Twelveness

A few months ago, a friend told me a curious fact: In 1936, George Gershwin had a standing tennis date in Los Angeles with Arnold Schoenberg. Can you imagine a more incongruous pair? The seemingly effortless crowd pleaser, Gershwin, up against the cerebral Teutonic composer who probably would have been horrified if, during a performance of one of his challenging atonal works, the crowd had accidentally been pleased. I couldn’t get these two out of my mind, so while I was on vacation recently, I wrote a play about them. It’s not even a musical, though there’s incidental music in the script. The play is called Twelveness, after Schoenberg’s 12-tone serial technique, natch. It hasn’t hit Broadway yet…or off-Broadway…or off-off-Broadway…but stay tuned.