What began in 2008 as a playwriting assignment for a West Virginia University class has become a full-blown production, playing to sold-out audiences as part of the prestigious 10th annual Downtown Urban Theater Festival in New York.

Kingdom Come, by Matt Webster, a 2011 graduate of WVU’s School of Theatre and Dance, is a musical with an interview-style feel where the 10 characters individually reveal their thoughts and feelings about their personal experience on the day of Sept. 11, 2001. It strives to take the audience back to “where they were” and challenges them to move into the future.

After receiving his bachelor of fine arts in acting from the College of Creative Arts, Webster He packed his bags for “The City” at the end of the summer and took off with the hopes of stretching the script as far as it could go.

“I’m young and inexperienced compared to others here,” Webster said, “but with all that I was challenged with at WVU I have what it takes to hold my own, because WVU prepared me better than I could have ever hoped.

“I have all the skills I need to do my job. Don’t get me wrong; I still have a lot to learn. I’m in an acting class, I take yoga once a week and I go to workshops and readings,” he said. “It’s a process and one that I am embracing. I constantly seek advice from my mentors.”

“Kingdom Come” was originally a monologue play with only five characters.

“My professor, Frank Gagliano, suggested that I add a song to the last monologue, since he felt the show could be enhanced with some music,” Webster said. “I took this feedback full-force, and during the following summer, wrote about six songs for the show.”

But the show’s direction soon got lost, he said, and Webster deleted all 60 pages to start fresh with a new concept, which kept some original stories but changed dramatically from the first version.

“It was begging to be cut. I was scared at first, but then I realized that it had to be done. That’s what is exciting to me about writing, that you can start over whenever you want, which can open up an entirely new possibility for your work,” he said. “What kept me going was the feeling that I was on the verge of something better than what I had. I had to have faith that I was working toward something great.”

The first public production of the show, performed in the 2010 spring semester at WVU, got a respectable response from the audience and led Webster to make more changes based off of the feedback. Subsequently, Webster ended his senior year with a public reading of the new script.

“The success from that show earned us a second performance at West Virginia Wesleyan a couple of weeks later,” Webster said.

The big move to New York City was intimidating, Webster said.

“NYC is terrifying. It can make you feel scared, shy, confused, wonderful, excited and inspired, all at the same time,” he said. “Sometimes you wake up with absolutely no motivation and no opportunities, and then you open your email up and find out that you just booked a job. It is one of the best feelings, but you have to go through a lot of no’s to get to that one yes. You get that glimmer of hope in your inbox and the world seems limitless.”

Webster’s biggest challenge in his transition into the NYC theater industry was the process of finding a place to showcase his work.

“Kingdom Come” was selected as a top 10 finalist for the Downtown Urban Theater Festival out of more than 200 submissions.

“It’s mostly hurry-up-and wait, which is a very frustrating but exciting process,” Webster said. “You spend hours working on something, years even, then an opportunity like this presents itself and the gratitude and honor that you feel for being chosen is wonderful.”

Some more challenges he faced included things that had come a lot easier to him in his college years at WVU.

Webster had been accustomed to having certain materials provided for him at WVU, such as rehearsal space, a piano, lights, equipment, a photocopier and more. However, he learned very quickly in his new setting that the responsibility to secure these necessities was all his own.

He also had to adapt to a shorter timeline for the rehearsal process.

“In school, the tech rehearsal process was usually a week, and in this festival we got five hours for tech,” Webster said. “The amount of time we were able to spend was severely limited. We rehearsed three days a week for three hours at a time, and in school we would have four-hour rehearsals for five days a week.”

Chasdan Ross Mike, a fellow 2011 BFA acting graduate from WVU, has been with Webster from the start of his “Kingdom Come” journey – from performing as an original cast member at WVU to performing in NYC for the show’s debut.

“The show has grown in the sense that it became a tighter and more well thought-out show since the first script,” Mike said.

Mike and Webster come from the same high school and have been best friends ever since.

“Matt had to really play all the parts in putting the show together. Casting the right actors, finding the adequate rehearsal spaces, a piano player, musical director and lighting designer, all of whom he found on his own,” Mike said. “He was responsible for keeping everything together which he did excellently.”

Webster hopes to take the show further now that it has been seen by industry professionals, and said that in order to produce anything in NYC, “you need money, and lots of it.”

“Without the support of WVU the show wouldn’t have the small amount of success that it has,” he said. “The most important thing I’m still learning from this process is, ‘out of limitations comes creativity.’”

The show’s March 23 received a standing ovation and had audience members drying their eyes at the end, Webster said.

“It was an incredible experience, and everyone had wonderful things to say about the show,” Webster said. “The people that had seen it in the past loved the new changes and those who were experiencing it for the first time were completely invested in what was happening on stage.”

For more information on “Kingdom Come,” visit www.KingdomComeMusical.com or https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kingdom-Come-An-Original-Musical/140179046026044. For more information on the School of Theatre and Dance, visit http://theatre.wvu.edu.

By Mel Moraes
University Relations/News

-WVU-

mm/03/30/12

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