It's a Helluva Town!

I went to New York over the weekend with New Line's resident stage manager Trish Bakula and we had a great time. While we were there, we met up with New Line actor Joe Garner, who's now living up there, and with Amy Schott, New Line's stage manager from Assassins in 1998 through Hair in 2001, who lives in New Haven. And we also unexpectedly ran into New Line actor Justin Heinrich, who I hadn't seen since Hair in 2001. I also spent some time with my friends John Prignano at Music Theatre International, and Peter Filichia, web columnist and Broadway critic for The Newark Star Ledger.

It was a fun musical-theatre-filled few days. On Friday I went to the New York Public Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Collection (my favorite home away from home). They've got a new, totally rehabbed, state-of-the-art home now. I watched the 2005 revival of the Shakespearean rock musical Two Gentlemen of Verona (with music by Hair composer Galt MacDermot), and though I already had heard the score and read the script, I had no idea how insanely fun and rowdy this show is! It's essentially the original Shakespeare script (though pruned considerably), augmented with some contemporary dialogue here and there and some hilarious new lyrics by playwright John Guare. It's fast and crazy and rowdy and romantic and sexy, and in a wacky way, really beautiful and life-affirming. And there's just enough political content to keep me happy. Even watching the show on video was such fun I was on a high the rest of the day.

...that is, until curtain time that night, when we dove into Next to Normal, the brilliant, dark, powerful new rock musical (almost rock opera) from Tom Kitt, the composer of one of my greatest musical theatre loves, High Fidelity. It's thrilling and overwhelming, and the cast was incredible (including the understudy playing the daughter!), and I cannot wait to produce it here in St. Louis. I think it is a genuine masterpiece of rock theatre. (Hopefully, the success of Normal will lead folks to take another look at the unfairly maligned High Fidelity!)

Next to Normal is the story of a bipolar woman and the family around her who are all struggling by her illness. It is a tough, uncompromising, exhilarating piece of theatre. Just six actors, a very minimalist set, and a driving, hard rock score like Broadway rarely hears. This is a show that asks a lot from its audience. My favorite kind of theatre!

On Saturday night, we saw the revival of Hair. I was worried about this one -- having directed the show three times now, and having written a whole book about Hair, I was prepared to be disappointed by a commercialization of this beautiful, experimental show. But to my surprise, the show was just about perfect. It was exactly what Hair is supposed to be -- messy, rowdy, chaotic, wild, and profoundly emotional. In fact, this revival was so much like New Line's productions in so many ways that it was almost a little disconcerting. The Tribe laid around the stage, hanging off the front, running through the audience, fucking around with people in the house -- at one point, Berger came running down the steps off the stage and threw himself across me (in the front row), literally laying across my entire body (Would just a little dry-humping be too much to ask in such a situation? He was hot!), in order to fuck around with the person behind me. The sad moments were devastating, the Trip was wonderful, the ending had half the audience in tears. And yes, they invited the audience up on stage to dance at the end. It was an incredibly emotional experience for me.

There were a few minor rewrites to Jim Rado and Gerry Ragni's script, but they all seemed to be aimed at helping the audience with historical references and context. Even Scott the Purist can't complain about that. The cast was utterly brilliant, every one of them. My only complaint is that everyone sang every song at the top of their voices. I know that's how Broadway handles rock musicals these days, but just a little variety would've been nice -- I would have preferred less kick-ass renditions of "Franks Mills" and "Walking in Space." But all in all, it was wonderful.

Sunday night we saw Toxic Avenger the Musical. Not so awesome. It is funny, I have to admit. I laughed a lot. But it's also a truly shameless rip-off of Bat Boy, cribbing almost every plot point and even some staging. After I noticed this, it was a little creepy watching them rarely waver from Bat Boy's plot through the whole show. They stole some from Urinetown as well, and stole one moment (a Bruce Springsteen doppelganger) from High Fidelity. I'm sorry to say there isn't a single original moment in the whole show. I was very disappointed.

We got back Monday, and though I enjoyed the trip, I really hate traveling, and I was incredibly happy to get back home to South City. But I have some awesome new musical theatre memories and a bunch of new show t-shirts as well.

Oh yeah, and we're definitely doing Two Gents in the fall and we'll do Next to Normal the second they let us have it. I can't wait!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

INTERMISSION

I stand/sit before you, a Man without a Musical. Pity me, my friends. Opening night of The Wild Party is... let's see... about, oh, I don't know... SIX MONTHS AWAY! I shit you not. It opens April 22. Ack!

Granted, I only have to survive till late February when rehearsals will start. But that's still a really long time. Especially for an obsessive like me. What will I do with all that time? There actually are a few things...

Over the last few days, I finally settled all the details for our annual New Line Holiday Dinner, set for Wednesday, December 2. And we're at a new place this year -- we've moved to Favazza's Restaurant, on The Hill. Come join us! This will be our ninth holiday dinner, and we really have so much fun!

On Thursday, our stage manager Trish and I are going to New York for a few days. I haven't been up to the Big Bad Apple since 2002! I used to go once a year (sometimes more), but the commercial theatre in New York has been letting me down a lot in recent years, so I haven't been back. But Trish convinced me it's time. We'll be seeing Next to Normal, Hair, and Toxic Avenger: The Musical. I'll also be spending some time at the New York Public Library's "Theatre On Film and Tape" Collection, watching a couple cool shows I haven't seen and am considering for next season.

I've also had, over the last couple weeks, two completely wild ideas for new musicals to write. I'll just say this -- one is about nuns and the other is about zombies. Now that I see what I just typed, I wonder if there's a way to do a musical about zombie nuns...? If either one really turns into anything, I'll let you know...

One of my tasks over these next few months will be to work on the Wild Party score -- it's a real beast to play! And since I'm our rehearsal pianist, I need to get in control of it. But that will be fun -- it's an incredibly rowdy score and such a damn joy to play.

I also realized recently that we'll only have a week off between closing Wild Party and starting rehearsals for Evita. And I'm planning to approach Evita reeeeeeally differently from the way everyone else does it. We're gonna do a very minimalist, raw, Brechtian production that emphasizes the rock and roll in the score. I may have posted this here before, but last year I heard the original Evita studio recording (made before the show had been produced), and that recording is sooooo much more rock and roll than what we're used to -- it sounds much more like JC Superstar. That's the sound we'll be going for. All of which means I have to prepare a lot for Evita before we even start Wild Party.

Also, in January, I'm going to be teaching musical theatre history for the first time in my life, so I'll have to prepare for that...

Sounds like I'll have plenty to do, doesn't it? I still have a feeling I'll be bored a lot.

I'll keep in touch.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I Can Breathe Again

Love Kills is over. As many people know, we ended up canceling the last week of our run because of a death in the New Line family. But it was a really strong show with a really strong cast, a really strong band, and if I do say so myself, some very strong direction. The audiences were smaller than we're used to (we're used to selling out a lot), but they were such good audiences, really tuned in, really listening, really focused. And surprisingly enough, considering the crazily intense content, we even had a few repeat customers.

The show's author, Kyle Jarrow, was very pleased with how seriously we approached his material, how well the show worked (it had been produced for six performances at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, but Kyle did major rewrites before giving the show to us), and how well it was received here (the earlier version was not all that well received in NYC). Hopefully, armed with quite a few great St. Louis reviews as proof of how well it works, the show will have a further life. New Line did that for High Fidelity -- none of the New York licensing agents would represent Hi-Fi because the New York production was such a mess and a failure, but because of our incredibly well reviewed production, many other companies have gone through us to contact the authors and arrange further productions. I hope the same happens with Love Kills.

However, as great an experience as it was for all of us, there was a genuine tragedy. Our guitarist Mike Renard passed away before the run was finished. Mike was a real artist with a guitar (and, on occasion, a banjo, a mandolin, whatever we needed). He played almost every New Line show going back to our first Bat Boy in 2003, when Mike was still in high school. He could play any style and was so terrific to work with. He was uncomfortable with compliments, but I hope he knew how much he brought to our shows and how much we all respected his enormous talent and how much we loved working with him. He was such a good guy and a consummate artist, and we will miss him terribly. I realize as I type this that we don't have any good pictures of Mike because he was always in the background, but I cropped this shot from Love Kills of Mike in action -- this was the first time Mike was both guitarist and conductor for us (there's no piano part in this show). He rose to the challenge as he always did and impressed the hell out of everyone once again. It will be so weird to do shows without him now. You ROCKED, Mikey!

Still, despite the sadness of this past week, I feel so proud of Love Kills. We took this tough, emotional, disturbing little show and we did what we do best -- we fashioned the most honest, truthful performances we could. In my not-so-objective opinion, this show had some of the best, most subtle, most truthful acting we've ever had on stage. It was a genuine pleasure to watch these four actors -- Alison, Zak, Phil, and Taylor -- work every night. What an amazing foursome they were, unbelievably connected to each other every night on stage, sometimes seeming more like a brilliant string quartet than four actors in a rock musical.

As the American director Alan Schneider has said, "There are no secret shortcuts, there are no formulas, there are no rules. There's only yourself and your talent and your taste and your choices." I love that quote. And then there's this one, from director Robert Falls: "I learned from acting teacher Edward Kaye-Martin about courage and using your fear in your work and always striving. He had a saying, 'Go for the gold,' which means always make the richest choice. Not the most obvious choice. The scariest choice, the juiciest choice."

That's what Alison, Zak, Phil, and Taylor did every night on stage, and it was a joy to witness. So thank you to everyone involved -- the cast, the band, Vicki and Ann in the lobby, Matt on sound, Trish on lights, our designers, everybody -- and most of all, thanks to Kyle Jarrow. I could not be prouder of this show.

Now on to The Wild Party!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Look Down On Your Life

We're halfway through the run and this sure is one of the stranger experiences we've had. Love Kills is a very intense show, and though almost everyone who sees it is blown away by it, and though the reviews have been really strong -- some of them outright raves -- still our audiences have been awfully small compared to our other shows.

It will be interesting to see if our audiences grow these last two weeks or if this is a show that appeals only to a small subset of our usual audience.

I mentioned this in an earlier blog but it continues -- to this day, halfway through the run, our audiences still do not applaud after the songs in this show. On opening night, I tired to get applause started after the first song, and the night Zak's family was there, they tried to applaud Zak's two big songs. But other than that, no one has applauded at all for a single other song. It is apparently not that they don't like the show, but somehow it doesn't feel right to them to applaud. When we ask them about it after the show, some of them honestly don't realize they hadn't been applauding. We assume -- we hope -- that they're just so tuned in to the show that nothing can break that focus. We do notice during some long pauses in the show that no one in the audience even moves. There is dead silence. I don't think that would be true if folks weren't engaged in the story. And yet they don't applaud...

Weird, huh?

It is very cool to work on a four-character show. The only shows we've done that are this small were Songs for a New World (four actors) in 1998 and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (two actors) in 2004. It's really different than having our usual cast of 10-14. First of all, it's easier to polish the show because there are fewer performances to work on. Second, it's easier to avoid egos with so few actors. And third, the cast gets really closely bonded. Don't get me wrong, the New Line casts usually bond pretty strongly, but this is different.

It's been so nice for me to be able to send the author Kyle all these great reviews. There aren't a lot of companies that would have taken a risk like this -- it's a tough, little show and it demands something from its audience. It's not commercial. But now with these glowing reviews in hand, maybe Kyle will be able to find future productions and this beautiful show can have further life.

We're going to lose a shitload of money on this show, but this is why we exist -- to do challenging, relevant musical theatre that other companies are afraid of. We ended last season with a surplus and we'll probably deplete it all on this show, but it is so worth it.

I am so proud of our choice to do Love Kills, of our amazing cast, and of the excellent work we've all done on it.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

You Like What You're Seeing

Ticket sales are still somewhat slow, but we expected that -- it's a difficult and unknown show. But Jesus, the reviewers sure like us! That's usually enough to boost sales; we'll see...

We got two more reviews, both real raves, this time from Paul Friswold at The Riverfront Times, and from Andrea Braun at KDHX-FM.

Friswold writes in his RFT review, “Love Kills is a gripping and fascinating evening in the hands of director Scott Miller and New Line Theatre. . . Love Kills is not a comforting evening, not by a long shot. Identify too much with one couple or the other and you're bound to feel bad about yourself. But Jarrow keeps feeding you moments in which you want the four of them to achieve everything they desire, even when the characters are at cross-purposes. The end result is much like navigating love – how do you give yourself to someone else and hold on to yourself at the same time? Life is long; if you're lucky, long enough to figure it out.”

Andrea Braun writes in her KDHX review, “Watching their story unfold through a raw punk-flavored rock score and fine acting on the parts of all four cast members is sublime. The bad boy of musical theatre is gloriously back! . . . Composer Kyle Jarrow defines Love Kills as an ‘emo rock musical,’ and in the sense that it is highly charged and personal, that’s fair. Scott Miller directs with passionate intensity, and it’s among the finest work I’ve seen from this company, which is saying a lot. This isn’t the world’s best musical, but I defy anyone to leave it without much to ponder and plenty to talk about. I hope audiences will give it the attention it deserves.”

Gerry Kowarsky, of the local cable show, Two on the Aisle, on KDHX-TV, said, “The show bowled me over. It has a very well-crafted story and a powerful score.”

Wow! Once again, I think I may have underestimated our audiences and our reviewers. I really didn't know if folks would accept this tough, ugly little show, but they seem to fucking love it! So once again, we've proved that people don't only like what they know; they like what's good, even if it's challenging. Taking risks pays off.

I'm so proud of this show and of the New Liners!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

You Love to Watch

We had a great weekend! The show was so incredibly strong every night and though the audiences were small-ish, they seemed to really love this show! One couple said it was the best thing they've seen at New Line! And so many folks really wanted to talk after the show. I think they needed to work through their conflicting feelings about Charlie and Caril. Which is exactly Kyle's point with this show.

And the reviews have begun to come in.... We weren't sure what people would think about this dark, angry, sad, wild show, and the reviews are suitably odd. Not our usual crazy raves, but all of them positive...

Gabe Hartwig reviewed us for the Post-Dispatch this time (so many shows opened this week that Judy had to delegate some reviews). The only negative things he had to say were about sound balance on a couple songs (which I think we've worked out now), and also that "at times the singing seems misplaced -- like when stern-faced Merle sweetly sings 'Someday' to Gertrude while seated at a table and barely looking up." But the latter complaint misses the point that what songs in musicals do best is soliloquy, in which the character reveals emotions that he would never reveal to the world. He doesn't look up at her because he is embarrassed by his emotion. Adult men in 1958 were supposed to be Gary Cooper, not pussies like Jim Stark...

The surface action in Love Kills is so dark and violent, and the emotional core of these characters is so vulnerable and often in contradiction to their actions; this disconnect may make some folks who are used to Guys and Dolls and Wicked uncomfortable. But that disconnect is also profoundly human and real. Merle can love deeply, and can be insecure about his wife's love, while also beating the shit out of Charlie to get him to confess. Most people are different on the inside from what they show the world. In the case of this show, I think audiences and/or reviewers may accept those contradictions from Charlie and Caril because they're supposed to "damaged" and "sick." But that contradiction is no less vital to understanding Merle and Gertrude. Merle's tenderness and emotion in "Someday" and "Hard Man" are so opposite his hard, cold exterior, but these moments set up the crack we see at the end in Merle's precious surety.

And that's great storytelling. Anything less complicated would do a disservice to these amazingly fucked-up, complex -- and let's not forget, real -- people.

Joe Pollack no longer reviews for KWMU, but he continues to review on his own blog, and he gave Love Kills a very positive review, but he did write one thing that bothered me, that "there is a banality to the lyrics that is off-putting." What Joe doesn't understand is that in modern musical theatre (unlike most shows of the so-called "Golden Age"), lyrics cannot be in the voice of the writer; they must be in the voice of the characters. And they cannot contain more insight or self-knowledge than the characters possess. Good theatre lyrics are no longer meant to dazzle or impress; they must fuse seamlessly with the script.

Storytelling comes first.

In the case of Love Kills, Charlie and Caril's lyrics may seem shallow and superficial because that's who these kids are, but if you listen closely, there are dozens of little references, turns of phrase, slight variations from one verse to the next that reveal these characters without them knowing it (as often happens in real life). If you pay close attention to Charlie's lyrics, they have the repetition that real rock lyrics have, but they also do the hard work of theatre songs -- it's just that that work is ten times more subtle and more artful here than it is in conventional Broadway dreck like Phantom of the Opera or Shrek or Mary Poppins, or even more extreme examples like the steaming piles of shit that are Spamalot and Young Frankenstein the Musical.

Love Kills doesn't offer up anything on a silver platter. You have to work for it. And that is what makes it great theatre.

About half the reviews are in so far, and at this point, Chris Gibson's thoughtful review on BroadwayWorld.com understands this show and our production most fully. He writes in his review, "Miller likes to color outside the lines, and his determination here reveals his passion for bringing fresh and challenging new musicals to the St. Louis region. This might be considered a risky choice, but I'm glad he and the company were willing to take it on, because I might not have gotten the chance to experience it otherwise." Thanks, Chris!

We knew this would be a tough show for folks because it really requires something of our audience, not just their attention but very complicated moral judgement that's just chock full of gray area. And believe me, our audiences are soooo tuned in every night, you can hear a pin drop in the audience from the first notes to the last. There are a lot of tense pauses in the show and the audience almost holds its collective breath during those moments. No one is flipping through their program or shifting in their seats. They are captive to this story and these characters.

The one really odd thing about this show, though, is that the audiences do not applaud the songs. Any of them. The first night, that worried us. But then we talked to folks afterward and they were just overwhelmed with emotion and totally engaged. Almost everyone just loves this show. But there's something about it that keeps them from interrupting the story the way we all do in every other musical -- and weirdly, it is somehow a collective decision the audience makes every night. I mentioned this to Kyle (the author) and he told me that this happened with other musicals he's written. For the life of me, I can't tell you why it works this way, but it has at all three performances. Maybe we'll figure it out before we close...

I could not be prouder of this show or this cast. I think the writing is exceptional in every way (even if it may be too subtle or unconventional for some reviewers) and the four performances from Phil, Taylor, Alison, and Zak are pitch-perfect. I can't imagine any other actors in town -- and I've worked with some of the best -- playing these characters. They tear my heart out every night.

Once again the theatre Gods have smiled on us.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

We Gotta Hold On Tight

All the pieces have come together. Frank's set came together over the course of the last couple weeks, we had our lighting cue-to-cue rehearsal Saturday, and we had our sitzprobe (a run-through of the score with the band and actors) on Sunday. And now we're in the easiest Hell Week I think I've ever had.

This show is in great shape. I've never taken so few notes during the final rehearsals. That's partly because there are only four actors, so there are automatically fewer problems to clean up, but it's also because these four actors know exactly what they're doing. Even when they're dealing with the mics for the first time, the glass (you'll see!), the handcuffs -- their acting is so strong at this point that the various distractions we throw at them these last few days don't seem to faze them in the least. In fact, it's exactly the opposite -- despite all the technical stuff, the emotion of the show has just gotten deeper and deeper. And it's given us a chance we don't always have to focus on the smallest, most subtle moments -- that's so nice.

And though this is one of the more slowly paced shows we've worked on in a while, it also feels like it just zooms by when you're watching it. It actually runs about 95 minutes (no intermission), but it feels more like an hour...! It's so compelling!

To be honest, I have no idea what people are going to think about this show. It's so intense, so wild, and so incredibly emotional. Some people may be uncomfortable with it. Some may not like spending an evening with two kids who killed eleven people.

But I have this theory that, despite Conventional Wisdom, audiences don't only like what they know, and they don't want to escape -- they want what's good and they go to the theatre for connection, not escape. This show certainly delivers on those two counts. It's unbelievably strong, smart, artful writing, and you really have no choice but to feel for these characters -- all four of them. It's powerful stuff.

I've gotten very Zen-like about the show in the last week or so. It may not sell as well as some of our recent shows (and if the Cardinals go to the World Series, that may kill us), but we actually have money in the bank from our wildly successful last season. So even if ticket sales are low, we'll still be able to pay everyone. So that's not an issue, like it often is...

And I know what we've made is extremely good theatre. We have done this material justice. We are telling this story well and clearly. I think many, many people will respond to that.

We'll see. But however we do with ticket sales and with the reviewers, I am so proud of this show, these four remarkable actors, and our three indomitable musicians.

Come see us.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Stick With Me, Baby

I have to brag on my actors for a moment.

Phil Leveling, who plays Charlie Starkweather, has done only one other show with us, the surprising "monster" hit Return to the Forbidden Planet. Sometimes I felt like he was under-used in that show, but he did have a couple of great musical moments and, more than anything else, he was amazing at living in the moment, being alive in the background, keeping the reality of the story alive, and making us believe in a life that extends beyond the boundaries of this story. When we decided to do Love Kills, I thought about him right away -- he's got a great rock/theatre voice. I hadn't seen him play anything nearly as serious and intense as Charlie, but his talent and his professionalism was so obvious in RTTFP that I figured it was a safe gamble. And it turns out I was right.

Taylor Pietz, who plays Caril, also did one show with us before this, but hers was The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas back in 2003. She played Shy, and delivered the most beautiful, subtle performance as the fresh runaway looking for a new home. Even though hers was a relatively small part, she really impressed me with the honesty of her acting. No frills, no ego, no bullshit, just the Truth. The funny thing is that though I had done a show with her, I didn't really know how well she sang because she didn't have any solos in Whorehouse. So when I heard her sing for this show, I was blown away -- she has this powerhouse voice that can be rock and roll or Broadway ballad, ballsy or sweet. The other funny thing is that I mostly knew Taylor as a dancer and there's not a lick of dance in this show...

Zak Farmer, who plays Sheriff Merle Karnopp, first joined us in summer 2007 in the ensemble of Urinetown. He was really terrific and (like Phil) so fully living inside the universe of the story every second he was on stage. So I gave him some solos in our revue Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll, which he totally nailed (his rendition of "Reefer Madness" was terrifying). Then came Assassins, and I needed someone to play the crazy egoist assassin Charles Guiteau. So far, Zak hadn't done any serious acting for us, but I really felt like he had it in him. He turned in an absolutely brilliant, chilling performance as Guiteau, finding not only what was ridiculous about the man, but also what was sad. Then the part seemingly written for him, Barry in High Fidelity. Another home run. Then the cross-dressing Tourist Lady in Hair. If you didn't see it, words won't do it justice. And finally, the role that knocked my socks off -- Dr. Prospero in Return to the Forbidden Planet, a totally ridiculous, hilarious, Shakespearean rock musical. But Zak wasn't just funny, he was soulful, full of rage, regretful, and periodically wacky. It was the most wide-ranging performance I've seen in years, and somehow he kept control of it and made it a unified whole. It was never Zak asking for a laugh -- it was always Dr. Prospero living earnestly in this wacky universe. And now, something even different from all of those: a subdued, walled-off, damaged, conflicted, older man. Zak really can do anything.

And then there's Alison Helmer. I've known her since 1987. We directed a lot of shows together in New Line's early years. She's a really terrific actor but I can only get her on stage now and then. The performance that really convinced me of Alison's power was in Sunday in the Park with George. Alison, as Yvonne, had a scene with April Strelinger (then Lindsey), as Dot, that was one of the most beautifully acted scenes I've ever had in a show. So much unsaid. So much subtlety. So much comfort with silences. And so much honesty. Alison can do sincere so well on stage. That's why I asked her to play Emma Goldman in Assassins (across from her husband as Leon Czolgosz). And that's why I knew she should play Gertrude in Love Kills, a very complex but subtle character, and in many ways, the emotional center of the show. I'm so glad she's a part of this project.

These are the artists I've been lucky enough to work with for the last few weeks, the ones I get to watch create vivid, emotional performances over and over in the weeks ahead. The most fun for me is watching a show as it moves through its run, as it settles, then deepens. The changes are almost undetectable but when you see a show that many times you can feel them. A good moment gets a little more honest. The timing of a punchline gets a little tighter. A shared moment between two actors gets realer. A laugh becomes bittersweet. A sad moment becomes ironic. There's nothing better than watching skilled artists loving what they're doing.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

A Hard Man

It's interesting to me... When I'm working on a show, the themes and issues from that show run around in my brain 24-7. And I see the world through the lens of those ideas. And this allows me to see things and consider things that never even occurred to me before.

Cast in point: The Congressman with Republican Tourette's, Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina), who yelled, "You lie!" at the President during his address to the joint session of Congress. It was mean and ignorant, but more than anything else, it was cold. And it was just like the Town Hall meetings in August, where people shouted down folks in wheelchairs, waved posters of Obama dressed as Hitler, and talked of secession. Much of this is born of fear -- and too big a slice is fear of a Black President -- and most of it is about de-humanizing Obama. It is to make him "Other," just like soldiers do to an enemy in wartime, so that they can attack him and call themselves patriots for it. It allows them to hate him and slander him, but still call themselves Christians.

At its heart, it is a lack of empathy, elevated to DEFCON 1. These people can't feel what the impact of their actions must feel like to the other person. They have no empathy. (Remember the Conservatives mocking the idea of empathy during the Sonia Sotomayor hearings?)

And being in the midst of Love Kills, I've been thinking a lot lately about empathy and about recent brain research that I've already discussed here. If it's true that a lack of physical affection in a kid's early years leads to an under-developed frontal lobe and therefore an absence of empathy, then you have to wonder if that leads us back to the kind of child-rearing Conservative America was practicing in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. From what I remember (being born in 1964), the more conservative families we knew were very formal with each other and there was very little physical touching but a lot of physical punishment. Now I can't help wondering what those folks' frontal lobes looked like...!

Admitting to being only an amateur psychologist and totally biased to the Left politically, who knows for sure, but I wonder if the kind of authoritarian family structure that much of America lived under during the mid-20th century has led us to this slash-and-burn, lie-without-shame, angry, crazy, Apocalyptic political landscape.

And it leads me to re-examine the character of the Sheriff in Love Kills. It never occurred to me before that he just might not feel any real empathy for others, not because he's mean or hard but because that part of his brain never developed, because he had a distant, authoritarian father. He has a song called "Hard Man," in which he tells us his father taught him to be that way, but maybe it was just as much about the structure of his brain.

And that leads me to see that Empathy is one of the central themes of this show. Charlie Starkweather doesn't have empathy and neither does Caril; they can both kill without remorse. They are unable to imagine how another person feels and therefore they don't feel the horror of the murder. Which is also why their love has no depth -- they need each other but don't understand real love. Both Charlie and Caril seem to have an inkling of this at the end of the show...

But Merle's lack of empathy serves him well in his job. (It probably also served him well in World War II, just 15 years earlier.) Merle is an enforcer of the law -- it doesn't matter if the criminal is a nice guy or not; it only matters if he's a criminal. Merle doesn't get emotionally involved in his work. But maybe this is the work he does because he doesn't get emotionally involved. And then what does that tell us about his marriage? In one telling exchange, Gertrude says, "Love isn't the same as need," and Merle responds, "Yes it is. That's exactly what it is." In a lot of ways, Merle is like Don Draper, the hero of Mad Men. Which I think bolsters my argument.

But Gertrude feels empathy. She identifies with Caril. She feels her sadness. She can put herself in Caril's place. But can we assume she had a more loving childhood? Who knows? But what a sad story this is -- both in micro and in macro, both for these fucked up kids and for mid-century America. These four disconnected people trying to connect to anyone or anything, but three of them not being able to feel how another person feels. It makes connection impossible. And it gives Charlie his Shakespearean Tragic Flaw.

I love working on this!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Goal of Living

New Line doesn't pay very well. That's no secret; it's just the way it is. We can only do the kind of alternative work we do -- and balance our budget and stay in business -- by paying everyone (me included) far less than they're worth. So why do so many astoundingly talented people work with us, in some cases, over and over?

I'd like to think it's because of my sparkling personality and my musical theatre brilliance, but it's not. It's because of the work. When else will an actor get a chance to work on a bizarre but brilliant show like Return to the Forbidden Planet? Or High Fidelity? Or The Nervous Set?

And our musicians work with us for the same reason. How often do they get a chance to play the music of amazing composers like Bill Finn or Adam Guettel or Galt MacDermot? And the same is true for our designers, our techies... all of us. It's the cool, interesting, unusual work that brings us together and it's that work that makes us all do our very best.

