The duo, who are also collaborating on the musical's lyrics, recently spent a week at Running Deer Musical Theater Lab to develop the show. Their goal is to complete the first draft this summer, cut a demo CD in the fall and mount a workshop reading by the end of the year.

About the recent week at the Theater Lab, Acito said in a statement, "A cabin in the woods, great food, a piano and a rhyming dictionary. What's not to like?" "Being away from it all gave us the focus to really find the heart of the show," added Stock. "Plus, we saw elk."

Jeffrey Stock composed the music for the Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical Triumph of Love. He is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for composition and the Jonathan Larson Grant. He was one of the composers of the Off-Broadway's Songs from an Unmade Bed, at New York Theatre Workshop. He also received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to write the score and libretto for a new opera.

Marc Acito is the author of the comic novels "How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater" (Editors' Choice - The New York Times ) and its sequel, "Attack of the Theater People." He co-wrote the twisted Christmas comedy, Holidazed, which was nominated for best play by the Oregon Book Awards, and performs "singing commentaries" on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

Previous Lab participants include Marcy Heisler, Zina Goldrich, Michael Mahler and William Donnelly. For more information about Running Deer Musical Theatre Lab, visit www.makemusicals.com.