Writers’ Room performed by Alarm Will Sound

Music by Matthew Browne Performed by Alarm Will Sound Live at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, July 30, 2016 “Writer’s Room“ aims to evoke the atmosphere of a room full of talented, driven, and sometimes stubborn television writers who are trying to come up with some good material for their next show, which has a very quickly approaching deadline. The piece, depicting this chaos, is constantly brainstorming, workshopping, revising, squabbling, and panicking. Much like some the more dysfunctional, wild, and entertaining writers’ rooms on television from the past, the music is constantly introducing new ideas, exhausting them to their logical breaking points, and finally tossing them aside in favor of newer, sexier ideas - sometimes shockingly and abruptly. Throughout the piece, there are moments of exciting momentum (as if one particular idea works well enough to run with), moments of absurdity (as if one of the crazier writers decided to shout out the first idea that came to their head -- known as a “wildie“), and also, as expected, many moments of bitter argument and chaos (where nobody can agree on what the piece is actually about). Somehow though, out of all this mess of ideas, the writers paste together something resembling a script, ready for air.