A couple of weeks after John’s February 13th blowup, I discovered that besides the firings, that Carmel Dean’s arrangements had been yanked from the show. No reason was ever given to her nor me. Carmel had to tell me herself that the arrangements were pulled. Such recklessness never crossed my mind.

My reps and producers were so ignorant of musical construction that they never bothered to inform me. Arrangements are more than just the sound, they are key to the structure. If a musical is a building, the music arrangements are the support beams. Much of what the audience loved came from work that Carmel inspired. One can’t just yank the arrangements out three years in and expect the building to stand as it once did.

But keeping them meant that money and acclaim would go to Carmel, who earned it - with no revenue and glory going to my agent and his clients, who did not. So the work of my excellent collaborator was pulled, in an expectation that I could be bullied into re-doing what worked before, adding years to the process, now with my agent’s clients - in a climate of bullying, fear and abuse, death to creative inspiration.

The musical that delighted sold-out audiences in its first production had been gutted and destroyed. My representation demanded that I begin at Square One with (what would prove to be) ill-suited collaborators instead of the rigorously audience-attentive artists who built the show with me, who were all rudely fired with no explanation.

Here is an example of a typical exchange with Conrad Rippy, after I learned that the arrangements had been pulled.

Feb 29, 2016 at 7:17 AM

TO: Conrad Rippy

FROM: Jeff Whitty

SUBJECT: MY POSITION

I won't go forward with the show if my conditions aren't met.

Basically, there are sections of the show that work wonderfully the way they are. If they seem simple it's because of 10000 complicated alternatives rejected. To redo them for the sake of other people's egos is a waste of my time.

I will point these moments out in a formal way. One example: I will not redo from scratch the insane structural work that went into dovetailing the stories of ALL of our main characters into "Unforgiven/Insincere." Why should I? Because Michael Mayer was too lazy to investigate what it took to get it there?

If Michael wants "his team" on board for his security and comfort, WHAT THE FUCK ABOUT MY TEAM? What about MY security and comfort, people? And is the music supervisor/director not really more tied to AUTHOR than DIRECTOR in the case of this jukebox show?

And Carmel Dean will get appropriate fucking credit. God how I will miss her presence in the room. Tom's work has to be inarguably better. I think of Carmel’s thrilling climax to "Rainy Day"; all of "Vacation"; the nuns in "Good Girl"; that transition from "I Get Weak" into "Heaven", that gorgeous simple shimmering "Apology"; the nuns and chorus in that heartbreaking "Here You Are." All of that has to be the same or better or I'm disgusted and done.

I can go on and on. As of this writing "Head Over Heels" is more my show than Michael Mayer's. Now that we have him on board we can ask of him a small sacrifice.

I'm sorry, I'll pretend as I always have that I am not Alpha of the show -- but I just fucking am. I am.

I am not redoing all of this to see no benefit on my end. J

It was my right to put my foot down. It was my lawyer’s job to back me up.

Please note that I demand that Rippy – my lawyer - address the storytelling mechanics of the musical. If he is making my artistic decisions, then surely my lawyer had the artistic insight about how to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

My tiresome nitty-gritty went blithely ignored, but my lawyer certainly made sure to clarify the terms of me leaving the show, to the end of hanging my property to his wealthier and more famous clients:

Feb 29, 2016 at 8:33 AM

FROM: Conrad Rippy

TO: Jeff Whitty

SUBJECT: Re: MY POSITION

I understand your position. As long as "not going forward" means something along the lines we talked about yesterday - i.e. withdrawing, with approval of any subsequent collaborator vis-à-vis the book, with no reduction in your compensation - then am on board and happy to relate to the producers. I continue to think that you are your own best advocate with respect to Michael Mayer and Tom Kitt, and that actually collaborating[1] with them (at least initially) would be the best way to go.

Also ... I understand that Tom and Michael have both spoken to Carmel and that she seems to be in an OK place ... but her lawyer is Mark Sendroff, who Donovan and Rick fired as production counsel in favor of Susan Mindell. So I would be very cautious about communicating with Carmel about anything having to do with her arrangements and orchestrations. It's absolutely clear that her work cannot be used in any subsequent production without compensation - and you never know, everyone (you included) may decide to use some of her work. But there's no benefit to you (or to the show) to wake that sleeping dog.

I would gently suggest not communicating (certainly in writing) with her about the show during this period, at least. As my Sonya story yesterday indicated, it's a long process and you never know. But to have Sendroff rattling cages right now isn't helpful, you know?

Xo Conrad

The title of my email could not be clearer:

“MY POSITION.”

Why was Conrad not taking MY POSITION, giving these producers a forceful ultimatum?

