Aaron Ricciardi is a NYC-based musical theater writer, playwright, Equity actor, and educator who hails from South Florida. His plays and musicals include The Star Killers, Only Child, A Bushel and a Peck, Nice Nails, The Travels, and Hanukkah Harriet, which is published and licensed by Stage Partners. His work has been produced and developed by Clubbed Thumb, the Playwrights’ Center, NYMF, Jewish Theatre of Bloomington, Stages Bloomington, and the BMI Workshop, and he is an Affiliated Writer at the Playwrights’ Center. Awards and residencies include Clubbed Thumb Early-Career Writers’ Group, Playwrights’ Center Core Apprenticeship, BMI Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop, Roundabout Space Jam, and the Clubbed Thumb Constitution Commission. Aaron contributed to The Playwright’s Toolbox, released in May 2024 by Applause. Aaron graduated from the Theatre program at Northwestern University, where he studied playwriting under Laura Schellhardt, and he received his MFA in Playwriting from Indiana University, where he studied under Peter Gil-Sheridan. As an educator, Aaron has taught at SUNY New Paltz, Indiana University, and 92Y; currently, he is on the college faculty of Manhattan School of Music, where he directs the Musical Theatre Lab Series. www.aaronricciardi.com
Most agree that the most important component of a musical is its book and that the book should come before the songs—but what comes before a book? Often, it’s a treatment, a highly readable outline that is at heart a pitch document meant to explain, in prose, what the final product of a proposed musical might look like. Treatments are typically used in the rights-acquisition process or when applying for a bookwriter job, but they are also an invaluable tool for finding the structure and heart of a musical all on their own. This class will take writers through the process of finding an idea for musical, outlining its planned structure, working out its theatrical language, and weaving together ideas and a vision into a document that eloquently expresses what a final product might be. By looking at real outlines and treatments of original and adapted new musicals, by reading the books that those treatments became, and by analyzing musical theatre show structure more generally, writers will develop an arsenal of understanding and skills that will help them not just begin crafting their own industry-literature treatment, but also understand how and why musicals work. This class is intended for playwrights, bookwriters, librettists, lyricists, composers, and any writer with even a passing curiosity about the musical theater form. Feel free to come to class with a musical you’ve been dying to start—or finish!
Aaron Ricciardi
