Daily Inspiration: Meet April Alsup

Today we’d like to introduce you to April Alsup

Hi April, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve been writing music theatre works my entire life. When I was young, my mother and I would sit at the piano and write stories, it was never about the musical notation on a page. It was about the bells in the belfry, the thunder of a far away storm, the brakes of a car or the horn of a passing train. We would use the sounds in various parts of our story and later act it out and sometimes the whole family would join in. Simple childhood games turned into a passion for writing music theatre works. Unsurprisingly, it was a simpler time, we had one phone in the kitchen and one television with only three channels. You might say it was boring, but I think it forced us to use our imagination. Recreating the world we live in for the spectacle of the stage has come to be an integral part of my life.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Yes, it has been a smooth road for me and I feel fortunate. Surely, there’s been bumps along the way, everyone has to trudge through the mud once in awhile. When I hear about some of the horrible things that other people have had to go through in there lives it affects me. Our experiences in life have so much meaning and they have a profound influence on my works. The challenge for me is to recreate them for our stages in a compelling and entertaining way.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
People label me an “American Musical Theatre Composer, Librettist and Lyricist,” which seems fair, but I think that just means I like storytelling and working with a melting pot of different music genres, traditions and styles. It takes a long time to create a full length Musical and I always have multiple projects going on at any given time. My friends might say that I come out of the woodwork once a year these days. It really does take a lot of time to stand up a music theatre work and I particularly enjoy the NYC & UK theatre scenes. In 2018, I received the prestigious “Greener Planet” award at the Planet Connection Theatre Festival in NYC. In 2023, I took home Broadway World’s “Best New Musical” for my Edinburgh Fringe production about the community buyout of the small Isle of Eigg and this year they’ve invited us back to perform my latest work to open the festival. I think what sets me a part from others goes back to the farmhouse in West Virginia, where we created music stories with family and friends about real life scenarios of the world around us.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
There’s and old saying about how much more we can do together than we could ever do on our own. So, if you want to create great work, you’re going to need to find great people and let them do what they do. I believe it’s important to show your colleagues how much passion you have for your work. I’ve found that people sense this sort of thing and if they feel it, you’ll have no problem getting them to collaborate with you. Nothing can drag down a project as fast as toxicity, so I never let anyone on my team get away with it. The friendships you make in theatre can last a lifetime. The show won’t last forever, music theatre projects are ephemeral by nature and eventually will come to an end. You never no when you’ll see each other again after the final curtain falls, so enjoy yourself, don’t burn any bridges and always take the high road.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.alsup.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aprilalsup/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/4alsup
• Twitter: https://x.com/aprilalsup
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alsupmusic
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/aprilalsup