A first-time collaboration is a risky thing. What if the participants don’t hit it off? How do they negotiate if one is not happy with what the other is doing? Who gets to call the shots?
It was a step into the unknown when playwright Morna Young sent her adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen to composer Finn Anderson. What would he make of her first song? Would it be how she imagined it when she wrote the lyrics?
The answer, in short, is yes. It was exactly what she had in mind. “We would have a conversation about each song in an abstract way before Finn would work on the music,” says Young in a lunchtime rehearsal break. “But the first song he sent me – Can You Hear Me? – I emailed back saying, ‘It feels like you’ve been in my head.’ It was everything I had imagined but better.” [READ MORE]