It’s an unusual idea for a musical: a story focused on a WWI soldier who also happens to be deaf.

Here’s how Marshall Pailet came up with that concept for “Private Jones,” which premieres Friday at Goodspeed Musicals’ Terris Theatre in Chester.

Pailet has always wanted to do a World War I epic — he’s fascinated by that war — and to tell it from one soldier’s unique perspective. He Googled around for inspiration until he stumbled upon the story of a Welsh sniper who was deaf.

There isn’t a lot of information about this young man named Gomer Jones, though there are mentions of him in articles and compendiums from that era. Pailet did research — he and his wife traveled to Wales for their honeymoon and spent time digging around the archives at the Welsh Regimental Museum — but he ended up creating a musical whose story is inspired by maybe one or two sentences about Jones.

Pailet wrote the book, music (which has a Celtic flavor) and lyrics for “Private Jones,” and he is also directing the Goodspeed production.

What was exciting from a theatrical perspective was figuring out how to do a war story from the point of view of someone who has lost his hearing.

In “Private Jones,” the character has gone deaf recently and is able to read lips. The audience sees what he does. What he doesn’t hear is also lost to the audience.

“Obviously, war is horrible, World War I is horrible. But this is all more haunting because he and we can’t hear what’s coming next,” Pailet said. “That was a very theatrically exciting thing for me. How would I write that, how would I stage that?”

When Pailet settled on the story, he knew he wanted to direct it as well.

“I wanted something where the story necessitated a really original and unique staging, where the staging felt like it was something intrinsic and critical to the story and not just a directorly add-on. I felt like this story had a lot of opportunities to make interesting choices,” he said.

One of the theatrical ideas is using sound Foley, which involves creating sound effects by using everyday objects. In the first scene, when Jones is a boy and hasn’t lost his hearing yet, the sounds of the world around him are created onstage through Foley means; for instance, actors flap umbrellas to mimic birds in the trees.

“We’re creating this soundscape that has these emotional connections for Gomer,” Pailet said.

The sounds that the show introduces in the beginning are the same as those used for the rest of the production to illustrate the world from Jones’s vantage point.

“You never add new sounds, but the sounds start to evolve and are misused as his perspective changes as he goes to war and his priorities shift,” Pailet said.

From the first scene, “Private Jones” expresses Jones’s emotional life through what he’s hearing. Pailet said that emotional life is just as rich, if not richer, after he’s lost his hearing. And the world of music illustrates what’s happening inside Jones.

Being inclusive

The cast and creative and design teams for “Private Jones” consist of people who are hearing, deaf and hard of hearing, to be as inclusive as possible.

Pailet said that Johnny Link, who plays Gomer, “is a beautiful singer, just a brilliant musician. He identifies as hard of hearing. He’s just an amazing talent.”

The show’s connection to Goodspeed

Pailet said that “Private Jones” is inextricably linked to Goodspeed. He wrote most of it at Goodspeed in 2019 as part of the Johnny Mercer Writers Grove.

“I wrote it very quickly. Being up there was really a kind of turning point process for me. Then the next year we did it as part of the (Goodspeed) Festival of New Musicals,” he said.

That festival staging was in 2020, right before the pandemic shutdown. Later on, Goodspeed produced a workshop of “Private Jones” in New York.

“I’ve done a lot of development with Goodspeed. Donna Lynn (Hilton, Goodspeed’s artistic director) has been there every single step of the way, supporting the show, believing in the show, giving us the resources we need to do this show right,” he said.

There are some different logistics for “Private Jones” than other productions. For example, interpreters are needed for “Private Jones” rehearsals.

Pailet said that Goodspeed has also been personally supportive of him on this project.

“I will be grateful to Donna Lynn and Goodspeed for the rest of my life for developing this show, and I’m so excited that its first staging is going to be on a Goodspeed stage.”

‘Pailet Playhouse’

Pailet, 36, has always loved musicals. When his parents had friends over for dinner, a young Marshall (who was born in Maryland and grew up in New York) would enlist his younger brother and put on a “Pailet Playhouse” performance.

“Right from the start, I just loved making stories and I loved entertaining people. There wasn’t a history of performance or art so much in my family. I was kind of an anomaly in that way. But my parents were so supportive — ‘If this is the thing that makes you happy, we’ll do it,’” he said.

Pailet became a child performer and acted in productions, including on Broadway the “Sound of Music” version that starred Rebecca Luker and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” where he played Sid Sawyer. His parents weren’t stage parents; rather, they put the whole experience in perspective.

Pailet started composing music at a young age and then began writing with his father, a corporate lawyer by profession. “There was this father/son bonding thing that we did together — like writing musicals when I was in middle school and high school. We wrote together a lot, and we actually still do write together,” he said.

At Yale University, Pailet was a philosophy student. It was also during college that he started directing a lot and realized he loved it; he felt he had found the thing he was meant to do. His after-graduation plan was to direct straight plays and write musicals. But when he created a musical, the show’s producer had trouble hiring a director so offered Pailet $1,000 to do the job.

“I was 22, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, a thousand dollars. Of course I will do it,’” he recalled.

The show ended up getting some traction, and that sent Pailet down the path he’s on now.

He went on to co-write musicals like the satirical “Who’s Your Baghdaddy, or How I Started the Iraq War,” which made it to Off-Broadway and was a New York Times Critics’ Pick, and “Triassic Parq,” which told the “Jurassic Park” story from the dinosaurs’ standpoint and has been internationally licensed.

“I’m lucky the thing that I loved doing as a kid, right from the beginning, is the thing that I’m still doing. Not a lot of people are fortunate enough to have that be true. So I feel very lucky,” he said.

If you go

What: “Private Jones”

Where: The Terris Theatre, 33 North Main St., Chester

When: Opens Friday and runs through Nov. 5; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Wed., 7:30 p.m. Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri., 3 and 8 p.m. Sat., and 2 and 6:30 p.m. Sun.

ASL, open caption: ASL interpretation Oct. 14 matinee, Oct. 19 evening, Oct. 25 matinee; opening captioning performance Oct. 27 evening

Tickets: Start at $49

Contact: (860) 873-8668, goodspeed.org