Broadway Playwright:Chad Beguelin

Chad Beguelin is a playwright who has wrote the books for many well known musicals such as Disney’s “Aladdin”, “The Wedding Singer”, and the lyrics for “Elf the Musical”. He is a 4-time tony nominee and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for outstanding lyrics. He also worked on a musical that will hopefully be on Broadway soon called “Prom”. “Prom” is about a teenage girl who wants to bring her girlfriend to her school prom. Because it’s against the rules, the school cancels the prom altogether and a group of fading celebrities decides to take up the cause and help. The opening night of “Prom” will be on September 7th in Atlanta and will most likely move to Broadway soon after they are finished with Atlanta. Beguelin spoke to Mrs. Arjona’s human rights and public speaking classes, the LGBT club, the Thespians, and Mrs. Esterly’s AP Biology class during F block and the entire upper school during assembly on Wednesday the 7th. He answered many questions about what it’s like to be a Broadway writer and gave advice for people who would want to enter the theater business themselves. Some of his advice for making it in theater included getting to know people already in the theater business and starting small with bit parts and commercials. Beguelin originally wanted to be an actor. He auditioned and got into the NYU drama program and soon notice his acting skills paled in comparison to the other actors. Beguelin said, “It was then I realized.. I sucked. I was terrible as an actor.” He realized he wanted to be a writer when he turned in a one act play as an assignment and his professor told him to write for a living. After college, Beguelin did low budget shows with friends until they where finally reviewed by the New York Post. After numerous rejections, Beguelin finally made it as a Broadway writer. He saved all of his rejection letters until they took up too much space and he had to throw them away. Beguelin said, “One day I was gonna be like ‘oh look at all the rejection!!!’ and then I was like ‘eh nobody cares about that.” When asked how he dealt with writer’s block, he said eventually it is no longer a problem “The more you write the stronger you become.” Beguelin favorite thing about writing is that, “There’s a million ways to say a line, and a million ways to sing a lyric, and that’s what I think is so exciting about theater.”