The same is true of Matt Reedy, our graphic designer and unsung New Line hero. He's been designing our posters for about four years now. Before him, Kris Wright did equally wonderful work. What Kris and Matt really understand about poster art is that the art really does have a concrete agenda -- more so than with other visual art -- in this case, to get the viewer to buy a ticket. These guys are so terrific at what they do -- from understanding the nature of the show, its style, its tone, its themes; to understanding what about this show will be interesting to the audience; to translating those insights into visual images, and laying out way more additional text than I'm sure they'd prefer. But every time I get one of their designs, I'm dumbstruck at how exactly right it is for that show.

In the case of Love Kills, Matt started out with the famous Sun Records label, invoking the rock & roll that both articulated the pain and confusion of teens like Charlie and Caril, but also fueled their feelings of separateness and oppression -- and sexuality. Rock & roll took seriously the feelings of kids like Charlie and Caril. In parallel to the show itself, Matt fills the rock and roll with images of violence instead of the musical images on the original. Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words. You look at this poster and you know exactly what this show is going to be like.

Pretty cool, isn't it?

I have this theory, that the reason the TV dramas on HBO and Showtime are so superior to the shows on the other networks is their no-exceptions dedication to artistic freedom and the freedom to take risks and fail. Is it just about being able to say cocksucker a lot on Deadwood or show a shitload of nudity on Oz? No, those are just examples of how that freedom can be expressed. It's the freedom itself that matters. Artists do their best work when they are free.

And the same is true for the New Liners. There is nothing off limits at New Line. The only consideration is whether or not it's good art and has something to say. Artists want to work in an atmosphere like that. The money becomes less important when there is real art going on, without fear, without commercialism, without censorship.

So just between you and me... do I wish I made more money? No, not really. I'm doing fine...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

When I Was a Boy

It was totally an accident, but once again I find myself working on a piece about the clash between the 1950s and the 1960s. If you haven't heard me ramble on about this before, here's a little taste --

I believe American politics for the last forty years has been entirely about a battle between the 1950s (conservatism) and the 1960s (liberalism). Although this last election might be the end of it -- McCain (the 50s) lost so decisively to Obama (the 60s) -- and since Obama is our first President who wasn't involved in any way in Vietnam or the Civil Rights Movement, and since the folks who remember the 50s are becoming fewer and fewer, this battle may soon be over. But what a fucking battle it's been!

And of course, musical theatre has dissected and commented upon this battle like other art forms have. It was obviously at the center of Hair.

But The Rocky Horror Show is about this battle too, with Brad as the straight-laced 1950s, Janet as the sexually adventurous 1960s, and Frank N. Furter as the Sexual Revolution itself, for both better and worse. But in Rocky everybody loses.

Grease is also about this, with Danny as the 60s, and Sandy/Sandra Dee as the 50s. And at the end of the show, Sandy crosses over to the 60s with a defiant (and literal) "Fuck it!"

Last night I caught Animal House on cable, a movie I truly believe is a masterpiece of social satire. And Animal House, set in 1962, is about this epic battle too -- the whole movie is a battle between the forces of chaos (the 60s) versus the forces of order (the 50s), and the 60s win, literally tearing down the 50s at the end.

Charlie Starkweather was right at the heart of all this in 1958 -- he represented everything adults feared about the coming 1960s: rock and roll, teen sex, teen movies, fast cars, "juvenile delinquents," in fact, all of teen culture. To some extent, though less explicitly, Love Kills is also sort of about this big cultural battle, with Charlie and Caril representing the chaos and anarchy of the coming 1960s, and Merle and Gertrude as defenders of what's right and decent and worthy of Eisenhower's (smothering but superficially ordered) 1950s.

I don't know if that 50s vs. 60s thing is as key to 20th century America as I think it is, or if it's just because I came out of the 60s and want to understand those churning cultural forces that birthed me. I realize now, looking back on my childhood in the 60s and 70s, that even within my own family there was that battle between these two visions of America.

Charlie and Caril were the real-life demons that terrified adults in 50s movies like The Wild Ones and Rebel Without a Cause. But why is that terror still with us? Why are the conservatives so terrified of nonprofit healthcare? Why are they so terrified of hip-hop culture? Why do they still fetishize the "Other," first the Communists, then the Blacks, then the hippies, then the rappers, then the Mexicans, now "the terrorists" (which to them often means all Arab men)...?

We have another piece of the puzzle here, but the picture still isn't decipherable. Maybe it never will be. Maybe it's just too complicated... But it sure is interesting!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Nothing is Real

With every show, I try to find a show-specific collective nickname for the cast and staff. For Urinetown, it was the Urinators. For Spelling Bee, it was the Spellers; for Return to the Forbidden Planet, the Crew; for Hair, the Osage (our tribe name); for Johnny Appleweed, the Stoners; and for High Fidelity, the Hi-Fi-ers (true, some are less elegant than others). Well, this time I think I'm settling on the Love-Killers. What do you think?

We've staged half the show now, and I feel great. I feel like everybody's on the same page, like we all instinctively understand the style and energy of the show, and also like everybody is really happy to be working on this.

I'm also realizing as I work that this is becoming my favorite kind of musical theatre -- non-naturalistic, fully acknowledging the audience and the fact that this is a stage performance. This open artificiality allows me to do some really spare, lean, less realistic -- but I think often more expressive -- staging. It's very Brecht in certain ways. Frank Bradley, our set designer, is giving me an almost-abstract space to work in, and I really feel like I know where we're headed with this show visually.

In a lot of fundamental ways, Love Kills will use the style and vocabulary of our productions of Assassins, Urinetown, Cabaret, Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll, March of the Falsettos, and others. My favorite kind of theatre is the kind that never pretends, even for a second, that what's on stage is real -- because we all know it isn't, so why pretend? Why not admit that this is artificial by design, that this is storytelling, and it's wonderful for what it is, and it's one of the most fundamental and primal of human needs?

In other words, it doesn't need to be "real" to be real.

The more we work on the Love Kills script, the more complexity and ambiguity we find. Each of the four relationships has a very tangled connection. There is both innocence and evil in Charlie, maybe in Caril too. There is both sanity and madness in them both. There is both love and coldness between Merle and Gertrude, and they have both gratitude and resentment toward each other. There's both empathy and envy between Gertrude and Caril, and also both fear and, most interestingly for Gertrude, identification.

And then there's Merle and Charlie. Merle never tells anybody what he thinks or feels (aside from his one "interior monologue" song, "Hard Man"), and nobody can ever tell when Charlie's telling the truth or not. So their relationship is the darkest and scariest and most unpredictable of all. I love dark and scary and unpredictable!

Monday night, we'll run through what we've staged so far, and then we'll start staging the rest. It's not long before we move into the theatre! Ack!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

We Did It All for Love

Week One of rehearsals is done and we are all so psyched!

My God, this score is incredible. We've noticed how much the show's creator Kyle Jarrow has used music to characterize, like all the best musicals do. The show has four characters - Charlie and Caril (the murderers), and the Sheriff and his wife. Charlie and Caril's music is mostly what I would call alternative rock, some of it very much like the best glam rock. But the Sheriff and his wife get 50s music, both doo-wop and other period forms -- the Sheriff gets a waltz for one of his more interior songs. Kyle has drawn this clear line between the generations by what kind of sound he gives them. This is terrific writing!

We've also realized how well wrought these lyrics are. In some cases, they sound very much like real rock/pop lyrics, with lots of repetition and often what seems like shallow emotions. But if you really listen closely, there are hundreds of tiny, subtle moments that elevate the lyrics and slyly give us information about these kids' thoughts, fears, desires, loneliness, and lots more. And so often, when there is repetition, there is also subtle variation that changes the emotion or context just enough that it moves us forward dramatically.

Check out this lyric in which Charlie berates the audience:

You stare at the newspaper pictures
They shock like a kick in the crotch
But I know you like what you're seeing
I know you love to watch

It's like watching a movie
And we're the stars of the movie
And it's a comedy movie
And it's terribly funny
And it's terribly funny how...

Now the roads all run with blood
From the people we killed
And the countryside could flood
With all that we spilled
Cause we did it all for love
And we'd be doing it still...
That's the funny thing.

That's some powerful shit. It's completely in Charlie's voice, but it reveals things about him that he doesn't even know he's revealing. The movie references remind us how he fetishized James Dean and saw Rebel Without a Cause several times. But it also shows us the self-delusion, that he murdered "for love." And what I like most about this song is that Charlie is indicting the audience for being complicit in his crime by lapping up all the salacious details...

This show was presented for six performances at the New York Musical Theatre Festival and I read some of the reviews from those performances -- they're not entirely positive, but I think these reviewers really missed a lot of what's in this material. That may be partly because most musical theatre in New York these days isn't terribly subtle or complex, so maybe some of the New York reviewers just aren't used to looking into a musical that deeply. We often have the same problem with St. Louis reviewers...

Like some of my other favorite theatre writers (Bill Finn, Larry O'Keefe, Adam Guettel, Tom Kitt, Jason Robert Brown), Kyle knows how to use a rock/pop vocabulary in the theatre without violating it. The songs in Love Kills are honest-to-god real rock and roll, but they're also excellent theatre songs. They have the repetition and surface simplicity of real rock and pop, but they also have the continually unfolding complexity and communication of important information that theatre songs need to do good storytelling.

For years, real rock didn't work on Broadway, with only a few exceptions. Rock is by definition repetitive, with the lyric usually taking a backseat to the beat, but theatre songs have to communicate a ton of info about character, context, plot, themes, etc. During the mid-1990s, suddenly a bunch of songwriters showed up who could both juggle and fuse the inherent characteristics of both forms, creating rock musicals that sounded far more like rock and roll than like Broadway -- with shows like Hedwig, Rent, Bat Boy, Songs for a New World, Myths and Hymns, The Capeman, and more recently, High Fidelity and Spring Awakening.

In the past, the Golden Age of Musical Theatre has been defined as Oklahoma! (1943) to Fiddler on the Roof (1964). I've never agreed with that. I'd say 1925-1950 was an important time when the art form found its voice. But for my money, the real Golden Age was 1960-1975, including shows like The Fantasticks, Cabaret, Man of La Mancha, Jacques Brel, JC Superstar, Hair, Company, Follies, Chicago, A Chorus Line, Rocky Horror...

But think of the amazing work being done right now -- Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, Spelling Bee, Avenue Q, In the Heights, Passing Strange, Grey Gardens, Jersey Boys, The Light in the Piazza... I believe we're in a new Golden Age of American musical theatre right now.

It's such an exciting time to be working in this art form!!

Long live the Musical!
Scott

Love Kills

We've started work on Love Kills, the new rock musical by Kyle Jarrow, about Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, two teenage spree killers in 1958 Nebraska who murdered eleven people before being caught. It's an incredible piece of theatre, powerful, disturbing, riveting, wildly original, and with just four actors.

The show was done for six performances at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2007, but we're the first ones to do a fully produced run. It's always so much fun to do a new piece, especially when we're in contact with the author (who I think will be flying in to see it) and Kyle is really open to our ideas, our questions, etc. He's really terrific. (And he's currently working on a new project with Duncan Sheik, the composer of Spring Awakening.)

We have a great cast -- Philip Leveling (who played the Bosun in Return to the Forbidden Planet) as Charlie; Taylor Pietz (who did Best Little Whorehouse with us in 2003) as Caril Ann; Zak Farmer (who's been in every New Line show since summer 2007, except for Spelling Bee) as Sheriff Merle Karnopp; and Alison Helmer (our Yvonne in Sunday in the Park and Emma Goldman in Assassins) as Gertrude Karnopp.

What first grabbed me about this show was the score -- an exciting, rowdy, visceral rock score (Kyle calls it emo), sometimes 50s doo-wop, sometimes really hard rock, sometimes emo/glam rock ballads -- but make no mistake, this is not Broadway rock, this is real rock and roll.

But what really sold me is Kyle's incredibly smart, raw, complex, subtle script -- less about the murders than about these damaged, emotionally disconnected people. Like Assassins, you come away realizing (to your horror) that these murderers aren't all that different from you and me; and like Assassins, the show doesn't really judge Charlie and Caril, which is so deliciously unsettling...

One of the weird things about the show for me is that there's no piano in the band -- it's just guitar, bass, and drums. Which means there's no piano score! So in rehearsal, I have to play from a guitar score and do my best to imitate on the piano what the guitar will be doing later. It's not the first time -- I had to do the same with Hedwig -- but it's really different for me. Still, I'm getting the hang of it...

I realized a while back that what New Line does best -- and what our audiences love most -- are those shows that are sui generis, that are their own genre, their own style, their own sound. We've done so many shows that are unlike anything else you've ever seen -- Bat Boy, Urinetown, Return to the Forbidden Planet, Rocky Horror, Hedwig, Spelling Bee, Assassins, The Cradle Will Rock, A New Brain, Hair, High Fidelity, Jacques Brel, Songs for a New World, March of the Falsettos, The Nervous Set, Sunday in the Park, Floyd Collins... and now, Love Kills. I could list more -- the vast majority of the shows we've produced fit into this category...

And I think that's the primary reason we just finished the most financially and critically successful season we've had in 18 years -- despite the tough times!

As with most of our shows, I just can't wait to share this awesome show with our audiences. I know people are going to be blown away by the power and honesty and emotion of it. And I bet we'll have lots of repeat customers again, just like we did for all three shows this past season.

I love my job.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Finale

I usually check back in with the blogworld right after we close a show. Not sure why it's taken me almost a week this time...

So yes, Spelling Bee did close, after an absolutely triumphant fucking run! THANK YOU, ST. LOUIS! Rave reviews, big houses, lots of repeat customers, the perfect cast in brilliant material, with a great band, terrific choreography, and (if I do say so myself) strong direction. It was hard to close it, and say goodbye to this weird world and wonderful characters.

This whole season has been such an incredible success, more than I would have ever expected. Hair blew people's minds (though I knew it would) and so very many people just fell in love with it, quite a few of them seeing the show multiple times. Then Forbidden Planet, possibly the oddest show I've ever done, also found an adoring audience, rave reviews, and repeat customers. And now Spelling Bee, embraced so fully by audiences -- every single night the audience was soooo engaged. It wasn't just about the jokes; it was about really thoughtful, artful, insightful material being performed by brilliant character actors working together with the precision of a Swiss watch. It reminded me a lot of our Bat Boy, one of those New Line shows that has become legendary.

So now this week I'm off, and then next week, we start work on Love Kills. And I have to tell you, the more I work on this material, the more I play the score, the more I find unbelievable artistry and depth and subtlety in it. This is going to be such a blast to work on, and a real change of pace from last season.

Last season was the Season of Laughs. This season looks like it's gonna be the Season of Death and Despair. Well, you know what they say, variety is the spice of life. Variety and cinnamon. And besides, we've haven't done drama this relentlessly intense since Kiss of the Spider Woman in 2005. It'll be great to flex those muscles again. I can't wait to get to work!

Spelling Bee will forever have a special place in my heart. It's not often you get to work on art that special. But the new season holds some pretty awesome work ahead...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Just Sensational!

Last night, we had our biggest house yet -- 192 people in a 210-seat house! And on a Thursday night! That means this weekend is going to be awesome! Pre-sale is already over 100 for both tonight and tomorrow night, and our walk-up sales have been as big or bigger than our pre-sale this season, so I'm betting on a couple sold-out houses! Woohoo!

Although... when we sell shows out, that's when people can get really mean... you know, the ones who show up at two minutes to curtain and proceed to be morally outraged that we're sold out and didn't hold back tickets just in case they showed up... :)

Also last night, one of our audience spellers was a teacher celebrating her birthday. Her parents had contacted me earlier in the week to see how to get her into the Bee. Quite by accident, she was the last audience speller left, so she got serenaded by John Rhine (Mitch) with the Act I finale, "Prayer for the Comfort Counselor." She thanked me after the show -- I think she really had a blast!

So far, we've gotten standing ovations after all but one performance. And unlike the Fox, audiences who come to the smaller theatre companies' shows are generally more hard-core theatre-goers and they don't give out standing ovations for just anything. This is quite a compliment to our amazing cast and band.

The unbridled joy that is Spelling Bee just keeps rolling along...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

You Hate Losers

Part of the fun of working on a show is that it swims around inside your head even on days when there isn't a performance. And when you're working on a really great show, that's half the joy right there. As those of us who had already worked on Finn's music all know, living inside this beautiful, special, quirky music for all these weeks has been a genuine privilege.

But this show also has a kickass book, full of rich layers. The show is always in the back of my mind, and once in a while, I have a revelation and I realize something about the show that I hadn't known before. Here's what I revelation'd today...

The secret of Spelling Bee is that it’s not really about winning the bee, as everyone assumes; it’s about winning at being a human being, knowing how to happily "be."

Olive and Barfée both "win" because they finally find a friend and now feel less lonely. Marcy wins because she rejects her unhealthy obsession with winning (or is it her parents’ unhealthy obsession?). Leaf wins by retaining his humanity and sense of proportion – he knows that winning isn't everything. In fact most of the time, it’s not much at all.

But Logainne loses because she doesn’t learn the right lesson. Even at the end, she continues to believe that nothing matters but winning, that anything else brands you as an inferior being. (Oddly, considering Logainne's liberal leanings, this is the mindset that has kept us in Iraq and Afghanistan all these years.) And Chip loses because he continues to invest too much power in winning. Early in Act II, Chip says to Barfée, “You know something, Barf, I may have lost but you are the biggest loser here!” Actually, the exact reverse is true by the show’s end. Barfée ends up one of the biggest winners of all.

Though the show’s central theme is the idea that "life is random and unfair," a companion theme is the idea that none of this really matters. As Jesus says in the show, “This isn't the kind of thing I care very much about.”

I love a musical with layers.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Best and the Brightest

Our second weekend started tonight with another really terrific performance and another amazing audience. It was so clear tonight that the actors have settled into these roles, and any opening weekend jitters are gone. The performances were a little more assured, more comfortable tonight.

And after the show we did a talkback with a group of theatre students from around the country who are here for an audition camp at Webster University. They asked some really interesting -- and sometimes really funny -- questions, and everyone in the cast was cool enough to stay and talk with them. One student dubbed Marcy the spellinator. I think that one's going to find its way into New Line's collective lingo.

Since back in high school, and still today, I love a talkback after a show. It's such fun to be able to ask the artists things you'd like to know, to be able to tell them you enjoyed their performances, etc. So when these folks asked if we could do a talkback, I was delighted.

It's also very nice for us to be able to interact with a bunch of strangers who've just seen our show and get a sense of what they took away from it, what they liked about it, what surprised them, what delighted them. The talkback was cool for us as well as (hopefully) for them.

And I have to admit, part of me was extremely glad to be able to expose them to a non-mainstream company, one that is not union but is professional. So many people think there's only union shows and community theatre, but there's a big, vigorous, varied category in the middle, doing alternative work. I'm glad these students got to see not only the work of a company like ours, but also the genuine joy we get out of that work. We don't do this for the money (which is uniformly shitty); we do it because we all really love making good, interesting art and sharing it with an audience. It's the experience, the adventure, not the size of the paycheck.

Long Live the (Alternative) Musical!
Scott

Holy Cow!

Our first rave review is in, from Chris Gibson at BroadwayWorld.com --

“An over the top delight. New Line Theatre's current production is a perfectly cast show filled with moments of high hilarity. . . I can't remember when I've laughed so hard and so long at a show. New Line's presentation of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is priceless entertainment.”

And another terrific review from Judy Newmark at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

“This Spelling Bee radiates the goofy, familiar charm of a sketch comedy show that you try not to miss. You know the players; the fun lies in seeing what they'll do this time. . . It’s just a sweet, imaginative look at pressure and how we badly we sometimes handle it. The adults laughing in the audience may have more finesse than the kids portrayed on stage – but we wouldn't laugh if we didn't know exactly how they feel.”

And this, from Paul Frisowld at the Rverfront Times:

"The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee America loves a winner — unless said winner is intelligent. If you're too smart, you're a dweeb. The seven children competing in the titular spelling bee are very intelligent winners, and very much social losers. But gathered together to compete against one another, each child discovers something about his or her individual weirdness that's worth treasuring. Rachel Sheinkin and William Finn celebrate the pariah in devastatingly funny songs. Scott Miller's production is exceptionally fine, exploiting the large laughs of the precociously confident William Barfeé (Nicholas Kelly), a mucously enhanced young man who lauds his magic spelling foot in a Busby Berkeley-esque fantasia (courtesy of choreographer Robin Michelle Berger). Miller just as deftly develops the quieter moments, such as parolee-cum-rules enforcer Mitch Mahoney (John Rhine), who sings of wanting to beat the children to teach them real pain, but instead hugs and comforts them. Because that's all anyone can do: Say 'good job,' and hope the vulnerable are resilient enough to take the punches when they come."

Read all the reviews.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Now Go with Dignity

Andrea Braun reviewed our show for KDHX-FM, and though she didn't really like the material much at all, she said some very nice things about our production. But she asked some questions in her review that I think are interesting. Here's part of what she wrote:

Is it absolutely necessary to continue to milk laughs out of the mispronunciation of someone’s name, the pathological need of misfit children to win to prove their own worth, a school administrator who did an unspecified bit of something nasty in the woodshed, and a woman whose whole life has been spelling bees? And don’t even get me started on a whole song about a contestant’s being undone by an erection.

I think the reason most people find all these things so funny is that they are all so truthful...

To me, the running joke about mispronouncing Barfée's name is about the disrespect and disregard for dignity that our culture shows young people, particularly the "misfits." Barfée is doing his best navigating the choppy waters of childhood, with divorced parents, being overweight, having multiple health issues, and being socially awkward (or maybe even developmentally challenged). That the adults won't even pronounce his name correctly shows us the way we disregard those who don't fit in (a theme also found in Leaf's story). It's about power. Panch and Rona don't have to pronounce his name right. They're the adults and they have all the power. And the bell.

This is spelled out (sorry!) most explicitly in Mitch's song, "Prayer of the Comfort Counselor." Mitch understands not being shown respect:

My friend, you will be missed,
But now go with dignity.
This ends, but first on our list,
You should go with pride.

This wisdom from the ex-con sets up the epilogue in which Mitch tells us he makes comforting spelling bee kids a lifelong endeavor.

And Mr. Panch's running joke about his unspecified breakdowns is the show's way of telling us that though we're watching kids, we're not really talking about kids -- we're talking about us. The damage we suffer as kids is often the exact same damage we still suffer in adulthood. Panch is as messed up as any kid on that stage. And it also shows us (comically, I think) how crazy the adults are who are supposed to be guiding these kids through the land mines of growing up... With role models like this (I had a vice-principal in high school exactly like that), no wonder kids grow up to be such fucked-up adults...

And I would argue that Rona's whole life has not been all about spelling bees. After all, the bee only happens once a year and we are told she's a top-selling realtor. But she does see the value in the bee, allowing the kids who can't win at anything else a relatively level playing field in which to excel. Even a damaged, awkward misfit like Barfée can be a winner here. And that's what Rona wants to share. And even beyond that, America has always valued spelling bees, because being a good speller means being literate, and being literate means the real possibility of success. When we have so many kids still today graduating high school without being able to read well, it seems to me the symbolism of spelling bees becomes even more important...

And finally, Chip's song about his erection is funny to so many of us because it's so ridiculously, painfully truthful. I remember in junior high -- just riding the bus could give a guy a hard-on, which is unbelievably embarrassing and in a weird way, frightening. That whole plot element is about how biology is one of those obstacles that makes life "random and unfair" -- being out of control of your own body may be one of the worst things a person can experience... But we all deal with it...

One way or another, most of us do survive it all. And that's what Spelling Bee is about.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

We Always Knew You Were a Winner

I am the luckiest fucker in town. The first weekend of Spelling Bee went so amazingly well, it's almost hard to believe. Everybody fell in love with our little show! We had great crowds and a standing ovation every night. The cast and band ROCKED.

Three of us had also worked on William Finn's earlier musical A New Brain, back in 2002, and as it was with that show, it is such an incredible gift to be able to live inside this music for a couple months.

Spelling Bee is both brilliant in its construction and surprisingly insightful. Its message, that "life is random and unfair" but we can all survive it, is very, very wise (and makes it a clear companion piece to A New Brain). So many people spend so much energy bemoaning how unfair life is, instead of just accepting that it is and enjoying the beautiful little moments we are given. To my mind, this is a very Zen show telling us to just stay on the path, whatever crazy obstacles may be thrown at us, whatever baggage/damage we may be carrying with us... and of course, not to take ourselves too seriously along the way...

The lesson implied by this show, though not explicitly stated, is that peace and happiness come only when we examine ourselves honestly and accept how deeply flawed we are. Leaf is our Zen master here. He doesn't need to win. He needs only to do his best. Each time he comes to the mic, he's not concerned about getting the word right. He just enjoys the experience and energy and excitement of being here. In bigger terms, Leaf isn't concerned about where he's going; he just knows there's adventure ahead.

I know a lot of theatre people think musicals are somehow lesser, less "legitimate," less "serious" -- these folks are missing so much. So much joy and richness and beauty and complexity. How on earth could the addition of music make something less? Great words can be thrilling in the right hands, but words can never equal the power and beauty and emotional heft of great music. Because it is abstract, music delivers something words never can.

I think it's that abstract nature that scares some people -- people who want to control and be controlled, people who are uncomfortable with profound or overwhelming emotion. Music is powerful stuff and that largely unexplainable power unnerves some folks. But that's their problem, not ours.

This production of ours is really something special. It's not just funny -- and believe me, it's really funny, I can't remember the last time I heard an audience laugh that much or that loud -- but it's also so beautiful and sad and complex. The audience falls in love with these kids every night. And though the brilliant writing gets a lot of credit for that, our cast also gets a shitload of that credit. The secret to their success is that they never laugh at these characters, never comment on them, never stand outside them. It's a wacky, outrageous show, but these nine actors bring such reality and depth and richness to these characters that the audience gets emotionally involved from the get-go (exactly as it was with Bat Boy). I actually hear sniffles from the audience during "The I Love You Song" -- that only happens with an outstanding, insightful, truthful group of actors. I can't thank them enough for giving our show such emotional depth.

I think too many people underestimate the value of joy these days. I know this show has brought us all much joy, and I hope we've passed that on to our audiences. Judging from their reaction every night, I think we have. I so love my job.

Thank you, spellers! You all very much rock.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I See Hope and Possibility

We are soooo ready for an audience! Great final dress rehearsal last night -- everyone is in tune with each other, all clicking on all cylinders. The pacing is excellent, and we achieved what I wanted, a show that is laugh-out-loud funny all night long AND deeply emotional and involving. What a glorious, beautiful piece of work this is, and how lucky we are to get to work on it!

Pre-sale is excellent. Our usual benchmark is that if the pre-sale gets to 200 (for the whole run) before we open, it's a good bet the run will sell really well. And as of today, the pre-sale is at 221. We've also got a bigger than usual pre-sale for our preview tonight. That's so great for the actors -- it's tough to do comedy in front of a small house because the fewer people there are, the more timid they seem to be, so the laughs are quieter and more reserved. We've got a big enough house already for tonight, that I think everyone will have a blast. And I assume we'll also get some nice walk-up...

Last night as I watched the show, I couldn't help but think about how many people come together in common purpose to put on a show like this. Nobody's getting paid very well, but everyone is so fully engaged. And everyone has done such outstanding work, from the musicians to our designers to our cast to Trish and Ann and Vicki -- I am very very lucky to work with the people I get to work with...

And a special shout-out to the New Liners who came in this week to be our practice Audience Spellers! In case you're worried, no one will get brought up on stage unless they sign up at the box office to be in the Bee.

Tonight, at long last, we get to share this beautiful, beautiful show with an audience. I can't wait!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Very Very Very Nice

We had a really good run Monday night. The actors are so in control of this show now. We finally gave them "audience spellers" to practice with (some intrepid New Liners have volunteered to be audience spellers for all three final rehearsals). Don't worry -- no one will be forced to participoate -- there will be a sign-up list at the box office if you want to be in the bee.

Several things struck me tonight.

First, what an odd piece of theatre this is! But I don't know that people will actually notice! It's so funny and warm and charming and wacky that I think folks will mostly just go along for the crazy ride. And it's also truthful. It's deeply, painfully, hilariously truthful. I think that's its real secret. Everyone in the audience will see themselves in at least one of these kids.

