Composers and librettists create beautiful music together in three-week Nautilus program

It’s like speed dating for composers and writers — except that the first dates last for at least a couple of days.

Fifteen Minnesota-based artists interested in creating new musical theater or opera works have gathered daily since Nov. 9 in a street-level studio in St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood.

Every two or three days, they were issued a fresh challenge: Team up with a composer or writer with whom you’ve never worked and have a song ready by the next day that drops audiences into the middle of a story. Each challenge came with its own new set of parameters and prompts, be it theme, structure or number of performers.

This is the Nautilus Composer-Librettist Studio. For 40 years, Ben Krywosz has led these intensive sessions, which are designed to teach the art of collaboration to composers, writers and performers. His methods have achieved such renown in the fields of theater and opera that he’s now teaching them at Yale University. Half of the 70 composer-librettist studios he has led have been in New York City, with similar studios in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

But his home base remains the big brownstone building in St. Paul that was once part of James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway operation.

Last Friday in that big brownstone building, Justin Spenner was pacing, rehearsing the multiple ways in which he could deliver a marriage proposal. Meanwhile, Julia Isabel Diaz was preparing to offer a proposal of her own: That the couple call it quits. They sat down at a restaurant that was invisible to onlookers to sing through their comically conflicting motivations for meeting, pianist Sonja Thompson accompanying them in a song full of interweaving lines and misunderstandings.

That scene didn’t exist 24 hours earlier. That’s when composer Carter Quinn Tanis and librettist Angela Frucci were asked to write a story in song. When Spenner, Diaz and Thompson were done rehearsing, tweaking and performing the song, the other participants applauded enthusiastically, then started asking questions about the process of its creation.

Among the inspirations for Nautilus Music-Theater’s name is the submarine in Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” and there’s a bit of Captain Nemo in Krywosz, who bears the kind of omnidirectional beard found in portraits of Poseidon. He’s been captain of the good ship Nautilus since its founding in 1986 as a Minnesota Opera program, the entity setting sail independently in 1992 and winning three Ivey Awards (the Twin Cities’ now-defunct theater awards) between 2006 and 2014.

“None of this work is ever intended to be for the public,” Krywosz said before the studio began. “We position it that way so people are willing to take risks. … This is about focusing on the people. The projects are exercises. But it’s not unusual for someone to say, ‘I’ve learned more in two weeks than I learned in two years of graduate school.’”

“The Composer-Librettist Studio changed my life,” said Twin Cities-based playwright Katie Ka Vang, a 2018 participant. “It gave me the opportunity to practice writing a libretto and understand the nuances of how musicals and new music theater is made.”

Christina Baldwin, artistic director of the Jungle Theater, went through the program in 2003.

“The Composer-Librettist Studio changed me as a collaborator and artist,” she said. “The knowledge that Ben shares and how he breaks down the mechanics of good collaboration has been indispensable in every project that I have ever undertaken.”

Timothy Takach, one of the program’s 2015 composers, added, “Ben’s teachings about how to work with others, how to effectively set words to music for the specific needs of the theatrical stage, have stayed with me over the last 10 years.

“When I was writing my first opera last year, I could hear his voice in my head, steering me through certain decisions and kindly urging me to get out of my own way.”

The tone shifted greatly during rehearsal of the freshly written two-person scenes. A graveside dialogue sung by a grieving son (Joshua Row) and his deceased mother (Keri Rodau) brought to life Brian James Polak’s anguished lyrics that were lent weighty sadness by the minor-key music of Tim Kirchhof. Some participants were moved to tears as they offered feedback.

Krywosz did more than facilitate these discussions. He implored artists to be cognizant of how they compromise, paying close attention to how much they’re dominating the direction of a piece or acquiescing to the wishes of others. When offering feedback, he told participants that emphasizing positivity is most effective and that unsolicited advice is seldom heeded.

“We’re making an investment in the future of the art form,” Krywosz said of this tuition-free studio, for which participants are paid. “Over the long haul, the world’s a better place because people are telling stories through music in new ways.”

With: Selections created at the 2024 Nautilus Composer-Librettist Studio.

When and where: 7:30 p.m. Mon., Nautilus Music-Theater, 308 Prince St., St. Paul; 7:30 p.m. Tue., Walker Community United Methodist Church, 3104 16th Av. S., Mpls.

Tickets: $10 or pay as you can, available at 651-298-9913 or staff@nautilusmusictheater.org.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.