Storybook Undone: Behind the Lyrics

I wrote the song Storybook Undone almost exactly two years ago after signing a copy of the Best Women’s Stage Monologues of 2022, an anthology in which I’m featured.Here in this book you will find 70 very diverse monologues written for women. These pieces present great acting challenges, and actors will have the pleasure of sinking their teeth into this sublime material while continuing to perfect their craft in their online or in-person workshops. The monologues all come from plays. Read these pieces, act these pieces. They will seem familiar to you as you hold the mirror up to nature and realize that art is indeed life.Smith and Kraus Website I’ve been thinking about Storybook Undone a lot lately, after writing a new song that I love, which in many ways feels like the sister of this song. I’m really excited to release it soon.These are the last few lines of Storybook Undone — the final chorus.And now that I’m free / I can learn to just be meNot who I thought I was / Who you thought you lovedShe’s not here no more / She walked through the doorOh, watch me run / Watch me tumble onStorybook Undone was largely inspired by A Doll’s House Part 2, a sequel inspired by Henry Ibsen’s acclaimed A Doll’s House.Before we talk about A Doll’s House Part 2, we obviously have to talk about Ibsen’s original masterpiece.For the record, you could see A Doll’s House Part 2 with no context, but what fun is that?!Housewife and mother Nora Helmer lives a delicately constructed — and seemingly perfect — life focused on keeping up appearances and meeting expectations. When a long-held secret comes to light on Christmas Eve, the foundation of Nora’s world begins to crumble. The blackmail and lingering resentments that emerge force her to come to terms with the fragile facade of her doll-like existence. Torn between playing the part that’s been built for her or leaving behind everything she’s ever known, Nora is faced with an impossible choice.-from The Guthrie Theater website. They’re about to do an adaptation by Amy Herzog, whom I love! She wrote the play 4000 Miles, which I did a monologue from for years. So if you are in Minnesota. Pleaseeeeee see this for me!The choice that Nora makes at the end of the play is shocking and largely unprecedented for a woman in the 19th century.I’m not going to completely spoil the ending too much because I would give anything to watch and read this play again for the first time.I will say that the door that protagonist Nora walks through is famously considered the door slam heard around the world; the slam that closed the door on the way things were and ushered drama into the new, modern world.A Doll’s House is easily one of my favorite plays. I first saw it at a theater company* I worked with in high school. I loved it so much that I saw it 2 or 3 times. I also ended up reading it in high school, and maybe again in college, and then saw the Broadway production with Jessica Chastain in 2023. In that production, Jessica Chastain as Nora walked out the door and straight into the streets of New York City, which was truly electrifying. (Some have criticized the staging because the quintessential ‘slam’ is missing - but I loved it.)** I was so excited to be working off-off Broadway that I didn’t even think about the fact that I was paying dues and not actually getting paid. I don’t even think I got free tickets for friends and family to come to my shows. There also wasn’t really a formal casting process - I think we had some kind of email system where we’d express interest in being part of a certain play, and then the founder would make decisions with the directors. Not the most ideal or ethical situation — and nonetheless a really formative experience. I loved being a professional actor. I loved going to rehearsals. I loved taking the C train home at midnight from Times Square after an evening performance. I didn’t love it when a drunk guy walked across the stage one night — but that’s a story for another time.I unfortunately missed A Doll’s House Part 2 when it came to Broadway. I’m confident I’ll get to see it staged one day, as it is literally one of the most performed plays in America. It was written by Lucas Hnath, who also wrote The Christians — a monologue I’ve used for auditions from a play I’ve come to love.And so, when I came across the script for A Doll’s House Part 2 at The Drama Bookshop, I couldn’t not read it.As I mentioned at the beginning, I had just signed a copy of the monologue anthology I’m featured in, The Best Women’s Stage Monologues of 2022. I didn’t know that the anthology would be there, but I really, really hoped it would be (hence the visit.)Here I was, an actor turned playwright in the new and improved version of a bookstore that means everything to me — holding a book that contained my own words. It was surreal and magical. I was floating. I couldn’t just leave and re-enter the outside world yet. And so, I wandered the bookshelves and looked at plays, like I had done so many times before.I spent a lot of time at the