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Notes on a Script: How Bob Martin Gave Betty Boop a Voice
Apr 28, 2025
xWhat goes into crafting the words that make up our favorite Broadway shows? How do Broadway playwrights and book writers make our favorite characters shine and our favorite scenes come alive? BroadwayWorld is finding out with Notes on a Script. In this video, watch as Bob Martin breaks down his words in Boop! The Musical.
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This is Broadway World's Notes on a Script, and I am Bob Martin, the book writer of Boop the Musical that just opened a couple of days ago
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So the scene that I wanted to talk about was the scene that takes place in the second act
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Betty has come to the real world, she's been disguised in the first act, and having the time of her life
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and then she gets so sort of ecstatic at the end of the first act that she is revealed as Betty Boop
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In the second act, she starts to understand that people have known her for a hundred years and that she's become kind of iconic and kind of a symbol
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And she says at one point, it seems to me that there are two Betty Boops, the one the whole world knows and then me
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And I don't think I know either of them. So she's in a place where she doesn't really understand who she is
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And there's a scene on the roof of Trisha's house, Trisha being the young girl that Betty befriends
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Betty is sitting by herself on the skylight looking out over New York City
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And Trisha and Dwayne come out to see her And at this point in the scene we have to deal with certain expositional elements including the effect that Betty has had on Tricia and on Dwayne and on Carol
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the three other principal characters in the show. Carol is now making her dreams come true
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Betty says, you're all making your dreams come true. And Dwayne points out that none of that happened until she arrived
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and then they get into this dialogue that leads into the most beautiful song in the show
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why look around the corner um which is about this search for love now betty boop as we depict her
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does not understand romantic love in her existence in the fleischer world she's only chased by men
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she's never had any kind of relationship here she is with duane and she's discovered a kind of deep
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connection that she's never experienced before. And a connection that really makes us human
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And that's kind of the whole principle of the show. And so she has this scene
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uh that really gets to me They they they had a little fight because Dwayne feels that she lied to her lied to him about who she was He says sorry I called you a liar She says I did lie
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I said I was a girl from out of town. And he says, well, you are. And you know what? Most people in New York are from out of town
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I am. Most people come here to find out who they are, to find a family. And it gets to this idea that Dwayne himself was out of town
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and he came because he wanted something, something that was missing. but he didn't know what to call it and that's why it was so hard to find and now he's found it
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and it's Betty it's the love that he has found with Betty Betty in act one has talked about this
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fluttering that she feels inside that she can't explain that she compares to like having swallowed
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a moth and so when he says that to her I found it how about you she says there's that moth again
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And it launches into this incredible lyric that Susan Birkenhead has written to David's
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beautiful music, Why Look Around the Corner, which is all about searching for this indefinable
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thing when it right in front of you And they sing this song together they dance together on the roof and um at one point Dwayne says in the middle of the song do you do you think you
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found it that thing you've been looking for and Betty says well there's no bouncing ball
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and Dwayne says what he says well this is all new to me but in my world two people have when
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two people have a moment like this there's usually a bouncing ball and maybe fireworks if it's really
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something special. And then she turns Dwayne's head to the moon that's projected at the back of
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the theater. The moon turns into a bouncing ball and bounces over the lyrics of the song
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and they dance together. And honestly, it's the most romantic sequence I've ever seen on a Broadway
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stage. And it's Jerry Mitchell just being incredible. It's Ainsley being a wonderful
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dancer. He helped choreograph his own material. It's Susan Birkenhead's beautiful lyrics and David's
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beautiful music. And, you know, it's my twisted idea of what makes us human
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all married together in this moment on the roof. So it's my favorite scene in the show
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