Dec 22, 2021
I’m sitting in a restaurant with a revolutionary idea scribbled on the back of a napkin. It’s the early 2000s and I’m still in the technology industry at this point, so we’re coming up with ideas for this crazy software application we want to create.
It’s never been done before and feels like it could change everything! We’re talking about a ColdFusion back end, a Flash front end, throwing data back and forth very quickly... it’d be the first time you could have a Rich Internet Application. {Fancy stuff back then.}
As we’re sitting there brainstorming my new friend Mark says, “Hang on, can we really do this? No one’s actually executed something like this.” Two seconds later, we find ourselves thinking, “Why not us? Why don’t we be the ones to do it?”
That software idea we brought to life launched a company that lasted for 16 years! And my special guest on the Storytelling School Podcast, Douglas Lyons, is all about bringing ideas that no one else has thought of to life in different forms.
What is the thought process behind birthing an idea that didn’t exist before? What is the only original thing about ideas? And what the hell do mosquito bites have to do with storytelling?
In this episode, I speak with Douglas about all of that, being successful without the usual “bells and whistles” of training, normalizing and giving representation to Black culture on Broadway, and more. You’ll hear his words of wisdom if you feel like your voice and perspective don’t matter. And you’ll discover how to know which stories to stick with and the power of figuring out your “why” for creating a story.
What you will learn in this episode:
Who is Douglas?
Douglas Lyons is a director, actor, writer, playwright, and composer-lyricist. He’s one of the writers and composers of Apple TV’s 2022 Fraggle Rock series and made his playwriting debut with Chicken and Biscuits, which starred Michael Urie and Norm Lewis. His other writing credits include Polkadots at the Atlantic Theater Company, Beau at the Adirondack Theatre Festival, and Five Points with Hamilton’s Andy Blankenbuehler.
As an actor, Douglas was part of the original cast of the Broadway production The Book of Mormon and Beautiful. He also did tours of Rent and Dreamgirls. His music and lyrics have been featured on CBS’s Sunday Morning Show and BET Plus, as well as in Lincoln Center’s Broadway Songbook Series and Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope Festival. And along with his musical writing partner Ethan D. Pakchar, he was a finalist for the 2020 Jonathan Larson Grant.