Creative duo make early musical-theatre debut

Takapuna Grammar students Aedan Ward and Tom Talbot have embraced the challenge of creating a musical, which is to be staged at the Rose Centre. They tell Helen Vause about the project that drew them together and what it took to make their show a reality.

Aedan Ward remembers standing by the water cooler at Takapuna Grammar School (TGS) when one of his teachers mentioned talk of students writing their own musical, and wondered whether Aeden might be the just the guy to do it.

That was the day the idea took hold for the now Year 13 student.

Next thing, he heard that another student at the school was a very competent composer who would be more than capable of putting together the score for a musical production.

Could the pair of them do it?

Aeden barely knew Tom Talbot, who is a year behind him, but 12 months on, the pair are overseeing rehearsals for Golden Screens, the musical they’ve co-created, which is to be staged at the Rose Centre this winter.

For both the writer and producer, collaborating on a musical as a pair of schoolboys was an unexpected opportunity, and they’re delighted with the results so far.

Aedan had already made his mark in drama at school and Tom had been turning heads with his musical-composition skills and in performance, notably on the clarinet.

Aedan has often appeared in TGS productions, and outside school as a young stand-up comedian, which was when Tom first admired his talent.

He’d also taken singing lessons.

Aedan took up the challenge of writing a musical in early 2022, when it occurred to him that a new path could lie ahead, leading to options he’d never thought of before.

“I realised I didn’t want to just be in things. I could be making them and I could be creating the roles and stories that I want to be in. It was pretty exciting.”

Once the notion of writing a musical was planted, and after some intensive thinking, Aedan pretty quickly formed the idea for Golden Screens.

He began writing, which he recalls as a painstaking, solitary process.

He reckons that every minute of the 90 minutes of musical theatre took a couple of hours of creative effort on the script.

Early in the process, he brought Tom into the project. The pair began to work together on how the music and words could work together.

“I went first,” Aedan says, “but then he was right into it with ideas about what was working and what wasn’t, and we were in it together. I am the writer, but it is a collaboration.”

So what is Golden Screens all about?

The story is based around a cast of 16 television characters, all starring in their own different shows. Away from their day jobs on camera, the colourful bunch all live in a made-up ‘TV land’ world.

Far from the glitz and glamour, they are all living under the threat of being cut from their shows.

The boys describe Golden Screens as both comedic and tragic.

For the music, Tom has put together a four-piece group of drums, clarinet, cello and piano.

He says this mix of instruments gives him a good variety of options, providing the range of pitch and style he wanted.

Having their musical-theatre debut at the Rose Centre is in part due to Aedan’s serendipitous choice of Northcote-based Patrick Kelly as a singing teacher, long before he contemplated writing a musical.

Kelly is internationally known in musi- cal-theatre performance and teaching.

He’s been on stages from Broadway to Japan, and mentored many in the field.

Writing and producing youth theatre has also been part of his career. Once Kelly knew his young singing student had bigger things on his mind, he stepped into a mentoring role with the writing of the show, ultimately taking a proposition to the Rose Centre to stage four performances of Golden Screens

He says what he saw developing with the talented pair of students reminded him of something similar he’d tried 30 years ago. He knew he wanted to back them.

“Writing a piece of work like this at their stage of life is as rare as hen’s teeth. It’s just not the sort of endeavour you would usually expect,” Kelly says.

“Together they have made a legitimate piece of theatre. Aedan is a very solid writer with a strong bent towards good comedic writing. Tom is a clever musician and his music for this is a solidly crafted piece of work. It is a very interesting score for such a young chap to do, I think. He has all the hallmarks of someone wanting to become a composer.”

He believes the pair could be part of the “next generation” in the musical-theatre business.

“And I’m fully committed to supporting them. They have all the hallmarks going on to their chosen fields.”

Looking back over the hectic and demanding months of combining study and school performances with their writing endeavours, they wonder how they got to the brink of staging their musical.

When it’s all over, they’re not planning another combined project, in the short term anyway.

They intend to take different directions after school.

“But yeah,” quips Tom, “when I’ve made it big on Broadway one day, I can see myself calling Aedan to say how about we do it again.”

From school, Tom plans to join family in the UK for a tertiary education in music and composition at an institution yet to be determined.

Aedan has dreams of pursuing a future in stand-up comedy, and taking a tertiary-education path in keeping with his success to date in drama at school.

Both had lead roles in the school production of Mamma Mia last year and, like many of the cast, both crashed with Covid shortly after the final curtain.

Aedan is also onstage this month in Company Theatre’s production of The History Boys at the Rose Centre (story, pages 38-39).

When the curtain goes up on the first of the four scheduled performances of Golden Screens, the cast will be largely drawn from the ranks of TGS drama students.

With rehearsals in full swing, alongside their school studies, both its creators have high workloads to deal with.

Tom has also had to manage an injury sustained as the result of a recent tangle with

Both say they’ve learned a lot from the reality of creating Golden Screens, including the power of collaboration.

“Before we started creating Golden Screens, we didn’t have much of a clue how to write such a large-scale musical and we both learned so much during the process,” says Tom.

“I think that the only real barrier to entry is the huge amount of time and dedication needed to be put into making something. Really, anyone with the motivation to create a musical and who has had some experience in the field can do it.”

The pair say their target audience for Golden Screens is everyone who wants to come and see it – parents, students and the wider community. They promise a brand-

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