Revving up for Reverie: Senior Grace Fields, writer and director of Reverie, shares the story behind her musical and its future

Shuffling through dusty boxes, senior Grace Fields became fascinated with the bookshelves full of preserved diaries and letters chronicling the life of her great-grandma, Lorene Grant Piper  — a concert pianist born in 1910 who coped with life through storytelling and music. It wasn’t until the end of her junior year when her independent study — a researched topic or idea, in this case “Reverie” — switched to an on-stage reality.

The musical’s storyline shifts between Lorene’s reality and a realm of characters she creates throughout her life when she escapes to her worlds of fantasy, like Ruby City and the City of Mystical Mirrors. Through the hardships of Lorene’s past, Fields intends to spread the idea that our lives don’t need a happily ever after. According to Fields, life is about the moments along the way.

As Fields continued to read about the life of her great-grandmother, she spent the vast majority of her junior year mapping out the preliminary details — creating 13 original songs and costumes based on mood boards to help envision the character’s personalities and the costumes themselves. Fields presented her project idea to teachers and students at the end of her junior year. She received positive feedback and advice on the show, pushing her to take it to the next level by bringing her great-grandma’s life story out of the diaries and onto the stage.

“Reverie” will be my first time ever directing a show,” Fields said. “It’s exciting, but I know it’ll present its own unique challenges. It’s been a very collaborative process already, and I’m excited to work with the people who have expressed as much interest in something I’m passionate about.” 

In the current stages of her musical, Fields developed a list of over 40 East students either involved in the cast itself, the crew, choreography or music. She’s also met her goal of writing 13 original songs and a completed script, minus the song lyrics added in and has begun constructing some of the costumes for “Reverie”, in preparation for rehearsals beginning in late February.

The students in “Reverie” are already enjoying the process and atmosphere of Fields’ student-guided show. According to senior Kate Whitefield, Reverie’s Agnes, with only a few months spent on the show, she can already sense the magical experience Fields is creating. 

“I’ve heard about ‘Reverie’ ever since Grace first started working on it last year,” Whitefield said. “Having chamber choir together and hearing about the process from the beginning has made me so excited to be a part of this exciting experience.”

Along with writing and directing, Fields also plays the lead role of her great-grandma.

“I would say I most definitely relate to the character I’m playing, Lorene,” Fields said. “She is very adventurous, an aspiring concert pianist with a love for music. She is very imaginative, which I would like to say I am, and a storyteller as well.”

Condensing an entire life into an hour-long show has been Fields’ main challenge. With diaries full of details down to the birth and death of Lorene’s world in the early 1900’s, finding a way of removing details and still ensuring the musical makes sense has been a struggle — but Fields has been finding solutions to her own challenges, like condensing six years of Lorene’s life into one song.

Through her planning process, Fields’ source of support was her family — who are equally fascinated with genealogy and their family’s past.

“I’m really proud of this big leap she’s taken with all the dedication and hours she spends on this project,” Fields’ mom Beth Fields said. “ I’m not a musician by any means, and I’m just fascinated by how the story comes to life through Grace’s music.”

Creating “Reverie” has also shifted Fields’ interest to writing scripts. Growing up with a passion for acting and singing from her first East musical, “Crazy for You”, to her most recent East musical, “The Wedding Singer”, Fields has ventured into the writing areas for musical theater by now writing her own show. She sees her future in show business as a writer.

“I think it will be interesting to see what happens with ‘Reverie’ in the future,” Fields said. “I want   to do a professional version of it with adult actors and circus elements, but I need to do a lot of research on those areas, which is key to taking my musical to the next level along with figuring out how to eventually get there.”

As Fields makes East history as the first student to write and direct her own musical, she’ll continue working on “Reverie” in preparation for when it debuts on April 12 in 2023.