*

Broadway's Circle in the Square has welcomed back Nick Blaemire, who, three years ago, opened and closed his first musical Glory Days on May 6, 2008, at the theatre-in-the-round. Following that "one-night Broadway sensation" (his phrase), and a handful of other jobs, the young writer-singer-actor is now center stage in the Circle's revival of Godspell.

In addition to performing "We Beseech Thee" eight times a week (while simultaneously jumping on a trampoline and playing guitar), Blaemire writes new musicals, occasionally books a television gig and performs with his rock band, The Hustle. Before talking to Playbill.com, Blaemire was hard at work, laying down a few tracks with The Hustle in the recording studio.

	Blaemire in Godspell.
	photo by Jeremy Daniel

Can you talk about the new musicals?
NB: I'm writing the book, music and lyrics for a show called After Robert Hutchens, which we did a workshop of at Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer as part of their fellowship program. Sheryl Kaller directed it, and she was incredible. Jesse Vargas is doing all the arrangements and orchestrations for both The Hustle and After Robert Hutchens. The show is about these two brothers who find out their mother had an affair for 25 years that they never knew about, [and] they decide to go find the guy. It's been really interesting to write. It's a tiny little show.

I also started a new show called When the World Ends, which I'm also writing book, music and lyrics for, that John Simpkins is directing. He did Blood Song of Love at Ars Nova and we did The Black Suits at The Public. He's a beautiful director. We're in the process of doing rewrites for that right now and we should have drafts done by the New Year. Hopefully we'll have some productions lined up.

What is the end goal for these musicals, and what is the process like?
NB: I learned a ton the last time I wrote a musical — a lot about the process of patience. [Co-creator James Gardiner and I] definitely jumped in full-force with Glory Days. These two are, decidedly, taking a different path. I've been working on them for a while and I just really want them to be in awesome shape before we give them to any theatres, so I've been kind of keeping a lid on them. They're both small. They're similarly sized to Glory Days. They're definitely both commercial pieces, but my whole goal as a musical theatre writer is trying to figure out a way to marry my favorite things: the odd ways you can manipulate reality and represent reality in independent film, and musical theatre. I think that a lot of new [material] that gets written is very presentational and doesn't feel real, and you have to deal with people breaking into song. I think it's possible to connect the music and speech a little more organically. That's been the goal of these shows.