After looking at so many media depictions of bipolar from a female angle, I've started writing a musical about bipolar disorder. I have to be careful though, because there already is a Broadway musical about bipolar disorder called Next To Normal. That one is about a middle-age housewife with bipolar and how it affects her family.

Mine will be different because it's about a young man and deals with creativity, youth, and childhood. This is the description I've written:

JACOB is a young man, a composer. Upon opening, he tells the audience he always hears the music, and that he’s writing a show right now. He narrates his childhood experiences when music seemed to have physical form and such power over him. The music appears as embodied physical characters, visual hallucinations. As the play winds on, it is discovered that he is inpatient in a mental institution. He takes us on a giddy whirl of his memories leading up to his incarceration, where it is revealed that JACOB suffers from bipolar disorder. MY NAME IS JACOB asks the audience bold questions, such as where is the line between creativity and madness, and how do you reclaim a lost youth?

I've written bits and pieces of some of the scenes, and a couple of songs. This is one of them:

https://soundcloud.com/rex1983/alive...rson-jackson-1

If I can manage to get a job this year and save up some money, I'm going to try and produce the play, just in my city, see if there's any interest.