By Yohannah Franco
The musical comedy inspired by Fordham culture, “Eternal Ramnation: A Fordham Musical,” is returning for its second run on Friday, Nov. 17 at 8 p.m. in Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s McNally Amphitheatre. Written by recent graduate Daniel Wilson, FCLC ’17 the show attracted a packed audience last year and earned the musical theater club Splinter Group a Best Event of the Year award in the 2017 FCLC Undergraduate Awards.
“The whole show is basically me roasting myself,” Wilson joked, “which is really fun to do actually!”
Kelty Lonergan, FCLC ’19, a music and philosophy double major taking on her first role with Splinter Group, says there’s something very special about this show. “I think because it’s written by Fordham students, it actually has a much more community feel to it, because it like bonds us together as Fordham students to complain about Fordham through a medium that we’re all a part of,” she said.
Wilson, known widely across campus as “Piano Dan” for his musical prowess, wrote the music and script during his last semester at Fordham. Since graduating early in Fall 2016 with a BA in philosophy and a music minor, he admits that he has frequented the school campus much more often than he’d anticipated. Working a weekday office job at the music management company Columbia Artists Management, he continues to offer his services at Fordham Lincoln Center at night as the musical director of the student theater club and piano accompanist for choral programs.
“Eternal Ramnation” was Wilson’s first original musical, and although the show only materialized last fall, the ideas behind it had been floating around since his freshman year. The very first song he wrote was about Lincoln Center’s mailing room.
“I’m fascinated by the people who work at Fordham and their lives and what they’re like,” Wilson said. “So I dashed off a song about the package room at Fordham. I think I wrote the lyrics my freshman year, and I wrote the song just in one sitting.”
“The Package Room Song” was performed flippantly during one of Splinter Group’s shows in 2015, but Wilson recalls that it was met with great reception and popular demand for an entire musical. Soon enough, titles of songs for his hypothetical musical which had been circulating among his friends as jokes became show numbers such as “Thank God We’re All Gay,” which mocks Fordham’s residence hall guest policies, and “7 Dollars to Hell and Back,” which incorporates actual quotes heard on the infamously tumultuous Ram Van.
Wilson describes the couple months leading up to the Fall 2016 premiere production as very frantic and rushed. Some evenings he’d be in the cafeteria right before rehearsal, writing out the notes to an unfinished song. This year in his reprising role as the show’s director and “Piano Dan,” however, Wilson says he feels much more relaxed and carefree.
“Last year I was graduating at the end of the semester, so my nightmare was like what if I do it, it’s terrible, and then I just graduate and that’s how I’m remembered?” he said. Wilson says he is glad he will be remembered–although not exactly in the way he had feared. Although he originally wrote the musical specifically depicting his own Fordham experience, Wilson says that he hopes other students walk away from “Eternal Ramnation” feeling as if they are part of a supportive community with shared struggles and joys.
“It’s as important to laugh about our problems as take them seriously,” he said. “There’s songs about relationships and class registration, and like all these very insular college problems that it’s really easy to get overwhelmed with and think that they’re the whole world, and then you see something like this and you’re like ‘Oh wow, everyone goes through this! It’s not just me, I’m not the only one.’ So I hope they come to it and feel welcome.”
Ezriel Ciriaco, FCLC ’20, a computer science major with some background in high school musical theater, says the show’s appeal stems from this unique relatability. As an ensemble cast member, he says that he feels as if he is part of the creative process itself.
“You partake in, like, the creation of art, you know, whereas if you do like a professional [Broadway] show, you’re just, you know, reenacting,” Ciriaco said.
A commuter student from New Jersey, Ciriaco says that although many of the show’s comedic references are based on Lincoln Center’s resident life, there’s something in it for everyone—even for those hailing from Rose Hill. He personally resonates the most with “The Elevator Song,” which details the woeful frustrations of tardy students who unnecessarily take the elevator to the second floor. The show briefly mentions commuters like himself, and Ciriaco says the representation is quite spot-on.
“I’m pretty sure there was like one mention of commuters, and then we were discarded, you know, like real Fordham!” he said with a chuckle.
Rating the musical’s accuracy in depicting the Fordham student experience, Ciriaco gave it 100 out of 10.
“This is more accurate to Fordham life than Fordham life!” he said, laughing.
Wilson shared that “Eternal Ramnation” has been a continual process of revision and improvement in order to maintain this accuracy. This year, audiences can expect more jokes surrounding updated topics such as new places to eat around campus and the Duo Mobile Security sign-in system. Wilson says there is a couple new scenes tailored to this year’s cast, and the upcoming production will feature an upgrade in sound equipment and possibly a pit ensemble.
“The current e-board of the club [Splinter Group] is trying to make this more of like a tradition that our club does, so like a hundred years from now, we’ll have been doing it,” he said, adding, “that’s unlikely—uh, for the best.”
Between his day and night jobs, Wilson has been staying busy with some other compositional projects. He’s written an instrumental piece for an ensemble that guest teaches in Fordham’s music department, helped friends write and direct their own musicals and, most recently started working independently on another full musical for which he hopes to garner support for production next year. Although he says he’d love to be able to commit full-time to his passion for music-making, he is okay with where he is right now.
“I’m just happy to be doing it at all,” Wilson said. “I would be lying if I said that there’s a part of me that doesn’t want recognition, but most of it is because I just really love music and I really love working on these things.”
