By and large I use this blog to write about musicals by people who are not me. However, on occasion I’ll use it as a platform for tooting my own horn. This is one of those occasions.
To wit: I’m delighted that my multiple-award-winning family musical Gideon and the Blundersnorp is now available for licensing from Pioneer Drama Service! Pioneer is a premier publisher of family-friendly plays and musicals, so they made for a natural fit. They’re also lovely people who have been unabashedly enthusiastic about the show.
All this means that Gideon is now available for performance by local and school theaters both in the USA and abroad (I am very excited) without my having to do any work as the show’s producer (I am very relieved).
On top of that already good news, the show has won the 2025 Shubert Fendrich Memorial Playwriting Award! (Please see plaque pic below as evidence.)
The plot
What’s the show about? Plot-wise, Gideon concerns a stableboy who dreams of being a Royal Cavalier, one of the realm’s mounted knights. Gideon has the equestrian skills and bravery, but not the social standing. He’s repeatedly told that only the children of nobility can become Cavaliers, never a lowly peasant like himself.
But when the kingdom is threatened by a legendary monster — the titular Blundersnorp — Gideon takes it upon himself to chase after a Cavalier who is unwittingly riding into harm’s way. This propels him into various adventures, as well as the companionship of Alanna, a kidnapped viscountess. The two of them team up, despite the cultural gap between them, and end up facing the Blundersnorp together. Along the way both come to realize that social status at birth doesn’t dictate a person’s future.
The show’s had a number of productions (gaze upon some of them here) and was voted Best Musical at the 2021 Hollywood Fringe, where it made its debut.
Nobody likes backstory
Gideon is my take on the YA fantasy genre, put into musical form. The story owes a certain debt of gratitude to Lloyd Alexander, Piers Anthony, David and Leigh Eddings, and other fantasy authors who impacted me as a kid. There’s plenty of rambunctious adventure in the show, but also a core theme that personal virtue is more important than social status. This message transcends genre and era, and is one that I really want to convey to young audiences.
My original concept for the show was a piece for narrator and orchestra, akin to Peter and the Wolf but an hour long and with a more involved plot. I wrote an entire draft of this version, but the idea turned out to be impractical. (If you hand an orchestra a sixty minute piece of music, it had better be by Mahler.)
On the other hand, an hour is a perfectly reasonable length for a stage musical, and the story translated very nicely to this format. And in fact, some of the music originally written for the orchestra-and-narrator version survives via themes that pop up throughout the stage musical version.
Ye olde upshot
If you’re a theatrical artistic director (or know someone who is), feel invited to visit Gideon’s shiny new page at Pioneer Drama Service.
You can also listen to the cast album of the original Los Angeles production at all the usual music-streaming places.
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