the obligation to be Sweet's "bride", tells the group how much fun they have been ("What You Feel" (reprise)) and disappears. The Scoobies realize that their relationships have been changed irreversibly by the secrets revealed in their songs ("Where Do We Go from Here?"). Spike leaves The Bronze, but Buffy follows him out, and they kiss ("Coda"). Production and writing Joss Whedon had wanted to make a musical episode since the start of the series. This was heightened during the fifth season when he hosted a Shakespeare reading at his house, to which the cast was invited. They began drinking and singing, demonstrating to Whedon that certain cast members had musical talents. Whedon knew he would have to write an entire score, which would take weeks or months. During the first three seasons of Buffy, he was unable to take more than two weeks off at a time, and the constraints of writing and directing the show precluded him from putting forth the effort of preparing a musical. Whedon spoke to the show's producer, Gareth Davies, about his idea; they agreed that a musical episode would be written. Whedon spent six months writing the music for "Once More, with Feeling". When he returned after the end of the fifth season, he presented Davies with a script and CD, complete with notated and orchestrated music, which Davies found "mind-boggling". The actors were initially bewildered; in 2012, James Marsters commented that "it's obvious now that they were good songs but the thing was Joss and his wife Kai, they don't sing very well. And they don't play piano very well. The songs sounded really cheesy and horrible... We were saying, 'Joss, you're ruining our careers.'" Preparing for the episode was physically difficult for some of the cast members, most of whom had little experience singing and dancing. They spent three months in voice training. Two choreographers worked with Whedon and the cast on dance sequences. Michelle Trachtenberg (Dawn), who is trained in ballet, requested a dance sequence in lieu of a significant singing part, and Alyson Hannigan (Willow), according to Whedon, begged him not to give her many lines. Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy) told the BBC that "It took something like 19 hours of singing and 17 hours of dancing in between shooting four other episodes" and she was so anxious about singing that she "hated every moment of it". When Whedon