Also, to my great surprise, the balance between the singers and the band is outstanding. We're not using microphones for this one -- well, actually, we're using mics for the bee, but not for the songs. I really don't like mics. We use them when we have to, mostly when we do rock musicals. But I much prefer natural sound. I hate putting anything -- whether it's big sets or technology or anything else -- between the actors and the audience. With a rock musical, you have no choice. But with a show like this, you just need good actors who can project. It's often tough for the band to balance with the singers when they're not mic'd. But not tonight. Petersen and his boys are so great.

We also saw all the costumes finished for the first time, and they look terrific. To Amy's great credit, they're really authentic. They really help these actors become these kids, and not in a cartoony way, but in a very genuine way.

And we added the last of the specialty props. We got this incredible trophy that Best Bowling Pro Shop fixed up for us -- it's beautiful and totally personalized! And the awesome owner is loaning the trophy to us for the run for free. Mucho gracias!

Also Monday night, Dowdy (who plays Chip) got to work with the Food. I don't want to spoil the surprise f you haven't seen the show before, so I won't say exactly what kind of food, but suffice to say it was every bit as funny as we had hoped.

Such a stress free rehearsal for me! I took some notes, of course, but there's nothing major to fix. All very small, fine-tuning stuff. This show is in great shape and it's only getting cooler day by day. I can't wait to share it!!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

So Amazed Am I

Just a quickie...

Tonight we ran the show again, but this time without two actors who were out sick. Yikes! We open next week! We're just assuming they'll be healthy as hell and back with us by Thursday. Send us good vibes...

But the weird part -- worthy of a short blog entry -- is that tonight was an outstanding run-through! I assumed it would be less than it should be with two characters (out of nine) missing. And the harmonies did sound odd, with two parts missing. But the cast rallied and nailed it. We really made some progress and did some good work. The show was funny and sweet and totally energetic. They rocked.

I love actors. I really do.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Joy Never Comes for Free

So last night our pianist/conductor Chris Petersen joined us and I relinquished the keyboard once and for all (well, at least for this show). That first night with Chris always reminds me how incredibly fragile performances are. Even though Chris is playing the same score I've been playing, the fact that it's a different pianist makes a real difference to the actors.

Part of it is that it's very hard for Chris to jump into this already moving vehicle -- the actors and I have established our own tempos, our own subtle shifts in tone and feel, our own musical quirks, and now poor Chris has to adjust to all that. But that's one of the reasons he comes in the week before Hell Week, so he can figure all that stuff out before Hell Week and before the band joins us.

But like I said, even the most subtle changes require adjustments from the actors, and since they're not fully settled into their own performances yet, since they're still finding their own paths, it's hard for them too.

This part of the process -- the Home Stretch -- can be rough on the actors in so many ways. First, we give them a new pianist. Then Saturday we'll give them lights -- especially in this show, lights are an integral part of the storytelling (helping to delineate flashbacks, interior monologues, etc.), an element that the actors really need but haven't had yet. On Sunday, we'll add the band and microphones. On Monday, we'll add costumes and the remaining props.

And then they'll have just three run-throughs to put it all together -- meanwhile polishing their own performances and putting my various notes into practice. This is the main reason why New Line has so many more run-throughs than we used to. When we started the company, we'd generally have one full run-through before Hell Week; now we usually have five or six. We used to move into the theatre the Sunday before we opened; now we move in two and half weeks before opening. At the beginning of New Line, the amount of time we got in the theatre didn't allow for a lighting cue-to-cue rehearsal or a sitzprobe; now we get both.

But as any of our actors will tell you, the more run-throughs, the better. (Although it is possible to have too many run-throughs, to the point of getting bored with it...) Doing this many run-throughs gives the actors time to settle into the show and then still have time to explore and find all those beautiful little moments onstage that reveal character, relationships, story, themes, etc.

This is the part of the process that is a lot like making sausage -- it's not pretty to watch, but you know the end product will be terrific. And it reminds me that no matter how hard or scary my job is, the actors' job is easily twice that...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I'll Make it Happen

Next week is "Hell Week" (what less interesting people call "Tech Week" or "Production Week"), but this week is Crazy Week!

I have to get postcards in the mail, the program to the printer, posters and postcards for the next show designed and printed so we can put them in the lobby, plus this week is when I'll do the bulk of the polishing. I've been behind the piano thus far, so now I will see everything that's going on, some of it for the first time.

People always wonder how I can direct when I'm behind the piano for much of the rehearsal process. But the secret is that this gives the actors some very valuable play time, time to experiment with their characters and relationships, with their physicality, with bits of stage business, with the pacing of the show, all that stuff that adds so much to a performance without the audience really noticing. If I wasn't behind the piano, I'd be giving them notes and bothering them much earlier and I think it would rob them of that time to explore.

I do give them direction when I'm at the piano -- I've learned over the last 28 years to play and watch at the same time -- but I try only to fix staging problems and give them Big Picture direction. From this point forward, with nothing else on my mind, I will nitpick. I will polish this show like a madman, focus the comedy, "underline" what's important (there are lots of subtle ways to do that), massage everyone into the same style and energy, and get us the last mile of this journey. This is the time when they transform from a bunch of great actors into an Ensemble, and I love watching that happen!

Ticket sales are already doing great -- that's earlier than usual. Order 'em now, people!

Long Live the Musical!

Scott

How Wonderful It Feels

Rehearsals are going really, really well. This must be the hardest working cast in show biz right now, 'cause this is not an easy show...!

So we've blocked the whole show, and Tuesday night we ran Act I. To my great delight, everyone was mostly memorized and the act ran very smoothly. It was fun to see the actors -- especially the "kids" -- finding the physical side of their characters, now that their scripts are out of their hands. I knew the physicality would be a HUGE part of this, and it really is...

Tonight we run Act II, and I expect it will be in great shape, too.

Nick (Barfee) came over after rehearsal Tuesday and we were talking about how much we're enjoying the show. We also realized that our production does have a somewhat different tone from the original. Ours is a little more serious, a little more real. The laughs are still big and fairly continual, but the acting is less cartoony. And so the emotional moments are a lot more intense and more compelling. I can't wait to see how those moments grow and deepen over time.

The same thing happened when we did Bat Boy. There were huge laughs throughout the show, but there were also very serious, very emotional moments that had been played for laughs off Broadway. The original production had played more like sketch comedy, but ours played more like alternative theatre.

I've come to realize that my favorite kind of theatre is the kind that is both hilarious, wacky, outrageous, on the one hand; but also surprisingly serious and emotional and moving. We've found a lot of shows that operate that way -- Bat Boy, High Fidelity, Hair, Assassins, Forbidden Planet, A New Brain, March of the Falsettos, Hedwig, The Cradle Will Rock, and lots of others.

Maybe musical theatre, with its extreme emotion and its inherent artificiality, is better suited than theatre that lacks music to pull off this wild balancing act...

And maybe I like that kind of storytelling because it seems most honest. Life is continually both ridiculous and serious. Our storytelling should recognize that. Of course, some of our shows consciously focus mostly on the dark side (Kiss of the Spider Woman, for example) but there's always still some humor in there, even if it's really oppressively dark humor... :)

Spelling Bee will be such a terrific finale to this wonderful season. I love my job!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I'm Loving Every Minute

Two weeks down...

What an interesting piece of theatre Spelling Bee is. And not really what I expected when we went into rehearsal. Having seen the original cast and hearing the audience roaring with laughter all through the show, I made the (silly) assumption that this was a show like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Reefer Madness, Forbidden Planet... sincere but overblown. I was operating under the mantra of the Bat Boy writers, "The height of expression, the depth of sincerity." We operate under that rule quite often...

But Spelling Bee is something else. Like many of the shows we produce, this is a show like no other. It has its own rules. In fact, as we started blocking, I realized I had it backwards -- this show doesn't operate like Bat Boy. The trick to making this show work is to play the kids as real and honestly as possible, with almost no "style" layered on. I've realized the show is built so that the kids are normal people (relatively speaking) in a nightmare world. Sort of like the Jonathan Pryce character in Brazil.

I realized that if the kids are cartoony at all, that undermines the many serious moments when we go inside their heads and reveal the many complicated emotions, loneliness, frustration, and feelings of abuse or even abandonment. The world of the Bee is what's crazy; not the kids. The show makes this Bee as disorienting and confusing and overwhelming for the audience as it is for the kids. That's its genius -- to take something we all either dismiss or find merely cute, and show us what it feels like from the inside, to a terrified ten-year-old.

And that in turn reminds us that we're all still that ten-year-old, still having to audition (literally or figuratively) over and over throughout our lives, still being judged every day in one way or another, constantly finding we're the "loser" in one context or another.

And these kids show us how we deal with all that. Leaf and Marcy have found their inner Zen Masters. Marcy finally realizes that sometimes losing -- letting go -- is the real road to happiness. Leaf is the one kid who has never really cared if he wins; it's an adventure to be enjoyed as far as he's concerned, not a mountain to be conquered. Olive finds joy in the small act of being taken seriously, victory or not. On the other hand, Chip and Logainne find only unhappiness at not measuring up to Perfection. Even Barfee finds that making a new friend is as big a triumph as winning a Bee.

But for us, the audience, to register all this, the performances have to be very real, more so than one would expect from a show this outrageous. And that was a surprise to me.

What a privilege it is to work on a show this beautifully and artfully written!

Long Live the Musicals!
Scott

It's a Very Big Undertaking

I've spent the weekend thinking about the show and working out a lot of the blocking. I think our production is going to be more Brechtian than the original, with a clearer distinction between the "real" world and the interior world. The more comfortable and adventurous I get as a director, the more Brechtian my work gets. I think it's just my natural state.

For those who don't generally throw around esoteric theatre terms, "Brechtian" is a style that comes from the German director/playwright Bertolt Brecht (Threepenny Opera), a style that admits the artificiality of the theatre. Brecht's idea was not to let the audience get too emotionally involved in the narrative, to constantly yank them out of the "reality" of the story by continually reminding them that this is just theatre, just actors on a stage telling a story. The really funny part is that Brecht's theories don't really work the way he thought, so good Brechtian theatre often lets you get emotionally involved and engages you intellectually.

There are lots of ways to make Brechtian theatre. In many cases, it's about the actors speaking directly to the audience rather than pretending they're not there. (Spelling Bee does this, but then again, we're at a spelling bee, so of course there's an audience!) But a show like Forbidden Planet does it by using extremely artificial devices -- Shakespearean dialogue and classic rock and roll songs. When Miranda breaks into "Teenager in Love," it pulls the audience out of the story and reminds them of the real world -- while commenting on both the show itself and on the real world context of the song. Instead of feeling sorry for her, you're thinking how funny it is that she's singing this song you know, how strangely perfect the song is for this moment...

Last night I watched a bootleg video (don't tell anyone!) of the new rock musical Next to Normal (with music by Tom Kitt, who also composed High Fidelity). It's an amazing piece of theatre -- powerful, ballsy, darkly funny, incredibly emotional, smart, complex. And a lot of the show is spent with the actors talking directly to the audience. I realize that musical theatre is becoming more and more Brechtian, going back to the mid-90s with shows like Hedwig, Bat Boy, Urinetown, etc. Maybe that's because the conventions of musical theatre are so inherently artificial, that acknowledging that artificiality seems more honest, more authentic somehow, especially in this ironic, self-aware culture of ours. The more a musical admits its artifice, the less the audience feels like it has to "accept" the profound unreality -- the "lie" -- of the musical form.

It's like we're saying to them, "Hey, we know its extremely unnatural to break into song (and harmony and dance numbers), but that's the storytelling language we're gonna use tonight, so go on the ride with us and we promise not to bullshit you."

Spelling Bee is a very complex piece. So silly on the surface, so dark and emotionally messy underneath. It's really going to be fun to stage this and to watch it find its footing over the next few weeks. Luckily, we have a kick-ass cast, and all but two of them have worked with me before, so I know they'll trust me and go down whatever road I lay before us. We have in this cast veterans of New Line's A New Brain, Bat Boy, Urinetown, Johnny Appleweed, Reefer Madness, Rocky Horror, and Forbidden Planet.

They know Brechtian.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Woe is Me!

Well, we've had a week of music rehearsals and we're almost done learning the score. But Jesus Christ, this is hard music! After working on the extremely easy scores for Hair and Forbidden Planet, I think my music director muscles were getting soft. I had forgotten how hard the other Bill Finn scores were (March of the Falsettos, A New Brain). Our intrepid actors are charging ahead undaunted, but I can tell how hard they're working.

With some shows, I teach the music and it sounds great right away. Those are the shows with easy scores. With other shows -- the really fucking hard shows -- I teach the music, the actors all furrow their brows, the veins stand out in their foreheads, they say shit! a lot, they shake their heads, they frantically operate their digital recorders... and I know (and they know) they'll be doing lots of work outside of rehearsal getting comfortable with the music. Most of these songs have group singing in them, so there's a lot to learn. We start blocking Tuesday, so they have to be in control of their music by then.

But I'm not worried -- these are very talented people -- and luckily, most of the show will have fairly minimal staging (it's a spelling bee, after all!) so the crazy hard music can take up more of their brains for a while...

But I have to give a big shout-out to the cast for all their hard work. It's such a pleasure to be working on material this rich with people this talented and hard-working.

Don't worry, y'all. If the other Finn shows are any indicator, all the music will click soon and it will feel so absolutely right that you'll never forget it.

The adventure continues...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Spelling Bee!

It's been just a few days since we closed Return to the Forbidden Planet, and it's also just a few days until we go into rehearsal for Spelling Bee. I will miss RTTFP something awful -- it was one of the most fun, most enjoyable theatre experiences I've had -- but I can't wait to get into Spelling Bee.

Nick (who will play Barfee) and I were talking a few nights ago about doing A New Brain back in 2002, and what a joy it was to walk around for all those weeks with that beautiful, amazing music in our heads. As Sondheim has said, living in music is a gift from God. Particularly William Finn's music. Deborah (who will play Miss Peretti) and I worked together on March of the Falsettos, another Finn gem, years ago, and she also was in A New Brain. I believe the rest of our Spelling Bee cast is new to Finn. What a fun ride they have ahead.

In a weird way, tonight sort of launches the fun -- a few of us are getting together to watch the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. I was watching the semi-finals this morning and it's so cool how exactly right the musical gets the kids, the process, the atmosphere, the parents, the suspense, the joy, the agony. I could see several of the show characters in these real-life kid spellers. I think it will help the actors a lot to see the real Bee.

I've been playing through the score a lot this week, trying to get it in my fingers. Finn's music is such a fucking joy to play! It just feels good in your fingers -- like the music of Jason Robert Brown, Larry O'Keefe, and Adam Guettel. Playing this score is a lot like speaking really brilliant dialogue -- it's a gigantic pleasure and you can't help but feel lucky that you get to roll around inside this kick-ass music. It's not the feeling you get from playing less artful scores like Damn Yankees or The Sound of Music or Wicked.

At long last, after decades of divorce, musical theatre and pop/rock are reuniting in a meaningful way, with exceptional scores like Hedwig, Bat Boy, High Fidelity, Songs for a New World, In the Heights, Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, and plenty of others. (You'll notice I am not including calculated, unartful dreck like The Full Monty, Wicked, or Billy Elliot.)

We have an amazing cast for this show, terrific designers, and brilliant material. With the intelligence and crazed energy we bring to almost all our shows, this should prove to be quite a potent cocktail. As I wrote on our Spelling Bee webpage, you'll laugh your ass off and then spend the next week on your therapist's couch. Believe me, if you only saw this show at the cavernous Fox Theatre, then you haven't really seen Spelling Bee...

I'll keep you posted...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Credits

I just got home from our last cast party. What a wonderful run! Back on March 21, I predicted in this blog that this show would be a really hard one to walk away from. And it really is. But the show is over and it seems to me that a show based largely on a famous movie ought to have credits, right?

There are some serious unsung heroes behind the crazy, improbable success of New Line's Return to the Forbidden Planet.

First, there's Vicki and Ann, the box office and house managers, respectively. They're the ones who have to put up with the mean patrons when we sell out. Believe me, people can be total pricks when a show is sold out. Tonight, this one woman was complaining that we were sold out at 7:55. She kept whining that she had called earlier and "they" (in other words, I) said there were still tickets available. Well, we explained, there were, at 7:00, but not at 7:55. She was a real bitch. Ann and Vicki also had to field the complaints when the AC was out for a show and a half. These ladies are the ones on the front lines, and I'm sure glad they're between me and lots of problems.

Then there's Trish. She's usually our stage manager and lighting tech, but because of a new job, she couldn't work on this show. (She'll be back for Spelling Bee.) We sure did miss her. I got so used to having her there to take care of things! She kept her finger in the pie a little by doing props this time. Although there were only four props. But shit y'all, did you see that awesome giant space wrench???

I have to mention my friend Pat Edmonds, the mad genius. She makes a living creating craftsy stuff for arts and crafts fairs. But because she has to serve her client base, most of what she makes is Very Cute. So she loves it when I call her and ask for a bat baby and a life-size severed cow head (for Bat Boy), a raven puppet (for Robber Bridegroom), an American flag with a giant pot leaf on it (for Johnny Appleweed), and this time, two six-foot long tentacles belonging to the Id Monster.

"What does an Id Monster look like?" she asked. "How should I know?" I replied.

And there's Melissa who ran lights and Robert who designed and ran the sound. They were on the J-O-B every night. We literally could not have done this show without them. Robert's only a senior in high school, but he really is a total pro.

And then of course our brilliant, funny designers. Betsy and Thommy did an amazing job with the costumes. So clever, so original, so funny. They totally meshed with the cartoon world of this show. It's rare that costumes are actually funny, but these sure were. I think my favorite details were the CDs on Miranda's Act II dress, and the whole Ariel the Robot costume -- a laundry basket, giant combs, desk trays, and SLINKYs!

Hans likewise created the funniest lighting design I think I've ever seen. You don't expect lighting to be funny, but this really was, and it added so much to the style and energy of the show. Bravo, dude! Peter Sargent told me you were really good, and you really are.

And Dave and Jeff, who created the wonderful playground of a set. I've never seen actors have so much fun using a set. They just loved it. Again, exactly right in tone and style. And really, really funny. Some nights, people in the audience actually had their pictures taken on the set after the show. It was decked out with pill bottles, phone handsets, smoke alarms, telephone routers, a video game joystick, all manner of silly but perfect crap that always made me think of the salt and pepper shakers Dr. McCoy used as medical instruments on the original Star Trek. Home run, boys.

And last, the real magic in this show, The New Line Band -- Petersen on piano, Renard on guitar, Strathman on reeds, Dave on bass, and Schurk on drums. They've played so many shows together, they have become an incredibly tight band. And for this show, one new bandie, Patrick, who did a terrific job on rhythm guitar. Thanks for the referral, Tawaine.

Thanks to everyone who brought this fucked up gem to life. What a joyful, wonderful experience it has been. I can't imagine a cast and staff more perfectly suited for their roles and for this show. I'll gush about the playful, fearless cast later when I'm less tired and stoned.

Live Long and Prospero!
Scott

One Day I Feel So Happy

The reviews are coming in, and I think we're a HIT!

First, we got this terrific feature story from Judy Newmark in the Sunday Post-Dispatch, a really interesting exploration of RTTFP and its source play and film. She wrote, "Put it all together, and Return to the Forbidden Planet works on multiple levels: literary, pop-cultural and psychological. [Artistic director] Miller thinks that it compares well with Bat Boy and Urinetown, two smart, irreverent shows that go a long way toward defining the New Line point of view."

Judy's Post-Dispatch review of the show hit their website Monday (it was in Tuesday's print edition), and she says, "New Line Theatre presents a lot of intriguing work, but now and then it gets everything so right that you're ready to see the show again before you're out of the theater. Hair was like that; Bat Boy, too. And so is its new production, Return to the Forbidden Planet -- a smart, giddy, musically ingenious spoof written by Bob Carlton and directed by Scott Miller."

Paul Friswold at The Riverfront Times wrote in his Calendar Pimp column, "Remember the halcyon days when we were terrified of the Russians, they were terrified of us, and Shakespeare wrote his first intergalactic R&B hit, 'It's A Man's Man's Man's World?' Sweet fancy Moses, those were the days. Wait, that never happened. Or did it? Yup, looky here: Return to the Forbidden Planet. It's sweet Billy Shakes vs. Golden Oldies vs. Space Age Love Songs. Just what Dr. Tempest ordered." Yes, that about sums it up.

On Wednesday, Friswold reviewed the show, saying, “Bob Carlton's whimsical take on The Tempest as refracted through a 1950s sci-fi prism features a galaxy's worth of fantastic rock & roll songs, punning wordplays on snippets of Shakespearian monologues and intentionally ‘Pigs in Space’ costuming (courtesy of Betsy Krausnick). But this is no parlor trick of a musical; there's a rich vein of Shakespeare's favorite ingredient — the wondrous depths of the human heart — that elevates the show from cunning stunt to artful meditation on the destructive nature of power and the redemptive power of love.”

Chris Gibson's KDHX-FM review said, "Under the guidance of director Scott Miller, New Line Theatre is presenting a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable production. . . This is a fun show, and Miller has assembled a talented cast and crew that seems to be having a blast."

Mark Bretz' Ladue News review says, "New Line artistic director Scott Miller meticulously blends the comic sensibilities of his talented cast with the brisk, jaunty style of the New Line band to make this foray into outer space a campy and delightful journey. There are stars aplenty in this cosmos."

Andrea Braun's Vital Voice review was posted Monday afternoon, which said, "Forbidden Planet plays for laughs, which it receives in abundance."

Also today, someone posted the nicest note to our Facebook page: "We just got back from the show tonight (5/2/09), and it was phenomenal. Best time I've ever had at a local theater performance. The cast, the band, and the sets were dead on. The space and the sound were fantastic. Really, really good job, everyone. It was shlocky, pervy, funny, and rockin'. I could not ask for more."

And neither could we. Thanks to everyone who came out to see us this first weekend. If you haven't seen our show yet, come see us soon!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

We Did the Monster Mash!

Opening weekend went great! Terrific crowds and the show was tight and funny and focused like a laser. This is a hell of a cast and they are in complete control of this wacky freight train of a show. Judging by the audience reaction, I think word-of-mouth is going to be really good.

Sometimes people ask me the secret of how New Line gets so much press -- a little bit of national press now and then, but a ton of local press. I tell them it's very simple -- it has to be news. It has to be something worth writing about, something new. Nobody wants to write about another production of Hello, Dolly!, no matter how great it might be.

But New Line offers the press juicy stuff like Johnny Appleweed, the stoner political satire. And the outrageous social satire of Bat Boy and Urinetown. And a new musical about Rush Limbaugh. And, of course, the science-fiction-rock-and-roll-Shakespearean Return to the Forbidden Planet. We offer them a lot to write about.

Case in point: In today's Post-Dispatch, Judy Newmark has written a very cool article comparing The Tempest to the film Forbidden Planet to the musical Return to the Forbidden Planet. It's a really smart, really interesting peek into what makes this story in its various versions tick.

And it's the best present Judy could have given us! While we usually get Judy's review in the Sunday Post, this time she came to the show Saturday night, so her review won't make it into the Sunday paper. Instead we get this excellent preview piece, which in a lot of ways is even better. It's longer than a review and has accompanying pictures in the print edition. Plus, a day or so later, well get our review. (I'm told she was laughing a lot at the show, so hopefully she'll give us a nice review.)

Paul Friswold at The Riverfront Times also did a very smart, short preview piece, which perfectly captures the kind of show this is. He was at the show Friday, so I assume we'll have that review this week as well.

It's been a tiring week, but I feel so great about this show. It's so smart and also so silly. And somehow, strangely involving. You really get caught up with these crazy characters, very much like Little Shop of Horrors and Bat Boy. This cast is at the top of their game and I think they're all having an absolute blast, and so, the audience is too. That's the real magic of theatre.

Three more weeks! What a ride.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Won't You Please Take Me Along for a Ride?

Yesterday, we had our cue-to-cue rehearsal, a boring process but a valuable one for the lighting designer. Today, was our sitzprobe (a term from opera), the rehearsal where the actors sing the score with the band for the first time. For a New Line show, it's the first time the band has played the score together and it's the only time we'll run the music without running the whole show. Any potential problems or questions have to be sorted out in this one rehearsal. It's the most stressful part of the process for me, those four or five hours. But we have really talented, skilled musicians, and they pick up so much so fast.

The sitzprobe is a real turning point in each production. By this time, we've run the show several times, but only with solo piano. Particularly for a rock and roll show, it's just not the same. "Born to Be Wild" was not meant for solo piano. At the sitzprobe, the actors hear the incredible energy of the band for the first time, and the songs just leap to life. So, today was hard but it was also awesome -- our band ROCKS.

This is the weirdest time of the rehearsal process. All my hardest tasks are behind me, and yet I still can't think about anything but the show. Every waking hour. I can't accomplish anything that's not about the show. Ack!

As an example... After I got home tonight, in a desperate bid to escape RTTFP-on-the-Brain, I watched the film Frost/Nixon on cable. I had seen the play done extremely well by the Rep last fall The film was different but also very cool, very emotional, setting up those famous interviews as rounds in an existential boxing match. But then -- and I'm not kidding about this -- I started noticing parallels between Nixon and Dr. Prospero! Both of them do bad things thinking (or rationalizing) that it's for The Greater Good. Both their actions cause great harm. Both are challenged over their actions. Both volunteer to meet their fate before it can be thrust upon them.

See what I'm up against?

On the other hand, I am getting more and more zen-like about shows the older I get. For the last several shows, there's a point at which I realize that the end product is now out of my hands. The show is now the property of the actors and musicians. It's not theatre on the page; it's only theatre when performers bring it to life for an audience. I can still steer them a few more times, but it's theirs now. I set us on this road, I shaped our journey, but my work is largely done.

It will be what it will be. Some folks won't like it; hopefully far more will like it a lot. But we've done our best, we're made thoughtful choices, and experimented and played and explored, and the only real test now is that final missing piece: the audience. How will they receive it? Will we connect with them? Will the show be clear to them? Will they enjoy it as much as we do?

We will find out soon. Really soon.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Head Out on the Skyway

RTTFP Update: Our pre-sale is decent at this point. Hard to say what it'll be like be the time we open. Metrotix says our pre-sale is better than a lot of other local events right now. And the postcards just arrived, so hopefully that'll goose people into action. Also, Judy Newmark is doing a short piece about the show for the Post-Dispatch. We often get something in the RFT the week we open, but we never know beforehand.

I realized, watching a particularly funny run-through last night, that I don't really care if we get huge audiences (although that would be wonderful) and I don't care if everybody likes it (it's rare that a piece of art that's genuinely interesting is also hugely commercial). Whatever the reaction, I know this is a show that was worth doing, a show that was just waiting for us, a project to be proud of. It's twenty years old, but it's never been produced here before. If not us, then who?

When we did the deeply flawed but hilarious Anyone Can Whistle, people actually thanked us over and over for giving them a chance to see it. The same thing happened with The Nervous Set, Floyd Collins, The Cradle Will Rock, The Robber Bridegroom, High Fidelity... It may happen again with this show...

Part of what our company is about is sharing interesting, exciting work that nobody else will produce. Some of it is flawed and some of it is brilliant. Return to the Forbidden Planet is brilliant. And it's built exactly like a Shakespearean comedy -- and a 1950s science fiction movie! Two genres for the price of one! Luckily for us, Bob Carlton possessed the fearlessness to not only conceive of this crazy concoction but also the wisdom to see its potential and to follow through in writing it. There is so much smart and sly and subtle about this show, a lot of which some folks will probably miss. But I know I'll find new nuances every night sitting up in the booth watching my awesome crew literally throwing themselves around the stage. Hmmmm.... throwing themselves around the stage? Yes, very subtle. God love 'em.

New Line doesn't just produce shows I want to work on. It produces shows we ought to share with St. Louis audiences, to lay before them the full range of this amazing art form of ours. And what self-respecting musical theatre lover wouldn't kill to see a rarely produced gem like Return to the Forbidden Planet? That's who this is for.

Next week is Hell Week! Ack!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Get the Motors Running

We have moved into the theatre! Wahoo!

