Interview: Myle Yan Tay and Nathaniel Mah on Privacy Settings — Crafting a Musical that Holds Emotional Contradictions

In this candid conversation, emerging musical theatre writers Myle Yan Tay and Nathaniel Mah reflect on their evolving creative process behind Privacy Settings. Over two years of development, their approach and musical voice have shifted significantly. Early drafts — especially the songs written in 2022 — are now almost unrecognisable from the final version, evidence of how much both writers have grown artistically.

A pivotal moment came during a residency in New York, where they encountered The Connector by Jason Robert Brown. The work’s lyricism and emotional precision struck a chord. “It reminded us that musicals don’t have to be clever for the sake of it,” Myle says. “They can be heartfelt and brutal and silly all at once.” 

That ethos now guides their collaboration. Myle, who moves fluidly between fiction and theatre, explores themes of identity, masculinity, and rage in works like catskull and Brown Boys Don’t Tell Jokes. Nathaniel, a Yale-NUS graduate with a background in songwriting and sound design, brings sonic precision honed in projects like Temujin and Overtime. Together, they believe that musicals can do more than entertain — they can excavate.

“We’re not interested in floaty or frivolous theatre,” Nathaniel says. “We want to do something that balances levity with heaviness.” What interests them isn’t tonal consistency, but the dissonance — where humour is welcome, but never used to deflect the weight underneath. For Nathaniel, this impulse reflects a broader shift in musical theatre itself: “The idea of a serious contemporary musical—one that doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending — is actually quite a recent development,” he reflects. “You see it from Sondheim onwards, but before that, in the great American musical tradition, that kind of emotional complexity wasn’t really the norm.” (Referring to Stephen Sondheim, a groundbreaking American composer-lyricist known for reinventing musical theatre through complex harmonies, emotional depth, and lyrical sophistication.) Their work sits firmly in that newer lineage, asking how musicals might hold unresolved feelings without flattening them into resolution. 

For Myle, musical theatre was an intuitive turn. Influenced early by Jesus Christ Superstar, his sense of what theatre could be was later expanded by works like Dreamplay and The Good, the Bad & the Sholay. Today, he cites Groundhog Day by Tim Minchin as a touchstone: “It’s absurd and funny, but then it suddenly asks, ‘What if you are stuck in a life you didn’t ask for?’ That’s the kind of emotional undercut we’re drawn to.”

Privacy Settings mirrors their generational preoccupations. The musical doesn’t offer a neat resolution, and that’s intentional. It lingers in ambiguity — exploring digital intimacy, emotional inertia, and the quietly monumental task of choosing to change. “We’re interested in characters who can’t find the right words,” Myle says. “That’s where music comes in — it lets us sit in that emotional uncertainty.”

This sense of emotional accumulation is something Nathaniel builds consciously into his compositions. “Sometimes the music says what the characters can’t,” he reflects. “There are layers of meaning you can’t explain in a line of dialogue, but you can let it swell in a harmony or an unresolved chord.” 

Their creative process is built on emotional transparency. Constantly exchanging melodies, rough drafts, and late-night voice notes, they’ve come to see the messiness as part of the work. “We’ve had to learn to trust that,” Nathaniel says. “It’s not always about fixing something. Sometimes it’s just about figuring out what we’re actually feeling.”

The way they collaborate — fluid, reactive, curious — reflects the kind of story they’re trying to tell. One that resists easy answers. One that asks its audience to sit in the discomfort, to feel before they interpret. 

In the staged reading of Privacy Settings, voices rang out clear — textured, aching, and sharp. The cast's vocal prowess added emotional depth to a weekend retreat that was anything but restful. Amidst the lush orchestration and carefully crafted harmonies, one could glimpse the thematic density the writers have layered into their work: familial estrangement, digital surveillance, broken trust, and the quiet war of misunderstandings. At times, the libretto felt almost too laden, the lyrics heavy with intent — yet within that weight lies the writers’ insistence on wrestling with the messiness of modern life.

This density isn’t incidental. It reflects a belief that musicals can — and should — contain multitudes. Privacy Settings does not simplify. It lingers in contradictions: a supposedly tech-enhanced vacation that relies on analogue data collection; a corporation masking its surveillance behind kindness; a family trying to reconnect before an irrevocable separation. 

What emerges is not just a cautionary tale, nor merely a critique of digital capitalism. Instead, it is a fragile, ambitious act of threading emotion through overload. Its density challenges the audience to stay present, to listen harder, to feel more deliberately. And that, perhaps, is its quiet provocation—to ask if we are capable of clarity not in spite of the noise, but within it.

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Privacy Settings imagines what it’s like to live under the benevolent control of an all-encompassing digital corporation. Over one turbulent weekend, a fractured family is forced to decide whether to reconnect—or sever ties for good.

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PRIVACY SETTINGS
Original Musical (In Development)
Music & Lyrics by Nathaniel Mah
Book by Myle Yan Tay
Arrangement & Orchestration by Michael Brinzer
Produced by Mohamad Shaifulbahri
Sound engineer by Danial Ahmad

In this excerpt, Nadya Zaheer performs “The Last Time” during the staged reading on 4 February 2025.

Cast (in alphabetical order):
Ziyad Bagharib, Medli Dorothea Loo, Andrew Marko, Ebi Shankara, Nadya Zaheer

Band
Music Direction & Keyboard — Joanne Ho
Guitar — Daniel Chai
Bass — Brandon Wong
Percussion — Rizal Sanip

Video Credits
Cameras — Grace Baey, Basil Tan, Heng Ray Ern
Editing — Grace Baey
Audio Post — Nathaniel Mah

Venue Sponsor — Wild Rice

The musical was awarded the Creation Grant from the National Arts Council, Singapore in 2023, culminating in a staged reading at the Wild Rice Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre in February 2025.