old Drama Bookshop. It was where I would go to hunt for monologues and often sneak a picture of one that I liked so that I wouldn’t have to buy the whole play (sorry Drama Bookshop — promise I have not done this since I was a teenager!) I would sit for hours, poring through pages and pages of scripts, some familiar and some new.I did the same on that July afternoon. I sat in a cozy armchair, ironically elevated on a stage, and read the sequel to one of my favorite plays — just a few feet from a shelf that now held my own words.A Doll’s House Part 2 picks up 15 years after the original play ends. I can’t really talk about the plot without spoiling it for you, which you’re welcome to do yourself, but I leave that choice to you.What I can say is that even if I were going to speak freely about this sequel, plot spoilers be damned — I still don’t think I’d have the words. I think that Storybook Undone, the song I wrote immediately after finishing A Doll’s House Part 2 are still the only real words I have.I’ll also borrow Lucas Hnath’s own words when asked about the enduring power of the original play. From a Vogue InterviewThe action that takes place at the end was a shock when it was first produced, and it’s still a shock today. The way that it’s built is it’s a couple that actually is failing to talk to each other for most of the play. Then you hit that final scene where Nora says, “We need to talk.” That is such a resonant moment, and it’s such a familiar moment, too. It cuts to the heart of a problem in all intimate relationships. Also, Ibsen is trying to define what freedom is and is identifying the ways in which we are not as free as we think we are. Fears about reputation and how we’re viewed in the world, and anxieties about money and social standing—I think those are all shackles that remain today.Freedom. I guess I can unequivocally say that both A Doll’s House and A Doll’s House Part 2 are about women and freedom. Perhaps liberation — more so than freedom. The process of finding freedom, and the freedom itself.The song I wrote after reading A Doll’s House Part 2 is about freedom.My circumstances are very different from Nora Helmer’s, and yet there are so many ways I can relate to her. She, a married mother of three in the 19th century, went from her father’s house to her husband's. I’m single and childless and living in the 21st century. She is White. I am Black. And yet, we both grew up with a great deal of financial privilege. We both struggled with our predetermined roles. We’ve both been underestimated. We’ve both longed for things outside of our current circumstances. There is a kind of freedom I have been chasing my whole life, personally and artistically. Figuratively and literally. The freedom to be myself, to say what I want to say, to be imperfect, messy, and unrestrained, and loved because of who I am, not in spite. Seeing my monologue, from a play I wrote on my couch in pajamas during quarantine, inside a published book, felt like freedom.The freedom I felt holding that book in my hands was less about fame and notoriety.It was more about the validation of seeing a seed of an idea that I had for a play about abortion, growing into this.Actors are now going to be able to flip through the same kind of anthology I used to pore over as a young actor. and choose my monologue as audition material. They already have — they email me and tell me about it sometimes. That is so freaking insane to me. The fact that people resonate with the words I transport from my heart and mind to the page is nothing short of magic to me. And so, after this magical, full-circle moment of *signing an anthology that contained my work, in a bookstore that felt like a second home in high school, the only thing to do was read the sequel to a play I loved in high school.And after reading that play, the only thing left to do was write a song. (Something else I loved to do in high school.)*A HUGE thank you to the Drama Bookshop employee who asked me to sign it, and put the ‘signed author copy’ sticker on the book!I hope you chase the things that feel like freedom.I hope you have the courage to let go of what no longer serves you.I hope you know that what’s best for you is what’s best for your people — there is no such thing as one way liberation (a phrase I first learned from Glennon Doyle, with thousands of examples on large and small scales across history.) There is always a ripple effect when you do the thing that frees you.I hope you walk through all the doors you need to, to find the life you want and deserve.You can listen to Storybook Undone below.PS I think Nora would love the play that my featured monologue comes from (The Flower and the Fury) — she is one million percent pro-choice. I also hope she’d love this song, which is kind of in her honor.PPS There’s a reference about walking through doors in the new song too — coming very soon! PPPS More about the play that my monologue in the anthology is from, here! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thenuancediaries.substack.com/subscribe