This spring, the Oberlin Musical Theater Association and Oberlin Student Theater Association are producing an original musical, All In Your Mind, by three fourth-year students. With book and lyrics by Joey Birdsong and music by Jake Berran and Jacob Richter, All In Your Mind will run on Friday, April 12th through Sunday, April 14th in Wilder Main.
The show is set twenty years in the future. In a United States sunken even further into capitalism, the tech corporation MindShare presents Americans with a solution to financial stresses: you can rent out parts of your brain for them to use as a computer. The MindShare Oppositional Action Network, a team of organizer friends, plans direct action against the company. Then they meet Lucy, an artificial intelligence finding her way in the human world, and their plans become more complicated.
In an interview, Birdsong, also the show’s director, discussed what inspired the show’s plot and themes. An influence during the project’s early stages was the series Severance, about a company that erases its employees’ minds. “There’s a similar procedure, and the aesthetic was an inspiration,” Birdsong said.
Another prominent dynamic in the show is the relationship between the characters of Lucy and her mother and creator, Theresa. Birdsong compared their relationship to the Yorgos Lanthimos film Poor Things — which didn’t serve as an influence directly on All In Your Mind, but which they expressed admiration for and granted a thematic resemblance with — though just a slight one. “It’s not similar at all, really, but the idea of a created woman and overprotective parent is kind of similar.”
It’s also easy to draw parallels between the corporation-dominated setting of All In Your Mind and the Silicon Valley capitalists of today. “A lot of it is inspired by very modern techbros who are doing things that are inadvisable, like Elon Musk and his whole thing… it’s meant to skewer that type,” explained Birdsong. However, the show focuses as much if not more on the human drama between the protagonists that such a situation creates. “There are pertinent themes of individual culpability in a big system.”
All In Your Mind is Birdsong’s directorial debut, which has been challenging but fun for them, and they cited the show’s assistant director Ansel Mills as a great team partner. “I’m learning as I go, and getting better every rehearsal. It’s really helpful to have an assistant director who didn’t write the show because he can bring in new ideas I’m thankful for.” Bringing the play’s themes of individual culpability to life has also been a highlight of the directing experience for Birdsong, as have the show’s comedic and dramatic moments: “There’s parts of the show that are really funny, and we’ve been balancing how to get from really high highs and really low lows in a way that makes sense.”
Pairing well with its aims to hit a broad range of emotions, the show’s music is also quite eclectic. According to Richter, co-composer and co-music director, the musical’s songs include influence from rock ballads, klezmer, and video game soundtracks.
Composing the music for All In Your Mind collaboratively was new for Richter, who usually works alone. “For this project, we started by creating a score with just piano and vocals, and then orchestrated the piano part for strings, winds, and rhythm section.” However, collaborating with Berran proved fruitful. “For some of the numbers, we sat in the same room and worked on the same musical number together, and the outcome combined the best of both of us. This wasn’t feasible for the entire show, but even then we were able to exchange ideas and improve one another’s songs.
“It’s definitely the largest project I’ve worked on as a composer,” Richter explained. Both he and Berran are at almost all rehearsals, so co-music directing did not reduce his workload in that area. However, Richter remains committed to being as involved as he is – the most fun part of music directing for him has been getting to hear the cast bring the songs of All In Your Mind to life.
“We’ve been talking about writing a musical for a while,” said Birdsong. They, Richter, and Berran began work on All In Your Mind during Winter Term in 2023 and continued to work on it in the semesters that followed. With the year-long process of creating the musical about to bear its fruit, it looks to be one of the most exciting productions at Oberlin this spring.
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