The Freshman Experiment

The Freshman Experiment (commonly nicknamed Fresh X by those in the know) began in March of 2007 when musical theater writers Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk were looking for a new project. They wanted to do something that combined all the things they loved – musical theater, unconventional formats, and surfing the web. They also wanted to explore the flip-side of their most recent musical The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown. Instead of the fictionalized high school senior Sam who does not go to college, they were interested seeing the inside of the real college freshman experience. Since they are old and decrepit, they knew that they needed something more than their distant memories of skipping orientation, playing beer pong, and making out in public. They knew they needed real college freshmen. The only questions remaining were who these real college freshmen would be and how they could best document the experience.

After a long and hard search, they found Christine Coke and PosterChild, aspiring bloggers who agreed to write with absolute candor about their separate freshmen years. Their backgrounds and their new schools couldn’t be more different but by some weird coincidence the two had met before and were, for a brief period of time, friends. As friends often do, they lost touch, and were not reconnected until The Freshman Experiment began.

Once Christine Coke and PosterChild were on board, everything started to fall into place… if by fall into place you mean move painstakingly through legal meetings, the process of finding the right web designer – holla Odegy! – and waiting until all systems were finally go!

It’s time to make one thing clear. Kerrigan and Lowdermilk have no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into. They don’t know what the end result will be or if there will be an end result. Writing is all about the process and they’re letting you, readers, in on that process first hand. No more “Which comes first – the words or the music?” You’ll see that it’s a big messy pile of a little bit of both, er, um, it depends, I don’t really remember…

You will watch Christine Coke’s and PosterChild’s freshmen years progress alongside Kerrigan and Lowdermilk. You’ll read their postings, the very ones that will inspire new songs before the songs are even written. You’ll see video and audio clips of Kerrigan and Lowdermilk songs at their earliest stage. Your comments and ideas will impact everyone at every turn. In fact, your participation is vital to the evolution of the first-ever living musical.

Welcome to The Freshman Experiment.