'Island Song' premieres at Wells-Metz Theatre

With little set, no breaks and less than a night for the actors to mull over the changes the writers gave them, “Island Song” premiered at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at the Wells-Metz Theatre.

Though “Island Song” is still a work in progress as a workshop musical, the cast of five opened to a large and diverse crowd ranging from students to elderly members of the Bloomington community.

The musical runs for the next three nights, but Jesi Evans, who works at the Wells-Metz box office, said tickets are going fast.

“The turnout is pretty big because of hype from the new material,” Evans said. “All the different nights are getting filled up.”

Musical theatre major Hannah Slabaugh said although her friends are in the musical and attracted her to the show, she wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to see new material.

“It’s an entirely new play,” Slabaugh said. “The writers are also from New York and pretty famous, so that’s really cool.”

Also a musical theatre major, Elaine Cotter said the musical’s contemporary feel is what attracted her to “Island Song.”

“I’m pretty excited,” Cotter said. “I’ve heard the music is really difficult and there’s not a lot of set.”

Derek Gregor, who wrote the music for “Island Song,”said he met his co-writer, Sam Carner, in a graduate program for musical theatre at New York University.

Since then, they have written two full shows together, including “Unlock’d,” which won a Richard Rodgers Award and has since been produced at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, where it was critically acclaimed. “Island Song” is their second full production.

Gregor said the show is still in the works, and it has been performed at universities across the country as the pair tries to nail down specifics to put on a non-workshop production, the ultimate goal of the piece.

The entire concept of “Island Song” was built around a single song the pair wrote called “Wall Lovin’,” Gregor said.

“It was about feeling lonely,” Gregor said. “As we continued writing, we started having a common theme of life in New York, and from there we started fleshing it out.”

Gregor said this isn’t the final version of “Island Song.” He said he and Carner plan to come back with a director from New York to put on a full production at IU sometime in January.

“We really want to have it have a consistant theme,” Gregor said. “We hope one day to have it play in New York.”

Follow reporter Janica Kaneshiro on Twitter @janicakaneshiro.