Xerxes Atlas Blog

Hi everyone!  I'm Aaron Humphrey, and my awesome co-writer Justin Eade and I are going to be writing the script for XERXES' ATLAS.  I feel very fortunate to have been chosen to work on such an exciting project with along with a group of really passionate, talented people.  I'll be blogging here over the coming weeks to update you all on the progress we're making with the script.

Justin and I spent the first part of 2011 hashing out a detailed outline which will inform the rest of our work on the script.  Now we've moved on to trying to nail down the appropriate tone and language for the dialogue, which is a very different discipline than writing an outline as it's a lot less analytical and involves more trial and error to get the right "feel."

I think so far we have both enjoyed working together and having another writer to bounce things off of.  Justin is a very accomplished, knowledgeable writer, and I'm lucky to have him as a writing partner.  And the fact that I live in Australia and he's in New Zealand means that an International Team of Writers is collaborating on the script, which sounds pretty cool.

I'll have more updates soon, but in the meantime you can check out the blog I kept while I was working on my proposal to write the script for Xerxes' Atlas for a look behind the scenes of my creative process.  

If you're a script-writer and you're interested in writing the script for Xerxes Atlas: the world's first wiki-musical then you need to head over to elance.com and check out our Xerxes Atlas script writer project. There's a draft 'treatment' there for you to have a look at.

We're thinking to have the script finished in June - although that still gives us a bit more time should we need to make minor changes. Drafts and highlights will be made available to composers ASAP. We'll need to give as much information to them as possible. Song themes and keywords will need to be worked out from the script.

Q: I would like to ask if writing the Lyrics for the original songs to be played in the musical is part of the job description and if so, how will the rights to them be worked out eventually.

A: No, You don't need to write the lyrics for songs. (If you want to you could via the music process and perhaps be paid for that too). However, the script will need to drive the lyrics so its necessary that the script writer gives comments on what the content of the song should be. (ie expand on what I've put already in the song briefs)

Concerning who holds the copyright: We hold the copyright outright (that's why there's a payment).

Once the musical is premiered we release the musical under a CC-BY-NC-SA+ creative commons licence. With the plus ('+') representing a additional licence for schools and amateur theatre companies who might be on the fringes of being commercial. The script-writer will always be credited for writing the original script.

Please note that your script may be modified by someone else in the future.. They'll credit you as the orginal author and add their name to it.. that's the way it works..

Please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

So go to Elance and check out the Xerxes Atlas script writer project