半岛体育

Corn gets stuck in your teeth. In this case, Shucked, a musical about corn, has been stuck in mine for 10 years. Never in my life would I have believed this gay, Jewish, optimistically cynical hardcore New Yorker would collaborate with two Nashville country music artists to write a musical comedy about corn! One where people come , to see it. Yet here I am, shopping for a yellow suit for its opening night on Broadway!

Like corn itself, Shucked took time to grow. And now, a week before its opening night on Broadway, I鈥檝e written the last kernel of a joke on a script that has been open on my desktop longer than most New York restaurants stay open. Shucked has become this unlikely show with the nickname, 鈥淭he Corn Musical.鈥� And remarkably, audiences are embracing it with open hearts and abundant laughter.

I initially set out to create a fictional town whose inhabitants had closed themselves off from the outside world to protect their singular way of life. They were fearful of anyone who was different, which is why I decided to then bring in someone different. I wanted to write a story where you gently realize that unless you open your hearts to people who are different than you, you never grow.

Then, the world started to change in unfamiliar ways鈥攄ivide and vitriol started to permeate our peripheral. Brandy Clark, Shane McAnally, and I knew we wanted to write about what we were feeling. We knew we needed to merge optimism with caution, to create a fictional world where polar ideologies could come together. We knew our show鈥檚 selling points would be its comedy, heart, music. And corn.

Corn became the metaphor for both growth and sustenance. Admittedly, though, it can also have a negative impact environmentally. Both the positive and negative of that was emblematic of the story I wanted to tell. It was also the perfect crop to close off this heartland farming community from a progressive world.

Video: Watch Caroline Innerbichler Perform "Walls" from Broadway's Shucked

In the past decade, while Brandy and Shane worked on their masterful score, I labored over the book. Especially the jokes. I鈥檝e been asked, 鈥淗ow do you make something funny when you鈥檙e writing it alone with no audience or sounding board?鈥� In all honesty, it鈥檚 like trying to throw a bird off a cliff: some fly away and some land鈥攕ometimes with a thud. And I literally experience all five stages of grief when a joke doesn鈥檛 work.

At first, you get into your head. You say to yourself, 鈥渢he only way I鈥檒l ever be good at this is if they change what 鈥榞ood鈥� is.鈥� You try not to be cynical鈥攅ven though you can be cynical and accurate. You sit and watch as sanity and rationale slowly unfriend you鈥�.

Then, you remember to trust your instincts, know your characters and the stakes of the scene. You commit to a tone and let your neurosis and experience do its job. And then you edit. And then you nervously let other people, more talented than you, speak it all out loud. Then, an audience tells you if you were right. But you must always trust your gut and see the obvious. It鈥檚 kind of like knowing a psychic isn鈥檛 legit because they let you write a check.

It also helps to team up with two of the finest and funniest storytellers you know, with two of the biggest hearts you鈥檝e ever met, whose music makes you laugh, cry, and feel the feels. And then the three of you spend 10 years together creating a world. You workshop it, you rewrite it, you rewrite the rewrite, you discuss, decide, debate, deliberate. You create.

Then you say, 鈥淗i Producers of Broadway鈥ere鈥檚 an original musical about corn with no source material and no big movie stars. You want to raise millions of dollars in an unstable, post-pandemic, tourist-light marketplace to put it on? We did mention it鈥檚 about corn, right?鈥� And only someone fearless, passionate, deeply intuitive, and slightly off-kilter would say, 鈥淵es. I see your dream. It鈥檚 my dream, too.鈥� That madman was Mike Bosner. We gave birth to this show, but he brought it to life in the most contemporary and original way.

Then you get to Broadway. You see the show in front of an audience, multiple times. You revise the rewrite of the rewrite. Then, one day, you finish. You hope.

For me, I鈥檓 never done. You close the file, but never the thoughts. There鈥檚 always one more joke, one more line, or one more scene that can be made just a little bit better. With Shucked, our masterful director, Jack O'Brien, gently, lovingly, sternly came to me and said, 鈥淧en down, my love. Your work is done.鈥� You know that moment is coming like a colonoscopy. You dread it, it鈥檚 filled with discomfort, and there鈥檚 a good chance there will be drugs.

But now, 10 years later, saying goodbye to this show is like sending a kid off to college. You will miss it. You hope you raised it right. You hope it finds its heart and brings good into the world. You know you鈥檒l see it again soon鈥攑erhaps as a success, perhaps not鈥攂ut you look at it in wonder and say: I created that. I am proud of that. And I love that.

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This show that we spent 10 years writing, that lived in our souls, that refused to leave, is now no longer ours. It belongs to audiences. Saying good-bye to my brilliant collaborators, who have become my family, is the hardest part.

But I also constantly remember that for every action, I tend to have an equal and opposite overreaction. So I鈥檒l take comfort in knowing there鈥檚 a theatre out there where people from diverse walks of life are coming together to laugh heartily and feel the feels because Brandy Clark, Shane McAnally, and myself fell in love with an idea, and each other. And as Peanut, one of our characters would say, 鈥淎t the end of the day鈥�. It鈥檚 11:59.鈥�

Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and NY Drama Critics Circle Awards winner Robert Horn is a New York native. Horn has written the books for 13: The Musical, Tootsie, Shucked, Dame Edna, Moonshine, Lone Star Love, and Hercules.