The answer lies in the conflicts his firm allowed.

I wish I had kept Carmel Dean’s attorney Mark Sendroff in the loop. It didn’t occur to me that Rippy didn’t want Sendroff sniffing around lest his fiduciary violations be discovered.

The following months were brutal, as Michael Mayer took over creative control that I certainly never gave him. He commenced giving me ill-considered orders about changes he wanted in the show, though he seemed to only have glanced through it. I sent him a pleading email to keep the arrangements that went unanswered.

Many of his decisions – such as shoving “We Got the Beat” as an impossible opening number – destroyed work that the crowd loved. My original first five minutes played like a dream and set up the show perfectly. Nothing in “We Got the Beat” supported the complicated architecture of setting up story.

Mayer treated me like his monkey at a typewriter. He clearly had but glanced through the script, not knowing the names of characters, getting confused about story points. But he announced sweeping changes nonetheless, with an unspoken challenge to contradict him.

He could have seen the show live in Ashland but declined. He made his devastating decisions based on a grainy video that was shot for understudies to learn their tracks.

In theater, the writer holds creative control because producers and directors come and go over the course of a show’s life (Avenue Q has had hundreds of productions, for example, all with different producers and directors). And no matter what the production, the script stays the same. My name is always on it. This is why the writer comes first in theater. We have to be attentive “momma bears” to the very end. Our livelihood depends on quality control.

In subsequent phone conversations, Rippy would argue – sometimes shrieking at me – that I “sacrificed creative control” on February 13th. I was gobsmacked. I didn’t “sacrifice” anything. I was the one tied to the stake.

My mental health began a grim decline as I watched my livelihood and my career’s proudest work destroyed – all while I was being villainized, bullied, humiliated, blamed, shamed. I had no other income to live on, as Avenue Q was reaching the end of its life. I knew that Mayer’s reckless changes would lead to a flop, and I would be proven right, which gave me no pleasure as the show’s eventual failure made silencing me a necessity.

Until Head Over Heels, my shows after Avenue Q didn’t succeed. On some I made almost nothing for years of work. When finally my hard work led to a probable success, my own lawyer and agent were the obstacles to my livelihood.

March 27, 2016

TO: Conrad Rippy

FROM: Jeff Whitty

>> On Mar 17, 2016, at 11:53 AM, Conrad Rippy wrote:

>>And since he’s the director, and since the composer / lyricists here didn’t really feel strongly about it either way[2], that was that

But for this jukebox musical, where my access to creative oxygen depended on the ability to adjust the music, isn't the MD role really most closely tied to ME? Do my strong feelings matter perhaps more than the Go-Go's in this case of musical storytelling? Why is everyone all, "Jeff can just stick in someone else's work" without realizing that my work GREW out of what Carmel did? Conrad, I appreciate that you are giving me the other view, but look at how alarmed I am and CONTINUE TO BE.

I am at a point where I pray for release from this; if I can get ANY other project going and funds flowing I am out the door instantly. I am insulted to the core by the goings-on with this show. I have considered and considered and hoped I am in the WRONG actually. My pride has nothing to do with this, nor my ego, it's my simple workman's self.

I do not see how this will work well. I see a lot of effort going into saving a crashing plane: the Times article will be ala "How the promising show lost its way." I have asked for so fucking little -- ONE PERSON. ONE. ONE. ONE. I WROTE THE SHOW. I AM THE CREATOR OF HEAD OVER HEELS. WHY AM I BEING TREATED WITH SUCH CONDESCENSION?

Again – why is my attorney refusing to go to the mat for me?

Why do I have to plead with my lawyer to take my side? What I asked for was so simple.

In July, a “workshop” production was scheduled to take place at New York Stage and Film at Vassar College in New York, where Mayer would show the public his “reimagining” of my work. I originally agreed to attend, but my intuition pinged that I was walking into a trap that would trigger further abuse. I always looked forward to workshops. I’d never dreaded a workshop before. I ended up not attending, delaying my flights, and then at the last minute, as I got out of a taxi to the airport, my iPad and iPhone smashed when they fell from the roof of my Uber as I was rushing to the last plane. It felt like divine intervention.

I would not participate in my own exploitation nor fulfil my role as the production’s kicking-boy.

When I called Michael Mayer on my shattered phone from LAX’s departures area to tell him I wasn’t coming, I told him I’d be available for any conversation he wanted to have. After a couple of minutes of logistical conversation, he yelled, “I’m the dom top and you’re the sub bottom! Come and see it at the end!” We said our goodbyes, and that was the last conversation I ever had with Michael Mayer.

