#adamandi ama

[melliotwrites]

hii I don't know if this is weird so sorry pls ignore if it is but did u write portia as a poc? like bea and quincy and vincent are clearly supposed to be played by actors of colour and like it plays a role in their storylines but idk abt portia

Not weird at all! The actor who plays Portia is biracial, and our initial considerations for the character was to have her played by an actor who was more white-passing than the Beatrix actor (whether she was a lighter-skinned POC or a white actor.) (Hence, Roswell favors Portia more and promotes her, etc.) However, in the current version, Bea also says this line before Ghost Writer:

"Students like us" implies Beatrix knows Portia is also a person of color by this point in the show, although I guess if we worked with a white actor, Bea could be referring to queer students. - Elliot

#adamandi #adamandi ama #adamandi musical #portia elizabeth harper #beatrix valeria campbell

[melliotwrites]

what would everyone’s favorite musicals be nowadays

Fun question!

Quincy: He'd be into Sondheims and music-forward shows but doesn't know the niche stuff. A Little Night Music, Passion, Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, etc

Vincent: Hedwig and the Angry Inch and other rock musicals

Ambrose: I just can't imagine him listening to musical theater. But I think if you asked him he'd say Les Mis or The Sound of Music or a classic show he saw with his family as a kid

Beatrix: I think it's not her main interest, but she'd actually be into off-broadways and niche shows exclusively. Ghost Quartet, 35 MM, The Wild Party, etc.

Portia: The only one of them who would be genuinely, earnestly into musical theater, I think- she keeps up with modern musicals and maybe doesn't know the oldies as much. She'd be playing Six and Waitress and Ride the Cyclone in the dorms.

#adamandi ama #adamandi #answered

[melliotwrites]

@aveasorae: do you have any ideas about the phaethon projects of the other 20 murdered nominees? 

Here’s the relevant interview text for other canon projects! Student #2 is Christian Mills, Student #4 is Drew Harrison, Student #1 is Bertha Geiser, and Student #5 is Adrian Farthington, as they identify themselves at the start of the interview (though ideally we’d have other actors to play these nominees- I did just realize that Adrian and Drew’s projects change later in the script. Let’s say they changed their minds, lol)

Outside of what’s canon, various actors did come up with ideas – without naming specific characters, one nominee was going to very literally “do” the “most” – hook up with as many men in the school as he could. Another one was going to make a creature made out of sewing jock arms together Frankenstein-style called the chbjunculus (this originated from an actor thinking the Marmorei would have to chop off all of their fleshy parts to make themselves marble, and didn’t want all the jock parts to go to waste,) and one of the students was going to try and manipulate the weather at the school to alleviate that ubiquitous gloomy Dark Academia half-rain and see if it made the students less depressed.

#adamandi musical #adamandi ama #Adrian farthington #christian mills #bertha geiser #drew harrison #answered #aveasorae #adamandi

[melliotwrites]

(Grouping the last few questions from @aveasorae together!)

Q: beatrix mentions “vincent lin’s basement”, and later vincent and quincy meet in his room- what are the student accommodations at ardess like?

Ooh! I think they're pretty standard dormitories, at the time decorated a bit nicer than modern-day dorms (see below for one of the period photographs we used as a source)- a bedroom and a living room that you usually share with another student, though they can pay more to get their own. Or if you don't want to deal with trying to get on-campus housing you can always live somewhere nearby. Beatrix mentions that Vincent's dorm building last year was 1) next to the Ardess Daily building 2) had a basement. So I think they have access to shared basements, kitchens, and common spaces in the building. During the year that Adamandi takes place, Quincy and Vincent are roommates. Ambrose has a single dorm in the fancy dormitories, Beatrix lives on the other side of campus to the Daily to save money (and therefore it was easier for her to crash at Vincent's last year), and Portia lives in the underclassmen dorms which are generally a little nicer and less run-down.

Q: if quincy had discovered (last-minute) that beatrix had been a phaethon nominee, would they still have killed vincent?

