Nightbirds - Prelude To Love



Nightbirds - Prelude To Love is a 4 act stage musical. It was originally written by Amy Meyer [Riot! In The Boulevard] at the age of 15 and was even turned into a high school performance. It has since been edited and improved upon by Amy Meyer with the help of Simon Macy and Elle Whitford. The original story, music and lyrics were all originally written by Amy Meyer.
The story will be turned into an amateur production, staged at Spring Valley Community Theatre, Nevada in July 2011, providing the opening run of the show goes well, there is a possibility that it could be turned into a Broadway production, and the music for the show could be recorded and released as an album by Amy Meyer later on in the year.
The story surrounds four troubled 16 year olds living in New York and is split into 4 acts.

Act 1 - Me And The Life I Inhabit
Act 2 - Eyes Across The Room, (Scream, Rescue Me)
Act 3 - Skylines And Bloodlines
Act 4 - One Red Rose

Characters
Nina Bloom (Age 16) - She struggles to find the good things in life, her mother died giving birth to her and her father killed himself 3 years later after struggling to raise the young Nina, and this leads to her being a very angry person. She lives in an orphanage in New York and is almost constantly listening to music and drawing. She is a very complex character and often escapes from her foster home at night, hence the title Nightbirds.

Christian Ellis (Age 16) - He is intellectual and his biggest love is literature. He is the only person who Nina feels comfortable with. He isn’t one of the popular people at school, he just blends in and goes unnoticed. A chance meeting with Nina creates a beautiful friendship. His kindness is what sets him out from everyone else, he is caring and always knows what to say and do, but hides his pain and feelings of loneliness. His biggest aspiration is to be a writer.

Aidan Hines (Age 16) - He is an angry young guy. He takes a dislike to Christian and Nina and tries hard to make their life hell but it turns out that they have a lot more in common than he thought and they quickly become friends. He lives life freely and doesn’t have any major plans for his life, he has no aspirations. He is dating Lacey and the two have quite an unusual and volatile relationship.

Lacey Buckley (Age 16) - Is a carefree young girl. She says what she wants and doesn’t care if she hurts people along the way, she’s very self obsessed and often causes trouble for the group. She goes to a lot of party’s and is very outgoing and fun but she’s also very dangerous, leading the gang into various tricky situations. She often fights and argues with Aidan.
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Synopsis
Set in Manhattan, New York. Nightbirds, follows the story and love lives of four, 16 year olds living in New York City. Each of the characters are troubled in their own ways and have very different personalities compared to each other but quickly bond and form ever-lasting friendships, they often fight with each other and get into all kinds of trouble but their friendship always get’s them through any difficult periods.

Act 1 - Me And The Life I Inhabit
In Act 1, the audience are introduced to the characters. It becomes clear very early on that Nina is an extremely troubled individual and is a bit of a loose cannon. The main focus of Act 1 is Nina, it follows her story as a lonely teenager, despite living with various teenage orphans it’s obvious that Nina is extremely lonely, you quickly learn about the type of person that Nina is. She breaks out of the orphanage at night and wanders down to a park bench overlooking the Hudson River, she spends the majority of her evenings in silence and just staring across the river. Towards the end of Act 1, we see the kind of life she leads as a student, she is loud and often causes problems for her teachers, unafraid to speak her mind and willing to cause trouble but without friends.

Act 2 - Eyes Across The Room, (Scream, Rescue Me)
In Act 2, the life of Nina continues in the same vein until a change meeting with fellow high school student Christian, quiet and often unnoticeable, Christian decides to stand up for Nina following a heated debate which gets out of hand, he steps in the middle of an argument between Nina and a male student and finds himself in the nurse’s office with a bloody nose. Nina laughs and calls him a dumb-ass before heading out from the school premises, Christian chases after her and demands a thank you from her and says something that surprises Nina, figuring out her biggest vulnerability despite not knowing anything about the feisty teenager. As Nina continues to brush of Christians obvious attempts at friendship he becomes quite intrigued by Nina and endeavours to persuade her to give him a chance to make her smile, the two arrange to meet at the park bench by the Hudson River and it quickly becomes obvious that the two have more in common than they first thought. During Act 2, we are also introduced to Aidan and Lacey who quickly dislike the relationship between Christian and Nina as they were previously the crazy unconventional couple at school, jealously ensues as does a big fight in the school grounds.

Act 3 - Skylines And Bloodlines
In Act 3, the relationship between Christian and Nina continues to blossom as the two realise that they have a love of danger and they continue to feud with Aidan and Lacey, as the two couples set out to anger each other despite Christian’s disapproval, they quickly become big enemy’s with each other. As the night comes, Nina has a rather crazy plan which Christian refuses to be a part of, until Nina decides to go ahead with it on her own. Nina tricks Aidan and Lacey into climbing up to the top of an apartment building in a secluded area of New York and as Nina continues to push Aidan and Lacey into trouble, Nina quickly finds herself in trouble and stumbles while standing at the edge of the roof, when Christian realises that Nina had continued with her plan he races to the building and rushes to try to stop her but it’s too late as Nina falls from the 15 story building.

Act 4 - One Red Rose
In Act 4, following from the tragic fall, Nina finds herself in hospital in a very bad situation, the doctor confirms that she‘s in a coma and Christian struggles to deal with what happened. Aidan and Lacey arrive at the hospital to find Nina in a coma and Christian asleep in a chair nearby, they stay and talk to an unresponsive Nina before leaving the hospital.
As Christian wakes up, he talks to the unresponsive Nina, but her heart monitor starts furiously and the doctors quickly rush Nina to a room to attempt to save her.