The Next Stage.

Yesterday we finished the draft of Buckland/Giants in the Earth by getting it in a state ready to be sent off.  This was more complicated than I realised - it being a musical with songs and music and lyrics and everythig.  The text had to re-formatted to accomodate the lyrics, Matt and his partner Catherine Boot have recorded the songs and we also recorded some scenes as well to help make sense of what looks quite confusing on paper.  I offered to sing but my offer was politely rejected, but I did get to do some dialogue.  Matt puts everything through a program he's got on his Mac.  We record something, then he mutters way to himself for a few minutes whilst whizzing the cursor around the screen and it comes out with all the words and the music in the right places.  Mystifying. 
It isn't completeley finished. Some of the songs are only repesentations of what they will eventually  be and some scenes are only suggestions or experiments.  And in Part Two the music and lyrics only exist as a series of notes.  But the arc is there and our intentions are clear.
I'll pick up the disks this morning, print out the hard copy, add my own notes and send it off.  Matt will disappear to China to work on a show until the beginning of June, and we'll meet up again when I get back from the States at the end of that month, and provided our director hasn't rejected the whole thing as a huge mistake, we'll get on to the next stage. Taking it all apart and starting again. But at least this time we'll have something tangible to work on.