Hm! This is a moment I tend to leave open to audience interpretation (and, partially, the actors) in terms of Quincy’s motivations (Are they killing Vincent because they want the prize? To put him out of his misery? To make him a martyr and remove his sins? To remove the part of themself that is causing them to sin? To destroy the evidence of Vincent’s crimes or cover up their own?), but of course I have a writerly answer in my heart of hearts. And that answer is yes, probably, but they wouldn’t have killed Beatrix in that situation. ~Mel

Q: how would you sort the characters into the alignments (good-neutral-evil // lawful–neutral-chaotic)?

Here's where they'd be at the start of the show:

and here's where they'd be at the end of the show:

Q: set details pt 3- what were the articles in “the ardess daily” newspapers that were used in ‘read all about it’? (or was it just the lorem ipsum etc.) The Ardess Daily newspapers came from a distributor who makes period-accurate prop newspapers for shows: https://www.proppapers.com! I think they might have been more than lorem ipsum – stock period-accurate articles – but nothing related to the show.

#adamandi ama #adamandi #answered #aveasorae

[melliotwrites]

11/19: Adamandi AMA!

Hi everyone! In honor of Adamandi fan week* we will be hosting an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event on 11/19 to celebrate a year since the opening of the first production of our musical Adamandi.

HOW IT WORKS:

Our ask box will be open per usual, but we will try to answer everything as soon as possible! No question is too silly or too small - If you've been burning to ask "What does Vincent eat for breakfast" or "What software do you use to make your demos" or "What're some secret Adamandi set details we can't see from the recording," now is the time! (Of course, the usual rules of human decency apply - if you send something that is mean or offensive, or could be construed as mean or offensive, we won't be responding to it. ) We'll try to get to everything we receive Sunday, from 12:00pm (noon) to 11:59pm (midnight) Eastern Time.

Because of the nature of the event, we'll be focusing mostly on Adamandi questions, but if you have any asks about our other shows we'll get to them once all the Adamandi questions have been answered!

*We aren't running the Adamandi fan week or moderating it at all, we just think it is a fun idea and want to support :)

#adamandi ama #adamandi #adamandi musical #adamandi fan week #melliot #adamandifanweek

[melliotwrites]

what was casting like for adamandi?

Adamandi was our senior thesis, so we produced it through Princeton's theater program. Although some seniors pursuing acting theses can sign onto projects, Princeton runs most of its auditions though group sessions where project leaders (we were the project leaders on Adamandi) can listen to a group of auditionees cold read scenes, learn bits of music, and do exercises based on them. It's meant to be less intimidating than an individual audition. We then conferred with other projects that were casting to choose a group of people from this pool, and then consulted our director to cast them in roles!

#adamandi ama #adamandi #answered

[melliotwrites]

What would everyone's favorite musicians be nowadays? :)

I think Quincy would really be into classical music to relax/study to. He'd also probably be into 21st century opera.

Vincent would probably be into 70s/80s rock.

Beatrix would be into folk punk (Bendigo Fletcher, Mountain Goats, AJJ, etc.)

Portia would be into indie pop/bedroom pop (boygenius, Lucy Dacus, Laufey, etc.)

Ambrose is into 2000s alternative rock/pop rock (Imagine Dragons, Bastille, etc.) I also think he's not too into music (listens to his workout playlists and whatever they are playing in the gym.) (I had a friend in high school who was like "yeah I just. don't like music. I don't have strong feelings on it." and I think Ambrose is like that.)

I think Quincy and Vincent are the kind of couple to have aux fights (I think the only thing they can mutually listen to is jazz, swing, and 70s RNB) and Portia and Beatrix are the kind of couple whose music taste ends up blending together a few months into the relationship.

#adamandi #adamandi ama #vincent aurelius lin #quincy cynthius martin #beatrix valeria campbell #portia elizabeth harper #ambrose wellington bassford #answered #ballads-of-a-bluejay #quincent #portrix

[melliotwrites]

@aveasorae asked: i think you previously mentioned that the characters didn’t have set birthdays but you had a rough gauge of who’s older/younger- what’s that order like?

