book – Dumpster Diver the musical

book

Click below to read the different versions of the book (script) for Dumpster Diver the Musical.

The Story Behind the Different Script Versions
The original script for the musical is 154 pages with a run-time of 2.5 hours. For the stage play, due to time limits and other variables, I shortened the script to 75 pages. Even at 75 pages, the scene changes for the live performance meant the run-time would have exceeded the 90-minute limit required by The New York Theater Fest for their 2018 “SummerFest” program. In order to fit the musical within the 90-minute time limit, I edited the script further, down to 50 pages. With the scene changes, the 50-minute version script came to a 75-minute run-time.

Due to scheduling conflicts, the sheet music not being completed, and other circumstances, a few of the original cast members dropped out. This was a week before the musical was scheduled to be staged. In order to galvanize the remaining actors and recruit new ones, the director took out the first 14 pages, reducing the script to a more manageable length–37 pages. This brought the stage production to a run time of 43 minutes.

You can read the script versions below by clicking the links.

154 page version (2.5 hour run-time)

111 page version (1 hr, 45 min run-time)

75 page version (90-minute run-time)

50 page version (75 minute run-time)

38-page version (45-minute run-time)

37-page version (43-minute run time)

For a story of how Dumpster Diver the musical came about, be sure to visit the FAQ page by clicking here.

Kris Kemp
writer (book/score) – Dumpster Diver the Musical
347-557-5487
bicycledays@yahoo.com

Dumpster Diver the Musical is a musical I wrote about following your dreams, no matter how unconventional.

It’s a two-act musical that tells the story of 2 friends, Trevor, a tech kid, and Faith, a hippie nomad, who graduate college and head their separate ways. When they re-meet 4 years later, and Faith confronts Trevor with the truth about his company, that it is evil, Trevor has a decision to make–continue his comfortable life working for an evil company, or abandoning everything and joining Faith and her rogue friends on their cross-country adventure to expose the company, in order to shut it down.

Find out what happens in this new musical about friendship, adventure, and dumpster diving. Find out what happens when you “follow your dreams, no matter how unconventional”.

Kris Kemp
writer (book/score) – Dumpster Diver the Musical
347-557-5487
bicycledays@yahoo.com

Hi, I’m the writer (book/score) of Dumpster Diver the Musical. Originally, I began writing this story many years ago when I lived in downtown West Palm Beach, Florida.

At the time, I was living in this big run-down warehouse inhabited by a revolving door of artists, musicians, drifters and dreamers. This warehouse, a big quonset hut actually, was a kind-of “Bermuda Triangle” for the fringe artist scene. It sat in an area, Flamingo Park, that was being cleaned up. As the real estate investors circled the area, the code enforcement people start making regular visits to the warehouse.

On one side of the warehouse, literally, 20 feet from my room, sat the railroad tracks, and yes, they were active. On the other side of the warehouse, was the gentrifying neighborhood. We were surrounded on all sides, by progress and commerce.

Living there, I was in the midst of interesting people and I began keeping a journal, documenting the activity. I sifted through my notes and started to write a play called “Plato’s Cave”, as a nod to the offbeat philosophers that drifted through the space.

Around this time, I was introduced to dumpster diving, from a friend, who lived at a collective space in nearby Lake Worth, Florida. I took the notes from “Plato’s Cave” and thought, “What if there was an entire group of drifters and dreamers, who were dumpster divers, in a future where dumpster diving was illegal?” That was the seed of an idea that was planted in my imagination that would later grow into the tree, for Dumpster Diver the Musical.

Thinking about it now, this idea was likely shaped by the situation that was unfolding around me at the time, at the warehouse, as we were a group of renegades surrounded by a progress that would eventually see the warehouse shut down, buried under a mountain of code violations, so much so that the owner, Alan Patrusevich, forced with paying a huge bill and the continual harassment by code enforcement, would sell the property.

The dust would settle. As it had before. And the artists, poets, musicians, dreamers, writers, who’d left the treadmill of nine-to-five to navigate their way through this hamster cage of the disenfranchised, would eventually drop anchor at other overlooked and abandoned islands, with their run-aground ships and forgotten caves.

Those who don’t feel at home in this world will find their home among the invisible territories. Like giant magnets in the sky that can only attract what they do not destroy, their journey will rewarded. The sound of time is the music and the muse. The seduction of the equator is their reality.

Kris Kemp
writer (book/score) Dumpster Diver the Musical
347-557-5487
bicycledays@yahoo.com