The real mysteries of eight occur in musical repetition, trance inducing figures with fluctuations and additions or subtractions in the pattern to gather momentum, like the vamps in Jonathan Larson's new musical, tick tick boom, he who learned to keep continuum under the conversational voices from his mentor, Sondheim, (who learned it from Babbit, no, from Glass, who gradually mutates the vamp), its origins found in rock and roll's boogie woogie bass line. What am I talking about, right? And another thing, if you want to write for theatre you've got to write lists, because your audience is comprised of materialists. A list of questions, a list of attainments. of miscommunications, of acquirements, and keep a vamp going underneath to conceal the sameness of the chord progression. Get to work. And congratulations to Stephen Oremus and, always annonymously in the background, Steve Skinner. Tick tick boom boom at the Jane Street Theatre.