I think Ambrose is the oldest (he’s got one of those November birthdays that are juuust inside the grade cutoff), with Beatrix a month or two younger. Vincent is younger than Beatrix by a few months, and Quincy is around the same age, maybe March? And Portia was born around the same time of the year as Ambrose, but a year younger than the rest of the cast.

The names came pretty early in our process (to hear more about why we chose them, this post has some details!) If they ever had other names, we didn't write them down, alas. As far as I remember they've always been the same names. ~Mel

@casperwazhere

Elliot: I probably did the most work on Vincent, so my answer is him!

Mel: I really liked writing for the Administration, actually! I think they're the closest thing to a "force of nature" evil I've written before, so coming up with how they move and speak to evoke that (finishing each other's sentences, using many voices to make the same point) was super fun. In terms of research, I loved dreging up old exercise routines for Ambrose and looking into some more folk catholicism for Quincy to engage with.

#adamandi ama #adamandi #answered

[melliotwrites]

this is such a dumb question but i have to ask. when i was watching adamandi with some friends they heard that one of the phaethon nominees was named "david elizabeth hawthorne" and they immediately went "homestuck?" i don't understand what reference this might be, if it even is one, but i do have to ask: is it a deliberate reference, or just a coincidence?

HAHA this is my homestuck days vexing me. There's a guy in there whose name is Dave Elizabeth Strider I think and while I did not consciously reference it, my method for choosing this name was more "What middle name sounds right with David," so I can't deny that it might have subconsciously influenced me. ~Mel

#Adamandi ama #Adamandi #Answered

[melliotwrites]

hi there! recently got into Adamandi and I can feel it slowly becoming my latest hyperfixation, so I wanted to ask if there's a canon reason behind Beatrix living with her grandmother and not her parents? She's very relatable I love her very much

So glad you enjoyed the show! There definitely isn't a canon (meaning explicitly stated in the show) reason. From what I remember when we wrote it we thought that Beatrix's mom was probably trying to raise her on her own for a while. At a certain point, her mental health got in the way of caring for Bea and so Beatrix's grandmother took over as her primary guardian. I think Beatrix likes her mom and thinks of her as a close friend, but looks up to her grandmother more - and her grandmother's concern for Beatrix not to overwork herself when they were in high school was partially because she was projecting Beatrix's mom onto her.

~Mel

#adamandi ama #adamandi #answered

[melliotwrites]

would any of the characters have a kinlist. if so what would be on them

This sparked a whole debate about how online each character would be but we have agreed that probably none of them would have kinlists partially because they're so busy they'd be too offline to either know about them or consume enough media to make one. (Closest person would be Portia, who would tell Beatrix, and then maybe they'd both have one. I think Ambrose is the most offline guy on earth. You google him and find his middle school track trophy and his LinkedIn he made in Junior year. Quincy is very active on Twitter but mostly starting/continuing arguments in some highly niche online subculture like Early Medievalist Studies and thinks everyone else blogging in it is an idiot. Vincent prefers to spend his free time outside and if he knew about the internet he'd probably be more psychologically well and less isolated and get validation for his art, etc. Beatrix was online under an elaborate web of pseudonyms and such that she would stage interactions between but gave it all up for college.)

#adamandi ama #adamandi #answered #ballads-of-a-bluejay

[melliotwrites]

@aveasorae asked:

Q: set details- who did the blackboard drawings + were they all intentional?

The blackboard drawings were drawn by Elliot, Mel, and Tobias! Initially, the blackboards only had the eye painted on by our lovely set department, and our director Georgina Escobar and set designer Raul Abrego thought it would be fun to fill it in with chalkboard drawings by Vincent and Quincy (because it lived in their area of the stage.) Real chalkboard drawings also let Vincent really draw on the board during Student Body each night!

