[title of show]s Long, Strange Trip to Broadway

[the part with the background information]
A new musical is often born when two elements converge and create some divinely inspired "Eureka!" moment. Maybe it's a pianist housewife who learns her local garbage collector has a lovely tenor and writes a pop opera for him. Or two stoners who, after staring silently at the TV for three years, whipser in unison, "We should remake Donnie Darko as a musical."

In the case of [title of show] creators Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen, their convergence happened in 1995, when the two got to know each other during a Virginia Beach production of Good News. But the "Eureka!" moment wouldn't surface until well after Y2K, when a friend suggested they try adapting the movie 9 to 5 into a musical. 9 to 5 is now on its way to Broadway, with creative input from Dolly Parton herself, but Bell and Bowen have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Though hardly fruitful, that first joint venture taught Bell and Bowen a lot about themselves and the business. "We learned that we liked collaborating," Bell says now. "We liked each other's aesthetic. We were like, 'Next time, let's write something original, that we obviously would have the rights for.'"

[the part about getting "the Idea," then work-work-work and all that stuff]
Creative synergy established, in this part of the Backstory the team in question grabs the bull by the proverbial horns and gets down to business or brings it, as the kids might say. Suddenly, everyday life promises more than boring old routines and soul-sucking day jobs. Juiced by a mysterious rise in self-confidence, the ones who always thought, "I suck," suddenly believe, "You suck. We rock!"

Bell and Bowen's kick-in-the-pants came in the form of a three-week deadline for entering a show in the first New York Musical Theatre Festival. Instead of wimping out, they approached the tight schedule as a creative challenge. "We wanted to treat the three weeks as a writing exercise," says Bowen, who's quick to point out that Wonderful Town was written in one month. "No matter if we made it into the festival or not, it was good to be focused on a project, to have a deadline, to prepare a script and lyrics and a demo CD."

But what to write about? Ah, the Backstory plot thickens. Bowen and Bell brainstormed on possibilities, at times considering a piece with a variety-show setting or doing another adaptation. By the second day of writing, something became obvious: "Our conversations about what we were writing were funnier than what we were actually writing," says Bowen. "And once we realized that, the script took form."

Following the path paved by many a post-modern luminary—novelist Dave Eggers, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, Pirandello if you want to get highbrow about it—the two guys began writing a musical about two guys who were trying to write a musical. To quote from another post-modern landmark, the pair stopped being polite and started getting real. "It was nice to just relax and write something that sounded like the way we talk all the time," says Bell, who let go of any internal pressure to adapt a high-profile movie or reinvent Shakespeare. "Not that there's anything wrong with that. That just wasn't getting us to write."

[the part about putting it together, tasting success, etc.]
Now comes the section of the Backstory in which the work of the team in question makes its first foray into the world. Bell and Bowen met the deadline, and [title of show] won stage time at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in the fall of 2004. Other shows featured that year included Altar Boyz, Caligula, Like You Like It and Frankenstein, the last of which deployed sets and costumes worthy of a Broadway-caliber production. By contrast, Bowen and Bell only had their fellow performers, Susan Blackwell and Heidi Blickenstaff, and their accompanist, Larry Pressgrove. What didn't they have? A set, some costumes, a director. "We pulled four chairs from the back of the theater," remembers Bell. "We wore street clothes. And…that was it."

No success story is complete without a twist of fate or three: A last-minute schedule change allowed for the attendance of a writer from The New York Times who provided a favorable review and a visit from producer Kevin McCollum, who took notice of [title of show]'s less-is-more approach—a term that also described the audience: "There were, like, 10 people there, but we were beyond the moon because we were performing in New York City," says Bell. "And we were doing a show that we wrote!" adds Bowen.

[the part about dreams coming true, so…now what?]
This part of the Backstory is akin to those "rising up the charts" montages you always see in music bio-pics. A workshop at the Eugene O'Neil Theatre in Connecticut! An Obie-winning extended run at the Vineyard Theatre, helmed by performer-turned director Michael Berresse! Next stop, Broadway! Only that last part didn't happen quite so fast.

[title of show] opens at the Lyceum Theatre almost two years after its run at the Vineyard. That interim ushers in the "low point" of the Backstory, a time when passion is set aside and the principal players ponder more practical issues, like paying rent. Bowen, the pragmatist to Bell's idealist, began warming to the idea that maybe [title of show] had run its course, and he and Bell should consider moving on. Bell, however, wouldn't give up.

He created "The [title of show] Show," a series of YouTube clips that featured guest appearances by everyone from Cheyenne Jackson to Sierra Boggess and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Although Kevin McCollum had merely optioned the show, Bell announced in each clip that [title of show] was officially headed for Broadway, knowing full-well that McCollum was preoccupied with other projects. Nevertheless, all that old-fashioned chutzpah paid off. In the spring, the show was booked into the Lyceum, following none other than Patrick Stewart's splashy Broadway turn in Macbeth. At last, Bowen and Bell were heading for the big leagues or takin' it to the next level to quote Carol Channing quoting the Notorious B.I.G..

As for changes on the road to the Great White Way, [title of show] has been expanded to include all of the above, thus granting the low-budget production with one very special effect. Since the audience is now watching a Broadway show about two guys dreaming of being in a Broadway show, it's like watching a dream come true before your very eyes.

So now we arrive at the Backstory's conclusion. Ideally, this is where you insert a memorable vignette, one that gives the reader a sense of hope and excitement about the future. In this case, the fitting sign-off is "Part of It All," a duet Bell and Bowen sing midway through the show about wanting to earn a decent living on Broadway. "There'll come a day when we'll look back at the time we spent writing this very show/Our attempt to stay above the derivative tricks and the critical undertow/Our show, though small/Will have been part of it all."