Playwright Grace Piper Fields discusses her debut musical Lorene’s Reverie

Grace Piper Fields performing in Lorene’s Reverie. Courtesy of Fields.

Throughout her junior and senior years at Shawnee Mission East High School, Grace Piper Fields wrote the script, music, and lyrics for Lorene’s Reverie, a musical based on her great-grandmother’s diaries. A condensed version of the show premiered at the high school in 2023.

From July 25 to July 27, the full musical will be performed at the Music Theater Heritage theater at Crown Center. Fields started her own production company, Moon Piper Productions, in order to put on the show.

Fields, twenty years old, is a student at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, majoring in songwriting and minoring in theater. We spoke with her about the musical’s origins, the writing process, and what she’s learned along the way.

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The Pitch: Tell us about when and how you came across your great-grandmother’s diaries.

Grace Piper Fields: This whole journey began in 2020 when my grandmother showed me my great-grandmother Lorene’s diaries and letters. Lorene was a pianist, composer, and storyteller. I’ve always identified with her because we share so many of the same interests. She documented her entire life from age 10 in 1917, all the way to her death in 1979. There was a plethora of diaries, scrapbooks, and artifacts, and they provided this rare insight into the personal life of a woman navigating 20th-century America. I had this extra time because of the pandemic, so I decided to reimagine her life as a musical.

My grandma saved these artifacts, thinking someone would write a book or do something with them. I was surprised that I thought of a musical first, but it makes sense because of my background in music. I’m a singer-songwriter. I currently attend Belmont University in Nashville. I’m in their songwriting program, and I’m also a theater minor, so I’m trying to combine my love of both. 

Courtesy of Grace Piper Fields.

Tell us about your approach to translating the diaries to the stage. 

There was a lot of content because she had written so much about her life. It was difficult to figure out what the important parts of it were, and what I wanted to highlight for the stage, so I have several time skips in the stage version of the show. There are three different versions of Lorene in the show.

There’s a young version, a middle version, whom I play, and a narrator who’s looking back on her life through the diaries.

That was a good way for me to fill in those holes, to have the narrator up there to say, ‘This was my 16th birthday,’ and that’s when it skips to my character. I tried to highlight those big moments in her life, and still make the story fluid, consumable, and interesting. I tried to highlight those moments, and fill in the gaps with the narrator character.

Tell us about the writing process. 

During my junior year of high school, I had an independent study (course), where I started discovering what I was going to write for songs, and I started an outline of the synopsis…At the end of my junior year, I put on a presentation of the synopsis, and played some songs from the show. 

I had this idea of bringing the fantasy scenes to life through aerial arts. I’ve always loved circus and aerial arts, and I’ve done it since I was a kid. I wanted to tie that in and make those fantasy scenes more magical. The next year—my senior year—a teacher said, ‘Why don’t you put on the show?’ At that point, I didn’t have a script. I wasn’t done with the music. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to take this opportunity that I’ve been given and just run with it.’ So I spent the next year finishing a condensed version of the musical, directing and producing the backing tracks, and casting it. I also performed in it, and that was put on at my high school last April. I couldn’t do the aerial side of it at the school. But in the full version this summer, Kansas City Aerial Arts is performing the fantasy scenes to bring a little touch of magic to them. And of course, it’s an extended version (of the show) now…I spent the entirety of last year, as well as my first year in college, adding songs, revising the script, and tweaking things in the process. But the work is never done. I keep wanting to tweak and change things, but my cast has to learn the music at a certain point. 

You mentioned fantasy scenes. Why did you choose to include these? 

Lorene uses her music and imagination to persevere through life’s challenges…She struggled with polio. As a child, she lost her ability to walk, then regained it, but started to lose it again as she got older. So there’s all of this flying imagery. She has this want and need to fly and transcend her problems. But of course, her legs are failing her at the same time. I think that image of her aerial, with her ability to walk slipping away, really paints a picture of her inner longing versus what her bodily limitations are. 

Courtesy of Grace Piper Fields.

What has been the most challenging part of putting the show together?

You have to have a lot of faith that you’ll learn how to do the steps along the way. I’d never produced a song before the show. I have an equity actor in this version, and I’d never hired an equity actor. I’d never started a company. All of these steps seemed like such daunting tasks, and sometimes impossible…I felt like I needed to bring this story to life, and that was the driving force that kept me going—to bring Lorene’s story to life, and to put the message of the show out there. And so I pushed through. 

I think one of the biggest lessons (I’ve learned) is that it takes a village. It takes a community to put on something as big as this, and theater especially is such a collaborative art. I think (this experience) really reinforced why I love theater and music, because it brings people together and connects people. There are so many old connections that I formed years ago—like hairstylists and people from my church—that are in the show. It’s really crazy to see the widespread support system that has grown because of this production. I think it’s very powerful…The biggest takeaway is having faith in yourself and not stopping something because you’re too young, or you’re too inexperienced.