Elliot drew some diagrams of dissections and organs (the dissected rat, bird, and anatomical heart near the top – which I think has an arrow pointing to an area in it that says “love?”), Tobias drew a bat and a mutated rat with an ear on it near the bottom, which I imagine to be part of Vincent’s research. Mel drew the skulls, eyes, and chirologia (specific hand gestures of saints in icons and paintings) on the lower blackboard, labelled with their meanings. You can see some of them in this photo Mel took of the books next to the blackboard- I also remember the IXIC hand was on there somewhere. The Control one is one I made up- I imagine Quincy drew these for his project and then they were vandalized by Beatrix. And of course there’s a heart with “Quincy” written in it by Vincent, with the circle over the i… and then Quincy has added a flame over it, making it a Sacred Heart (like the one on their bowtie). Symbolism! 

#adamandi ama #adamandi #we're going to put questions with long answers in separate posts and group short ones together #so none of the answers get too long! #quincy cynthius martin #vincent aurelius lin

[melliotwrites]

@aveasorae asked:

Could you elaborate more on the “track thing” for portia?

It’s what she briefly implies when she’s talking to Quincy in the scene before A Little More In Love- she was previously on the track team, but developed a crush on another girl on the team and confessed her feelings to her. The girl not only didn’t return her feelings, but told everyone else in the team about Portia, which lead to Portia being kicked out of the team (or, realistically, the other girls complaining that they aren’t “comfortable” around her anymore and freezing her out until she left of her own accord.) This is what sends her to the Daily at the start of Sophomore year, a weird time to be looking for a new club: she needs a new social group, as soon as possible. ~Mel

#adamandi ama #adamandi #answered #portia elizabeth harper

[melliotwrites]

Which scene/song was the hardest to write, and which are you the most proud of?

Elliot: Little More in Love was hard to musically write for me (probably because I had written so many cute love songs for Princes and was kinda drained of the genre at that point. Similarly, I had lots of trouble writing Good Enough for Ghost Story because it's so similar to the Adamandi song genre, lol.) I think my ear just gets used to whatever genre I was working in and makes me think the song is really boring or something.

I guess I'm proudest of the music for I Hate and I Love, but I don't know if that's just because some of my profs really liked it.

Mel: The One Who Pulls The Strings was like pulling teeth, I think because we wrote it last and I was starting to apply a more critical eye to my work at that point- it was hard for me to just let the character speak & say what she had to say without worrying about how technically perfect my lyrics were. I think it turned out really well, though!

Lyrically I'm pretty proud of I Love You, I Swear- its precursor was originally written for an assignment to write a song with the hook "I love you," which I grumbled about at the time because I think it's a terrible hook (I think Rodgers & Hammerstein said that you can never write a good love song with the words "I love you" in it? And I kind of agree.) But I think it's possible to write a good hate song with the words "I love you" in it. It also has a sparser, simpler lyrical style than the rest of Adamandi, which I see as the precursor to what I'm experimenting with now in grad school (leaving space for the music to do some of the storytelling, etc!)

#adamandi ama #adamandi #answered

[melliotwrites]

HI if qns about all works are accepted can u please share a bit about the ghost story timeline?? like w no context. make it even more complicated than it actually is

Hahah!! yes......Yes.

Upper Diagram: The yellow line up top represents the ranch house that Joey and Anthony are visiting (the same one that Józef and Hao lived in.) The past is Józef and Hao's storyline, and the present is Joey and Anthony's, and for Act I the present generally has dominion over the past (as shown through the brackets) and in Act II things get a bit more muddy (this is related to "Hao gains sentience" in the lower diagram.) Also by "Deadwood" we really mean Dead End Gulch and were real tired while making these.

Lower Diagram: The bottom blue and pink lines represent the closeness between the present day couple and the past day couple (how are they interacting, how much can they touch/control/affect the physicality of the other, etc.) At the end of Act I they intersect, and in Act II they have to tear apart from each other again. This is simultaneously caused by and causes the burning down of the house.

And just for fun...general placement of where the song demos (and a couple upcoming song demos) fit on the chart:

#adamandi ama #ghost story musical #ghost story #melliot #answered #litanyofthemartyrs

[melliotwrites]

is Adamandi set in a certain time period? I thought it was contemporary, but now I'm not sure

Adamandi is set in the 1930s! It's based on the loose time period that Dark Academia media tend to take place in (between the 1st and 2nd world wars).

~Mel

#adamandi ama #adamandi #answered