Every song has a story. And sometimes – even within the confines of that song’s structure, beats and words – that story continues to unfold and evolve.
In After the Rain, a new musical from Tarragon Theatre and The Musical Stage Company, learning a single piece of music becomes a portal into connection, creativity, and the notes and rhythms that shape a person. The world premiere, which has just arrived at Tarragon’s Mainspace after years of collaborative development, brings together a powerhouse team. The book is by prolific actor-writer Rose Napoli, with music and lyrics by musician, composer, and educator Suzy Wilde. After the Rain has already received both Tarragon Theatre’s Bulmash-Seigel prize and The Musical Stage Company’s Aubrey and Marla Dan Fund prize for new musicals. And the show features performances by Joe (Jojo) Bowden, Deborah Hay, Brandon McGibbon, Andrew Penner and Sheamus Swets – with Annika Tupper in the central role. And the production is directed by Marie Farsi, with musical direction by Rachel O’Brien.
Wilde and Napoli recently made time for a friendly, fulsome Zoom chat, during which we discussed the genesis and evolution of the musical. It is their second collaboration (the first being The Dora Award-nominated Carrette Sisters, which was part of a collective adaptation of Mavis Gallant’s works titled Retold). And it began when Musical Stage tasked them to brainstorm a large-scale show that they would write together. “At that point, Suzy played me a song that she had written years earlier, called “After the Rain,” and that was the beginning. She played me the song, and I thought, ‘you know, that’s our show!’” recalls Napoli.
From moments to miracle
Instead of treating songs as endpoints, After the Rain works generatively, unpacking the moments, relationships, and choices that bring music into being. “We look at our show as a show that breaks down the life that an artist has to live to write a single piece of music,” Napoli explains. “We quote Don Henley from the Eagles: ‘It took me 42 years to write this song and five minutes to sing it.’”
People often assume the musician simply sits down and writes the piece of music, she notes, but the song is actually an end result and culmination of every encounter with every person who has passed through that musician’s life: “It’s the person that they have an interaction with on the bus. It’s their teacher. It’s their parent. It’s somehow a song they heard on the radio that day… And some of those folks who are indirectly and unknowingly responsible for the creation of music would not call themselves musicians. So we really wanted to embrace this idea of democratizing music – of making it something that is for everyone.” The duo’s bottom line is that “a piece of four-minute, bite-sized music is kind of a miracle.”
While not strictly autobiographical, the show draws on emotional truths and creative details that are deeply personal to its creators, but should resonate with Canadian musicians. “Most of the characters are based on people that we know – or have little bits, little qualities borrowed from real people,” explains Wilde. As but one example, “there’s this moment where one of the characters gets tangled in a microphone cord. And that stemmed from a story that I told Rose about my own mom… what that felt like to see your parent, who you idolize so much, in a moment of stress and not knowing exactly what to do.”
Writing a song: writing a self
The story’s central character, portrayed by Annika Tupper, is a young songwriter still finding her voice. A struggling composer, she sings backup in her parents’ band and quietly pays the bills by teaching piano on the side. When she takes on a new beginning student who is older and has a singular focus on learning Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” – her world begins to shift. This piece may seem an over-familiar or even clichéd choice. Indeed, a smiling Napoli grants that it is “a beautiful piece of classical music, but can sometimes elicit some eye rolls”. However, the creators see its quiet beauty as deceptively powerful: a proof that instrumental music can be transgressive, political, and capable of making a huge statement. “Something small can have a huge ripple effect.”
As the songwriter navigates the chaos of touring, unexpected connections, and the complexities of family, a deeper story unfolds—one that explores how music can change in meaning over time, and how the very act of making it can reshape relationships. “She hasn’t matured as a human being and as an artist – that maturation is the journey of the show,” explains Napoli. The duo wanted “the show to be filled with great music”, but the challenge was how to do this while tracking her artistic growth through the show’s score. So “it’s been really cool with Suzy to be like, ‘right, what was an early song when she’s first starting to write music?’ What is that? Maybe embracing simplicity is not something she’s able to do at the beginning of the show. So it’s a little wordy, and she wants to show her skills.’” The continuous creative question was, “How do we show that progression musically? How do we do that storytelling through music?”
