Love Equals Pain! Mind-Numbing Pain!

When people ask me what Yeast Nation is about, and I flail around verbally trying to explain that it's really hilarious but also kind of freakishly serious; that it's literally about single-celled yeasts three billion years ago, except that's not really what it's about at all; that it has clear parallels to Antigone and Macbeth (and a lot of other "serious" classical theatre), and it's also deeply fundamentally, joyfully ridiculous... I'm usually able to refrain myself from going into "guns, germs, and steel" and the allocation of resources...

I mean, I'm trying to sell tickets...

At first, I was saying that Yeast Nation is kind of like Urinetown, but the more we work on it, the more I see that's not true. There are a few Big Picture similarities, but the two shows are very different.

The one thing I never find myself mentioning is Love. And yet, despite all I just wrote, love really is the driving force behind our story. Jan-the-Sly (the "princess") knows she is less loved by her father Jan-the-Eldest (the king) than her brother Jan-the-Second-Oldest ( the crown prince); and that sense of injustice, based on nothing but her gender (except yeasts don't have gender), and her hatred for her undeserving but beloved brother, drives every dastardly scheme she undertakes. It's always the ones without power -- but close to it -- that crave it the most.

But significantly, Jan-the-Sly would never think in those terms because love hasn't been invented yet, since it's three billion years ago on the floor of the ocean. And yet, love will fly like a stealth bomber through this entire story. And while, 90% of musicals are love stories, this is a story about the danger and powerful destruction of love.

In the form of a Greek tragedy. That's a rock musical. That's actually a quirky comedy.

It's interesting to note that there are no songs in Act I with the word love in the title. There are five in Act II. And you can sort of chart the arc of our story through those titles: "You Don’t Know a Thing About Love," "Don’t Be a Traitor to Love," "Love Equals Pain," "Doom! Love! Doom!" and "Look at What Love Made Me Do." There's even one more that's about love, though it doesn't appear in the title: "You're Not the Yeast You Used to Be."

Before all that, in Act I, Jan-the-Second-Oldest has a fight with Jan-the-Sweet, and after she storms out, he sings a song about the love he feels for her that he can't yet verbalize, "I'll Change the World Around Her." He is the first of the yeasts to love, so they don't have language for it yet. After the song, our (sort of) narrator Jan-the-Unnamed says to her yeast chorus, "Did you not feel it, children? The 'flame' that burns within him, the one cherished by the Creatures-Yet-to-Come?" (The Creatures-Yet-to-Come are us.) When one of them replies, "Twas mighty, this heat," Unnamed reveals the secret that will propel the rest of the plot like a virus: "Twill grow mightier, still! For 'twas the heat - of Love!"

Once Jan-the-Wise overhears their conversation, once the word infects him, he's doomed too. His vague feelings of something toward Jan-the-Sweet now take on new weight and new peril. Love is fucking shit up. Rather than the force that usually propels us toward a Happy Ending, here love is the enemy. As the king bemoans in Act II:

Doom is the outcome!
Doom is the love-child!
Doom all around you!
Doom now has found you!

In fact, the word doom appears in our script more than any other words, except yeast (obviously) and love (which appears 120 times). Not a coincidence.

Like its sibling Urinetown, Yeast Nation gives us a hero who makes lots of terrible choices (in a world where there really aren't any good choices), but always for the right reasons; in both shows, he does it both for love and for the good of the community.

Once Jan-the-Sly sees how powerfully love can drive Jan-the-Second-Oldest, she realizes what a valuable tool of manipulation and power it can be. Though Unnamed warns her of the equal danger of self-love. By the end of Act I, the word has infected Jan-the-Famished, and she invokes her love for the king to get herself out of trouble -- which then infects Jan-the-Eldest, the most dangerous infection yet...

The second act shows us the fallout from the love virus. The act opens with Jan-the-Unnamed and her yeast chorus lecturing both the audience and the lead characters, with the greatest anti-love song you've ever heard in a musical.

Well, you don't know a thing about love!
Love comes on with hurricane force,
Drives a dire, disastrous course.
Love outkills disease and famine!
Hear us as we sing about love!
Love is like a hell upon earth!
Torture that begins upon birth!
Join us now as we examine:
Love-tinged sadness,
Love-fueled madness,
Steaming piles of
Wigged-out, pigged out
Love!

It feels like a glorious mashup of the opening number of Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with A Midsummer Night's Dream. And before you know it, the king is losing his edge because he's so enthralled by his love for his grand-yeast. Yes, you read that right. And it will be his downfall.

Once again, love sucks.

In "Don't Be a Traitor to Love," Jan-the-Sly needs the regicidal assistance of Jan-the-Wise, so she ruthlessly exploits his understandably adolescent love for Jan-the-Sweet, by persuading Wise that he has to be a traitor to the king (and the yeast kingdom?) in order not to be a traitor to his love for Sweet. Well played, Sly One.

Jan-the-Sweet and Jan-the-Second-Oldest nearly have nervous breakdowns over the ups and downs of their love throughout the second act. And it pretty much does the same to Jan-the-Wise.

So it's a musical comedy but not really a musical comedy... and it's a love story, but not really a love story, okay sort of a love story, maybe it would be better to call it a story about love, or maybe a story about the unpredictable power of...

Oh fuck this. Call it Yeast Nation.

The adventure continues. We start blocking Act II Monday.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

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