Well, we've blocked the whole show, the cast is largely off script, many of the costumes are done, and our set is mostly up. Holy crap! Load-in was Saturday afternoon, and thanks to our most excellent set designers, Jeff Breckel and David Carr, much of it was pre-built and just had to be assembled and tacked down. The actors who were there Saturday got their first glimpse of Betsy's spaceship uniforms, which are awesome!

We'll take some PR photos tonight, then run the whole show for the first time. We've run both acts individually and they're both in pretty good shape. But it will be so much fun to run the whole thing all together, so the actors really get a sense of the pacing and flow of the show. My hardest work as director (the actual staging) is done -- although the hardest part of my producing job is yet to come...

Now we get to my favorite part. We'll run the whole show every rehearsal and I get to see what we've wrought and to fine-tune it all. I probably won't give them too many notes this week, as they acclimate themselves to the actual set (rather than just folding chairs outlining the playing area in our rehearsal space). Then next week, after they've gotten fairly comfortable, I'll start fine-tuning and finding solutions for all the little problems and obstacles that will present themselves from now till (or even through) opening night.

I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. I know I get to see our show in full blossom soon, but not quite yet...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I'm Just a Soul Whose Intentions Are Good

I've been in a dark place this week. I've been having these weird dreams -- every single night I've been dreaming a different but related dream about me not being able to get into a theatre or not having my ticket or there's someone in my seat... you get the idea. The story is always different but I always wake up pissed off. Which I hate.

I finally realized it's my worry over where we're going to find a new theatre when our current space is no longer available in fall 2010. That's only 18 months away, so that problem is always in the back of my mind, and now, annoyingly, it's coming out in my dreams. At least I oughta get my own dream ballet! And my own Dream Curly! (musical theatre joke)

But I also get in a bad mood after the Kevin Kline Awards every year. By most measures, New Line is wildly successful. We're in our 18th season. We get tons of local press and a bit of national press now and then. We have a loyal donor base. We sell out a lot of performances (though fewer recently because we're in a much bigger house now). We get many, many rave reviews and almost no negative reviews. Audiences were thrilled by all three of our shows in 2008 -- Assassins, High Fidelity, and Hair. All three enjoyed repeat customers (a lot for Hair). And yet, in four years and after twelve shows, we've never even gotten a Kline nomination for our shows, for my direction, or for any of our leads. (We have gotten some nominations but none for the major categories.) And no one from New Line has ever won a Kline.

I know, awards don't matter. That's true, they really don't. It's the opinion of seven judges. Hardly something to be annoyed by. And truthfully, I'm incredibly uncomfortable with the very idea of winning awards for making art. That seems creepy and inappropriate to me. The only real measure is: do we connect to the audience in a meaningful way. And we do. And yet it still bothers me somehow that we get "de-Klined" every year. I admit it's ridiculous.

Really, other than my worry over where we'll move in 2010, everything else is going great. Forbidden Planet is going so well, and the cast is so strong and having so much fun. I am positive that our audiences will fall in love with this show. And we've chosen our shows for next season and all three of them positively thrill me!

So why am I in such a dark place? Maybe because I'm 45 now and New Line is 18, and yet it's still so hard to get shows up and opened. And we still don't have a permanent home. I feel like after all this time and all this success and all this praise, at some point it should be easier than it was ten years ago. But it's not.

And yes, I chose this life. I chose to live on the minuscule salary New Line pays me, plus a bit on the side from my books. I chose to start a company that does alternative work, a company that by definition does not attract a wide, mainstream audience, a company that by design operates on a shoestring; and doing often obscure, quirky shows that I'm constantly having to "sell" to actors, designers, etc. Maybe I'm just realizing that it's going to keep being hard as long as I do this. I thought it would get easier.

Part of my darkness is probably just that we're at that nebulous midpoint with Forbidden Planet, where I've poured all my ideas into the show, but it will take a few run-throughs for me to see what the result is, to see how good my work is, and what work still lies ahead. So I'm done with the biggest (and least fun) part of my job, but I don't get the payoff quite yet. I can sort of imagine the end product, but none of us really knows yet what this crazy and beautiful piece of art will be.

I don't have too long to wait though. We move into the theatre in a week and open 2 1/2 weeks later. I can't wait to hear the band and to see the set and costumes! This is the part of the process where I have to have faith and patience. Neither is my strong suit.

Ah, just shut up and go smoke a joint, Miller. Okay, if I have to...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I'm Gonna Change the World

Though most of the people who love Return to the Forbidden Planet (and there are tons of them!) might think I'm crazy, I see real depth and substance in this show, underneath all the wackiness and wah-ooo's. The same is true of Bat Boy, Rocky Horror, Urinetown, and many of the crazier shows we've produced.

At the center of this tale is the biggest of all moral questions: should we restrict or block science, even when it crosses into moral gray area? It's a question that's also at the center of American moral debate right now.

In the musical, Dr. Prospero’s discovery of telegenesis (you'll have to see the show to find out exacty what that is) seems to him a great step forward for humankind, an expansion and extension of human consciousness greater than any that has come before. But he doesn’t foresee the inherent downside, that he would greatly intensify the mind’s power without also greatly increasing the mind’s ability to control itself.

In almost any endeavor, increasing power without increasing control usually leads to disaster. It’s a problem we keep bumping up against repeatedly as we evolve. But it's even worse when it comes to the Wild West of the human mind. Consider that old joke, “Don’t think about a pink elephant.” It’s nearly impossible to do because the mind is hard to consciously control. Strangely enough, that's at the center of the story of this show.

Consider this: Decades ago, we discovered nuclear power, but we still can’t control or contain it. The world’s greatest fear today is that Iran or North Korea or, worse yet, a band of rebel terrorists, will get hold of a nuclear bomb and use it. We increased our power without sufficient control over it.

We invented the internet, wildly expanding the reach of human consciousness, but with it came online predators, the loss of privacy, and the erosion of copyright laws through viral videos and file sharing. Again, we increased our power but not our control (although some believe, myself included, that the internet should not ever be controlled).

And two of our newest technologies, gene mapping and embryonic stem cell research already scare people who foresee human cloning and “designer babies.” Imagine how terrified they'd be if someone actually discovered telegenesis. This is the real issue at the heart of Return to the Forbidden Planet, and it’s why this story remains so fascinating. Dr. Prospero believes that Knowledge is Good, but he forgets that Knowledge is often Dangerous too.

Futuristic food for thought.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Pardon me while I gush...

I LOVE THIS SHOW!

Now I understand why there is this international cult following around Return to the Forbidden Planet. We ran Act I tonight and it is so fucking crazy! It's funny, it's intelligent, it's just smart-ass enough, it's really well-constructed, and it's one of the highest energy shows I've ever worked on. And when I say that, you have to keep in mind that I've worked on some really high-energy shows. But this is one of those that will leave the cast huffing and puffing at intermission. Especially the smokers.

As I watched it tonight I realized that I just can not imagine anyone not having a blast watching this show. And despite the sometimes dense Shakespearean language, it's so easy to follow the story, the characters, the relationships. There may be a few folks who are so scared of ol' Bill Shakespeare that they'll just tune out right at the beginning, but I think they will be few. It's so easy to understand this stuff.

The other surprise is that there are several genuinely emotional moments -- when Prospero tells us the story of being betrayed and banished by his ex-wife, when Cookie is rejected by Miranda and he gets a juicy Shakespeare-style Mad Scene (incorporating bits of King Lear and the awesome song "She's Not There")... which is followed by Prospero's own Mad Scene (including "Shakin' All Over") as he seethes in anger over his daughter's abandonment of him for the studly Capt. Tempest (and thereby invoking the dreaded Id Monster!).

And I have to give a shout-out to Phil, our Bosun, who is hilarious whenever your eye happens to catch him, just sitting there, watching, reacting. He's so fully in it. He such has a great expressive face, and though what he's doing is pretty subtle, it's very funny stuff...

I offer my kudos to the whole cast. They're all working their butts off and creating some wonderful, funny, beautiful moments. I can't wait to get to work on Act II...

Watch -- they'll all suck now. Just kidding.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

That's Where It Is

Rehearsals continue apace...

When I first read the Forbidden Planet script, I knew this was one of those shows that reads well, but not nearly as well as it plays. I could tell that as much fun as it was to read (truly laugh-out-loud funny), much more coolness would reveal itself once the show got up on its feet. The same was true of Rocky Horror, Bat Boy, Nervous Set, High Fidelity, and many of the shows we've produced.

It's certainly true of Forbidden Planet. As we block Act I we find such richness in the characters and such intelligence in the comedy. We realized this week that the male characters are all just full of rabid 1950s sexism, trying to cram their women into the 50s most restrictive categories -- either virgin or whore, nothing in between. It's a phenomenon we see illustrated in Grease, Rocky Horror, The Nervous Set, and other shows that comment on those times. But it's extra-funny in this context because this is a 1950s view of the future, so here the future takes on the regressive social politics of the mid-20th century.

We also realized that the show consciously subverts the usual 1950s heroic spaceship captain character by making Capt. Tempest utterly incompetent, ill-prepared, and an all-around terrible leader. He fights with his science officer (who happens to be a woman), he panics in the face of danger, and he's terrible at making decisions. He is the average 1950s American -- baffled by technology, scared of what he doesn't understand, and held back by a hermetically closed mind.

But we also discovered the feel of this show, the energy of it, the pacing, the heightened acting style, the incredibly high stakes for these characters, and so much more. We're having so much fun!

The hardest challenge is meshing these three seemingly incompatible storytelling forms: Shakespeare, 50s sci-fi, and rock and roll. I told the cast they have to really be rock stars when they sing, to find the rawness and sexuality and emotion of these classic rock songs; but at the same time they have to be the same character in the same style whether they're singing rock and roll or speaking the "Fakespeare" lines, all while living convincingly in this sci-fi universe. That's not easy -- but even after only two blocking rehearsals, they're already finding that common ground where all three elements come together.

With some of our more unusual shows, it takes a while for the actors to figure out how this particular universe sounds and moves. Usually, I have to convince them that I know where we're going and they can trust that I'll take care of them. That was true of Urinetown, Anyone Can Whistle, The Cradle Will Rock, and lots of others. But this time, the whole cast seems so tuned in to the material, even at this early stage, and that will make the whole process easier and a lot more fun...

This isn't an easy show to bring to life -- it's such a unique and complex piece of theatre, and it's got fairly serious undertones that can't be allowed to get in the way of the wackiness (much like Urinetown) -- but we're really on the right road. And everybody seems delighted to be traveling that road together.

The fun is only beginning. I predict that this will be one of those shows the whole cast will hate to close on May 23. I know I will.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Great Balls of Fire!

So we blocked the first section of Act I last night. What a relief! My ideas work and the show is every bit as funny as I hoped it would be. Even in this very early stage, it's really, really funny!

And just as wonderful is this: every actor in the show is so willing to be silly and ridiculous, to throw themselves to the floor when the ship crashes, all of them screaming and singing as they pass through the meteor storm (hence the title of this entry), all of it... It's a very physical show, and every bit as wild and wacky as Bat Boy or Urinetown. And everybody seems ready and willing to go for broke. As we like to say, it's all about "the depth of sincerity, the height of expression" -- the emotions are honest and real, the stakes are high, but the style is BIG and outrageous (like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Little Shop). It's going to be a very funny rehearsal process...

The other cool part is that I'm sure now that this was a good show to put in our season. Having never actually seen the show onstage -- and despite the many, MANY truly terrible YouTube videos of college productions -- I read it and listened to the cast album and felt that this was a really original, interesting show, something our audiences would enjoy, high energy, big laughs, a bit of seriousness underneath it all, and my favorite thing of all -- a genuine roller coaster ride.

We've only staged 17 pages, but I am so sure now that audiences are going to fall in love with this bizarre show. I can't wait to share it with them! After all, we do all this for the audience -- without them, it's not a show, it's just a run-through...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Go Now

Such are the trials and tribulations of a small professional theatre company:

A while back I had emailed the "Forbidden Planet" cast with details about when rehearsals started, etc., and I had heard back from all but one of them. So last Friday, a few days before rehearsals started, I called Wayne, the one actor I hadn't heard from. But I couldn't get through -- his phone had been turned off. Luckily, another friend had a number in Colorado where Wayne (to my great surprise) was at the moment.

I talked to Wayne, who said he'd be back in St. Louis that weekend and he'd be at the first rehearsal Monday night. He said he was just in Colorado for a dance performance he was in.

Monday night, Wayne didn't show up. We tried that Colorado number, but no one answered. So after rehearsal, I sent him an email and messages on both MySpace and Facebook, asking what was up. The next morning, Wayne had uploaded pictures of himself and his friends drinking in Colorado, but he did not answer any of my messages. And then he didn't show up Tuesday night either.

Then I noticed on both his MySpace page and his Facebook page, he now listed Colorado City as his city. Huh??? I left more messages, email, voice mail, the whole shebang... And to this day, a week later, he will not respond.

I realize now Wayne has moved to Colorado to stay. (He's even offering dance lessons to people in Colorado City on his MySpace page.) And it seems pretty clear that he already knew that long before he and I talked on the phone and before he promised me he'd be back to start work on the show.

This doesn't happen often, but actors do drop out on occasion, sometimes for legitimate reasons, often not... But because we had already started rehearsals and were already learning the score, replacing Wayne was urgent. I put the word out to all my theatre friends that I needed a replacement.

Then I get a call from Nick Kelly, longtime New Liner -- actor, director, and our official fight choreographer when we need one -- he teaches acting and he knew an actor who was interested in stepping in, Mike Dowdy. I had seen Dowdy do improv (he's hilarious) and heard him sing (terrific tenor voice), so I talked to Mike about the details, and the Deal was Done. Crisis Averted.

Of course, now Mike has to do a lot of catch-up. But I think he'll be great. And I doubt he'll move to Colorado any time soon.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Return to the Forbidden Planet

Today's my birthday. But that's not the reason I'm happy. The real reason is that after eight agonizing weeks of not being in rehearsal or performance, I'm finally going back into rehearsal Monday, this time for Shakespeare's forgotten rock and roll masterpiece, the deliciously bizarre Return to the Forbidden Planet.

This is a show I had heard about for years, but it always sounded like a silly, shallow catalog musical to me. It first opened in London in the late 1980s and was a surprise hit, winning the Olivier Award (their version of the Tonys) for Best Musical, beating out Miss Saigon. It's (really loosely) based on Shakespeare's The Tempest and on the 1956 film Forbidden Planet (which itself was also based on The Tempest). But what the show's creator Bob Carlton did with the material was pure wacky genius -- he based his musical on both sources, using character names from both, using some dialogue from the original Shakespeare, and around that built a show with fake Shakespearean dialogue (we call it Fakespeare), a 1950s sci-fi acting style, and a classic rock and roll score.

For no particular reason I can remember, I got hold of the London cast album last year and listened to it for the first time. Luckily, it's a live album, so not only can you hear the hilarious dialogue leading into many of the songs, but you can also hear the audience's laughs and cheers. I realized that there was much more there there than I had originally thought. Uncharacteristically, I had judged this weird show without even hearing or reading it. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I realized this might be a show we'd want to do. So I got hold of the script. And I just couldn't stop laughing. It's that funny. I sat alone in my living room reading it and repeatedly laughing out loud. But I also discovered that the show is really, really smart, retaining the serious themes of the two earlier versions, but also trading in the sly self-referential humor that musical theatre embraced so fully in the 1990s and still today. Return to the Forbidden Planet fits in quite nicely next to other quirky shows that came after it, like Hedwig, Urinetown, and High Fidelity, but also reaching back to the mostly subliminal social commentary of The Rocky Horror Show, Grease, and the original Star Trek.

(Hey, maybe we need a rock and roll Star Trek musical next...!)

Just like its precursors, Return to the Forbidden Planet is still about a central theme -- the idea of expanding human consciousness with technology (or Jedi-like magic in the original), unknowingly releasing the dangerous power of the human id, and thereby butting up against that timeless and universal truth, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There is serious stuff at the core of this show, but it's easy to ignore that part if you're so inclined. As the editors of Mother Jones magazine once wrote in an anniversary issue, "Better to give us thanks for knowing the importance of being un-earnest, of taking undignified chances, for having the courage to risk all, risk being wrong, risk looking foolish. If there is in fact any secret at all to our amazing longevity, that's surely near the heart of it: knowing how to act the fool like the future depends on it."

We've done that before and Lord knows we can do it again. It's sort of becoming our specialty.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Creative Genius

With this entry I embark upon treacherous and uncharted seas -- I'm about to talk about my art without the benefit of cannabis. I don't do that very often, because I believe God's Goofy Green Goodness opens up my puny human mind in ways that are uniquely worthy of the discussion of art. But this time is sorta different.

My buddy and fellow writer Sparger sent me this link to a video, a talk by author Elizabeth Glibert on the nature of art and creativity and genius -- and the unfair pressure we artists impose upon ourselves. It's about twenty minutes long, but it is soooo worth your time, I promise...


As often happens with such things, Sparger couldn't have had better timing. As I sit uncomfortably in the middle of a two-month break between shows, Ive been thinking a lot about stuff like this. I realized a while back, after reading director Anne Bogart's brilliant (and reassuring) book A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art in Theatre, that what I do is not about A Career or A Body of Work. It's not about Accomplishment or Achievement. It's just about doing good work. Just showing up and doing my job. The stakes are no longer so high for me.

I no longer believe that every piece of work I do has to be better than the one before it. I no longer have to "top" myself with each show or each book. It just has to be a serious, honest effort to say something of value in an interesting way. That's all. If it's a flop, then I'll learn some lessons from it. And if it's an incredible success, I probably won't really know why anyway...

Gilbert talks about how the ancient Greeks and Romans did not believe that genius (which really just meant creativity) resides inside a person but rather was an external divine force. I love that.

I like to think of myself as an antenna, always scanning the skies, listening to the world, being ready to receive, being ready to write down whatever fascinating things come charging into my neural circuits. I don't think of myself as the source of those things, but instead merely as the recognizer of them. And yes, that's where the pot comes in. A heaping bowl boosts the strength of my antenna, allowing it to pick up weaker signals I might otherwise miss, signals I might otherwise dismiss as just white noise. There's a lot of wonderful stuff in there! The pot rescues me from that overly judgemental internal editor that leaps to assess the value of every thought before it's fully explored.

I agree with Gilbert. It's time to free ourselves from Great Expectations and allow ourselves to be what we are at our artistic best -- a conduit, a servant. Because just being that is enough and it's more wonderful than most people will ever understand.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Obama's Economic Recovery Bill and US

It's so interesting to watch the debate over President Obama's economic recovery bill. It's kinda like a Terry Gilliam movie. It's as if the Americans voters had not in fact rejected Republican economic policies both in 2006 and 2008. It's as if the election a few months ago never even happened. The Republicans are incredibly pissed off because this bill isn't exactly the same thing they've been doing for the last eight years.

Which, as we can all too clearly see, did not work, as half a million people lose their jobs each month...

One interesting aspect of the surrealistic debate going on, on Fox News, on conservative talk radio (yes, I do listen to Hannity for laughs, but I can only listen for about 10 minutes at a stretch), and on the internet, is that the definition of "pork" has completely changed. "Pork," in legislative jargon, used to mean earmarks, those pet projects that were stuck into bills without debate or vote, usually in the conference committee. Of course, the truth is that though McCain bet his entire campaign on his pledge to eliminate pork, it's really only a tiny, tiny percentage of the Federal budget, less than 1%. So McCain's quixotic quest to clean up earmarks may have had philosophic appeal, but it would have changed virtually nothing in the real world.

But "pork" isn't just earmarks anymore. These days, "pork" is anything the Rabid Right doesn't like. So even though there are zero earmarks in the recovery bill, Hannity and the other fringe lunatics are as enraged as ever over all the "pork." (Have you also noticed they're trying really hard to replace the word "Democratic" with "Democrat," as in "the Democrat Congress"... maybe someone needs to remind them about the difference between adjectives and nouns. They are not interchangeable.) One of the Republicans' biggest outrages is funding in the bill for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). "That's not stimulative!" they all shout. (Clearly, they've never seen a New Line show...)

This is mostly because they hate the NEA in principle. They are as afraid of art as they are of science and France. What they refuse to consider (among a thousand or so other things) is that the NEA gives much of its money to the state arts agencies, in our case the Missouri Arts Council. And then that money goes in large part to PAYING WORKING ARTISTS.

The screaming fringers want to keep stock brokers employed but not artists. Why? Because artists reveal the truth, and that terrifies the Right. The truth is that our country is significantly worse off than it was eight years ago. The truth is that Bush Jr. did not keep us safe -- we were attacked by Al Qaeda on his watch, well into his first term. He destroyed our economy. He almost destroyed our government. (Why do we ever elect hard-core Republicans who keep telling us that government doesn't work? If they don't think it can work, why would we hire them to run it...???)

Every civilization that survives requires art and artists. As I've said before, we are the tribe shamans. We tell our stories. We record our civilization. How many of us have ever read English history books? But lots of us have seen English history through the lens of good ol' Will Shakespeare. The artists always get the last word.

And there's nothing the Crazies fear more than that. Well, except homosexuals...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Rock Trib 2

I just watched a videotape of New Line's very first show back in 1992, a revue I put together called "A Tribute to the Rock Musicals 2." Why "2," you ask? Because I had already done a "Rock Trib 1" with CenterStage Theatre Company, and so though it was New Line's first show, it was my second "Rock Trib."

What a trip to see that show again! (Shhh, don't tell anyone we videotaped it!) I remember at the time getting a lot of attention for it. We got one review, from The Riverfront Times, and it was really positive, not quite a rave, but not far off...

Now watching it 16 1/2 years later, there are a few cringey parts and a lot of brilliant parts, most notably the entire (well, almost) 17-minute Montage ("Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen") from A Chorus Line. It was fun seeing a whole bunch of people I haven't seen in years, some of them in New York, others who knows where...

The most interesting part of the show to me was seeing me stretch my conceptual muscles as a director. I had directed several shows with CenterStage, but none in which I could really experiment. So I tried a shitload of experiments in this show. So many of the tools I use now I can see myself trying them out for the first time in this show. I had never before had complete artistic freedom to do anything I wanted. Some of my experiments didn't totally work; others totally worked.

The funniest thing to me was the show itself. It was less a revue and more a lecture-demonstration. I'm not kidding, it was a lecture on the history of rock musicals. There was actually a "professor" at a podium lecturing between songs. How the hell did I get away with that? But the audience loved it. Watching the video, there's virtually no coughing, rustling, talking, etc. The audience is totally tuned in. Part of that is because the musical numbers had an incredible energy about them, a lot like our much later productions of Bat Boy, The Robber Bridegroom, March of the Falsettos, Assassins. The Riverfront Times review said the cast was "impressively – sometimes overwhelmingly – enthusiastic, talented, skilled, and well-trained."

As that review suggests, the best part of the show was the voices! Jesus, how did we get that lucky on our first show? Almost everyone in the cast had an amazing voice and real control of it. The power ballads rocked. It was one of those shows where the audience actually cheered after some of the songs. What a cool way to start a company like New Line... Sorta like a statement of purpose...

Yup, it's fun to revisit the roots.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Obama and Us

This has certainly been the most active, most aggressive, most hard-working first two days I've ever seen from a new president! Not just undoing some of Dubya's more obnoxious misdeeds, but also making extremely strong statements about how his administration will operate. Today Obama signed two executive orders that were particularly relevant to what we do.

He put a freeze on senior staff salaries (in other words, no raises), and he announced really strict rules about lobbying his administration. Why? Because he thinks government should be about public service, not personal gain.

And he fuckin' means it, yo.

So why is that relevant to us? Because nonprofit theatres are different from for-profit businesses in one big way. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court decided that arts organizations could have the same nonprofit status and benefits of hospitals, schools, and other social service groups. Why? Because presenting the arts is inherently educational. It is a social service. We are here to serve our community. And too many theatres forget that.

Our primary goal is to serve, not to make money or win awards. (Although, in all fairness, we do have to make enough money to keep the doors open. Still, that is not the primary goal.) We are, by legal definition, a social service organization. That means we always have to be thinking about if we're serving our community, how well we're serving the community, and most of all, how we can better serve our community. That means being aware of racial diversity, onstage, backstage, in the office, and on our board -- so that our company looks like our community. It means doing everything we can to keep ticket prices as low as possible, so that we don't exclude the folks who make minimum wage. It means making it clear to our audiences how our shows relate to events and issues in their real lives, and showing them how powerfully live theatre can address social and political issues. And it also means serving and developing younger audiences.

Obama is trying to make Service to the Community cool again. And here at New Line, we love that. We created the New Line Free Seats last season. We just announced our first college scholarship to be offered. We're working on developing closer relationships with local schools. We're working on making people of color feel more welcome in our casts and audiences. Our board of directors is 28% African American and 14% Asian American, but we're still working on that too.

And we ask our audiences and our supporters to help us with all this. Help us bring in audiences of color. Help us get actors of color to audition for us. Help us reach out to young people. Help us serve our community. And tell us when we fall short. Help us make our corner of the world a little bit better.

We're not just singing and dancing, folks. We're trying to make a difference.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Check

This week I begin a long and lonely stretch of seven weeks before I'm back in rehearsal. I haven't had this much time between shows since college. (You know, back when we wrote our papers on typewriters.) The calendar at our new space is really different, but it's a small price to pay for the use of the space.

So I spent the day today uploading production photos to our Facebook page, pretending to myself that was productive in some small way because surely some folks find us by browsing around Facebook and so our Facebook page should be as nice as possible, right...?

Then around 5:00 p.m. I realized I hadn't yet eaten. So I headed out to pick up some Subway, and on my way out I checked the mail. I thumbed through it and, to my great surprise, found a little treasure.

A check to New Line for $10,000.

It happens once a year. Anonymously. And always at exactly the right time. Sounds like a musical, doesn't it?

This has happened several times before, but this was the first time I realized that it means something more than "support" of New Line. It means that this person believes that the work we do matters, that it is important, and that this person trusts us to use their money wisely and effectively to share our art with the community. Writing fundraising letters all the time, I forget what "support" really means. It's not just a compliment. It's a vote of confidence and a vote of trust.

And we have to remember that when we create our work. We owe all those people everything we can give, to make smart, exciting, surprising, provocative, engaging, relevant, emotional theatre. We theatre people sometimes joke about what a shame it is that the days of royal patronage of artists is over. But it's not over; it's just democratized. Now it's public "patronage" of artists. That's the whole point of legal nonprofit status -- the idea that arts organizations are inherently educational and beneficial to the public and therefore should be relieved of tax obligations, so that money can be spent directly on serving the public. The public (though tax policy) pays us to serve them. And we owe them something for their money.

That's my New Year's Resolution: to keep the contributors and audience foremost in my mind all the time. I love my work more than I could ever explain, but we do theatre for the audience, not for us. Without an audience, it's not a performance; it's just a run-through.

Happy New Year!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott

They're ALIVE!

Our revels now have ended. Tonight was our second and final performance of Night of the Living Show Tunes. Both nights went phenomenally well. This was our fourth show at the Sheldon and we're used to getting 100-150 people a night. But this time we got 258 the first night and 225 the second! And what audiences! We could not have asked for better crowds. They listened, they laughed, the cheered -- quite often, in fact. They were so tuned in. I included several story songs this time ("A Trip to the Library," "Fathers and Sons." "And They're Off," "Madeleine," "The World Was Dancing") and the audience just sat riveted. They caught everything, every laugh, every surprise. It was very cool.

Judy Newmark even gave us a mini-review on the Post Dispatch website, singling out several performers and songs for praise. I believe we'll also be getting a review on the KDHX website in a day or so.

I think this was the best of our four outings at the Sheldon so far. I think I'm getting better at putting the song list together, we did the most interesting (and most difficult) material we've ever done in a concert, we had sixteen really talented performers, and there was some wonderful alchemy among this cast. I won't start talking about particular songs or performances because that'd take all night, but it really was amazing.

The part the audience doesn't know is that both nights there were tons of tiny little mistakes, from pretty much everyone, including me on the piano. It kind of freaked some of the newbies last night -- they were beating themselves up over little mistakes. But that's the nature of this particular beast. We put together about thirty songs, including quite a few very challenging group pieces, in a very short period of time. I asked some of our veterans if this material was harder than in years past -- they all said yes. Loudly. Emphatically even.