I hung up in relief, albeit creeped out by Mayer’s parting shot. How was my agent portraying me to Mayer? As some kind of servant? As his BDSM slave? What was going on beyond my view?

In BDSM, all sides are present because they wish to be there. There is another word that describes the seizing of control without consent in the sexual arena.

With a heavy heart I realized that my best choice was to let the Mayer version go to its ignominious end. I chose not to fly across the country to attend the public performance, in defiance of my “dom top.” It would be too awkward. I chose to avert further abuse, telling my new agent Scott that I wished to see Mayer’s workshop on video, the way that he saw my production.

Nobody reached out to me during their rehearsals (this is important later). After their public performance, I heard nothing for a couple of weeks beyond an email from Scott, who saw it and suggested that I iron out the “rough edges” – rough edges nowhere in evidence in my production. When a video link to the public performance arrived at last, I was appalled and deeply wounded to witness Mayer’s public desecration of my work in front of potential investors

If Head Over Heels were a painting instead of a script, the reckless destruction would be easier to comprehend. It’s as if Mayer attacked my work with razor blades and fashioned a primitive collage with the shreds.

Jokes that took dozens of drafts to perfect were made unfunny and, in some cases, lifted entirely (as a lot of my humor plays in performance but is easy to miss on the page). My years of work crafting story to effortlessly match pre-existing lyrics was undone.

With Head Over Heels I assiduously avoided the traps that make many people shudder to hear the words “Broadway” and “musical” together: the bland generalities, the unjustified excess, the sense of people showing off without concern for the audience experience. Bit by bit, Mayer was inserting those qualities.

In June I conversed by phone with producers Leitch and Ferrari – men who never attended a single rehearsal in Ashland. Though newbies to musical development, I expected them to recognize the decline in storytelling. But they were not theater savvy. They never attended my rehearsals and only saw the show a couple of times over a year prior. They had no personal experience with my collaborators, and only knew Mayer and Kitt. They were in the thrall of my now former agent. As he had humiliated me in front of them before, treating me like a despised uppity servant, God knows what he was up to beyond my view.

My agent convinced them that his way was the only way to Broadway, and discouraged them from hearing me out despite the fact that I was a two-decade veteran in the field of musical theater developmemt. I understood the show better than anyone as, after all, I created it from my imagination. My bona-fides could not be argued: I wrote a musical that ran sixteen years commercially in New York – whose success sprang from an atmosphere of respect for its hardworking creators.

Leitch and Ferrari declared that they wanted to stick with Mayer’s “vision,” though they couldn’t articulate what that vision was when I asked them. It would have solved every problem to keep Carmel’s arrangements in the show. But she was not my agent’s client.

In despair, drawing the only boundary I could to stop the onslaught of opportunistic behavior, I told Leitch and Ferrari that I hereby removed myself from Head Over Heels: three years of my life, my finest work and my only source of income on the horizon.

I quit. I did so in the moment, on the call, with no drama. My voice was calm. As I had no one in my corner, I had to let them take my work to its inevitable outcome.

Leitch and Ferrari wheedled and protested, begging me to stay aboard. But how could I? I could not simply delete work that played so well before the crowd and try to do something different in a hostile environment,  especially because I’d have to steal from Carmel Dean. (Much of Broadway’s Head Over Heels used work that came from my years of collaboration with Carmel, with no reward for her.) I wasn’t being “difficult” as I would be portrayed. I was looking out for business in the midst of impossible demands.

In more than one phone conversation, sometimes resorting to yelling, Rippy argued that while Carmel’s execution was copyrightable, her concepts were not. He insisted that I betray my unjustly fired collaborator and steal her ideas – demanding that I violate professional decorum and betray my collaborator and my friend. Following Conrad’s orders would destroy a cherished professional relationship and my honorable reputation in the industry.

All so my lawyer and agent could run amok with my work.

In truth I had no lawyer nor agent, but confidence artists claiming to be so. My agent dropped the mask too far, and I caught on to him. But I was still blinded by misguided notions of friendship where Conrad was concerned. Perusing the emails now, it’s clear that my fiduciaries saw me as their slave to be punished if I proved an obstacle to their ambitions.

It would have been so easy to keep Carmel’s work in the show. But by this point, the dispute had little to do with Head Over Heels. It was never my choice to find myself in a battle of egos that would destroy not only my work, but the career that I built from two decades of humility, diligence and respect for audiences. From here the circus only accelerated.

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[1] I was constantly portrayed as uncollaborative, when Mayer’s first move – before even saying “hello” – was to gut the show to benefit his cronies and agency buddies.

[2] Remember: the Go-Go’s are here portrayed as not feeling “strongly about it either way.”