Director Dolly Dulu revealed that he was inspired by “High School Musical” and “Camp Rock” which he grew up watching since he was young. This resulted in him doing his first musical, “Lyric and Beat.”
“Iyon ‘yung mga shows na pinapalabas sa Disney Channel. So, iyon ang naging influence ko kung bakit gusto kong gumawa ng musical At the same time, Dreamscape [has] a lot of young singers and performers doon sa bago nilang roster sa Squad Plus,” he said during the face-to-face grand mediacon for the series last July 19.
(Those were the shows shown at the Disney Channel. So that became my influence as to why I wanted to do a musical. At the same time, Dreamscape has a lot of young singers and performers in their new roster at Squad Plus.)
Mixing singing, dancing and acting in a cohesive whole was overwhelming for Dulu, though he clarifies that there was no pressure given to him in any way.
“Hindi naman ako pine-pressure ng Dreamscape or ng management regarding doon sa material kasi parang wala naman kaming magiging basis ng musical,” he explained.
(I was not pressured by Dreamscape or by management regarding the material because it seems like we actually have nothing to base the musical on.)
“The last musical that ABS-CBN did was ‘Idol’ which was what, fifteen years ago with Sarah Geronimo and Sam Milby,” he added.
Dulu explained that the pressure in fact came from him, because a musical is hard to do.
“We were just doing our best [because] instead of just focusing on the acting, we had to do song rehearsals, we had to do dance workshops,” he said.
Since December, the cast has already been doing workshops for singing, dancing and acting. Then, before their lock-in taping in Baguio, they also rehearsed for the cast to learn the dance numbers and the songs.
“Siyempre, hindi rin dapat makalimutan ‘yung acting (Of course we cannot forget about the acting),” he stressed. “Because at the end of the day, it is still a drama series.”
“Lyric and Beat” stars Andrea Brillantes, Seth Fedelin, Darren Espanto, AC Bonifacio, Kyle Echarri, Sheena Belarmino, Jeremy G, Angela Ken and Awra Briguela. It starts streaming via iWantTFC on Aug. 10. JB
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