History & Development

TUSK has been in development for a little over two years. The first production was a staged reading in Albany, NY at the Empire State Plaza, Center for the Performing Arts, The Egg in September of 2003 as part of their “New Work, New York” program. It was presented free to the public in a concert version with book in hand. This was the first public performance and purpose was to hear the book and music and to engage an audience and their response.

With the first reading we went with our instinct of what we thought the story should be and how we would tell the story. From the time we began to collaborate on TUSK to the first reading, about a 6 month period, the book had extensive work. Originally the story was developed as vignettes, it was adapted to a continuous book and all but 4 songs were kept and fourteen new songs were written. It was very well received; almost 450 attending each evening for two nights, the audience Q & A afterwards was invaluable. From this experience we rewrote much of the book and made major changes in the story and characters and made additional musical changes, and 4 new songs were added.

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