Just a Matter of Time
The Musical
An Equity Showcase

The Sage Theatre, NYC, January 18-31, 2007
Boothbay Playhouse, Boothbay, Maine, August 9-11, 2007

Book & Lyrics by Sandra Dutton
Music by Jack Kohl
Directed and Choreographed
by Susan Streater


Boothbay Production
New York Production
"Lewis Carroll meets Dr. Seuss meets Salvador Dali meets Rene Magritte.  Gads, what a feast of language and visuals."
                                Mark Lynch
                                Writer, Director
Just a Matter of Time at the Boothbay Playhouse
Songs

1.  Overture

2.  Drowning in the Details

3.  How Many Cows in Katmandu?

4.  Be Bold But Beware

5.  Ode to Salad
Sung by David DeMato

6.  Pots of Cream & Caramel Dreams
Sung by Lindsay Goranson

7.  Your Mind Has  mind of Its Own

8.  Thoughts That Surge and Beat

9.  Everyone Said I Had Heart

10.  For I'm Time, Yes I'm Time

11.  Reprise
The Writing of the Play

I wanted to write a nonsense fantasy, something American with indigenous characters and American obsessions.  No kings and queens.  I made several attempts, but found no compelling ideas.  Then, when I was thumbing through a magazine, I noticed an article about the effects of gravity on time.  I read it, read it again,and somehow got hooked.  I began watching lectures on cosmology, reading one science book after another—and as I read, strange bits of dialogue began to occur:

     Once I was out with a hummingbird.  We ran so fast we made an hour last
            for seventy-five days.
 
                                                                          and:

           I can do anything with time, once I’ve got it.  I can take time that’s flown
           and make it march.    Or time that drags and make it soar.

I began to imagine the speakers—a pig who’d stolen time, a mole in a pin-striped suit, a sheep who’d lost her mind, a rat obsessed with ideas.  All were a bit frantic and out of breath.  Then there was Time himself, a huge clock figure dressed in yellow longjohns.  I kept seeing someone socking the daylights out of him, and thinking, What if Time were beaten, what would happen next? 

That’s how it all got started.  A musical on time.  But why should Meg, my protagonist, be on a search?  I wasn’t sure. Like many American children she was probably being tested to death. Probably spent all her time memorizing facts for short answer tests.  Probably had forgotten how to ask questions.  It’s an American problem, kids not being free to dream and imagine.  And time—one of the most used words in the English language—is an American obsession.

Sandra Dutton

Story

Meg, sitting in a gazebo memorizing her homework, is accused by her grandmother of having lost her curiosity.  The garden is transformed into a maze and Meg discovers it is her job to find Time. He’s been beaten in a boxing match by the Lop-Eared Rabbit and is hiding somewhere in the maze.  She must find him before her own allotment of time runs out.

Searching, she meets the Rhymester, (once a celebrated poet) the Pig Who Stole Time, the Sheep Who Lost Her Mind,  and many other creatures who show her that time is more than minutes on a clock--that it can be begged or borrowed, stolen or squandered, and that if she is to make the most of her own time, she must follow her curiosity.

Characters

Meg, an 11-year-old girl
Gran, Meg's grandmother
a Beaver (Time's Keeper)
a Goose (the Mayor)
a Duck
a Possum
the Brass Band--three pigs in fire hats
the Walrus, a shopkeeper
the Rhymester  (a Mole)
the Pig Who's Stolen Time
three Sharks
a Policeman
the Sheep Who's Lost Her Mind
the River Rat
the Lop-Eared Rabbit
the Lop-Eared Rabbit's Shadow
Time