Director's note:
I hadn’t heard of Oceanborn until Morgan reached out to me. They - fairly casually - mentioned that I could find a lot of information online, without pointing me directly to the Spotify album or 54 Below concert on Youtube. And yet, it took me a quick Google and about five seconds to realize that I was two internet degrees from being the next digital fan of this already-so-popular music. Just like the other thousands of people that discovered this show via the music online, I needed to know what the script contained because Eira and Finn were relatable and unlike other characters we typically see onstage.
It is no secret that this show is happening today because of the enormous fan base, grown almost entirely online and before the show had any discernible future on its feet. These people - mostly teens, mostly girls - craved this show because it is so dissimilar to most of the theatre that we see in the mainstream. The need for representation and characters like the ones in Oceanborn is immense. Morgan & Mhairi gave them life & had the vigor to move this show forward to a concert & staging because the need for young people to represent themselves on Broadway with stories that they relate to, can be inspired by, & jam to has a tenacity unfamiliar to producers & theatre professionals.
What matters about this approach is that Morgan & Mhairi - and now this cast & team - aren’t following the typical procedures for taking a show to production that the big players in American musical theatre have in the past. In this show about finding your own space and voice as a young person that is a leader, the embodiment of that in meetings, the rehearsal room, and online is evident. It’s contagious. This gesture of what this Oceanborn can be - full of joy, loss, friendship, kickass fight choreography, & ideally a fire budget - is the next step in a process that makes the lyric “here’s to the maybe of something new” catch in my ears every time that I hear it. The hope Finn’s village has for a new tomorrow is a need and a want that is present in every moment of creating this show and person it reaches.
