An elevator is a strange place -- awkward, claustrophobic, not usually where one would consider notions of life and death and legacy… and not normally where one would set a musical. Then again, maybe it's perfect.
Elevators lift us up, bring us down, force disparate people together. So do the best musicals. As the elevator doors open, we enter knowing our destination, but perhaps not our destiny -- which also well describes the premise of Going Up. In this tragicomedy -- which I co-wrote with my classmate Max Afifi, a brilliant composer, and which includes ten original songs -- six flawed strangers find themselves trapped in an elevator and evaluating their existence. Facing the prospect of death, they wonder: Are we going up... or down? A rarity at Pacific Grove High School in that it was a student-run musical in every capacity, Going Up premiered to overflow crowds in the closing weeks of my senior year. |
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