Hey, I never claimed to make performers comfortable.

Well, it's time to get this tired old body stoned, but let me conclude thusly: It is a genuine big-ass joy to work on material that rich, to perform in a hall that magnificent, with a cast that talented, and to share it all with audiences that warm and receptive. You heard me, a big-ass joy!

Now I'm high on two things! Thank you, cast! You ROCK!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Merry Christmas!

I sit here listening to "Turkey Lurkey Time," a truly bizarre but awesome Christmas(-ish) song from Promises, Promises. (Whaddya think I listen to Christmas carols or something??) I think back over 2008 and I see two things. Personally, it was a rough year for me, with all the bullshit at the Ivory, scrambling to find a new theatre, and other ridiculous, difficult things I suffered through. But artistically, it could not have been a better year.

I feel like we really hit three Home Runs in 2008. Assassins was one of those perfect shows for me. I got to pick my dream cast, we got to work on brilliant, ballsy material, and I felt like I did some of my very best work. This was our third time doing this show (and that sort of became an accidental theme for the year...), and it was clearly the best of the three excellent productions we've done -- the smartest, the most interesting, the most daring, the funniest, and the most shattering. What a joy to work on a show like that with people like that. Despite the bullshit with the Ivory, I'm crazy proud of that one.

And then there was one of the great thrills of my life, working on the brilliant, deeply emotional, painfully truthful High Fidelity. This was a show I think every one of us was so grateful to work on. Talk about a labor of love! To be the first people to do this show after Broadway (and arguably the first people to do it RIGHT) was awesome, but even awesomer was the show's lyricist flying in to see us and loving it! This will be one of those shows I'll never forget. It surely ranks as one of the most wonderful experiences I've ever had in the theatre. And once again, I am eternally grateful to that wonderful, playful, wildly talented cast, especially Jeff Wright, who brought such warmth and honesty to the proceedings. We kicked some fuckin' ass and the best part is everybody who saw it just fell in love with it. We actually sold out on the Fourth of July!! Who could ask for more than that?

And then there's Hair, another show we did for the third time this year. I was proud of our first two productions of Hair, but this one really was the strongest of the three. I certainly understood this crazy show this time better than I did the other times, but we also had a great cast and incredible leads in Todd Schaefer and John Sparger. And again, what a joy to work on material that good with people that good and share it with audiences who fell madly in love with it. People came back time after time -- one guy saw it ten times, others saw it four, five, six times.

Hair always reminds me the reason we make theatre -- to connect to people, to say something of value to them, and hopefully to send them out of the theatre a little wiser, a little more thoughtful, a little less confused and alone than when they came in. Hair certainly did that every night -- and to produce the show in the middle of this history-making political season was a genuine thrill. I'll never forget after the show one night early in the run, when one audience member yelled out as he was leaving, "Vote Obama! Don't let this happen again!"

Wow, huh?

It's not a metaphor, it's the truth -- the theatre is my church. It's where we go to touch God, where we celebrate the wonder of being human, where we come together in ancient rituals to make sense of our world and to connect to each other. Every day of my life I count myself lucky -- we are the tribe shamans, the tellers of stories, the revealers of Great Truths, the intermediaries between the spirit world and the physical world. And I ask you -- what could be cooler than that??? :)

Merry Christmas and thanks to all the New Liners for being part of all this joy and beauty.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Night of the Living Show Tunes

On January 5 and 6, for two nights only, we will return to the amazing Sheldon Concert Hall for our triennial concert of show tunes, this time titled, A New Line Cabaret, Episode IV: Night of the Living Show Tunes. Catchy, huh?

This follows A New Line Cabaret in 2000, A New Line Cabaret, Episode II: Attack of the Show Tunes in 2003, and A New Line Cabaret, Episode III: When Musicals Attack in 2006. Why the smartass titles? Mostly just because they amuse me. But also because we want to make it clear that these concerts do not feature songs like "Edelweiss" or "What I Did for Love." These are not show tunes you'll hear on the stages of The Muny or Stages (well, maybe with a couple exceptions); these are show tunes that challenge, surprise, and on occasion, offend. (Probably not this time, though.)

The cast for the concert -- what I call the New Line All-Stars -- includes Mara Bollini, Nikki Glenn, Joel Hackbarth, Amy Kelly, Nicholas Kelly, Khnemu Menu-Ra, Katie Nestor, Talichia Noah, Jeffrey Pruett, John Rhine, Todd Schaefer, Deborah Sharn, Kimi Short, Margeau Steinau, Scott Tripp, and Jeffrey M. Wright. Many of these folks have performed with New Line for a long time (Deborah was in the very first New Line show in 1992), but some of them are almost brand new to us (Talichia and Margeau have each done only one show with us, and Nikki and Amy have each done only two shows with us). And then are those who we've been trying to get rid of for a while, but they just keep coming back, so what're ya gonna do...?

The song list (which still might change slightly) this time includes:

ACT I

"Our Prayer” from Brian Wilson’s Smile
“Spanish Sailing Ship” from Songs for a New World
“I Don’t Remember You” from The Happy Time
“Sometimes a Day Goes By” from Woman of the Year
“Look Over There” from La Cage aux Folles
“A Trip to the Library” from She Loves Me
“Somewhere That’s Green” from Little Shop of Horrors
“Sara Lee” from And the World Goes ‘Round
“Madeleine” from Jacques Brel
“Ready to Settle” from High Fidelity
“I Love You” from Little Me
“The Stuff” from Reefer Madness
“And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls
“Don’t Know Where You Leave Off” from Sweet Smell of Success
“Getting Married Today” from Company

ACT II

“Four Jews in a Room Bitching” from March of the Falsettos
“And They’re Off” from A New Brain
“Fathers and Sons” from Working
“The World Was Dancing” from Songs for a New World
“There’s a Fine, Fine Line” from Avenue Q
“Poor Child” from The Wild Party
“Baby, Dream Your Dream from Sweet Charity
“Unrequited Love” from Promenade
“I’m Going Home” from The Rocky Horror Show
“Vacation” / “No Holds Barred” from Pump Boys and Dinettes
“I Believe” from Spring Awakening
“Hear My Song” from Songs for a New World
“Hills of Tomorrow” from Merrily We Roll Along

Not a bad song list, huh? Having created our controversial revue last season, Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll, I'm better now at connecting songs in revues. I learned a long time ago about "routining" a revue, creating waves of up-tempo songs and ballads, company numbers and solos, etc., in other words, giving the show variety without randomness. But now I also look at thematic and emotional arcs, something most revues ignore. After an invocation ("Our Prayer") and a thematic statement of purpose ("Spanish Sailing Ship"), Act I is largely about fucked up romantic relationships, and Act II is about fucked up family relationships. But by the end, we find healing in music and in the optimism that musical theatre specializes in.

We started rehearsals last week. I can't wait to share this with an audience!

And here's a little insider info -- we're working with the Post-Dispatch to create a theatre scholarship for high school seniors planning to study theatre in college, using part of the income from the Sheldon concert. No done deal or details yet, but it looks promising...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

President-Elect Barack Obama

Ohhhhh, now we've gone and done it!

Now everything's going to be different.

Holy shit.

ON WITH THE GROOVY REVOLUTION!
Scott

Pump Up the Volume

I just caught one of my favorite movies on cable: Pump Up the Volume. If you haven't seen it, rent it. You'll love it. It's about a high school kid (Christian Slater) who starts his own pirate radio show. And the message of the film (at least for me) is twofold. First, that none of us is really alone. We all suffer the same insecurities, the same fears, the same loneliness. It's just that nobody ever says it out loud. But there is a cure: connecting.

It's what most of my favorite shows are about -- Sunday in the Park with George, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, High Fidelity, Bat Boy, Company, Hair, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Passion, yes, even Assassins...!

But Pump Up the Volume is also about finding your voice and, having found it, Saying Something. Those of us who make theatre have been given the greatest gift of all -- a voice with which to tell the truth. But we must not waste that voice. Why do you think live theatre still survives after all these centuries, largely unchanged? People need us. We have the power to make people think and feel. We can tell the truth and be listened to. This is a great gift but also a great responsibility. That voice must be used, not wasted, not trivialized. People will try to control the voice. People will find the voice threatening if it really speaks the truth.

That's why the Republicans are so angry right now. They are terrified of this truth-teller Obama, because everybody seems to be listening to him! And now everything's going to change!

And so I challenge my fellow theatre artists: don't waste your voice on the trivial or the shallow, don't offer us the easy and the comfortable, don't believe the lie that people only want escape; instead trust your audience, believe in their intelligence and depth, believe that your voice has value to them and purpose in our world. Say Something.

There is no nobler profession than storytelling. It is how we bond, how we record our history, how we pass on our culture and philosophy, and how we chart the human mind and heart. It is absolutely necessary to the health and well-being of a civilized society -- even more so today, in an ever increasingly complex world.

Let's set the bar as high as we can imagine it, and let's take our audiences on an adventure every time they come to see us. What could be more fun than that?

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Beauty of Life

I've been watching our Presidential race for more than twenty months, back before Obama had even announced he was running. I watched every debate, Democrats and Republicans. I'm a political addict. Luckily, I have great dealers like MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, etc.

It was this race and its historic nature that made me think we should produce Hair again (at that time, we had a black guy, a woman, and a Latino all running). And it has been genuinely amazing working on this show in the midst of this campaign season. It's been very cool knowing that we were part of the conversation. Early in the run, after curtain call, after the audience had come down to dance, one of the audience members yelled, "Vote Obama! Don't let this happen again!" And I thought, wow, this really IS as relevant as I think it is...!

Having just recently worked on Grease again, and now on Hair, it has crystallized for me a theory of American politics that I have picked up from various sources -- that for the last forty years, American politics has been about the battle between the 1950s and the 1960s. The Republicans, if they really had their druthers, would return America to the 1950s, although their vision is that of Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver, not the real 1950s of discrimination, racism, sexism, sexual oppression, enforced conformity, and prescription drug dependence. And the Democrats have been trying since 1968 to finish the work of the 1960s, to work toward equality and justice, and an end to poverty.

But it goes beyond just politics. The famous American "Culture War" is really just about 1950s morality versus 1960s morality, conformity versus individuality, oppression versus freedom. That's what Grease is about, with Sandy representing the 1950s and Danny representing the 1960s. The Rocky Horror Show is about this too, with Brad as the 1950s and the newly sexualized Janet as the 1960s.

Just look at the candidates this year. Every one of the Republican candidates looked like they stepped out of a 1950s sitcom. But Hillary and Obama sure didn't. They are the faces of the 60s, of independent women and proud black men.

When the 60s fell apart in 1968 and 1969, after the twin assassinations, Nixon manufactured a great cultural backlash and unleashed not only really dirty politics but also the false cultural divide that has poisoned American politics ever since. Nixon didn't just soil the office of the Presidency with Watergate; he also invented the politics of fear and personal destruction that Reagan employed and that Karl Rove perfected so many years later.

Perhaps, at long last, Obama is the candidate who is immune to the slime, the one who can finally finish the work of the 60s.

Think about it... What if the ideals of the 60s weren't silly and naive after all? What if the song "Walking in Space" in Hair is actually wiser and more knowing than we give it credit for? What if Hair is full of ideas that we're only slowly evolving enough as a culture to understand? What if mind-expanding drugs really are the road to finding The Truth? What if the answers were there all along and we just weren't open enough to see them? Can we see them now?

Walking in space,
We find the purpose of peace,
The beauty of life
You can no longer hide.
Our eyes are open,
Our eyes are open,
Wide, wide, wide...

The last several performances of Hair were wonderful. We had the best fucking audiences! One New Line loyalist, Randy Ulrich, saw the show ten times! We have a winner! Thank you, Osage Tribe, for helping me to spread the word. Keep on keepin' on.

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Oh Great God of Power

We were about halfway through the first act, in the middle of the scene with Claude's parents, right before the big number "I Got Life." And right in the middle of a line...

The power went out.

And the actors kept doing the scene... and they kept doing the scene... And I'm standing up in back, thinking, do I interrupt them or should I wait for them to find a place to stop...? And they kept doing the scene. So finally, I stopped them, asked the crowd to sit tight, and went to find out what I could find out.

We soon realized all the buildings behind our building were out too. Power was on across the street, but not us. The building guard called the Wash.U. folks and I called Ameren UE. We slowly pieced together the story: a drunk driver hit an electrical pole and took out a big area about 7:00 p.m. There was a crew working down the block. But that was at 7:00 p.m. And here we are sitting in the dark around 9:00 p.m. Eventually we find out the crew working down the street took out our power too. We don't know if it was accidental or if they had to do it to do the other work.

Ameren UE had told me to wait fifteen minutes and call them back to see if they knew more. So I did. They told me the power would be back on at 2:30 a.m. On my way back up to the theatre, the cop who had come by to see if we needed help told me he heard it would really be 6:00 a.m.

Now, Ann had a lot of wine she could've sold, but asking the audience to wait NINE HOURS seemed a bit excessive. I'm sure you would have come to the same conclusion.

So anyway, I announce to the audience that we can't finish the show and that they can bring their stubs back on another night to see the show again. Then the guard tells me that the Wash.U. folks are asking us to leave as soon as we can because the emergency lights will start to fade out at some point.

So the audience leaves, the actors change back into their street clothes by candle light (good thing we were doing Hair!), and Trish, Matt, and I go about shutting the place down and locking it up. I came home and emailed Metrotix to tell them they'd be getting calls, and then I changed our voice mail to include info about all that.

It's hard work canceling a show! But now I'm home, cuddled up next to my favorite pipe, and all is right with the world again. And as I am walking in space (you know, to find the purpose of peace...), I realize this is gonna give us bigger houses for the last five shows. It won't be more money, but fuller houses are much more fun to play to...

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

He Pretends He's Fellini

Such is the life of a guy running a small theatre company...

We're two-thirds of the way through our six-week run of Hair, and though it's not selling out (every theatre in town is experiencing a downturn in sales right now), the show is going well, and we're getting decent-sized houses full of people who fall in love with our show and often come back to see it more than once.

But meanwhile...

We've got the first audition for Return to the Forbidden Planet this Monday. So I'm trying to redirect my brain. It's hard for me -- when I'm running a show, that pretty much takes over my brain till we close. I don't think about a whole lot else. But today I have to switch gears and prepare for tomorrow's audition. And I fucking hate auditions.

And... I'm also working on gathering together a cast (by invitation only) for our two-night concert at the Sheldon Concert Hall in January. Once I get everyone confirmed, then I have to go back to my tentative song list and start assigning songs to singers. At that time, I'll probably find that some songs on my list should be cut, and others may be added. It's a relatively complex process, but it's worth the hassle to get to play that beautiful grand piano at the Sheldon...

And... believe it or not, we're already thinking about what shows we'll be doing next season -- yes, that's right, the 2009-2010 season! Funding applications for that season will start coming due in the next couple months...

And... I have to readjust our current season budget because I anticipated sellouts for Hair, which would have given us a real cushy nest egg to get us through the other lesser known shows this season. But I guess I'll have to change my plans... (show tune reference!)

So there's a lot on my mind right now. God help me.

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

I Believe in Love

It's been two weeks since I last posted. We just opened our third week tonight to a terrific audience! In fact, almost every audience has been terrific. People are overwhelmed and thrilled by this show every night. It's so wonderful to be back inside this experience after eight years.

After the show tonight, after the audience had come onto the stage to dance with us, one voice rose above the crowd, an audience member, who called out to the rest of us, "Don't let this happen again! Vote Obama!" And the audience and cast cheered. And I thought to myself, yep, this is why we're doing Hair again. I can't imagine a show being more relevant right now.

And not only do audiences love it; the reviewers do too...

Judith Newmark wrote in The St. Louis Post Dispatch, “This is New Line’s third production of Hair in less than ten years, and you know why from the moment you smell the incense. Director Scott Miller has a wonderful feeling for this material; his production delivers the hippie world with sensual precision. It comes through in the exotic aroma, in the eye-popping set designed by Todd Schaefer, in the era-exact costumes by Thom Crain and the dreamy sound of Chris Petersen’s six-man rock band. Most of all, it comes through in the cast, an ensemble known as the Tribe.”

Andrea Braun wrote in PlaybackSTL, “Hair at New Line Theatre is unexpectedly, beautifully, joyfully, mournfully, tragically relevant again. Gerome Ragni and James Rado have turned out to be poet-prophets and their book and lyrics are given life by Galt MacDermot's eclectic rock score. . . I'm happy that New Line chose to produce Hair because I'd never seen it live; I am sorry that it can't just be a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the show but that it still has so much relevance. See it to celebrate, to mourn, and finally to celebrate again for there is hope and light and no matter how hard ‘they’ try, they cannot ‘end this beauty’.”

Chris Gibson said on KDHX-FM, “Scott Miller knows this material well, and his skilled direction keeps the action flowing and the actors focused. The tribe is well cast, and seem completely comfortable with one another. And they make a marvelous sound harmonizing together on this catchy score. Thom Crain's costumes add a nice air of authenticity. Chris Peterson's work on piano and conducting the small ensemble is impeccable. The band provides a solid pulse to this electrified revival meeting.”

Richard Green wrote on TalkinBroadway.com, “Much smoke is blown, and much adolescent naughtiness is waved like a banner. But just to see the glowing idealism on the faces of fine actors like Khnemu Menu-Ra, Aaron Lawson and others is somehow astonishing in this age of bitter disappointment and gloom, and to hear the folksy and dramatic songs of Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot raised so beautifully is a great pleasure. . . . For the generation of psychedelic awakening and sexual revolution, this lock of Hair is a sentimental touchstone and a heart-warming bit of modern Americana.”

What more can I say?

I also have to mention this -- tonight was Ryan's birthday (who plays Sheila) and she brought love beads for the whole tribe, and each of us got a necklace with beads that spelled out our tribe name. Very cool. Thanks, Ryan! After the love bead bracelets that T. Love made for all of us before we opened, there's a lot of love spreadin' around...

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

My Conviction

A couple years ago I got an email from a woman named Pola Rappaport, who said she was making a documentary about Hair. She had read my book, Let the Sun Shine In: The Genius of HAIR. Long story short, she and her partner Wolfgang Held, flew to St. Louis to interview me for this film.

Flash forward a couple years. I finally get a copy of the film on DVD from Pola just in time to show the tribe early in the rehearsal process, and it was soooo helpful for them to see what we were aiming at, what the finished product looked like, what the motivations behind it were, what the original production was like, all that stuff. It gave them a head start in understanding this wild show that the earlier Osage tribes did not have.

And yes, it was cool showing them this documentary about this history-making, theatre-redefining show, when every 20 minutes or so, my face would appear on screen. I'll admit it. It was fun.

Today, I get an email that the film (first released in Europe) is finally available in the U.S., from Alive Mind Media. I highly recommend this film. It has quite a lot of archival performance footage, interviews with a lot of the people involved with the original, and it does an amazing job of placing the show in its historical, political, and social context (which was mostly my role).

Kinda cool...

And while I'm blogging, I'll add this tidbit. I just talked with Metrotix and couldn't believe what they told me. A normal show for us sells 100-150 tickets for the run before we open. Our previous pre-sale record was Urinetown, which sold about 220 seats before we opened. But this production of Hair has already sold 386! This first weekend is still pretty light, but we hope for a lot of walk-up. I'll say it again -- get your tickets early!

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Tune In

As with every show, this is the busiest time for me. Saturday, we had our all-day cue-to-cue rehearsal, where we slowly move from one lighting cue to the next. It went very smoothly -- but it usually does with our awesome resident lighting designer Ken Zinkl...

Then Sunday, we had our "sitzprobe" rehearsal, the first time the cast sings with the band. That's usually the hardest rehearsal (by far) on me personally. I have to teach the band all the little nuances and subtleties that we've brought to the score over the last two months -- and I have to do it with the entire score in about four hours. And there are, like, forty songs in this crazy show! It's grueling for me. But again, this time it went pretty smoothly. Our band sounds amazing -- wait till you hear them!

This is also the time during which I have to get all the last-minute details done -- getting change for the box office, picking up the programs from the printer, printing (at Kinko's) copies of my analysis chapter for the lobby, picking up tickets, and lots more. All those things nobody even notices that I do to get a show open... And for this show, I also have to go pick up live daisies every Weds. of the run, for the Tribe to give to the audience as they enter the house. Meanwhile, Ann (house manager) and Vicki (box office manager) are both preparing things as well.

Last night was the first time we ran the whole show with lights, costumes, props, the band, microphones, and everything else. This can be hard on the actors, after so long working in rehearsal without all those distractions. But this cast was ready for it, and last night went really well. I had lots of nitpicky notes for them afterward, but there were really no big problems. So tonight and tomorrow night, it's just about me fine-tuning what I can and then turning it over to the theatre gods. We preview Thursday, and then open Friday. I can't wait!

Also last night we had our first Tribal Council. Our old box office manager Steve, who passed away a few years ago, gave me an Indian talking stick the last time we did Hair. (The idea is that at a council, only the person holding the talking stick is allowed to talk.)

This show is unlike any other show in about forty different ways. But one of those ways is our pre-show rituals, which we started last night. We warm up vocally, then we have the ceremonial Folding of the Tarp (this big stage covering we use at the end of Act I), we do our "Salute the Sun" ritual, then we sit down in a big circle and have a Tribal Council. Each night, one of the Tribe gets to talk, and says whatever they want, about the show, about themselves, about this experience, whatever...

It wasn't until last week, when I really got to see the show up and running, that I was reminded just how unusual this show is. I've gotten so used to Hair over time that I forget how weird it is, and what a wild experience it is for audiences. Nothing about it functions like a regular musical. Or even a regular piece of theatre. It really is its own thing. Come see for yourself -- but get your tickets early!

Lots to do, but I had to check in with my blogosphere buddies...

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

I Got Life

It's funny. I read the other blogs from my fellow Osage Tribe members, and quite a few of them are talking about how weird it is that they find themselves in Hair at exactly the moment when they're going through major life transitions. Well, I join the ranks of the confused, seeking, and transitional.

But I know it's no coincidence that we're all doing Hair together at this moment in this place, a show that opens up our mystical third eye and reminds us that the rules we're all used to aren't necessarily the best rules to live by, that there is far more to life and living than most people may ever know. And the hardest and scariest thing of all is finding out who you really are deep, deep down, where most people will never look.

I'm going through some rough times these days, and not just because bad things have happened to me, but because my eyes are being opened -- again, bigger, wider -- and while I recognize that this is healthy for me in the long run, it's difficult and scary in the short run. It's tough really facing yourself naked and bullshit-free, and I can't help but think about that scene in "The Empire Strikes Back," when Luke goes into the tunnel on Dagobah, thinking he's battling Vader, but when he takes the helmet off, it's Luke! Yep, that's where I am right now. Wishing I had left the helmet on.

Rebirth always sounds like a good thing, but it's as painful as being born the first time, just in a different way -- this time the pain is all on the inside. But that doesn't make it any less traumatic.

I'm hoping Hair will heal me. It's done it for me before. This wasn't just a good time to do Hair politically; it also turns out to be a good time for me personally -- and apparently, for a bunch of others in our tribe. After all, "walking in space, we find the purpose of peace."

Amen, brother.
On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Where Do I Go?

I didn't expect our last show, High Fidelity, to be as meaningful and powerful as it was for me personally. I knew it was great material that I wanted to work on and share with our audiences, but I didn't think it would hit me right in the solar plexus the way it did. About halfway through the run, I realized why: I was at the exact same place in my life as Rob Gordon was. I needed to learn exactly the same lessons he needed to learn. And with both Rob and me, even when the show ended, our journeys did not. Rob had only begun his journey as the story of High Fidelity ended. (Actually, in the novel the story goes one narrative step further than the show does.) It's like the end of Company, where Bobby makes a decision about the road he will take now, but we don't know how it will work out, whether he will find happiness, etc. -- all we know is that he's made a decision. The same is true of High Fidelity.

And my life.

Luckily for me, I now move from that deeply personal, deeply meaningful experience to another! I already know that Hair carries some important lessons for me, some of which I learned the last couple times -- particularly the second time, when we closed just ten days before the September 11th attacks. But I also know I'm in a different place now.

I've always been a junkie for books about religion. I do not subscribe to any organized religion and do not believe literally in the stories any of those religions tell us. I know that the stories of Jesus, Moses, and The Gang are important stories that teach us important truths, but I also know that they rightfully belong alongside the great stories of Zeus, Thor, Jupiter, Zoroaster, Shiva, the Reverend Moon, and L. Ron Hubbard. Every tradition has its central myths and fables, none of which are true but all of which are truthful. In fact almost all of the Christian myths and fables originated in other Eastern traditions first. The Garden and the Fall of Man, the Great Flood, the Virgin Birth, all Jesus' miracles, the idea of the Trinity, the 12 disciples, the crucifixion and resurrection -- all of it showed up in other places before Christianity. Which makes it a little hard to take the Bible literally.

I'll offer up just one detailed example to prove my point. Jesus’ story shares many coincidences with the story of Horus -- and here's the crux of it -- an Egyptian story from thousands of years earlier. Horus was born to a virgin and was the only begotten son of God (Osiris). Horus’ mother was Meri and his (step-)father was Jo-Seph. Both births were announced by angels and witnessed by shepherds. Jesus was visited by three wise men; Horus was visited by three sun gods. Herod wanted Jesus killed as a child; Herut wanted Horus killed. There are no details on either of them from age 12-30. Both were baptized at age 30 in a river by a known baptiser. Both faced temptation in the desert by an evil god (Sut/Satan). Both had 12 disciples as an adult. Both of them walked on water, cast out demons, healed the sick, cured the blind, stilled the sea, and raised the dead. Horus’ ressurection of his dead father happened in Anu. Jesus resurrected Lazarus in Beth-Anu, or Bethany (beth means house in Hebrew). Both were killed by crucifixion, accompanied by two thieves. Both were entombed, then resurrected after three days, and in both cases the resurrection was discovered by women first. And all this happened to Horus thousands of years before Jesus even showed up! Odd, isn't it? But enough of that...

Lately, I've been reading books about Zen Buddhism, and I see great truth there, and a much more evolved sense that the closest we can come to God is metaphor, that literal language and stories will always be utterly inadequate, and most significantly for Christians, that we can't ever really know the nature of God, the nature of Life, the nature of Death, or any of the rest of those Big Questions. (Depends on the shit you're smoking!) It's the questions that count, not the answers; the searching for, not the pretending to know.

(If you ever want a really good laugh, listen to "The Bible Answer Man" on Chrstian radio. To paraphrase the Hair script -- Anyone who thinks they have all the answers is full of shit.)

The more I read about world religion and philosophy, the more I'm convinced that our primary duty as moral, rational beings is to Evolve. If we believe now exactly what we believed as children, then we're not doing our job, we're not serving our souls, we're not growing and striving toward our potential.

When I hear people say that "all the answers" are in the Bible, I feel sorry for them. The Bible is a history book and a philosophy book; it's not an owner's manual. And it does not have answers for us about 21st century technology or many other modern issues. The Bible is a guide, nothing more, and it's up to us to use the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, and others texts like them to learn what we can and keep pursuing the Big Questions. But we have to accept and even embrace the fact that we will never fully understand the answers (and sometimes, not even the questions). The idea isn't to get the answer -- that's what game shows are for -- the idea is to keep thinking and evolving. That's what makes us better people and the world a better place.

I'm hoping Hair will help me with that the way High Fidelity did. I consider myself quite a success professionally -- though I make precious little money, I do run a nationally known theatre company, I've published several books in my field, and I hope that I continue to get better as a director. But in my personal life I'm usually a failure, and I'm trying to figure out why that is and how to get myself on a different road. High Fidelity opened my eyes to a piece of the puzzle, but there are many more pieces to be found.

Part of me feels like it's awfully late to have my eyes opened at age 44, but another part feels like this life may well be just one rung on the great ladder of Enlightenment, that what we think of as a full adult life may really be merely an infancy in a much bigger, wider world of experience that our puny brains can't even imagine. I know we all have work to do, but I think I may have more than most...

If nothing else, at least I finally feel like I may be on the right road. And I have to accept that I don't know where that road is leading. I just have to stay on the road and Keep On Truckin'.

