← The Works

Bystanders

2008

Bystanders survives in the archive primarily as a set of music recordings made in February 2008. No script, program, or cast list has been recovered, but the demo tracks tell their own story: this was a musical built around a gallery of named characters, each given a song of their own.

The recordings open with an Intro and move through a sequence of character pieces — Erich, Serena, Denise, Jaymee, Bob, Bill, and Sylvia — before closing with a Finale. The structure suggests an ensemble piece in which a handful of ordinary people, the bystanders of the title, step forward one at a time to be heard. Additional working tracks labeled "boy," "girl," "new intro," and "outro" point to a score that was still being shaped and revised as the show came together.

Musical Numbers

Production Notes

The surviving demo recordings are dated February 2008. The materials in the archive consist entirely of audio files; no text documents, scripts, or programs were found, so cast, venue, and crew details are not currently known.