Playing Well Together : For Cal State Fullerton Student and His Partner, Creation of AIDS Musical Was a Lesson in Trust, Risk and Negotiation

If their story were a script, it would never sell.

Two young, wide-eyed UCLA theater students meet in a class called “Writing for the Musical Theater.”

While he’s confident in his ability to turn a phrase, his music doesn’t do his lyrics justice. She happens to be as skilled with melodies as he is with metaphor.

They join forces and cut their collaborative teeth by creating songs for some fluffy musical one-acts. While the results are nothing that either is especially proud of, the experience convinces them they’re more powerful as a team than either would be working alone. In the three years that follow, they combine their talents to create a compelling, dramatic musical that makes its debut to strong reviews.

While the plot has the ring of one of those Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney “let’s put on a show” shows, it’s a real-life scenario for Cal State Fullerton graduate student Larry Johnson, 27, and creative partner Cindy O’Connor, 26. The two admit they’re a bit dazed by the early success of their musical “All That He Was,” the story of a 29-year-old man who dies of AIDS and then returns to his own funeral--visible only to the audience--to comment on the unresolved relationships he left behind.

“At first, we weren’t even sure where we were going with this project or whether it could even be a play,” says Johnson, who is a final exam away from earning his master’s degree in theater. “It started out as a package of songs, a revue. We just knew that we had this place in our hearts and our psyches to write about the subject of AIDS. The more songs we wrote, the more our friends encouraged us to do something with them.”

The process of creating the songs, developing a plot and characters and weaving it all into what would become “All That He Was” was an eye-opening lesson in risk, trust and negotiation for both Johnson and O’Connor.

“In the beginning, I was reluctant to show Larry things that I thought he might consider too far out or different,” O’Connor recalls. “I was so concerned with what he might think of my work--and of me--that I would edit myself to a point where it stifled my creativity.”

Now, O’Connor says, she and Johnson have achieved a comfort zone in which they both are willing to take creative risks.

“Once you establish a certain level of trust, you can be totally honest, but it takes time. I think we’re at a point where each of us feels comfortable showing each other just about anything. Even if something one of us has written isn’t working, it may lead us to something that does.

“You learn to take risks. Once you accept that the other person may not always like what you do, but that they share your vision to create something of quality, it’s a lot easier to hear what they have to say.”

Johnson agrees.

“I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t trust many people,” he says. “You get so much criticism when you write something. Everyone is a critic, and everyone thinks they know how to write your work. In all honesty, no one knows how to write my work except me. But I’ve come to trust Cindy’s opinions. I know that she’s got the best interest of the show in mind.”

Johnson and O’Connor agreed early in their partnership that he would have final say on script and lyrics and that she would have final say on the music. But neither recall an occasion when they had to pull rank.

“You learn to compromise without compromising the quality of the work,” Johnson says. “There have been times when I’ve written lyrics that were way too long. But instead of saying, ‘This will never work,’ Cindy would go ahead and write the music so that I would see for myself what the problem was. If she’d said, ‘There’s no way that song can be that long,’ it probably would have turned into a battle of will. She humored me, and in the process proved her point.”

Their creative partnership has presented plenty of practical challenges.

O’Connor lives in Sherman Oaks, while Johnson lives in Rancho Cucamonga, works in Claremont, and attends school in Fullerton. When O’Connor, a self-described “morning person,” is at her creative peak, Johnson is on the job as marketing manager for a small dinner theater. When he catches a second wind that carries him into the night, O’Connor is often fast asleep.

But the biggest snags in their relationship haven’t been logistical. Instead, they’ve occurred under the pressure of looming deadlines.

“I’m capable of producing something under pressure but not necessarily something real good,” Johnson says. “And if I try to push Cindy, that’s when our tempers flare and we get snappy. Deadlines don’t agree with either of us. I feel like the best parts of the show, the ones where I can sit back and be most satisfied, are the ones that simply wrote themselves. And they didn’t happen when we were racing the clock or racking our brains . . . they just flowed. It’s like when Cindy just relaxes in front of the piano, good stuff just comes out of her fingers.”

Johnson says the most exciting aspect of collaborating is when the creative spark ignites.

“I remember one time when we both came in feeling really horrible. It was like we were each carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders. We sat down at the piano and I said, ‘I wrote some lyrics, but I’m not sure about them.’ She said, ‘I’ve been playing around with this melody, but I don’t know. . . .’ ”

Somehow, says O’Connor, it all jelled.

“The lyric and the melody fit beautifully and ended up becoming one of the strongest songs in the show. It was like we’d been working on the same wavelength even before we got together.”

Johnson says his creative partnership with O’Connor has taught him the necessity of clear, honest communication.

“If I don’t like something Cindy’s written, I’ve learned to deal with it on the spot,” he explains. “Where we would get into trouble is when I’d wait six weeks to tell her something wasn’t working for me. It’s a lot easier to say, ‘I’m not sure I like that melody’ the first time you hear it than it is to allow the frustration to build up. The last thing you want to do is cringe every time you get to a certain point in a song.”

“All That He Was,” which was performed at Cal State Fullerton in mid-November, was recently chosen to compete in the prestigious American College Theater Festi v al. If it succeeds at the regional level in Las Vegas on Feb. 20, it will go on to the national finals. The winning musical will be produced at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

Before the festival, the show will be staged again at Cal State Fullerton on Feb. 12 and 13. “Creating a show like this is an ongoing process,” Johnson says. “The production the audience sees will be very different than the original script we started with. We’re talking about cutting several songs and adding a couple of others. We’re considering breaking it into two acts and including an intermission.”

Johnson and O’Connor are hopeful about the show’s potential.

While Johnson says he’d be happy to see “All That He Was” performed at a small theater in Hollywood “where lots of people would see it every week,” his smile grows broader when the word Broadway is mentioned.

“If ‘Falsettos’ can appear on Broadway, there’s no reason that a show like ‘All That He Was’ can’t make it, too,” he says. “Revivals like ‘Guys and Dolls’ and spectacles like ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Phantom of the Opera’ have dominated the musical theater for quite a while, but the tide will eventually turn and little pieces that are fresh and exciting and relevant and dramatic will become popular again.”

Hopefully, Johnson says, the timing will be right for “All That He Was.” But regardless what happens, he and O’Connor already see their first collaboration as a success.

“I feel like we’ve succeeded whether it wins any competitions or whether we ever make a dime from this show,” Johnson says. “Now that we’ve experienced the process of working together, we have a lot better idea of what to expect and how to do it. We know we can trust each other and that we can produce results. We know we have a future together. No matter what happens with this show, we’re both banking on the notion that it’s only a beginning.”