My body is walking in space,
My soul is in orbit, with God, face to face.
. . .
On a rocket to the fourth dimension,
Totally self-awareness the intention.

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Take Trips, Get High

This is such a different experience than the other two times I did Hair. Partly because I have such experience with the show this time and I came into the process with an incredible head-start. Partly because I could give this cast a much better idea of where they were headed than I could the other times. Partly because I think I'm a better director seven years later.

But a big part of it is this Tribe of ours. Everybody is so terrific to work with, the atmosphere in rehearsal has been wonderful, and they're all really working hard to find their place in the crazy quilt that is Hair.

We've run both acts separately, and they're both looking really good already. And on Monday night, newly ensconced in our new theatre for the first time, we'll run the whole show. Which will be so much fun to see the whole thing -- and for them to finally have the real space in which to play. We'll see what still needs work, what needs focus, etc. And the tribe will start to get an idea of the flow of the show, how all these pieces really fit together. I think it will be particularly helpful for a few of the actors who really have complex character arcs over the course of the show.

Today, we load in the set. Todd (Claude) is our set designer and he's already over at the theatre with our Trusty Stage Manager Trisha, getting everything ready to build. Several of us will be there shortly to help. Today we build, tomorrow we paint. Then Monday we finally get to play on the real set!

I can hardly believe it's already load-in day. It doesn't seem like we've been working on this show very long. But when I think about having a six-week run again, I'm reminded that this is one of those rare, cool experiences that's actually going to last a while. With most shows, even though we usually run four weeks, it's still hard to close the show, and it always feels like we could run longer. This time, we do get to run longer, for almost twice as many performances as usual. And that's a real gift. Tickets are already selling pretty good and people seem to be as psyched about the show this time as they were the other times. The first two times we had houses of 125 and 150 seats; this time it'll be 210 seats. But I still think we'll sell out most of the run. We'll see...

Well, I've gotta get my carcass into the shower and get over to the theatre, so I'll end my update here...

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Dead End

If we think we're a divided nation now, we just have to look at 1968 to see what amateurs we are today. On the morning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral in 1968, the Chicago Tribune published an editorial that tells us everything we need to know about The Other Side of the Culture War, both then and now...

Yes, this nation and people need a day or mourning. America should mourn, but not for Martin Luther King. They should mourn because moral values are at the lowest level since the decadence of Rome....

Funny, isn't that what we're hearing today? And really, weren't they saying that 100 years ago? Isn't there some famous quote of one of the Ancient Greeks writing about the decaying morals of the Younger Generation? Ah well, the more things change...

...Drug addiction among the youth is so widespread that we are treated to the spectacle at great universities of faculty-student committees solemnly decreeing that this is not longer a matter for correction...

Oooo, "correction"! That sounds so S&M...! Sign me up!

...At countless universities the doors of dormitories are open to mixed company, with no supervision... Dress is immodest. Pornography floods the news stands and book stores. 'Free Speech' movements on campuses address themselves to four-letter words... We are knee-deep in hippies, marijuana, LSD, and other hallucinogens. We do not need any of these; we are self-doped to the point where our standards are lost...

Okay, first the idea of being knee-deep in marijuana sounds like Heaven on a Stick to me! But putting that aside, can you imagine if the people who wrote this editorial could leap from 1968 to 2008. I think it's a fair bet their heads would actually explode. Can you imagine a traveler from 1968 dealing with South Park, Cinemax after Dark, online porn, The Daily Show, Comedy Central in general, Janet Jackson's Nipple Scandal, Weeds, Deadwood, Avenue Q, Harold and Khumar, The Aristocrats, and of course, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle...?

...If you are black, so goes the contention, you are right, and you must be indulged in every wish. Why, sure, break the window and make off with the color TV set, the case of liquor, the beer, the dress, the coat, and the shoes. We won't shoot you. That would be 'police brutality.'...

Except of course when we shoot you for no reason coming out of your own bachelor party the night before your wedding. Or when we drag you from the back of a pickup till you're dead. Or when we leave you to die in New Orleans...

Then again, we did let O.J. go...

...If you are white, you are wrong. Feel guilty about it. Assume the collective guilt of all your progenitors, even if neither you nor anyone you know is a descendant of salve owners. Yield the sidewalk to the migrants from the South who have descended on your cities. Honor their every want, because the 'liberals' tell you that it is your fault they have not educated themselves, developed responsibility, trained themselves to hold jobs, or are shiftless and dependent on your taxes.

Gee, that sorta sounds like the arguments coming from a lot of the Right Wingers today, doesn't it (though they usually dress it up in less obviously racist language)? Not McCain himself, of course. That would be unseemly. He leaves it to schmucks like Hannity, Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, and the Lesser Crazies... They even have the same trick of de-humanizing with labels: then it was "migrants;" now, it's "illegal aliens." And these terrible creatures don't "move to" a city; they "descend on" it. These Pundits of The Dark Side know that if people of color are just "people," they're not scary enough to rouse the rabble!

Then as now, half of America is always afraid of Anarchy, that those who are oppressed will rise up and up-end everything we hold dear. In retrospect it's hard not to see the original Planet of the Apes films as a fable about race fear in America. They feared that chaos would erupt (which it often did in 1968) and Order (i.e., White Defined Order) would never be Restored. The same fear is with us today -- many Americans told exit pollers during the primaries that race did play a part in their decision. Is it possible to see that as anything other than racism? If someone votes for Hillary over Obama, and says race was a deciding factor, doesn't that ipso facto make them racist? The pollsters have reported those numbers but are afraid of drawing the obvious conclusion...

When Don Imus can call black college women "nappy headed ho's," then the song "Colored Spade" in Hair feels as timely as tomorrow morning's headlines. Which is a shame.

The more I compare 1968 and 2008, the more depressing it gets. We really haven't come very far since then. Maybe we can blame Nixon and Watergate for short-circuiting the good work of the Sixties, but we gotta blame ourselves, too. And our fear.

So what do we do now?

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Ooooooo, The Bed!

As of last night, we've staged the whole show except The Trip in Act II, which we'll do Monday. It's still amazing to me how willing our tribe is to try crazy things, break rules, and throw themselves into the relative chaos of this beautiful, baffling show. So Thank You once again to the Osage for so cheerfully following me down this road, even when you think I may be losing my damn mind. Your trust is wonderful.

Hair is a very difficult show to stage, partly because it's really strange, using experimental theatre devices and so forth, and partly because it's also very complex, with lots of stuff going on much of the time (and The Trip is the most complex of all, which is why I saved it for last). When a show is supposed to feel spontaneous and sorta chaotic, it's extra hard to find ways to focus the audience's attention where it should be focused.

Because, after all, even though Hair doesn't feel like it has a plot, it really does...

This blog is supposed to be a truthful chronicle, warts and all, of our process, so here's one of the warts, a glimpse inside the messy process of making theatre. I realized when I got home last night that I don't think the way I staged "The Bed" works very well. The proof of this is that the tribe really didn't understand what I was going for. They seemed totally lost, even frustrated, which has not been true of any other moment in the show. If the actors feel that lost, it's most probably my fault.

So I need to re-think this number. Why is it here? How does it function? Deep down at its core, what is it about? How does it advance character, plot, or the show's themes? Is it just about playfulness or is there something more? In other words, maybe it's about something underneath that's different from the surface meaning.

Here's a piece of the very odd lyric from "The Bed":

You can lie in bed
You can lay in bed
You can die in bed
You can pray in bed
You can live in bed
You can laugh in bed
You can give your heart
Or break your heart in half in bed

You can tease in bed
You can please in bed
You can squeeze in bed
You can freeze in bed
You can sneeze in bed
Catch the fleas in bed
All of these
Plus eat crackers and cheese in bed...

What on earth??? This is a hard song to make work because it's one of those rowdy, silly, playful songs that populate so much of the Hair score, but it comes at a very intense, sad moment in the show. Why is it there? Why break up the intensity and the building dramatic tension that's leading straight into the finale? Why stop the show for a list of things you can do in bed (only some of them sexual), when we're about to send Claude off to the Vietnam meat grinder?

Part of the answer may just be the perverse pleasure the show's creators took in consciously rejecting expectations every chance they got. Part of it I think is the juxtaposition of Claude's sadness, fear, apprehension, guilt, etc. against the still playful, still stoned, still outside-real-life tribe around him. They will go on playing while he goes to Vietnam and gets killed. They will no doubt still be playing when he's sent back home in a body bag.

But is it about more than that? The first half of the song is exclusively non-sexual things you can do in bed. Them the bridge of the song describes the bed in analytical terms:

Oh the bed is a thing
Of feather and spring
Of wire and wood
Invention so good.

Maybe this is a song about rejecting the demonization of "what we do in bed." Maybe this is a commentary on how "the bed" became a strictly sexual symbol in the freaked-out 60s, which in turn made it something "dirty," "private," "adult," rather than a source of pleasure and rest and renewal. Everybody has a bed, the tribe is telling us, and it's silly to attach such heavy, "forbidden" meaning to such a simple, good, useful thing, to reduce it to nothing more than sex so that you can't even talk about it in polite company.

Then the last section of the song finally celebrates sexual acts, but only as one of many things you can do in bed. Sex is only one part of this picture. And notice that the song never uses the word fuck, even though it's all over the rest of the show:

Let there be sighs
Filling the room
Scanty pajamas
By Fruit of the Loom

You can eat in bed
You can beat in bed
Be in heat in bed
Have a treat in bed
You can rock in bed
You can roll in bed
Find your cock in bed
Lose your soul in bed

(Remember, the phrase "rock and roll" was originally a euphemism for sex.) And then the song ends with a warning: "You can lose in bed / You can win in bed / But never, never, never, never, never, never sin in bed." Is that telling us to stop demonizing both the bed as a symbol and also our own sexual exploits, however non-mainstream they may be, to stop thinking of sex as "sin"...?

And maybe the tribe is warning Claude -- he wants to sleep with Sheila before he leaves, but "You can give your heart, or break your heart in half in bed." Going to bed with someone can be complicated...

When I figure all this out (and I've actually come a long way just writing this blog entry), then I'll figure out how to physicalize that, how to make it as clear as possible to the audience, how to use staging to enhance and make the words even more meaningful. Maybe it calls for abstract movement or maybe concrete movement that literally "explains" the song... With things like this, I have to think really hard about it for a while, then forget about it and let it percolate in the back of my mind. As I move through this weekend, this song will sit in my subconscious and hopefully, it will suddenly become clear to me how to make it work. I say "suddenly" because it will feel like that, even though the process will probably take a couple days...

I learned a long time ago that making theatre is not always a conscious process. Sometimes the best art is made subconsciously, by just allowing your artist self to cruise along on auto-pilot. I've been using this same process since 1997 when we did Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris and 1998 when we did Songs for New World, both largely abstract musicals. When I'm having trouble with a number, I stop myself, ask myself, "What is this really about?", and that usually puts me on the right road. That may sound like Directing 101, but it's something too many directors never do... especially with a musical...

We'll see if it works this time... Hopefully I'll have new staging to show the tribe Monday night.

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Beads, Flowers, Freedom

I'm reading this new book, Nixonland, and it's really fucking fascinating. It's a portrait of how America changed from the 50s to the 70s, using Nixon's political rise as a structural device, and also asserting that Nixon was the guy who started the conservative movement that has so fucked up our country in the last eight years. The book makes a very persuasive case that without Nixon, there would have been no Reagan and no Dubya, and that Nixon was actually the guy who pioneered the dirty politics that we've come to know as "Rovian." (Believe me, you only THINK you know how dirty Nixon was...)

This book has confirmed a theory of mine, that America has been fighting the same battle for the last forty years, between those who want America to return to the certainties (and racism and sexism and cultural oppression) of the 1950s, and those who want to finally fulfill the social and political promises of the 1960s. That's what Grease and The Rocky Horror Show are both about. And I think that's what the 2008 Presidential election is about.

But this book is also an incredible journey through the politics and culture of America during that wild, disorienting, transitional time. I'm only about a third of the way through, but I feel like now I understand better how tumultuous that time was. Unintentionally, it was the hippie and anti-war movements that allowed Nixon to come to power, with the brilliant bullshit of his "Law and Order" campaign in 1968. It was bullshit, of course, because the federal government has very little to do with "law and order" -- that's almost always a state and local issue. The Constitution doesn't give the federal government much "law and order" power...

But Nixon knew that's what "the great silent majority" wanted, an end to the chaos and upheaval. They just wanted to get back to the 1950s. So that's what he offered them.

And the way Nixon got around his jurisdictional problem was to declare a War on Drugs, which has been under federal jurisdiction since the 1930s when another bullshit artist, Harry Anslinger, convinced the U.S. -- and many other countries -- to outlaw marijuana, jump starting the horrific, misguided, sometimes deadly, and mostly ineffectual War on Drugs, which has resulted in (among other things) a third of African American men being in jail at some point in their lives.

Right now, I've gotten to 1967 in this book, and it's talking about that famous March on the Pentagon, when the hippies put flowers in the barrels of the guns of the National Guardsmen. And the author of this book, Rick Perlstein, makes an incredibly interesting point about that moment -- he writes, "Others placed flowers in the barrels of their guns. On the surface, a gesture of sweetness. Deeper down, for a soldier steeled for grim conflict, just doing his duty, the most unmanning thing imaginable: you are slaves and we are free."

Fuck! That's intense!

And in a sense, that's the whole point of Hair. This hippie tribe has come together to hang out with us, rap a little, and show us The Way. They will show us Great Truths, they will shine harsh light on the bullshit, and they will open wide the Doors of Perception for us. It's up to us whether or not we step through. But underneath it all, the hippies know the truth -- that we (the audience) are slaves in so many ways, to money, to job, to family, to the advertisers, to the drive-thru's, to religion, to school, to the government, to social convention, to political correctness... and the hippies are free.

Wow. Now go smoke some of God's Goofy Green Goodness and try to wrap your mind around that...!

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

How Dare They Try to End This Beauty

So I'm sitting at my computer working, listening to this stoner Mixwit tape Todd Micali has put on his blog, and I've just listened to "Puff the Magic Dragon" four times in a row. I always knew the song was about pot (well, maybe not when I first got the sheet music at age 6), but hearing it now in the context of working on Hair, I hear deeper things in it, about the danger of losing the beauty and ideals and innocence of the 60s and the drug culture -- sort of along the lines of the Hair songs "How Dare They Try to End This Beauty" and "Let the Sun Shine In"... Go listen to it and see what I mean...

Wow. That's heavy, dude!

You gotta check out Todd's mix tape -- it's fucking amazing!

And also notice the photo on his blog of the guy putting flowers in the gun barrels of the National Guard. This famous shot is from the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, when 35,000 people circled the Pentagon, held hands, and tried to levitate the building! Where did those 35,000 people go, I wonder...?

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Come to the Be-In

I just finished watching the coolest fucking documentary! It's called What Would Jesus Buy?, made by the same guy who made Super Size Me. It's about Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, a church choir combined with performance art and political activism. The film follows their month-long tour across America to stage demonstrations/performances/protests at malls, Wal-Marts, Targets, Starbuckses, the Las Vegas strip, and the Mall of America, all during the Christmas holidays. They even visit (and protest inside of) Disneyland.

And as I was watching it, I realized the hippies are still with us! This is exactly what the hippies believed in, a rejection of consumerism and materialism, a return to valuing people above things, a return to humanity, a search for transcendent truths. At one point in the film, Reverend Billy and his choir are exorcising a Wall-Mart, and afterward he says he really thought they were gonna be able to levitate the Wal-Mart to show the strength of their message. A parallel event happened in October 1967 when the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam gathered 35,000 people in Washington D.C. to try and levitate the Pentagon. (In Hair, Sheila was at this event at the Pentagon.)

There's a playfulness about Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Choir, but there's also a deep seriousness underneath it all, a serious call to reject the addiction of consumerism, to stop feeling "forced" to go into debt every Christmas. It's a playfulness mixed with seriousness that is found in the hippie culture of the 60s as well -- and in Hair. In fact, it's not hard to see Berger in Reverend Billy -- charismatic, charming, equal parts shaman and bullshit artist.

The one moment in the movie that really grabbed me was outside a Wal-Mart somewhere out West. The choir is passing by the front of the store and there's a young couple there with a baby and a toddler. The father asks Reverend Billy to bless his baby, and so with back-up singing from the choir, Billy blesses the child and prays that she won't be afflicted with the curse of consumerism. It's both funny and really moving, and it reminded me how dangerous our brand of consumerism is to our health and happiness, both collectively and individually. It's obvious that this moment re-energizes Billy but it also makes you stop and think seriously about what they're preaching. Jim Wallis, minister and publisher of the excellent Sojourner magazine, says it all in the film: "Christmas is supposed to shake the world up!"

And so is Hair.

They're right, after all, Reverend Billy and his friends. For the first time since the Depression, Americans have negative savings. The Rev says we're lost in "the valley of the shadow of debt!" We've been hoodwinked and victimized. (Well, actually, when I say "we" I really mean "you," since I gave up credit many years ago, and it was mostly voluntary -- with only one exception in the meantime, to get a car.)

And there's the connection to Hair. The hippies in Hair are right too. Marijuana and sex are gifts from God and war is always wrong. But to understand that, your mind has to be opened ("wide, wide, wide") and not too many people know how to do that. Not yet.

Maybe Hair will help.

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

What a Piece of Work

I don't always block our shows (i.e., work out the staging) in advance. With most shows, there are certain scenes that will be physically complex that I have to block ahead, but I love letting actors find their own way when I can, mostly because the staging ends up looking more organic that way. Some shows, like Chicago or Bat Boy are just so complex and/or stylized that I have to block every moment. With Hair, it's some of both -- lots of moments that have to feel utterly spontaneous, so I will give the actors very little blocking; but other moments are so weird and stylized that I'll have to block them in great detail.

So, for the last week I've been working through the script and blocking what needs blocking. In order to do that I relied on several sources. First, I've got some Hair documentaries on video that have footage of the original cast and staging. When possible, we will use those moments of original staging -- it's not a lot, but I like reaching back and connecting with the original production, especially with a show as special and rule-busting as this one. Most of what we'll take from the original will be little tiny moments; for example, there's a moment in "The Flesh Failures," when the entire tribe puts their hands up in front of Claude's face to block the audience from seeing him. It's a tiny moment, and probably doesn't sound like much reading it here, but it's really powerful, so we'll use that. Also, the first time we did the show, one of the original Broadway cast wrote out for me a long, detailed description of the original staging for "Aquarius," which we will adapt slightly for our show.

My second source is our last production. I watched a video of our 2001 Hair and looked through my script from that show. There aren't a whole lot of things I want to use again from that staging, but a few things are really nice and seem to really nail the moment, so I'll use those. But also, as I watched the 2001 video, I realized there are moments in the show that we didn't really fully understand at the time, though I'm not sure the audiences ever knew. We'll get those right this time.

Another source is a copy of a Hair script I have (no idea where or how I got it) from 1969. It's fairly close to the script we have now, but I did get some good insights from reading it.

Another source is production photos from the original -- these don't necessarily give me staging ideas, but they do help me figure out the writers' original intentions, which is valuable. Some directors don't care about original intention -- I'm not a slave to it, but I always find it extremely valuable.

There are quite a few moments in the show that I now understand better than the last time we did the show, so I think I'll guide our tribe better into realizing those moments this time. Last time we did the show, my favorite thing to hear from audiences -- the people who were actually around in the 60s, experiencing this subculture -- was that we got it "exactly right," the look, the attitude, the mood, the relationships, all of it. Nothing is more important to me with this show than authenticity. Mostly since nothing was more important to the hippies.

This week is going to be such fun. We're really going to dive into the world of Hair. Tonight we'll sing through the entire score (all FORTY songs!). Tomorrow night, we have a "Table Talk" night. I'm gonna show the tribe a couple short documentaries about Hair (including one that I'm a part of!). And then we'll talk about the historical context and the world of the hippies. We weren't able to do this last time because these documentaries didn't yet exist, and I knew way less about all that, not having yet written my book about the show. I think all this will really help the actors. And then Thursday, we will read through the script and sing all the songs as they come up. It will be the first time the tribe will hear the show, see how it all fits together, and they'll probably end up more baffled than ever... It's a weird fucking show!

The first time we did Hair in 2000, I had no idea what I was doing. But we trusted the material and it turned out great. The second time, in 2001, I felt like I really "got it" and I think the show was even better. This time, I've written a whole damn book about the show, so I better know what I'm doing!

It's gonna take a while to get the cast memorized (these songs are a bitch to memorize), comfortable with touching each other and with the extreme emotion of the show, comfortable with the many devices from the experimental theatre world, and really tuned in to the hippie worldview that underpins the entire show. It'll take a while but we'll get there.

It's quite an adventure in front of us and I feel so strongly that the end product will be even more wonderful than the last two times. Judging by ticket sales the last couple times, you'd better call Metrotix now... I'm just sayin'...

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

This is the Dawning

Back in early 1999, we were working on programming our next season. We knew that we were going to open with the brilliant Floyd Collins, and that the season would also include our first sequel. We had done an original revue in 1996 called Out on Broadway, an evening of theatre songs sung from a gay perspective. It was a huge hit originally (we even brought it back for additional performances a few months after its first run ended), and people had been asking for a sequel ever since, so we decided that Out on Broadway 2000 -- or OOB-2K as we nicknamed it -- would be our spring show. But we weren't sure what to put in the third slot, and almost without any forethought, we finally announced that Hair would be the third show.

Now, I didn't really know Hair. I had seen the movie in high school. One of my friends was a neo-hippie and she dragged a bunch of us to a showing at Meramec Community College. Since then I had been a moderate fan of the music. (I really liked singing "Sodomy" loud enough for my mother to hear it.) Then in college, a group from Brown University was touring New England with a production of Hair, and they stopped by our campus for a few performances. It was fucking weird! I didn't much like it. I didn't know what the fuck it was. It wasn't a musical like any I had ever seen... And that was what I knew about Hair.

Then all these years later, I blindly put Hair into our season. We held auditions, we cast the show, we started rehearsals, and I thought, "Holy shit, I have no idea what to do with this!" The script didn't make sense. The lyrics didn't make sense. I didn't know how to stage these bizarre songs. I couldn't tell if there was a story in there or whether there was a main character.

And then the heavens opened up, the Universe took pity on me, and I happened upon a national discussion group about Hair online. Luckily for me, the group included Michael Butler, who originally produced the show on Broadway, a woman who is the Hair archivist, and several members of the original cast. Thank God.

They were happy to answer my questions, explain lines and references, etc. One of them even wrote out for me a really detailed description of the original staging of "Aquarius," which we adapted for our production. As other productions have done, we gave ourselves a tribe name: the Osage. But the show still didn't make much sense. All my new Hair friends just kept saying "Trust the show, man. It will work."

And so we trusted the show. We were flying blind, but we trusted the damn show.

And then on opening night we understood. Suddenly our eyes were opened to the mystical magic of this show. I've never seen an audience more connected to a show. People were in love with it from the first moments. As we sang the finale, "Let the Sun Shine In," I looked around and saw that about half the audience was sobbing.

I mean, they were sobbing!

Like the original production, we did our curtain call without music, and then the band roared back to life playing the title song and the cast went into the house to bring the audience onstage to dance with them. To our amazement, about two-thirds of the audience came onto the stage to dance, many still sobbing, others hugging us, thanking us. It was like no experience I've ever had in the theatre before or since.

That Christmas, we had a tribe holiday party and the actors begged me to do the show again. No, I said, we kicked ass, we sold out all but one show, everyone loved it, and we were going to go out on a high note. About a month later, we announced we'd be remounting the show in August 2001. Now I know -- never say never...

The second time we did it, we took a big risk. Instead of our usual 12 shows over four weeks (the first Hair actually ended up playing 15 performances because we added some Wednesdays), this time we would run the show for 23 performances over six weeks. And so we did. And we sold out 23 out of 23 shows.

After we closed I wrote a book about the show: Let the Sun Shine In: The Genius of Hair. I understood it now.

Then, about a year ago, I was thinking about organizing another St. Louis Political Theatre Festival. I was watching early Presidential campaign coverage, and I kept hearing people compare Obama to Bobby Kennedy. Everybody was talking about how 2008 was so parallel to 1968, the year Hair moved to Broadway. And I remembered back to 2001 when Michael Butler came to see our production and he told me that he could see that the 60s were coming back and that the Hair tribes would lead the way...

I knew it was time for Hair again. I knew that we had to do it right before the election, to inspire people, to shake them, to engage them, to remind us all that we never did solve the many social and political problems explored in Hair. Forty years later, racism is still a major problem. We're back at war again. And the Youth Vote has been reborn! I wondered if maybe we were finally going to get to finish the work of the 1960s, the work that was prematurely ended by the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and by Watergate. And it seemed to me it would be utterly idiotic if we didn't open the season with Hair.

So here we are. And what a goddamn fucking joy it is! Stay tuned...

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac
(my Osage Tribe name)

A Hollow Bone

It's not easy living without High Fidelity these past 48 hours. It's like I'm Rob and Laura has just walked out on me. I try to comfort myself with other show tunes, but I still find myself playing Hi-Fi in the car. I try to tell myself I'll be fine, that I'll be in rehearsal for Hair next week and all my post-production depression will be behind me. But deep down, I know it's all a lie. Just a big, cruel lie. Hi-Fi is going to be with me for a while. And yes, in case you're wondering, High Fidelity is definitely on my Top 5 List now. And it won't even have to do a slutty, Pat Benatar number to secure its spot.

So currently, my Desert Island Top 5 New Line Musicals are:

• High Fidelity
• Hair
• Floyd Collins
• The Robber Bridegroom
• Bat Boy
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch
• Songs for a New World
• The Cradle Will Rock
• A New Brain
• Sunday in the Park with George

Yes, I'm well aware there are ten musicals on that list. So fuckin' what? If Rob's list of Top 5 Things He Misses About Laura can have ten items, then so can my list! (Sometimes I wonder if anyone's Top 5 list of anything really has only 5 items...)

Last night, Aaron and I watched a bootleg video of the original Broadway production of High Fidelity, something I had not seen since months before we started rehearsal. I remember thinking that I didn't much like it when I saw it last. I didn't think the director and designers understood the material. But watching it again last night, from a different mindset, made its chilly New York reception a lot more comprehensible.

Now, having worked on the show, having poured myself heart and soul into it, having written one of my infamous chapters about it, having worked so hard at finding the truth and the soul in this beautiful writing, having been through all of that, watching the original production made me want to go out and kill an interventionist. It just wasn't good. I now understand why the New York reviews were so terrible, and why so many people were so outraged that this was how High Fidelity was adapted for the stage. I think if I had seen the Broadway production first, before hearing the CD or reading the script, I probably would not have wanted to produce it.

What was wrong with it? Where do I begin?

First of all, Walter Bobbie's original direction was terribly misguided. It was like he was doing a different show than the writers were. Every actor raced through their lines like they were on crack. I'm not exaggerating -- I don't know if I've ever seen a show performed so fast! Some of the actors delivered their lines in almost a Joe Friday monotone, others played so far over the top that they became caricature instead of character. It was High Fidelity in the style of A Flea in Her Ear. God help the Broadway theatre if this is what they do to brilliant, original material now.

Dick, Liz, Anna, TMPMITW, and several others became nothing more objects of mockery instead of real people. The audience laughed at these characters, never with them. And strangely, Marie LaSalle, who should be batshit crazy, was played totally normal and bland. And that's such a shame when you're working with a script and score this smart, this subtle, this emotional, and this original.

And the choreography! Every number was standard-issue, assembly-line Broadway dance, like something out of The Full Monty or Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The songs weren't rock and roll numbers. They didn't look like rock and roll and they didn't move like rock and roll. Tom Kitt and Amanda Green wrote this brilliant score in which every song evokes one of Rob's favorite music artists, but all that went out the window. It felt like the director and choreographer didn't even try to understand what the show's creators intended; they Knew How to Make a Broadway Musical, and they weren't gonna let the "concept" get in the way...

Some of the choreography was so bad I actually threw up in my mouth a little. (Okay, that's not really true, but you get the idea...)

