On Writing: A grammar musical, a grammar column, a grammar Substack
As another musician says: Ch-ch-ch-changes.
Since I started this Substack, it has been, with few exceptions, a mailing list for my biweekly column in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
That’s about to change.
First, as regular readers know, we’re less than two weeks from the world premiere of The Angry Grammarian: A New Musical. The below piece goes into lots more detail about that.
Second, I’m using the launch of the musical to rethink this platform. With the column in today’s paper, I’m bidding farewell to the Inquirer, and look forward to writing more broadly about grammar and language here on Substack.
Also more angrily.
Newcomers can subscribe to have these grammatical rantings delivered to their inbox:
Finally, a programming note: It’s been too long since Philly has held an amateur spelling bee. So we’re doing one this week.
Tuesday night, February 27, I’m hosting an amateur spelling bee at the Pen & Pencil Club (1522 Latimer St., Philadelphia, PA 19102). It’s free to attend and compete, and it won’t be too hard—at least to start. 7 pm. Register ahead of time here, or register on site. Prizes include tickets to The Angry Grammarian, as well as signed grammar and language books.
On writing a grammar musical:
You don’t realize how hard it is to rhyme the word comma until you try writing a song about commas.
Drama? Yeah, that’s dramatic, OK, check. Trauma? Too melodramatic. Mama? Not unless your singer is 5 years old, in which case they’re probably not singing about commas. Llama? No thanks on absurdist theater, Ionesco. Obama? Who wants to get political?
These are questions I’ve grappled with over the last decade as I’ve endeavored to write an original musical about grammar, language, and punctuation.
Is it possible to write a grammar musical that isn’t as didactic as Schoolhouse Rock!, as old-timey as 1776, or as corny as elementary school shows performed regularly around the country?
We’re about to find out together. The Angry Grammarian: A New Musical, presented by Pier Players Theatre Co., runs March 7 through 16 at Theatre Exile in South Philadelphia.
No shade to Schoolhouse Rock! or 1776 — they’re great shows — but along with my writing partner, award-winning local playwright David Lee White, we were interested in a romantic comedy that played with grammar and language first, taught grammar and language second.
That’s how we ended up with ballads like “Lie With Me and Lay Me,” in which Greg and Lisa, our two protagonists, serenade each other: “Lie with me and lay me/ Your usage is so right/ Lay takes a direct object/ So make me your object tonight.” Or “Bring in Da Funk, Bring in Da Wagnalls,” a wah-wah-driven soul anthem about why, for Lisa, the hardcore descriptivism of Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary makes it superior to the Oxford English Dictionary — and how that’s a metaphor for her approach to language, love, and life.
Some of my most controversial column topics lent themselves naturally to songs. When I wrote about whether one space or two follows a period, my inbox exploded with (wrong) people who (wrongly) asserted that two spaces were needed. “The Right Space” became a song about Greg, who writes a grammar column for a newspaper (I swear this show isn’t autobiographical), searching for a soulmate who puts only one space after a period.
Similarly, few grammar topics incite as much passion as Oxford commas (a.k.a. serial commas, a.k.a. Harvard commas) … so of course I wrote a song called “The Comma With Too Many Names.” (Without spoiling too much: Greg and Lisa have a budding romance, but they disagree on the Oxford comma. Things get ugly.)
Not everyone is as obsessed with grammar as those two. Miriam, Lisa’s sister, and Web, Greg’s best friend, open the second act with “Whom Cares?” — a song in which they deliberately drop language errors in every line: “When we conversate/ You misunderestimate/ My grasp of rules, supposably/ Makes me lose my head, literally.”
It’s an absurd (not absurdist!) show. But it’s a lot of fun. Tickets for The Angry Grammarian’s nine performances are at theangrygrammarian.com.
Come correct.