After an experimental workshop phase, Wilde and Napoli chose to make the musical entirely diegetic—meaning that all songs are consciously performed or written by the characters themselves. As a result, the music is not only character-driven, but deliberately constructed within the logic of the story – akin to a musical like Once, where musicians are writing and singing music that they are aware of. During an earlier workshop, Wilde composed a “Greek chorus”-style thread of music that was more aligned with traditional musical theatre, and which was intended to externalize the characters’ inner thoughts. But when paired with the grounded, band-driven songs already in development, the contrast felt incongruous. “Suzy had written a whole thread of music that was very aligned with traditional music theatre,” recalls Napoli. “And when we put that with the band music, one thread felt like the kind of music we wanted for the show, and the other thread felt like something else entirely.”
Musical immersion
The shift was more than aesthetic: it reflected a deeper commitment to allowing character development to unfold through the music itself. The songs, explains Napoli, had to reflect each character’s artistic identity at various stages of growth. As one funny example, Wilde explains that “there’s a great moment where her boyfriend, who is a bad musician, decides to play one of his original songs. That was one of my favourite writing assignments ever… I’m tasked with writing a really bad song!” she laughs.
But in keeping with the premise of developing character directly through the music, the team ultimately made the bold decision to “cut an entire thread of music that we had these amazing actors spend weeks learning,” chuckles Napoli. Instead, “our songs do that indirectly. So… if a mother and a daughter are in the middle of a fight, and one sits down and starts playing a song, and the other sits down and joins… there is a mending of a relationship that’s happening through the music that may not be literally happening in the lyric, but is happening in the action underneath the song.”
“Why did we do this: to make it so much harder for ourselves?” jokes Wilde. No – because “it’s so satisfying to watch, when it works. And it’s just really, really moving.”
This attention to detail shapes not only the story, but also the way the show is brought to life onstage, with After the Rain embracing both intimacy and scale. “We wanted it to feel almost like a documentary… but then also put it in this hyper-stylized piece of theatre,” nods Napoli. “We’re really riding the line all the time in the show!” To support that vision, the creative team has reimagined Tarragon’s Mainspace as an immersive venue. “The space is being used in a way that it has not been used for the last 15 years,” Napoli explains. “We’re creating the sense of a Massey Hall-style concert” – right down to the band merchandise and a lobby design that echoes the feel of album liner notes. “We want it to feel like they’re immersed in something. We had a lot of wild ideas – like we’ve created a band t-shirt… with tour dates from 20 years ago printed on the back.” Together, these choices extend the world of the show beyond the stage, inviting audiences into an experience that blends the intimacy of theatre with the atmosphere of a full-contact live concert.
A great ending . . . for everyone
Yet even with this vast creative scope, After the Rain stays grounded in emotional truth. “There are four moments where the whole show could just end . . . but then it keeps going.” Ultimately, “it’s a great ending,” notes Wilde, before doubling down: “It’s a great ending.”
And circling back to where we started our discussion, this sense of musical momentum and connective accumulation is a direct reflection of the show’s collaborative, iterative journey. “We—the four of us—I mean, we’re really good friends,” says Wilde of herself, Napoli, O’Brien, and Farsi. “We just sit there and laugh the whole time – not at anyone, just at the hilarity of the situation.” This trust and ease, anchored in friendship, has carried the creative team through all of the workshops, rewrites, and bold pivots.
What excites them most now is finally sharing the full arc of the show with audiences – particularly the (truly) final 20 minutes, which have never been seen publicly in past workshop presentations. “Now we can finally show everybody the whole show in its entirety,” Wilde says. “It’s so exciting and moving.”
And for Napoli, the experience of making this musical with a live audience is the ultimate and final part of the art itself. “We are trying to do this thing – which is to make a virtuosic piece of musical theatre – but we’re also trying to make it with an audience: to drive home this point that music is for everyone.”
After the Rain is on stage at Tarragon Theatre Mainspace from May 27 – June 22, 2025 (opening June 4). Reserve tickets on tarragontheatre.com. In the new year, After the Rain will tour to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