I think what surprised me most was that the director apparently didn't understand that the whole show takes place in Rob's head, even though the dialogue makes that fairly explicit. Most of the show was staged (and designed) like a standard-issue musical comedy, and for the few songs that couldn't work that way, they expended huge amounts of effort justifying the nonreality with special effects, sound effects, stage tricks -- none of which would be necessary if they had just bothered to figure out how the show is supposed to operate. No justification is necessary if you know that this is all in Rob's head, because then the only limits are those of Rob's imagination.

Probably the most disappointing aspect of the production was the obvious lack of affection for the music at the heart of this story. Several of the numbers mocked the artists that inspired the songs, rather than paying tribute to them. And no offense to the actors, but none of them knew how to sing rock and roll; they all had these brassy Broadway voices. Springsteen didn't sound like Springsteen, Aretha didn't sound like Aretha -- every actor sounded like they should be singing Andrew Lloyd Webber. (Oops, just threw up in my mouth again.) No one on stage seemed to really love pop music. And if you miss that, what's the point?

This is a show written by people who obviously love music deeply and who understand these characters and this sub-culture. The high quality of the show's writing has been proven by the incredible reception it received here in St. Louis by both audiences and critics. Unfortunately, the people putting the show together on Broadway did not seen to share that deeply held love of pop music, they didn't understand these characters, and this sub-culture was utterly foreign to them. I recently read an early draft of the show and I can see from the video that many four-letter words were cut from the script in New York (most of which we kept in). More proof that the Broadway production staff (and/or the show's producers) didn't "get it."

After seeing the bootleg, I realized why Amanda Green had been so happy with our production. We treated the show with respect, intelligence, heart, joy. We let it find its own pace. We didn't try to hide the pain or the ugliness of the story. We didn't worry about offending people. We just tried to find the heart, the soul, and the truth of the show. And though that ought to be the agenda every single time a piece of theatre is staged, sadly, I don't think it usually is.

I don't think I've ever said this before, but I can say it now with some confidence -- I think our production was better than the original. And apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks so.

So a Big-Ass Bravo to the company of New Line's High Fidelity, and my eternal thanks to Tom Kitt, Amanda Green, and David Lindsay-Abaire. I couldn't be prouder of this show, and I owe the entire cast, staff, and band my gratitude for proving me right -- this was worth bringing back to life!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Rock Your Soul

I'm walking on sunshine...

Amanda Green, lyricist for High Fidelity, flew in from New York today just to see our show. Afterwards, we introduced her to the deep-fried mac-and-cheese balls at the Cheesecake Factory. My favorite! You can just feel your arteries clogging!

Having her come see us was cool for me not only because we'd get to hang with one of the show's creators (and she is fun to hang with!), but also because to me, Amanda Green is Broadway Royalty. For those not in-the-know, her mother is Phyllis Newman, stage and screen actor, who's done a number of Broadway shows, including Bells Are Ringing, Subways Are for Sleeping, The Apple Tree, On the Town, and others. And her father was a real Broadway God, Aldoph Green, co-writer with Betty Comden of the screenplay to Singin' in the Rain, as well as lyrics for On The Town, Wonderful Town, Bells Are Ringing, The Will Rogers Follies, On the Twentieth Century, Applause, and many other shows. Amanda comes from strong musical theatre stock.

But she kicks ass and takes names all by herself. Her lyrics for High Fidelity are smart, honest, emotional, funny, beautiful, all of it. Like her two collaborators, she was exactly the right person to write this show.

But the best part of all is that Amanda really, really liked our production. She complimented us so profusely, and was particularly complimentary about Jeff, Kimi, Zak and Aaron, Margeau, Nikki, and Todd. She talked to me at length about how much she loved Jeff's performance, how real the character feels, how beautifully Jeff navigates Rob's ricocheting emotions. If you haven't seen Jeff's performance yet, you really should before we close on July 5. The whole show is terrific, but Jeff is giving the best performance I've ever seen from him.

I think she was really pleased to see that the show works this well when it's pared down to a very minimalist production. She was happy with the humor of it and the sadness of it. A whole lot of her compliments started with "I was so happy to see --" and she told me several times that she could see that we "got it." That's my favorite thing to hear. Sondheim always says the most important thing for a show is not to be liked, but to be clear. I think with this show we found everything important and wonderful about it, everything the creators labored so hard to weave into the fabric of this story, and we figured out how to communicate that clearly to an audience.

I think that's my job, first and foremost.

Amanda was also very pleased to see my background and analysis essay in the lobby. I think it means a lot to both her and Tom Kitt (the composer) that we've taken their show seriously, that we've treated it with respect and love. I think they were both very hurt by the show's nasty reception in New York, and I think in a small way we've redeemed the show for them, and proved to them that what they wrote is as good and smart and true as they thought it was. What a kick to be able to give them that!

Plus, since we announced our production, five other companies from around the country (and I think one might have been in London?), have contacted us to find out how to get the rights to produce the show. So I've been sending them all to Tom. And again, it feels so great that I can help other people find their way to this amazing piece of writing, and help keep Hi-Fi alive and kicking. I've also been lobbying one of the New York licensing agencies pretty hard to get them to represent the show, so that more people will produce it.

For me, this is a show like Bat Boy, A New Brain, Floyd Collins, Sunday in the Park -- living inside this music is such a damn fucking JOY that it will hurt like hell to close it. We only have four shows left, and closing night will be hard. This one has found a place deep in my heart.

Which is why it was so wonderful to have Amanda at the show tonight, especially since she seemed to really, really love it. It let me know that we have done justice to this beautiful writing, and that's the best thing of all.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Top 5

We had our first two sell-outs this weekend! People continue to fall madly in love with our little show, and we're all happy as hell about that.

So we're at a cast party Saturday night at Jeff's (a big shout-out to Jeff's awesome dog Roxie!), and I asked Aaron, then later Jeff, what their Top 5 Moments in the show are. And they both asked for 10 slots instead of 5. It was really hard for both of them to narrow it down. Like most of the cast, they just love every second on stage -- even the moments they aren't directly involved in.

So, now here are my Top 5 Hi-Fi Moments...

1. All of "Last Real Record Store on Earth" (which is now on my list of Top 5 Coolest Theatre Songs Ever).

2. This little word-less mini-scene we created late in the show -- after Rob loses Dick, Barry, TMPTITW, and Liz, he is left alone in his empty record store. It's the first time it's been empty the whole show, and there's this beautiful, sad instrumental underscoring that quotes "Terrible Things" (this music shows up frequently in the show each time Rob gains a little self-knowledge -- very cool!). We really sense the emptiness of Rob's life at that moment. He has hit Rock Bottom. He has lost everything (or at least it feels that way to him). He pulls out The Mother Lode and he can't even find comfort there. Jeff's playing of that scene is fucking powerful.

3. The guys doing the Four Seasons slides in "9% Chance of Your Love."

4. The scene in which Dick rejects Anna's gift of a John Tesh CD. It's such a sad, tense scene, and even if the audience is laughing about John Tesh at the beginning, they shut up fast when they see the struggle that Dick goes through. Aaron handles some long, heavy pauses with real skill, and he just breaks your heart (as do Jeff and Kimi, also with weighty pauses galore, in their break-up scene early in the show).

5. maybe my favorite of all, Rob's Top 5 Things He Misses About Laura. Late in rehearsals, we decided to leave Laura on stage while Rob talks about her, then during Hell Week, I asked Jeff to play almost the whole monologue directly to Laura, and Jeff absolutely nails it. There is such love and pain and loss in that monologue and Jeffrey holds the audience in the palm of his hand every night. Great writing and a great performance. Bravo, dude!

6. If you'll indulge me... I can't help myself. Who the hell says you have to limit yourself to only five, after all? Huh??? So... 6. When Barry is cock-blocking Rob from talking to Marie, Dick steps in with a Clever Ruse and says "Hey, corn nuts!" which sends Barry off in search of said corn nuts, we get a laugh from the audience, and then as Dick walks away, he gives Rob this subtle but hilarious "You're welcome" look... Utterly priceless.

I'm sure I could keep listing more of them, but I'd end up listing everything and you might as well just come see the show, right? So if you haven't already, come see us -- I promise you'll have a blast!

And oh, by the way, we're already half done with the run! Holy Shit!!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

We're the Experts Here on Everything

The show just couldn't be going better. Almost a full house tonight, on a Thursday night and with a show most people have never heard of! (It's amazing how many people have never seen the movie or read the novel.) Not bad!

Then I get home from the theatre and I have an email from Paul Friswold, one of the reviewers at The Riverfront Times. I had written him thanking him for his review of High Fidelity and disagreeing with him about one of the things he wrote (I really believe reviews are part of a conversation and that reviewers are part of the theatre community, so I regularly engage in debate/discussion with reviewers over their reviews. I think a few of them hate this, but most seem to be cool with it. I love it.)

Anyway, Paul had written a 2,000-word review of High Fidelity, but the RFT had cut it down to about a quarter of its original size. I had asked Paul if we could read his full review, so he got the RFT website guys to post the full review on their blog webpage.

So now you can read the full review. And Jesus is it fun to read! Not only is it a very positive review of our show, but it's also an incredibly intelligent, funny, thoughtful essay about the show and the issues it raises. Paul's a hell of a good writer! I wish more theatre reviewing in St. Louis were like this. Don't we deserve that? Shouldn't the people judging our work take it as seriously as we take the work itself?

Also... Steve Woolf, artistic director of The Rep, emailed me to say he's coming to see us. He doesn't often get out to other companies' shows because he's always so crazy busy with the Rep's own 11 or 12 shows a season, plus auditioning, etc. in the off-season. But he wants to see High Fidelity and I'm delighted. Steve is a very good guy, and we've got some wonderful performances in this show that I'd love for him to see. Maybe we can get our actors some work that actually pays a living wage!

Also... last night several of us went to see this band from Illinois, Elsinore (listen to some of their songs on their MySpace page). Aaron Lawson ("Dick") is friends with the guys in the band (from college, I think) and he had played me some of their songs -- which are all incredible. But it was so much more fun seeing them live, you know, really feeling that bass and drum beat right in the solar plexus. Not only are they a great band, but the songwriting is fucking outstanding. Truly some of the most interesting, well-wrought music and lyrics I've encountered in a rock band in many moons. Plus, it was very cool to be at a club hearing a lesser known band right in the middle of running High Fidelity. I so felt like "Rob," especially with "Dick" and "Barry" there at my side. On the way home from the club, I called and left a message for Joe Edwards (owner of Blueberry Hill and the Pageant). I got to know him a few years ago working on a new theatre that never opened, but we've remained friendly -- he's such a nice guy. Anyway, I left him a message gushing about Elsinore and telling him he had to book them at Blueberry Hill. I doubt Joe will blindly follow my instructions, but maybe it'll put Elsinore onto his radar. These guys are fucking AWESOME!

That's all for now. This show -- and all the experiences that have come with it -- has been one of those amazing, once-in-a-lifetime things. I will never forget this and I will always feel lucky to have worked on it.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

All a Record Store Should Be

More great reviews coming in -- this is one of the best reviewed shows we've had in a long time. Usually our shows are just weird enough that some of the critics really can't deal with them, even though audiences are usually very enthusiastic. I think too many of our local critics are still mired in a "classic" musical theatre mindset, wanting every show to be either Mame or South Pacific.

And we don't do that.

But this time, despite the weirdness of the show, everybody -- and I mean everybody -- is falling in love with our production. The latest are a rave review from TalkinBroadway.com and a short review from The Riverfront Times that loved our show but had problems with the original novel being "sexist." Why that criticism is in a theatre review, I don't totally understand -- and also, isn't that sort of the POINT of the story, that Rob is immature and selfish, and since he's the only source of information in the story, doesn't that automatically make the storytelling sexist... on purpose...?

Still, both very nice reviews of our work. So if you haven't come seen us yet, what in hell are you waiting for?

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I'm approaching infinity and happiness...

The good times just keep a-rollin'...

Two more rave reviews, from KDHX and The Ladue News. Wow, people really love this show! We should still be getting reviews coming from The Riverfront Times, TalkinBroadway.com, and maybe a couple others...

And today I got an email from Amanda Green, the show's lyricist -- she's flying in from New York to see our production! This information will freak out some of the actors so I won't tell them when she's coming, but it's very cool that she wants to see our show. I've been sending her and Tom Kitt (composer) our reviews and a few production photos...

This is one of those shows I will always feel lucky to have worked on... It's just that wonderful.

"And I wouldn't change a thing about it..."

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Why Am I Feeling So Good?

The first weekend of the show is over and we are off and running! We had such a great opening! The show had been going well in rehearsal -- very well -- but the Final Dress Rehearsal on Weds. night just suddenly exploded with energy and emotion and my favorite thing of all... wait for it, wait for it... Truth.

Overnight, the show went from really good to Totally Fucking Amazing. Everybody in the cast is doing such a strong job, and poor Jeff Wright, who literally only gets to leave the stage at intermission, is just On Fire for two hours and fifteen minutes every night, both in terms of energy and joy, but also in the depth of his acting. I just can't imagine a better Rob.

And everybody who's seen the show just seems to fall in love with it. My parents, who I thought would enjoy it but wouldn't really relate to it, likewise fell in love with the show and with Jeff and Kimi and Aaron. Which makes me think maybe the show's target audience isn't an narrow as I thought it would be... Which also means we're gonna get boffo word-of-mouth for this show of ours... Opening Night brought us an almost full house and a rousing standing ovation. What more could we want?

We got a slightly odd but very nice review in the Post-Dispatch today, and the other reviews will be rolling in over the next week or so.

And lest we forget, we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Tom Kitt, Amanda Green, and David Lindsay-Abaire for creating this beautiful, quirky piece of work, and for allowing us the first production after Broadway.

I could not be prouder of this show. It's an absolute joy to watch every night. And I'm extremely grateful to this wonderful cast. People kept saying to me after performances this weekend that every single performer in the show was "so perfect" for their part, and it's really true. We didn't have the biggest turn-out at auditions, which sometimes scares me (and in fact scared me this time as well -- this show has really specific casting requirements), but holy shit, did it turn out great! It's like every single actor was just born to play these roles -- Jeff, Kimi, Aaron, Zak, Margeau, Nikki, Robb, Todd (as a frighteningly authentic Springsteen), and everyone! We're often very lucky about finding the right people for our shows, against seemingly gigantic odds sometimes, but we really hit the Big Fucking Actor Jackpot this time.

I love us!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

And in this light, you don't look so bad...

Just a quickie tonight... Just got home from rehearsal...

Monday night of Hell Week is often a bit rough, since so many new elements are all added at once. But tonight really wasn't rough! There are still small things to fix, to polish, to adjust, and the energy was good tonight but a tad uneven sometimes -- but really, all in all, it was a strong performance. There's nothing major to fix. It's all just fine tuning. What a relief!

The cast is doing a very good job, they take my notes well and they make the adjustments I ask for. They understand how this wonderfully odd show operates and they're all really on board. I think this has become a very personal show for many of us.

It's so nice having the band now, the lights, costumes, props, all that stuff. I feel so great about this show. I think we may have light crowds the first weekend -- after all, it's a show nobody knows -- but I think word-of-mouth will be very strong. It's such an original piece of theatre, very funny, very sad, very cynical, very rowdy, and oddly sweet now and then. All my favorite things. I really think audiences will embrace this as much as we have.

We shall see...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Where the Music Took Me

I have now officially gotten through the most difficult rehearsal -- the Stizprobe.

For those who don't work in musical theatre, the Sitzprobe (I hate that word but everybody uses it) is a rehearsal in which we just run the score with the band for the first time. No dialogue unless there's music under it. It may not sound like that difficult a process, but it really is. We get just four hours to run every number, correct problems, warn the band about pitfalls and surprises, small cuts, etc. It's the only time we get to focus exclusively on the band, and as with most of our shows, the band has a very challenging score to navigate.

The Sitzprobe rehearsal yesterday actually went okay. It's always a thrill for the actors to hear the whole band -- and we have very good musicians -- particularly when we're doing a rock/pop show. But it stresses me the hell out. It's an incredible amount of work to get done in only four hours. Plus, the less experienced actors don't always have the discipline to be patient and quiet while we work out various problems. Which means that while I'm talking to the musicians, figuring out cues, entrances, tempos, etc., I have to keep turning around to (a few of) the actors and asking them to be quiet so we can work. It was even worse yesterday because we have four stand mics in front of the stage, so whenever the actors were chit-chatting, it was coming through the mics and into the band monitor, making it very hard to have a conversation with the band.

So I'd ask them to be quiet. Then ten minutes later, I'd ask them more loudly. Then ten minutes later, I'd bark at them to be quiet. And finally, I'd compare them to Second Graders and throw in a "Jesus Christ!" for emphasis. I don't usually get to that last level at Sitzprobe, but I did yesterday. And now they all think I'm a Cranky Son of a Bitch.

Which I totally was yesterday.

But we got through the score (barely in time) and the musicians are in pretty good shape. I think we tackled all the bigger potential probs and we have three more nights to fine tune. But it really was one of the more stressful Sitzprobes we've had in a long time. Ugh. But I gotta give a shout-out to Steve Massey, our sound guy, who always solves every mic problem and never seems to get the slightest bit flustered; and to Chris Petersen, our pianist, who went four straight hours yesterday without a cigarette, god bless him...

Then later, Kimi and I drove out to Maryland Heights to pick up 300 LPs from Michael Dorrin, a former co-worker of Matt Korinko's, to dress the set. It was the last thing I wanted to do last night, but a record store's gotta have some records, am I right?

Buddha willing, the rest of the week will go much more smoothly than yesterday did, and I will be much less stressed out. I think our show's in pretty good shape, but now this week all the various elements come together, and it's a hell of a ride for the actors from here till opening.

I'll keep you posted.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

A to K Rack, L to Z

So we had our first rehearsal in the theatre last night. That's always such a weird night, though I'm not exactly sure why. Even when the dimensions are exactly what they were in the rehearsal hall, even when there aren't giant set pieces that change the logistics of things, even when you'd think nothing would really be different, it's still always weird. It's that way with almost every show.

Still, all in all, the cast did a good run-through last night. We ran through all the set changes first -- every set piece is on wheels and they all move at some point. But god bless this cast for never being impatient or difficult.

One weird thing is that we're not on a physical stage -- the playing space is the floor of the blackbox, and the audience is on risers. What that means is that until we get the mic stands to delineate the front edge of the playing space, it's very difficult for the actors to always notice the little blue taped X's, and they keep coming too far forward (which in a few days will mean out of the light). I spent a lot of time last night standing on the audience risers frantically gesturing at the actors to move back into the "light."

It really is fun to be working on the real set at last. Jeff has gleefully taken ownership of "his store." He already looks so comfortable hanging out at "his counter," reshelving albums, moving through the store. Even though it's not a naturalistic set, it really does wonders for the actors to have the set to work on now.

There are still things to adjust. For instance... The set piece configuration for Rob's apartment just didn't look right the way we were planning it. So after rehearsal, Trish and Kimi and I played around with the set pieces and eventually found a really good look for the apartment that I don't think will change any of the blocking. (We'll see tonight...)

That first night in the space is always hard for me. The actors are struggling to find their bearings in this new environment and so the show is never quite as smooth as it was the previous rehearsal. The focus temporarily moves away from character, relationships, and emotion; and it changes to just getting around the set without tripping. Which means I have to be patient and let that night just be what it is -- time to adjust. Especially when we only have a week in the space before opening (usually we have two weeks), it's scary to me that the show isn't perfect that night. But rationally I know that that's just the way it is, and everything will be fine later.

In fact, a lot of these last two weeks will be spent with my fear and my brain battling each other. Every show feels at some point like it might not come together, but my brain knows that this one is so strong (as are most of our shows) that it will come together beautifully. They always do.

It really is incredibly hard making theatre, and even harder making musical theatre. I don't think most people truly understand the complexity of what we do. But I'm working with some of the best performers there are, and I know they'll all be wonderful. Stay tuned...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Let's Do It

The Home Stretch...

We move into the theatre tomorrow, and since it's not our usual "home" (we've been nomadic the past year) there will be lots of things to figure out about the new space, how to power the band, how much room the audience risers will take up, what Trish's view from the booth will be like, etc. And we'll have actual set pieces for the first time -- and since every set piece is on wheels, we'll now have a whole new element to deal with...

Now we start adding distractions. We've been working on the show in a kind of bubble, and everything will change in the next two weeks before we open. I'll be giving up piano duty Monday to Chris Petersen, our resident show pianist. The differences between how I play the score and how he plays it will be minimal, but to the actors who often listen for the tiniest musical moments for their cues, any change at all is tough. But they'll have some time to adjust to Chris and vice versa. We'll get three rehearsals to adjust to the set and to Chris.

Then next Saturday, we have our lighting cue-to-cue rehearsal, a tedious process if there ever was one, but a necessary process if you have a lighting design of any complexity or artistry. Then the next day, the band comes in and we have our first rehearsal with the band -- just a few days before opening. Again, the actors have been used to rehearsing with just piano, so hearing the whole band is thrilling, but it's also fairly disorienting. Things they used to listen for in the piano may now be coming from the lead guitar or the second keyboard or the bass... On the positive side, some musical moments that are hard often become easier once drums are there to lay down a consistent beat that may not be in the piano part...

Then, on Monday, June 9, we start what we lovingly call Hell Week. Just three nights when we add the band, lights, props, costumes, and anything else. All of a sudden, the actors have twenty new things to worry about in every scene, and only three nights to work it out. There's a reason we call it Hell Week (and a reason we have as many full run-throughs as possible before Hell Week). Then again, New Line's Hell Week usually goes awfully smoothly.

Knock on wood.

Then we preview on Thursday, June 12. We used to open on Thursday, but we decided several years ago to make that first night in front of an audience a preview, primarily so we could keep the reviewers and Kevin Kline Award judges away. The bigger theatres get several days of previews to play the show in front of an audience before Opening Night, to find the flow and energy of the piece with live responses, applause, etc. We only take one night for that, but it's important for us to have it.

And we open on Friday the 13th. Yikes!

Normally I'm a little worried at this point about whether the show will come together, whether the actors will fully understand the weird approach we're taking, all that stuff. But this time, I don't have those worries. Knock on wood again. The show is going great and everybody seems to be solidly on the same page. From now till opening, it's really just about adjusting to the new elements, fixing the minor problems we still have, and settling into the roles, songs, and the show as a whole. Now, it's about comfort and depth.

This is the really hard part and the most fun part, all rolled into one. Wheeeeeee!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Guys Who Prize the Things I Know

People ask me this a lot: why do you take your shows So Seriously? Why not just lean back and enjoy them? They're just musicals, after all...!

Seriously. They ask me that. And then I pick them up off the floor and apologize for punching them. I tell them that I don't work in the theatre to have fun (though I have a lot of it). I work in the theatre because making art seems to me one of the most important and meaningful things a person can do -- not as important as food and shelter, but important. And when I start work on a really great piece of writing -- and everything we do at New Line is a really good piece of writing -- then I feel this powerful responsibility to make the best theatre I possibly can with this wonderful material.

It's like someone's given me a gift. The Best Toy Ever. Something that feels like it's made just for me. And then I get to play with it for several months. And then I get to share it with hundreds of people. That's the fun part.

I believe the way to make good art is to throw yourself into it with something just short of obsession. Ask our actors -- for every show, I'm reading, watching documentaries, scouring the internet, trying to learn everything I can that relates to the world of the show. I've read a book on daily life during the Inquisition (for Man of La Mancha), a book on German cabaret (for Cabaret), on the history of marijuana laws (for Reefer Madness), on the early Beat writers in New York (for The Nervous Set), the list goes on and on... so many books I would have never otherwise read. But the more I learn about the world of the show, its period, its locale, its context, the more I see the depth and complexity of the piece, and the realer we can make that world for the audience.

And then I try to distill everything I've learned into one of my chapters, which eventually get bundled together to make my next book. My chapters essentially do all (or most) of the dramaturgical work for our production but also, once up on our website or published in book form, for other companies' productions as well. My first book is in its eighth printing now, so there's clearly an appetite for this stuff...

If you want a taste, read my High Fidelity chapter (which will continue to expand probably until we close).

Most of what we learn the audience won't see in one performance. But it does inform the performances, the actors' choices, my choices as director, and hopefully it creates a fuller, realer, richer, more complete universe onstage. I guess it all boils down to finding The Truth. There's nothing more important in a piece of theatre than The Truth. It's not enough to impress the audience, amuse them, make them laugh. We have to show you Truth, or what's the point?

And that's why I take it all so seriously. And really, I could never go back to those days of just staging it and performing it (as far too many people do with musicals). There's so much more to it, and you're missing out on so much fun and joy if you skip that part... That's what I think, anyway...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Quite Detailed and Lengthy Too

We had our second full run-through tonight, and... wow, what a difference! It was a completely different show tonight, which I'm assuming was in large part because everyone's pretty solidly off book now and focusing their attentions much less on technical shit and much more on character, relationships, and story. Almost overnight, Rob (Jeff Wright) was so much realer, more complicated, his emotions more raw, more naked, more out of his control. We saw his sense of humor become less about funny lines and more about Rob's worldview. We saw little flare-ups of anger that weren't there before but feel so organic to the story. We saw pain and vulnerability and confusion...

Bravo, Jeffrey!

From what I could tell emailing back and forth with them, I think the creators of the show feel pretty happy with the original production, but the more we work on the show, the less I like the Broadway production. I feel like it always danced around the most painful emotions. I want to tackle those emotions head-on -- it's the show's (and novel's) brutal, naked honesty that gives it such balls and such rock and roll cred. There are moments in the show that should make the audience incredibly uncomfortable because they're so real and so universal, and that's what makes great theatre.

Sitcoms are safe; theatre should be an adventure.

Also, I was reading online some reviews of the Broadway production, and several of them complained that the role of Laura was underwritten, that we don't spend enough time with her, etc. What none of them understood is that this isn't a story about Rob and Laura; it's a story about Rob. And I think the original production tried too hard -- in this regard but also in others -- to make it a musical comedy and to make it a love story. And it's just not. And neither were the novel or film.

This is a story about a guy becoming a man, changing, growing up, putting others before himself. It's not a story of boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl. It's not Anything Goes. (Which I love, by the way, but this ain't that.)

One way we're (hopefully) solving that problem is that Rob never leaves the stage in our production. Since everything happens in his head -- memory, flashback, fantasy, dream -- it seemed important to me that Rob be ever present. It sucks a little for Jeff, having no down time, but I think it will help audiences not to jump to the conclusion that this is a love story. They say there are three kinds of conlifct in drama: man vs. man, man vs. society, and man vs. himself. This story is man vs. himself. It's an entirely interior journey (kinda like when Luke went to Dagobah and went underground and did battle with Vader, and when he took off Vader's helmet, it was LUKE!!). But I digress...

Tonight, I got a little glimpse of what this show will be like when we open in two weeks, and I love what I see...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Finest Vinyl

It was a good day today.

It started with a choreography review rehearsal, not something we always have time for, but I'm glad we did. The four numbers were all in good shape -- our five women move and sound really great, and Robin has done some kick-ass choreography -- but it was nice today to have the time to polish, tweak things, change little moments, better focus a tableau, clean up a wrist, all that stuff. And by the time we left, those numbers fucking sparkled. Sexy, sassy, funny, and fierce.

Then earlier this evening, some of the boys and I met at Record Exchange to film a little video promo that Aaron Lawson is creating for us, a fun viral video that addresses head-on one of the primary questions many people have -- Why turn High Fidelity into a musical? I don't know if we'll convert any purists, but it'll give you a chuckle, and hopefully encourage some folks to come see our show. Aaron has made several viral videos and the ones I've seen are terrific, very smart, very funny, so I'm sure this will be very cool...

It was so fun being back at Record Exchange after our field trip there last weekend. Jean Haffner, the owner, is the nicest guy in the world and he let us shoot after he closed today.

AND -- only a few people will care about this, but I'm so psyched -- Zak is thumbing through some old 78s between shots and he pulls up "The Death of Floyd Collins," a song written in 1925 about the real-life caver Floyd Collins who got trapped in a cave and around whom sprung up America's first media circus. Why do I care about all this? Because we did this beautiful, incredible musical called Floyd Collins back in 1999, and at the time, Alison, the guy playing Floyd, and I went to Cave City, Kentucky, to see Floyd's cave, to understand better what happened. And while there, we found this crappy but fun little Floyd Collins Museum, which played (endlessly) "The Death of Floyd Collins." When we came back from that trip, the show meant more to us than ever. We really felt we understood Floyd and the events in February 1925. So finding this 78 today really meant something to me. And on top of everything else, we're working on High Fidelity and this is VINYL!

