I answer your question. Yeah, like, started recording started in New York, pre pandemic, I had a rehearsal with Christina pre pandemic. But then the pandemic hit, everyone scattered. And then we did a remote recording much later in July of all her stuff. Telly, he came over to my apartment, I was in Harlem, then in actually December of 2019.

We had a rehearsal. And wait, yeah, so he actually, I think he was the first we recorded Douglas Studio with him in Brooklyn. And he laid down his songs in January, late January of Yeah, so he was the first actually. So so few singers pre pandemic, and then it was just like, boom. And when it hit, it was like, everyone left the city. It was like, so crazy. I mean, we really were it was like Exodus from crazy. I remember the day like, it was like, um, when Lisa and I said, Well, you know, we better just, you know, New York shutting down, basically. Let's go back up to Burlington. And I remember like, the subway ride to no one was on on subway was like crazy. And then the Uber driver I got was like coughing away.

I was going, should I be worried? I cracked open the window. And then I rented a car. That's a I'm digressing here. But um, so yeah, pre pandemic recordings, and then ended up the rest virtually. And it was actually very cool. Because honestly, there's really not a heck of a lot of difference when you can talk to the it's like you and me now, I can talk to you. So if you're singing a phrase, and it's like, No, can you like be a little more like sad and heartfelt in that? And, you know, yeah. And it's boom, it's right. It's like, I'm in the other room. So with recording, I feel, um, you know, there's really not, there wasn't really, you know, doing it in a pop way where you're layering stuff, it really doesn't affect too much.

And it's actually, you know, it's kind of cool in a way, because, um, well, I think for the composers and, and producers, because they can kind of, you know, be really hyper focused in there, not have to like spend an hour in traffic, getting all frustrated, and blah, blah, blah they're hyper focused on the material. And so I think for me, I feel like one hangover from the COVID thing is that I'll probably still do a bunch of virtual sessions, because I'm on track to do Scrooge next. And I'll do some live, but I feel like I could do a lot of it, you know, virtually, and that means the palette of artists too, because, you know, wherever they are, they, you know, no one has to, you know, spend two days to get wherever they're going.

[30:32] Martín Acuña: I wanted to ask you, now that the cast recording is out, and everyone can listen to it on streaming platforms, where is the musical headed next? Do you want to look for the funds and produce it? Do you want to do and try to do an out of town run or an off Broadway run? Where do you want to go with this musical?

[30:55] Philip Stern: Yeah, I mean, one of the prime reasons for doing the, you know, creating a cast recording was to have it in a permanent place, not that it not that the show is fixed. I think every every show changes once they get into production stage. But having it in a fixed place with clear, clear story, like in the in the in the in the digital liner, or you get a pretty clear sense of the story. If you download the album, yeah, you'll get the digital liner. I'm not plugging that by buying. But so that I think for producers, their time is limited, they're looking at a lot of stuff to be able to go easily to a place where they can listen to the music and say, Hey, this is cool. I'd like to get involved. So sure, I am totally, you know, I feel like, number one, I would love colleges and high schools, I'd like to get this licensing, because I think it'd be super fun.

It has a really universal message. I think it has educational value with the message. And I think vocally, it could be very interesting for the kids, because there's a lot of different material. Coral, like different, but I mean, coral material, there's, there's challenging some challenging tenor stuff too, as you may be heard in like some of the pieces Antonio sang, which, you know, can be really great for. So I think educationally, I'd love to see it out there. And I, I think, you know, the whole Broadway, Off-Broadway touring, again, I think it would do well. And I think I think it would be loved by a lot of people, but you don't know. And I do, I think. So I am, you know, I'm open to developing it.

So yeah, your your producers in Columbia, hit me up. But I actually, I actually am, I have been producing tours myself, as you know, and I feel like at this stage where I'm at now, I am wanting to back away. So I am looking for a lead producer for the show, someone who can shepherd it through through the channels of financing and, you know, Off-Broadway or, or tryouts or more development. So that's in my mind, because I feel like, and I think a lot of creators, creative artists feel like this way is that it's difficult to balance the business and creative. And I think it's great to have someone just taking care of those elements, and it lets, frees one to be more creative and to do the changes that need to be made or to pursue other creative avenues to keep healthy creatively.

So that's, that's where I'm at with that with with Stone Crossed. So and I feel like, you know, I always have been approached and by singers, like, where can I listen to your stuff? Where can I sing the music? How can you know, sheet music? And so I feel like it's the start for me of sort of documenting this stuff. So it can be in a place people can find, I want to have the sheet music online so they can find that and enjoy the material and hopefully useful for them too. So yeah.

[34:15] Martín Acuña: Well, Philip, I love this. My last question for you is, if someone wants to contact you, what is the best way to get ahold of you?

[34:25] Philip Stern: I think nystage at gmail.com. That's nystage at gmail.com. That's, that's a great way. You can also go to pdstern.com. That's the website. And I think you can look up stonecrossedmusical.com too, to get Stone Crossed stuff. And you can go to Broadway Records, also to actually get the album and iTunes and all those other platforms.

[34:52] Martín Acuña: So listeners, now you know, if you want to work or you want to sing something that Philip has created, go to his website and check out Stone Crossed on their Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. And please do yourself a favor and listen to that amazing cast recording. Philip, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for coming over.

[35:18] Philip Stern: Thank you, Martín. I so appreciate it.

[35:20] Martín Acuña: I know that it will be great. And I cannot wait to see where Stone Crossed goes. Thank you so much.

[35:30] Martín Acuña: Thanks, everyone for listening to this new episode of Backstage Talk. Remember to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Backstage Talk Podcast.