A Song Is Born

The Play

Nine years of cataloguing music.
Two days of understanding it.

A full-length stage comedy. Based on the 1948 Samuel Goldwyn film directed by Howard Hawks, from a story by Billy Wilder.

FormatOne Act · No Intermission

Running TimeApprox. 1 Hour 45 Minutes

ConfigurationProscenium · ~490 Seats

EnsembleLive Jazz, Present Throughout

PeriodNew York City, 1948

Scenes16 Scenes · No Blackouts

ScriptRevision 6 · April 13, 2026

"The play moves with the propulsive logic of a jazz performance: theme, variation, development, resolution."

— from the production notes

In a grand Upper West Side research library in 1948, seven professors have spent nine years compiling the world's most ambitious encyclopedia of music. They know every date, every tempo, every published fact about American music. They have never once listened to it.

Professor Hobart Frisbee leads the Totten Foundation's jazz encyclopedia with the devotion of a man who has confused thoroughness with understanding. Then Honey Swanson arrives.

She is a nightclub singer, streetwise and quick, running from a gangster who would prefer she not testify against him. She needs somewhere to disappear. The Foundation, with its seven unworldly scholars and its limitless capacity for not noticing things, is the most invisible place in New York.

What follows is two days that change everything — for the professors, for Honey, and for anyone who has ever believed that knowing something and understanding it were the same thing.

The music is not accompaniment. It is character: every one of the ensemble's sixteen cues a voice in the scene, never background. The play's climax, built around three appearances of Flying Home (Hampton/Goodman, 1939), asks what it means to truly hear something — the first time as revelation, the second as battle, the third as joy.

◆

A play about the distance between knowing something and understanding it. And, underneath, a love story: the two days it takes a man and a woman to cross a room.

The Voice

Three lines.
You'll know in thirty seconds.

Nine years at this table. Nine years of my life. Do you know what I might have accomplished in nine years?

— A different encyclopedia?

…That's almost certainly it.

Professors Gench & Elkon · Scene One

That note you bent in the second chorus — the way you let it fall rather than resolve — do you know that technique traces directly back to —

West African vocal tradition?

You know music theory?

I know music. Theory came later.

Hobart & Honey · Scene Four

Note for the encyclopedia: Jazz is not a subject.

Jazz is a verb.

Professor Elkon · Scene Sixteen

The Legacy

The greatest concentration of jazz talent ever assembled on a Hollywood soundstage.

The 1948 Samuel Goldwyn film — directed by Howard Hawks, from a story by Billy Wilder — gathered six legends of American music onto a single soundstage in an act of artistic generosity that was unrepeatable then and is unimaginable now.

This stage adaptation honors that legacy while doing something the film could never do: let the music be live, unrecorded, and present in the room.

A camera can capture a performance. A stage places you inside one. The ensemble is never in the wings, never pre-recorded, never incidental. They watch the action. They respond to it. When the play is funny, they swing. When it aches, they slow. They are a chorus, a conscience, and a punctuation mark.

The music should never sound like a museum piece.
It should sound like something happening right now.

Benny Goodman

Clarinet · The King of Swing

Louis Armstrong

Trumpet · Satchmo

Tommy Dorsey

Trombone · The Sentimental Gentleman

Lionel Hampton

Vibraphone · Flying Home

Charlie Barnet

Saxophone · The Raven

Mel Powell

Piano · The Arranger

"This is not a museum piece. It is a new play, built for a live room, about what happens when people stop organizing knowledge and start listening."

— from the Production Notes

The Playwright

An unconventional route.
An unconventional result.

Daniel Pettus

Playwright

Years in Healthcare
Informatics

$2B

Portfolio Led — Becton
Dickinson & CareFusion

Medication Management
& EHR Integration

IEEE

Published · Patented ·
Best Article of the Year

①

His first play.

Let us be straightforward about it.

There is no agent. There are no prior productions. What there is: a writer who spent thirty-five years solving a specific problem — the gap between data collected and knowledge felt — in a field that had nothing to do with theater.

Vice President roles at Becton Dickinson and CareFusion. A $2 billion portfolio in medication management and EHR integration. Patents in medical device connectivity. Published in IEEE, the Journal of Clinical Monitoring, and BI&T, where his 2014 article on infusion pump integration won Best Article of the Year. Recognized publicly by Yale University and UC San Diego for contributions to anesthesia informatics and patient safety.

And then: a 1948 Howard Hawks film, watched once, then again, then again. A question that would not let go: what would this story be if the music were live, unrecorded, and present in the room?

The play he finally wrote is about seven men who have catalogued music for nine years without once listening to it. About the gap between documentation and understanding. About what happens when that gap, finally, closes. He knows this story from the inside. He worked in it for thirty-five years.

That is either a very bad sign for a playwright, or a very interesting one.

We believe it is the latter.

He came to this material by an unconventional route. He believes — and the work bears out — that this is precisely why the play is what it is. A Song Is Born is his first play. The script is complete. The voice is entirely his own.

Materials

Everything you need
to make a decision.

Complete production documentation available on request. The script is ready for the room.

📄

The Full Script

A Song Is Born, Revision 6 — April 13, 2026. One act, sixteen scenes, approximately 1 hour 45 minutes. Complete with character descriptions, setting notes, all stage directions, and production notes from the playwright.

Download PDF

🎭

Director's Production Notes

Complete staging documentation for proscenium production. Permanent zone maps, scene-by-scene blocking guidance, lighting specifications, transition timing, prop lists, and acoustic considerations for the live ensemble.

Download PDF

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Read the Opening

Scenes One and Two of the script — the full opening sequence that establishes world, voice, and dramatic problem. The music enters on the second page. Read it here, in the browser. No download required.

"The jazz ensemble should be treated as a full creative collaborator in production. The musical director should be given latitude to expand, develop, and improvise within the framework provided."

— Production Notes, On the Music

The Ask

The work is done.
The question is whether
it belongs in your season.

The script is complete. The production package is ready. There is no development left to do before a reading, a workshop, or a full production. This play can be scheduled, cast, and rehearsed right now.

If A Song Is Born is something you'd like to read — or if you've already read it and want to continue the conversation — Daniel would like to hear from you.

Not through a submission portal. Not a cold query letter. A conversation.

danpettus@outlook.com

No submission queue · No agent required · Just a note

"Jazz was built on exactly this: people believing in something before it was finished. Backing it with what they had. Showing up to the session not knowing quite what would come out, but knowing it was worth the room."

— from the Playwright's Note

Nine years of cataloguing music.Two days of understanding it.

Three lines.You'll know in thirty seconds.