Clear Blue Tuesday

A montage of songs, collage and unconventional narrative style, Clear Blue Tuesday is a journey of self-discovery in the face of adversity.

Eleven New Yorkers change course after 9/11 forces them to examine why they moved to New York and to decide whether they'll stay. Clear Blue Tuesday follows their lives over the course of six years, each year on a Tuesday in September, as they pursue the dreams that drew them to the city.

Through personal journeys, Clear Blue Tuesday explores the difference between the goals we pursue and what makes us happy and how the expanding gap between the two becomes more visible against the backdrop of catastrophic world events.

Over a nine month period eleven actor-singer-songwriters developed a fictional story through an extended rehearsal process with director Elizabeth Lucas. Using personal journeys and improv as a springboard for developing characters and narrative, the cast wrote the songs they sing.

Everyone has a 9/11 story. As I have been speaking with people about this movie over the past six months, I have been amazed and humbled at how much people have to say to the simplest questions. It's as if, with all our public mourning and warfare and political debate, we have yet to have a personal discussion about the impact on individuals of such a defining event. As a nation we chose our designated mourners, our culprits and our defenders and they have stolen away an event that belongs to all of us, no matter how close or far we were to the epicenter. Memories of what happened are indelibly etched in all our minds, but the aftereffect variations are as numerous as people. I've heard so many stories of life change – switching careers, adjusting personal outlooks, recommitting to relationships and leaving relationships, finding god and losing religion, falling into the arms of whoever offered comfort, rediscovering family ties – stories that tell of resilience, grief, community, guilt, anger, fear, love and determination. Some left New York and some decided to stay forever. More than a few people have told me their lives changed for the better since 9/11 by making them more aware, more grateful, more focused and more likely to jettison negative influences from their lives. 9/11 was a catalyst for personal change, both good and bad. This is not a movie about 9/11. This is a tale about what happens after. ~ Elizabeth Lucas

We've documented the making of the movie from conception through filming and will be periodically be posting written and video blogs. Our resident blogger Jeremy Blachman documented the first few rehearsals in writing. Here is his posting about our first day of rehearsal...

February 27, 2007
Jeremy Blachman
Writing from a studio at the Gibson/Baldwin Showroom

There's something kind of magical about the start of any creative collaboration, or at least the good ones. No one really knows what the end product is going to look like, but there's that glimmer of hope that maybe it'll turn out to be "it," that special project that's quite literally going to change the course of your life. Or maybe it'll just be a waste of time.

This blog, hopefully, will provide a little glimpse inside the creation of Clear Blue Tuesday -- a window into the rehearsal process and the people involved in the project, from a bit of an outsider's perspective. I've known Elizabeth Lucas for a few years, and think she's an awfully talented director. When she first told me about Clear Blue Tuesday, I thought it sounded like a neat idea, and wanted to get involved. For now, we've come up with the idea of an ongoing blog about the process -- I'll act as your eyes and ears inside the rehearsal room, and report back to try and give you a sense of what's going on, and try to look for ways to get you as the potential audience involved in the process as much as possible. Interviews with the actors, discussions in the forum, and a weekly entry to let you know how things are progressing. We'll see how it goes.

I arrived at the first rehearsal not really knowing what to expect, although I'm not sure the cast knew exactly what to expect either. I came in with very little background -- Clear Blue Tuesday is a movie musical, but it's not written yet. There aren't even any characters yet. Elizabeth has chosen a dozen actor/singer/songwriters and they're going to work together to create a set of characters and stories, which will inspire songs, and which together will inspire a film. Against the backdrop of September 11th, and how catastrophic events can change your course, force people to think about their decisions, and whether they're the lives they want to be living.

The cast talked about a bunch of things on Tuesday -- about what brought them to this project, about their post-9/11 experiences, and about movie musicals in general, and what kind of movie musical they hope this one will turn out to be. The movie musical discussion is interesting, and probably deserves its own section on this site, outside of this blog... and hopefully it'll end up being a place where readers can interact with each other and talk about what's good and not-so-good about a bunch of the movie musicals that have been made over the years, and where there's room for this one to be different. Similarly, lots of people have their own 9/11 stories to tell, and I get the sense the 9/11 angle will become more important as the character development continues over the next few months.

But the thing that was most interesting to me, as I listened to the cast talk on Tuesday, was what brought them all to this project, and why they wanted to be involved. I didn't fully realize the divide between being pursuing acting and pursuing music, but it seemed like that's something that almost everyone in the cast has struggled with. Acting, especially at the Broadway level, is so consuming -- and forced you to be in the city, every day, and have every night free to perform on stage -- and a number of the cast members talked about how, while they loved the acting, they were constantly fighting to find time for the music. Conversely, devoting themselves to the music meant they had to give up acting. So it seemed like everyone had made a choice at some point -- acting or music -- and the other one had to be put in the background. But this movie gives them the chance to do both, and for a lot of them, that was a really important factor in deciding to work on the project. The career path of an actor/singer/songwriter is something that's interesting to me, more interesting than I would have thought before hearing what the cast had to say on Tuesday.

The time between the discussions was filled with a number of improv exercises, and the day closed with a musical improv that I expect will find its way onto this site, or at least a small piece of it. These are some tremendously talented musicians that Elizabeth has found for this movie. The musical improv really made that clear. And I can't wait to see what they come up with over the course of the next five months.

It was really pretty cool to be in the room on Tuesday, and I was jealous of the talent in there, and also a little jealous of the creative journey the cast is about to start on. I don't know how a movie musical gets made, from scratch, without a script or songs or characters, in just a few months -- and I don't have any idea what the end product is going to look like. But being in the room, there was certainly a sense that great things are possible. Hopefully I can help bring you a little closer to that room, and make you feel like a part of it.