The adage of “write everything you know” has proven fruitful for real-life couple that is creative Bennett and Ashleigh Taylor.

The musical theatre performers came across whenever 25-year-old Bennett and 29-year-old Taylor both starred in the 2017 creation of American Idiot and their love blossomed whenever Bennett moved from Townsville to Sydney.

Co-creators of this new lease of life of Us musical Ashleigh Taylor and Ben Bennett. Credit: Rhett Wyman

But simple months in their relationship that is two-and-a-half-year Taylor to New Zealand for five months to surface in Pleasuredome The Musical. It absolutely was with this separation which they had written the majority of this new Australian musical, The lifetime of United States, which makes its world premiere at Hayes Theatre Co this thirty days.

The show follows the relationship that is long-distance of college sweethearts Charlie and Ellie, additionally played by Bennett and Taylor. The few are forced aside whenever Charlie, a musician, would go to the united kingdom to follow their profession, while Ellie continues to be behind within their hometown to look after her mom, who has got early-onset Alzheimer’s.

“We explore exactly exactly what this means to get in touch to a different individual, whether or perhaps not we have to actually see an individual so that you can keep any type of relationship and just just what that absence of real connection does,” claims Taylor. “We were really much drawing on individual experience.”

The musical does not flinch through the difficulties of long-distance love. “What the show that is whole about isn’t having that connection and gradually it deteriorates until it is not here after all,” claims Bennett. “Every time the thing is one another you fill it right back up a little bit, nonetheless it’s like there is a opening when you look at the base http://www.datingreviewer.net/pl/bdsmcom-recenzja associated with the glass.”

As the Life of Us is profoundly informed by their very own experience, the initial concept for the show bubbled up before Taylor had also met Bennett. The Artist’s Way to inspire herself in 2013 she was feeling creatively lost, so began following Julia Cameron’s popular self-help book. One evening she dreamt the plot about a relationship that is long-distance as a result of exactly how the set should look.

“I’m not similar amount of musician and songwriter that Ben is, on my own,” says Taylor so I didn’t feel I had the skills to write it

The idea sat inside her log for decades until she became a part of Bennett and shared it as a task in order for them to focus on utilizing the pair co-writing the book and Bennett penning the songs and words. “Ben usually jokes now once we state goodnight, he is like please dream up something great,” laughs Taylor.

The composer and lyricist behind Broadway hits Godspell, Pippin and Wicked despite the Life of Us being the first musical written by either of the two, the show scored them a place at the ASCAP Foundation Musical Theatre Workshop in Los Angeles last year led by Stephen Schwartz.

The two were the first-ever Australians plumped for for a coveted spot on this program, which selects attendees through a submission process that is worldwide. They received mentoring that is invaluable Schwartz and in addition Winnie Holzman, whom composed the guide for Wicked and developed the acclaimed teenager tv drama My alleged Life.

The tracks into the Life of Us function a pop that is strong, utilizing the set citing the soaring anthems of Dear Evan Hansen as well as the Greatest Showman as comparable in noise.

“[Schwartz] actually guided us on how to have that pop music sensibility but manage to drive a tale arc through it,” claims Bennett. “That launched my eyes, because he had been one of the primary individuals to bring pop music music into modern musical theater right back when you look at the ’70s.”

For the few working alongside each other has just strengthened their relationship. “It’s the glue that holds us together,” says Taylor. “We fight about a great deal of things, although not the musical. That has been hanging around.”