Bekah Brunstetter, a North Carolina playwright whose work has frequently graced DC-area stages, will write the book for a Broadway musical version of the Nicholas Sparks’ bestseller, The Notebook, producers Kevin McCollom and Kurt Deutsch announced yesterday.
Brunstetter, whose The Oregon Trail debuted at Flying V during the Washington-area Women’s Voice’s Theater Festival in 2015, is the playwright who wrote Going to a Place Where You Already Are (Theater Alliance 2016), Be a Good Little Widow (Unexpected Stage, 2018) and Cake (Contemporary American Theater Festival 2018). She is best known as supervising producer on NBC’s megahit, This is Us.
Brunstetter’s co-creator will be songwriter Ingrid Michaelson, whose “Girls Chase Boys” and “The Way I Am” have gone Platinum. Other artists involved in the production have yet to be announced.
The Notebook is a saga of two star-crossed lovers who struggled to find each other against massive odds and are now viewed in the final stages of their lives. The story has particular resonance for Brunstetter. “When I first heard about The Notebook potentially being turned into a musical, I was instantly drawn to the idea. The story hits home for me in two big ways: it takes place in my home state of North Carolina, and Alzheimer’s runs deep in my family,” she said. “I was sent a few songs Ingrid had already written for it, and that week, I spent my drives to and from work car-listening, memorizing, imagining the story unfold with music, imagining how I might layer worlds, dramatize memory, and before I even knew that I had to write the book for this, it was already starting to happen in my head.”
The producers have not announced a timetable for the production. Follow the show at notebookmusical.com.
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