PREVIEW: Solstice: The Musical That Asks How We Move On
05/22 and 05/23 @ Charles R. Wood Theater, Glens Falls
“Often you think you know what the show is about, and then you start rehearsing it with people and it becomes, in a beautiful way, kind of different. I've had that experience with this show, and it's been cool.”
Solstice, a brand-new original musical with book, music, and lyrics by Ben Rowley and directed by Brittany Martel, will be running for two nights this Friday and Saturday at the Charles R. Wood Theater in Glens Falls. For Rowley, it’s another step towards the culmination of a creative project that began to take form all the way back in 2020 as he was finishing up his pursuit of a degree in music composition from NYU. He began sketching out ideas for what the show would become, and then took a bit of a break after college.
“I had a number of great experiences, great collaborations, and worked on some cool projects,” he explained. “I have been working as a teacher, and have been the music director at St Mary's Church in Glens Falls for almost four years now. I’ve also been working on founding an Arts Academy here.” Still, throughout everything those creative embers that would become Solstice continued to smolder.
“The story is completely original,” he told me. “It's a story about two brothers who are living in the aftermath of their mom's passing at their childhood home alongside their girlfriends, and it's a story about moving on after loss, finding direction in life, finding hope, and persevering through that difficulty. It's a story that really is about young adulthood in many ways.”
It’s also a story that has grown and evolved over the course of those six years. “The first version I did in 2023 was not centered just on the brothers, although those were the core four,” he told me. “It was a story that was more about young adulthood in general, told from a lot of different perspectives. I decided I really wanted to just focus on this core unit.”
After that first reading, Rowley said he went through a pretty extensive reevaluation of the show’s direction. He wrote new songs and worked with new material, and then met director Martel at the Fort Salem Theater during a production of Tick, Tick…Boom! last August. After reading for another show in November, Martel said that Rowley approached her and asked if she would be interested in reading what he’d been working on.
“I sent him, I don't know, two pages of notes immediately,” she said. “He happened to like my notes, so it worked pretty well.” She went on to describe the creative partnership as a dream process for the two of them, and that was only magnified when the rest of the cast fell into place.
“Getting the actors in the room is really exciting, because then you have different interpretations of different parts of the text,” she explained. “It’s been really wonderful.”
“Often you think you know what the show is about, and then you start rehearsing it with people and it becomes, in a beautiful way, kind of different,” Rowley chimed in. “I've had that experience with this show, and it's been cool.”
Martel added that while they went into the process believing they were making a show about grief, they’ve decided that it’s more about how to live with and move through your grief. “I’m sure once we see the show, it’ll be a different conversation,” she added with a laugh. “We’ll tell you what the answer is after we land.”
Most of the cast and crew hail from the immediate Glens Falls region, while all of them are from the wider 518 making it a completely local, original production. Having such ties to the local creative scene just makes this that much more special for the team.
“Glens Falls, and this region in general, has an amazing track record for new works,” Rowley said. “It’s a community that is so responsive and passionate about new works, so it's just a joy to be able to do this from the creative side with this group of people who are so passionate about it.” That passion shines through in the cast, who the pair lauded for being willing to take on the daunting task of performing in a completely original work.
“It can be a scary thing to come into a new work and put yourself out there enough and be vulnerable enough to try,” said Martel. “When we do shows that are already done, there are soundtracks, there are things that we've seen that we have memorized.
“To trust Ben who wrote it, and myself who's directing it, and then the piece of themself that wants to tell this story as well… I think it's a really, really brave thing. So I commend them all.”
You can be among the first to witness the fruit of this long-term creative effort brought about by an incredible cast of creatives from right here in the 518. There are showings on Friday, May 22nd at 7PM and Saturday, May 23rd at 1PM and 7PM. For more information or to get tickets to the show, visit solsticethemusical.com!
