“Ogres are like onions,” proclaims Shrek, played by Brian d’Arcy James, “We both have layers.” Not unlike the big green hero, this same depth of character applies to Barnard alumna Jeanine Tesori, BC ’83, composer of the mega-musical that parallels the DreamWorks blockbuster.
Though she’s been living in the kingdom of Duloc for the past few years, Tesori wasn’t always so concerned with writing songs that would convey the back stories of a princess locked in tower or a little lord in search of respect. In fact, the composer of award-winning musicals Thoroughly Modern Millie and Caroline, or Change got her start as a pre-med student at Barnard. She made the switch to music after having spent two years on the medical track.
Describing herself now as a “mad layman scientist,” Tesori believes that “when you study music, and when you study great classical work, you realize that it’s a science, it’s a math.” Choosing to take classes at Columbia because Barnard did not yet have a music major, Tesori wanted to be tested compositionally when she didn’t yet have to contend with the pressures of paying rent or providing for a family. To her, music is “a beautiful combination of what is known and what is not known.”
And while solving for X doesn’t immediately lead to a cohesive score on the first go-around (she’s composed nearly 30 songs that don’t appear onstage in Shrek), Tesori relishes in the mystery and the process. “Rigor,” she explained, “doesn’t guarantee success or money, but it does guarantee a certain journey.”
Writing lyrics for the first time, David Lindsay-Abaire, author of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning play Rabbit Hole, accompanied Tesori on her compositional journey. While Tesori calls herself a “mid-career” composer, she has enjoyed writing with established playwrights like Dick Scanlan and Tony Kushner, CC ’78.
A graduate of the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program, Lindsay-Abaire came into Shrek as a knowledgeable listener, but without any formal music training. After four years of extensive collaborations, however, he and Tesori have developed a musical filled with catchy tunes like
Shrek’s confessional, “Who I’d Be” or the ritzy showstopper, “Freak Flag.” They’ve created an entirely original score, with Smash Mouth’s “I’m A Believer” being played by the orchestra only as an exit anthem following the final curtain call.
And yes, while Shrek The Musical does follow the same basic plotline of the cinematic gem that garnered over $200 million in box office sales, Tesori and co. spent a good deal of time inventing and improvising. For instance, the actors playing the fairy tale favorites that storm Shrek’s swamp spent countless rehearsal hours discovering just who their characters were and how they might act.
Tesori and Lindsay-Abaire encouraged this organic process. “When you start a show, you don’t really know what you’re doing,” said Tesori. She likened the creation of a musical to looking at a newborn baby, saying, “‘I love you, but I don’t know who you are yet.’ It’s all new.”
One of the few women who compose music for the theater—the only woman, in fact, to have had two new shows running concurrently on Broadway (Thoroughly Modern Millie and Caroline, or Change)—Tesori finds the paucity of female representation in New York theater disheartening. “It is very possible, very doable, and necessary that we have these [female] voices not just as playwrights and lyricists but also as composers,” said Tesori, who got her start writing tuners for the 1984 Varsity Show, The New U. “I know that they’re there, and I see them writing.”
At the center of a male-dominated profession, Tesori hopes to organize a free lecture series for students interested in music at Barnard. She aims to show that while there is no prescription for success, composing is in fact a viable career option. “It’d be lovely for kids to spend their energy just starting out knowing what will come their way from people who are older,” she said. The story of Shrek is one of inclusion and solidarity, and Tesori seeks to build camaraderie by giving back to the place where her professional life began.
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