How I wrote a musical (and you can too)

Most people’s tenth-grade Personal Projects are things like “building a bookshelf” or “learning how to cook pasta without setting the stove on fire.” Reasonable. Admirable. Tangible.

Me? I wrote a musical about quantum physics.

Yes. You read that right. A musical. About quantum. physics.
I would say “don’t ask,” but actually, please do. Because looking back, it was probably one of the most unhinged and rewarding creative decisions I’ve ever made.

At the time, I was neck-deep in two very different but very intense obsessions: particle physics and musical theatre. One was teaching me about probability waves, uncertainty principles, and how absolutely weird reality is at a subatomic level. The other was teaching me how to belt high notes while sobbing dramatically on stage. Naturally, I thought: Why not combine them? Because if Spring Awakening could make teenage repression singable, surely I could make Schrödinger’s cat into a showstopper.

The working title was something painfully dramatic like Uncertainty (very on brand), and the musical followed a fictional teenage protagonist grappling with chaos in her personal life—divorce, identity, growing up—all while preparing for a science fair project on quantum mechanics.

Yes, it sounds like something that should only exist in a fever dream. But through the narrative, the laws of quantum physics became metaphors for emotional states:

• Superposition as emotional confusion.

• Entanglement as the feeling of being tied to someone, even when apart.

• Collapse of the wave function as growing up and having to choose.

Suddenly, Heisenberg wasn’t just a guy with a microscope—he was a plot device. And somehow, it worked.

Writing the script was… an experience. I alternated between researching the Copenhagen interpretation and trying to rhyme “Planck constant” with “daunting.” (Spoiler: I failed.)

I structured it like a typical one-act musical: Opening with Schrodinger singing to his cat, and then a flashback to Lord Kelvin announcing that physics is over. After that, we move through the discovery of the quanta, and the eventual fallout when older scientists like Einstein refuse to get with the times. 

The songs ranged from upbeat pop-punk (“I hate my son”) to existential solo numbers like “He doesn't play dice” where Einstein breaks down over combining his religious side with his scientific side, echoing the collapse of infinite quantum possibilities into one.

No, we didn’t rent out a theatre and stage a full production (I was still fourteen and had a life to live, okay?). But I wrote the full script, lyrics, and even recorded demos of all the songs with very questionable background music. I made a poster. I presented it like a pitch to my teachers. And most importantly, I made people care, even just a little about quantum physics through show tunes.

I wanted to write about this, because it shows that LITERALLY anybody can write a musical. All you need is the following: 

• A weird idea that you’re obsessed with

• A willingness to commit to the bit

• Some basic Google Docs formatting skills

• And, ideally, a keyboard, guitar or band lab and a friend who can sing (or not, we love a one-person show)

Writing a musical about quantum physics wasn’t just an academic project, it was a love letter to learning, to creativity, and to the part of me that refuses to choose between theatre kid and science nerd. It reminded me that art and science aren’t opposites, they’re just two ways of trying to understand the world.