When I asked Jean how much he wanted for it, and why it was important to me, he gave it to me as a gift. What a good guy!

So, all in all, a pretty great day. Tomorrow night we start running the whole show every rehearsal, which is totally my favorite part of the process. Now we can find the Life and the Truth in this wonderful, smart, emotional piece of theatre.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Sometimes All You Need...

Nick Hornby, author of the High Fidelity novel, briefly kept a blog on Amazon.com, which I just happened upon this evening. Nothing all that interesting, except...

He did list "This Month's Playlist" on Oct. 17, 2007, so I thought I'd re-post it here:

God, Please Let Me Go Back - Josh Rouse
To The Dogs or Whoever - Josh Ritter
Girls In Their Summer Clothes - Bruce Springsteen
Monkey Man - Toots and the Maytals
Aftermarket Blues - Adam and Dave’s Bloodline
Chelsea Rodgers - Prince
It’s Only Money, Tyrone - Marah
Mansion On The Hill - The National
Versatile Heart - Linda Thompson
Slippin’ Around - Detroit Cobras
Melting Pot - The Roots

The more I work on this show, the more I understand the deep connections between pop music and its fans, and the way a person's music reveals them to the world. I've asked everyone working on the show to pick their favorite pop song, which I've put at the end of their program bios. Looking at the songs really does seem to tell you a lot about the person.

Think about it -- what are your favorite pop songs and what do they say about you? Hmmmmm...?

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

This Ain't No Coconuts

On Saturday, a bunch of the boys met over at Jeff Wright's house, had some of his excellent chili cheese dip, then went on an adventure to the Record Exchange, St. Louis' closest kin to Championship Records in High Fidelity.

Truth is, I've spent much of my life at the Record Exchange, starting back in Junior High, right after the store first opened in 1976 (originally down the street from its current location). Back in my baby-show-tune-freak days, I was a newbie collector of cast albums, and the idea of finding the older stuff for four or five bucks was a revelation for me! Back then I had about 50 cast albums on LPs. Today I have about 800, God help me.

I'd go every month or so and always leave with several cast albums of show I had never heard of up till then -- wonderful shows like On the Town, Pal Joey, Carnival, Fiorello!, The Apple Tree, and so many others. Sometimes I'd bring in a pile of my crappy pop albums (Air Supply, anyone?), and they would graciously accept the pile for ten bucks in store credit, even though looking back, I'm sure they found my crap virtually worthless...

But even though I'm a longtime Record Exchange patron, it was so much fun to go there Saturday in the context of High Fidelity. To really register the beauty and chaos and clutter and the oceans and oceans of music in this place! To be surrounded by the Beatles, Springsteen, Elvis, James Brown -- and that smell of old LPs. There's truly nothing like it. Even today, in the age of CDs and MP3s, this place still feels like a cathedral.

In fact, maybe it seems even more like one today.

The owner of the place, Jean, is the nicest guy in the world. Jeff had already talked to him about our show, and we brought him postcards and posters, which he immediately put out in the store. We told him we were looking for a 45s case for one scene in the show, and asked him where we could find that -- he turned and walked away, and a few minutes later returned with the most wonderful, beat-up, taped together 45s case, just perfect for holding Rob's Mother Lode.

We bought a couple LPs, including Springsteen's "The River" for Rob to talk to at the beginning of "Goodbye and Good Luck." We also bought some classic 45s that Rob mentions as part of his Mother Lode collection. These are 45s the audience probably won't even see, but it'll mean something to the actors that those records are really there -- some Elvis, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis... Things like that bring such a cool vibe to a show, little tidbits of reality...

We also met one of the guys working at the store who is totally like one of the characters in the show!

After our adventure, we went back to Jeff's and he fed us dinner. He's the best host ever. He has a great house, he always has great food, and he's the friendliest, warmest guy I know, so that helps too.

All in all, a great adventure. This show is turning out to be a much deeper, more emotional experience for me than I expected. I love that.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Not Too Tired

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, we asked the writers of High Fidelity if they would consider restoring their song, "Too Tired," which had been cut from the show before it opened in New York.

I heard back from Tom Kitt, the composer, today. He and lyricist Amanda Green discussed it and ultimately decided they did not want to restore the song, at least right now, and they've asked us to keep the script and score as it was on Broadway. Obviously, we will honor their wishes. And we are extremely grateful to them for taking our request seriously and really thinking about it. They're both amazingly cool, talented people.

Tom gave us a couple reasons why he didn't want to make the change. First of all, they had written this song for a slightly earlier scene, at the funeral of Laura's dad, and they don't think it really fits right at the end of the show. Maybe that's just because they know the context they were writing for and a different context just doesn't feel right to them. Which I totally understand. Or maybe it's just because they're right...! After all, they did write the damn thing...

The other reason he gave was that the show received such a trouncing from the New York critics and they'd like to see how the show fares with audiences and critics outside of New York, to see if it really is the fault of the show or just the fault of the commercial Broadway mindset and senior citizen critics. (I think it's the latter.) And they feel that changing the show makes it more complicated to make that assessment of the material. Which I also totally understand.

Obviously, we hope the critical reception here is much better than in New York, but we're also approaching the show very differently. New York director Walter Bobbie treated it as a Broadway musical comedy, but we're treating it like the alternative, conceptual rock musical that I believe it is. Our production will be much more minimalist, much more dreamlike (since the whole story happens in Rob's head), and with more of a sense of perpetual motion, creating that sense of roller coaster that a lot of New Line shows have.

So anyway, Kimi won't be performing the world stage premiere of "Too Tired" after all, but we've still got a hell of a cool show and we're kicking some serious ass with it, if I do say so myself.

And I do.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

You're Gonna Wake and See

A thought just occurred to me...

Three people who are all on the cusp between the Baby Boomers and Generation X -- Barack Obama, me, and Rob, the hero of High Fidelity...

I've been thinking the last day or so about how this presidential election is at its core a battle between the Baby Boomers and the Gen X-ers. Bush and both Clintons are Boomers (and McCain is Grandpa Munster). Obama is on the cusp, like me and Rob, though all three of us are closer philosophically and culturally to the Gen X-ers.

(The musical sort of updates the story by referencing Coldplay and other more recent pop culture icons, but the novel was released in the mid-1990s, so Rob was definitely on the cusp.)

The Baby Boomers grew up with parents who had struggled through the Depression, rallied 'round the flag during World War II, and relaxed into the hyper-materialism and mind-numbing conformity of the 1950s. Sure, a lot of the Boomers rebelled against that in the 60s, but most of them ended up pretty much becoming their parents anyway. The Gen X-ers are different. More fucked up. They feel too much. (Just look at St. Elmo's Fire, for God's sake.) They actually believe the idealism of the Boomers but despair at the mess the Boomers have created for us. The Gen X-ers don't want to master the rules of two generations ago; they want all new rules.

The funniest thing to watch in the Democratic primary right now is how baffled the Clintons are. They've totally mastered the rules of politics, they know how to play the game better than anybody (except maybe the Bushies). But this Obama dude shows up and says, "You may be good at that game, but we're gonna play a new game now." And everyone (press and public) magically agrees that we are playing a new game now. But the Clintons are masters of the old game! And every time they play the old game now, everyone yells at them for their "old politics." So what the fuck do they do now?

Yep, Me, Rob, and Barack. The old rules just don't work for us. Money isn't much of a motivator. Yes, Barack played inside the system while Rob and I stumble around outside of it, but none of us ever had money as a goal. We believe in Big Things. Rob and I believe in the incredible power of art. Barack believes in the incredible power of the people when they have something to believe in. Real grass roots politics. For all of us, our central joy in life is sharing what makes us most happy -- Barack's dreams, my theatre, Rob's music.

I'm still working through all this. But there is something special -- which is not to say easy -- about being on the cusp. We're a little bit lost sometimes, but we're adventurers of one kind or another, so eventually we know we'll find our way. Eventually...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Smilin' T'wards the Dawn

Rehearsals are going great. We've finished blocking Act I and we're about a third of the way through Act II. We ran Act I all together one night last week, and it really works! The transitions between scenes are so smooth and so organic -- most of the credit for that goes to the writers, of course, but we're doing a hell of a job too. This is one of those shows that will be a real roller coaster ride, never giving the audience too much time to stop and "judge" what's happening, and therefore, putting them in Rob's shoes.

I may have mentioned this earlier in my blogging, but I went to the writers a while back and asked if they would restore the song "Too Tired," which they cut from the show before it opened in New York, although they did include it as a bonus track on the cast album. Tom Kitt (composer) and Amanda Green (lyricist) are both incredibly cool and have been so helpful, which is important since we're the first company to do the show since its Broadway run, so the materials have never been "prepared" for later productions. The three of us have had a fairly lengthy email conversation about putting "Too Tired" back in the show. I think they both like the song a lot (they included it on the CD, so they must). It was written for the funeral scene late in Act II, but I want to put it into the final scene, as Rob and Laura's final resolution.

As the show stands now, in the middle of the finale, "Turn the World Off," there is underscoring as Laura shows up and she and Rob sort of make peace and decide to try their relationship again. On Broadway, they did some dialogue then sang a reprise of "Laura, Laura," which then segued back into "Turn the World Off." It works fine, but it feels to me too much like a Happy Ending, and I don't think High Fidelity is the kind of show that should have a clear Happy Ending. Rob and Laura are getting back together, sure, but do we really know if they'll be okay? Of course we don't. It's like the end of Company -- the right path has probably been chosen, but we have no way of knowing what lies ahead on that path. Have these two people really grown enough that things will be significantly different between them now? Do they really even belong together? We've spent 95% of the story watching them be apart. Who knows if they'll be good together this time?

And that ambiguity makes for good, intelligent, adult theatre.

But the "Laura, Laura" reprise undermines that very real-world ambiguity a little bit. And I think putting "Too Tired" into that spot gives the story a more realistic ending. After the complexity of this story, tying up the loose ends too completely doesn't feel entirely truthful.

So I presented Tom and Amanda with a lengthy manifesto about why I think they should put "Too Tired" into the finale, and to their credit, they really gave it serious thought. But Tom didn't see a clear way to make this change without major rewrites. They finally came back and said that if we wanted to do this, we should put it in the way we want and record it for them, so they could hear exactly what we intended to do, in context. Then they would make a decision.

So we did exactly that on Tuesday. I figured out a way to segue from the existing underscoring into "Too Tired" and back into "Turn the World Off," I taught it to the actors, and we recorded it. I'll send the audio file to the writers now and whatever they decide we'll abide by it. After all, no matter how good I think my ideas are, it is their show...

There are two things about all this that are so cool. First, it's amazing that the writers are open to our ideas and are willing to consider our proposal. Second, it's even cooler that I get to talk to them on an ongoing basis while we work on their show, that I get to ask them questions, etc. We're very lucky that we get to do this periodically when we do a newer show -- I got to talk to Jason Robert Brown about Songs for a New World, Adam Guettel about Floyd Collins, and most fun for me, I got to talk a lot to Larry O'Keefe, Brian Flemming, and Keythe Farley about their masterpiece Bat Boy.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- I love my job. I'll let you know what Tom and Amanda say about "Too Tired." How cool will that be if we get to make the stage debut of this great song???

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

You're Riding a Wave

Hard work but fun tonight. Blocking this show isn't difficult for me in conception -- I understand how the show ticks, what it's trying to say, what its rules are. But it's such an unusual piece of writing -- and with so much music that is so intricately integrated into the script -- that it makes it harder to get it Just Right.

Usually when I block a scene, we talk through it, walk through it, smooth some rough spots, and then run it once or twice. With this show, we follow all those steps but we're spending more time on fine-tuning things early on, and we run each scene three or four times before moving on. It's a very complex show physically, almost perpetually moving, so we need to make sure everything works really well from the get-go. With many shows, I can sketch in the outlines, and let actors discover the details and colors. But shows like High Fidelity, Assassins, Urinetown, and Bat Boy, the details are everything.

So though we usually spend two rehearsals blocking each act, this time we're taking three rehearsals per act. Tonight we did only two scenes. Nothing much happens in "Ian's Here" -- it's really more of a character introduction than anything else -- but we found some fun little ways of suggesting the tension in Ian's and Laura's relationship early on, Laura's ill-fit in Ian's world, and the shallowness of Ian's Eastern-ism. And it's funny too.

Then we did the last scene of Act I, in which Rob, Dick, and Barry all three are poised for success or failure in their respective quests. The act ends with this terrific, rowdy song "Nine Percent Chance of Your Love," with all the guys celebrating the fact that they each have a minuscule chance of getting what they want. A very quirky but cool act ender.

Robin Berger does all our dance choreography, but I do a lot of musical staging myself -- what Jeff has dubbed Millerography. So I staged the opening and "Nine Percent" myself, and I'm really happy with how they turned out. For the opening number, I made several choreographic references to the Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense, and with the Act I finale, I make some references to the moves of The Four Seasons. I figure if the music of the show sounds like the music Rob loves, shouldn't the choreography look like the rock and roll moves he loves?

Robin's doing the same thing, using some moves from a Robert Plant video for "Desert Island Top 5 Breakups."

And I realized driving home tonight that Robin's choreographing the women and I'm choreographing the men. That wasn't a conscious decision, but I think it makes so much sense for this show, a show that we see filtered through the mind of its hero, and a show about the disconnect between the genders. I love cool accidents like that.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I Wouldn't Change a Thing

Just a short note tonight. I just got home from our first blocking rehearsal and I already love this cast. We worked on the first three scenes tonight.

The first scene, which is essentially just the opening number (though there is a fair amount of dialogue inside the song), is so much fun and Thank God, all my ideas work, including the dancing record racks. I'm realizing now that watching Stop Making Sense (the brilliant Talking Heads concert film, which is really more performance art than concert) has totally informed my take on this show. I think our production is going to be a weird and wonderful hybrid of smart concept musical and kick-ass, alone-in-your-bedroom rock concert. I gave the cast some cool Talking Heads moves in the opening and they totally embraced them. I have them jogging, jerking themselves around, jumping, doing air guitar, and it's all wonderfully quirky and endearingly goofy. My favorite attributes. Which is why Lawson and I have become such good friends.

Yes, that was an affectionate semi-slam of Lawson. He can take it.

The second scene is where Laura leaves Rob and moves out of the apartment. And jeez, it already breaks your heart. There are some pauses that feel so heavy and so loaded with unspoken things. Even though we just staged it tonight, it's already working. Thanks to Jeff and Kimi. You both rock. Fully.

That's a Bat Boy reference.

The second and third scenes both have great show-stopper numbers with The Ex-Girlfriends, who are kicking some serious ass doing Robin's seriously cool choreography.

The third scene also contains the adorably clumsy meeting of Dick and Anna, which Lawson and Katie are totally nailing; a hilarious characterization from Todd as TMPMITW (The Most Pathetic Man in the World); and also Nikki's kick-ass rendition of "She Goes." Damn, girl!

So to sum up, a lot of ass is being kicked. All over the damn place.

We are off and fucking running, my friends! I've been waiting so long for this! Thank you for this show, Tom, Amanda, and David.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

We've Got Blues and Soul and R&B

Last night, we had our first read-through/sing-through of the show, and it was a real blast. It was the first time we'd had the whole cast together, because Margeau (Marie LaSalle) has been in another show (Caucasian Chalk Circle, which I saw Sunday and really enjoyed) and she joined us for the first time last night. (And by the way, she and Lori sound amazing together on "Ready to Settle.")

More than ever, I feel so great about this cast, about the leads, the ensemble, all of 'em. They really understand this show and this music, and I think they're ready and willing to go on this adventure with me. We're going to be approaching the show very differently from the original, far more conceptual, far more "alternative," which is what I think this material deserved from the beginning. With no serious commercial forces bearing down on us, we are way more free than the Broadway company to let this show be as quirky and unusual as it is.

It's always cool to hear the script and score in our voices for the first time, but last night was particularly cool because this is such a well-wrought piece of theatre. It moves like a freight train, only rarely stopping to breathe. Almost every scene transitions directly into the next, enough so that I doubt we're going to use most of the scene change music written for the original production (which had giant, obnoxious, inappropriate sets).

The show is also incredibly funny, both smart and smartass, and surprisingly intense here and there. The writers, Tom Kitt (composer), Amanda Green (lyricist), and David Linsday-Abaire (bookwriter) haven't just written a "clever" show; it's far more than that. They have given us moments in this show of genuine emotional pain, very real, truthful moments that just break your heart. Even just sitting around reading it, the scene in which Anna brings Dick a John Tesh CD and he callously rejects her gift, is so painful, and it's such a beautiful example of how ballsy this show is. Our heroes can be real dicks sometimes (no pun intended). These are complicated, nuanced characters that are fully worthy of the great novel from whence they came.

I can't wait to put this in front of an audience!

The one drawback comes from the coolest thing of all. New Line is the first company to produce the show after Broadway, but that means none of the materials have been "prepared" for further productions. There are scribbled notes all over the music, our actors have to work from the full piano/conductor score since there are no chorus books, and the script, score, and original cast recording often disagree!

It's a bit confusing, but it also reminds us over and over that we're the first ones to produce this wonderful piece since its ill-fated bow on the Great White (Tourist's) Way. And that's pretty damn cool. Whatever hassles are involved, though, they are sooooo worth it since we get to live inside this rich, complex piece of theatre for the next few months... I just know we're going to do it justice.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

She Goes, Part Deux

So after multiple dramas trying to fill the role of Liz with two different women, both of whom ended up being complete flakes (see my previous blog entry), I ended last week with no one in the role.

Then on Saturday morning, Robin our choreographer calls me. Seems they just got a call at Robin's studio from the first (and third) Liz, saying that she had decided to come back to the show after all and needed directions to the studio for Sunday's choreography rehearsal. Robin's mom (and the studio receptionist) tells this woman that she had heard she had quit the show. The woman says, well, yes, she had but she changed her mind -- although she hadn't told Scott yet. So Robin called me and said, "You know, she thinks she's doing the show again..."

It's kind of like a theatre equivalent of the zombies in the George Romero films... The only way to kill them is to shoot them in the head.

So an hour or so later, I get an email from this woman saying she's thought it over and she's going to un-quit. Again. Third time, if you're keeping count.

So I politely but firmly email her back telling her it would be best for us to part company and that, in all honesty, if she did do the show, we'd all spend the next two months wondering when she might drop out again...

Meanwhile, I talked to Charles Glenn, a professional local singer, a guy who had played King Herod (brilliantly) for us in Superstar, and a really good friend. I knew his wife Nicki also did singing gigs, though I had never heard her. I asked him if Nicki might be interested in stepping into this role. She was. So she came over Sunday afternoon, tried the song for me, kicked ass on it even though she only heard the recording a couple times, and so I invited her to join us.

So we have a Liz again! Liz 3.0, you might call her. But I know Nicki. She's a real adult. She won't be dropping out. Don't look at me like that -- she won't, I swear!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

She Goes

Okay, here's one of the reasons my job does suck on occasion...

The role of Liz in High Fidelity. She sings the Aretha Franklin number, "She Goes," and she also plays one of Rob's ex-girlfriends.

So we cast this woman in the role who did really great at the audition. On her audition sheet, she wrote that she had two date conflicts with our schedule -- two dates on which she was doing another show. So I emailed her and asked if there were any rehearsals for that show that we needed to worry about. She wrote back that, oh yeah, there were rehearsals! With that information included, she now had twelve conflicts! But she said, she had a very small part in the other show and really wanted to do High Fidelity, so if I couldn't make the schedule work, she'd drop out of the other show.

That should have been a red flag! Any time an actor is willing to drop out of another show to work with us, that means they don't necessarily mind dropping out of shows... which is bad...

I wrote back that, no, we could not accommodate twelve conflicts. So the next day, she sends me an email saying she's thought about it, and she will drop out of the other show to accept our role. It made me a little uneasy, but she really was great.

But literally just a couple hours after the email, I got a voice mail from her saying, no, she had changed her mind, she probably shouldn't do our show after all.

Okay...

So we cast our second choice, another woman who had done well at the audition. I talked to her, she was very excited, and couldn't wait to get started.

This was all a few weeks ago, and in the interim, I sent out a rehearsal schedule, and several emails about various things, all including rehearsal and show dates... All the dates were also on the audition sheet back in March.

Then on the day of our first rehearsal, at 5:15 p.m., this second woman emails me to tell me that she hadn't looked at any of the dates until just that moment, and she had a conflict with performances, so she was quitting. Now, other folks at the audition have told me this woman had been talking about the dates at the audition, so we know she had seen them.

That night at the first rehearsal, one of the guys in the show mentioned that he knew the first woman we cast and would be happy to call her. So he did. And she decided to come join us, after all. We thought everything was fine. (Yes, we were that stupid.) She came to one rehearsal, Tuesday night, and did a great job. Wednesday, she emails me again, this time to tell me that, though we start at 6:30, she won't be there till 8:00 on a few occasions, because now she's doing both shows. Uh-oh.

Then Thursday night comes, and she (remember, we're back to the first woman now) doesn't show up. She calls halfway through rehearsal to tell me that her headlights don't work, so she probably can't get to rehearsal that night. After rehearsal, she calls again and tells me that she's found a pianist who will help her learn the parts she has missed.

Then this morning I get an email from her telling me she's quitting.

This is the part of the process the audience never sees. Thank God. It's like watching sausage being made. You just don't want to.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Climbing Up the Charts

Just a quick entry today. I leave for rehearsal soon...

...But I just had to log on and rave about our "5 Ex-Girlfriends," High Fidelity's Greek Chorus, Katie, Lori, Amanda, Margery, and Mary. We learned "She Goes" and "Number 5 with a Bullet" Tuesday night, and these five women sound so terrific together, a really rich, ballsy, Girl Power kind of sound that's just right for this score. It's always something of a crap shoot casting a show -- how someone does at an audition is usually only a slight indication of how they'll do in the show -- but we lucked out with these broads! They rock!

Still... these young folks apparently didn't know what a bullet on the Billboard charts means. For those reading this who do not (or did not) follow the Billboard charts (I did, but only from 1981-1984), a bullet (a black dot, really) next to a song on the chart means the song is higher this week than last week. So in the context of the song, Laura is teasing Rob -- in his own lingo -- declaring that though she was lower on his chart before ("Desert Island Top 5 Breakups"), she has now risen up into his Top 5. Pretty funny. Also very "insider," something this show does awfully well...

And tonight, The Bitches Are Back. (I can call them that because in "Conflict Resolution," they and the guys are called "Bitches and Pimps" in the score...) Tonight, we're working on "Desert Island Top 5 Breakups," "Cryin' in the Rain," and "Goodbye and Good Luck." That'll be fun!

It sure seems like the actors are having as much fun as I am. I can't tell you how awesome it is to play "She Goes," "Desert Island," "Last Real Record Store," and so many others. This is one of those scores that just feels good in your fingers. Jason Robert Brown's music (Songs for a New World, The Last Five Years), Bill Finn's music (Falsettos, A New Brain, Spelling Bee), and Larry O'Keefe's music (Bat Boy, Legally Blonde) are all the same way. All those scores are a hell of a handful and contain some monstrously difficult songs, but once you "get" them, once you find the patterns and contours, they feel so exactly right.

The only thing that sorta scares me is the three-part "Conflict Resolution," which I put off till next week because I'm something of a coward. The three parts evoke Guns N' Roses, the Beastie Boys, and Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre, none of which are within my normal realm of musical experience. Not even close. So I have to do my homework and listen to some "Welcome to the Jungle," "Ch-Ch-Check It Out," and of course, "Ain't Nothin' But a G Thang." Oh yeah, dawg!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

We interrupt this blog to bring you...

THE RIVERFRONT TIMES
April 16, 2008

Many St. Louis theater companies are homeless
By Aimee Levitt

New Line's Scott Miller is singing the blues over disagreements with the Ivory

Theatre.In the good old days, if Hollywood musicals are to be believed, all an aspiring impresario needed to stage a successful show was an abandoned barn and a dream. Of course, St. Louis is strangely bereft of abandoned barns, which means managers of small theater companies have to make do with churches, schools and community centers.

The Ivory Theatre is nicer than a barn and was, indeed, intended to be one of the nicest small theaters in the city. For 145 years, it was St. Boniface Catholic Church in Carondelet. Then the archdiocese sold it to Red Brick Management, which announced last summer that it planned to spend $800,000 to convert the structure into a state-of-the-art theater.

For local theater companies strapped for performance space, it seemed like a godsend. Even before construction was completed, three avant-garde groups — New Line, NonProphet and Hydeware — had signed leases on the Ivory. Six months later, only Hydeware remains.

"It really sounded terrific," says New Line's artistic director Scott Miller. Over its seventeen seasons, New Line has had six homes, most recently the ArtLoft Theatre on Washington Avenue. "We do musicals — only musicals," Miller stresses. "We need more space for a band and a bigger cast, and we need a fairly good-sized house, 150 seats, to make our budget balance. Our shows have adult content, so we can't use the Catholic schools or the secular schools."

New Line hoped that the large, secular (and student-free) Ivory would solve its perpetual homeless problem, but the arrangement turned sour almost from the moment the company moved in last August to begin rehearsals for its fall show, Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll.

"We didn't have a good relationship with New Line from the beginning," admits Mike Allen, co-owner, along with Pete Rothschild, of Red Brick. "The construction was supposed to take ten or eleven weeks, but it ran a little later, and New Line had to push their rehearsals back. After that, it was one thing after another, in my view, all small things. The more we did, the more New Line found to complain about."

To Miller, though, the problems weren't just "small things."

"They installed outlet covers on the stage that stuck up so we couldn't do choreography," he complains. "And the outlets were on the front half of the stage. We needed them in the back where the band would be." Also, the doors to the stage were too narrow, so the crew had to build sets directly onstage. The counters in the dressing rooms were at bar height instead of table height, so actors were forced to stand while they attended to their hair and makeup. Worst of all, the Ivory had only one backstage toilet, which had to accommodate the entire cast and band during intermission.

"It's not like they said, 'Let's make this difficult,'" Miller says. "It's just that there was no one involved in any aspect who understood theater."

If Red Brick's lack of understanding of the requirements of a functioning theater irritated New Line, Miller's lack of understanding of construction equally irritated Allen. "We built the theater in an old church with state and federal historical tax credits," Allen explains. "The rules were that we couldn't change the way the building looks. We had to build within the confines of the church space. Scott Miller admitted he had never been involved in building anything. We built what we thought was appropriate. Scott saw the plans. He never complained until he got in there."

The tensions between New Line and Red Brick during Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll might have been attributed to opening-night jitters, but they only escalated during New Line's second show at the Ivory, Assassins. When the company prepared to move in for rehearsals in February, it discovered that the theater was full of sets and props from the previous show, the Ivory-produced A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline, which had closed the night before. Allen says the Ivory management removed the Patsy Cline material the following day.

The NonProphet Theater Company, which mounted two plays at the Ivory, confronted similar obstacles. They, too, took possession of a messy theater and had to spend rehearsal time cleaning. The Ivory's management conducted tours during a dress rehearsal that were so loud, claims Tyson Blanquart, NonProphet's managing director, the actors had to stop performing.

During the week between performances of NonProphet's second show, second, Blanquart says, NonProphet agreed to allow another group to use the theater, provided it left the second set undisturbed. In return, Red Brick would reduce the rent. "When we came back to the theater," Blanquart writes in an e-mail, "we were met with a truly disturbing sight: Our set — which was screwed into the floor — had been moved. Not only was it moved, but it was broken. There was broken glass on the stage and in the carpet in the house. There was trash literally all over the theater."

Blanquart says the company also never received its rent reduction. "We attempted to air concerns with the owners," he writes, "but the owners of the property refused to rebuke management for any of the problems that we'd had."

The Ivory's managing director, Donna Perrino, could not be reached for comment.

Hydeware, the third company to rent out the Ivory, completed its first production there two weeks ago and will open its second, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, next weekend. Ember Hyde, the director, declined to comment about the state of the theater. Instead, she writes in a recent e-mail: "I don't think it would be fair to Hydeware, the Ivory, or any potential audience members, to have any preconceived notions about any aspect of the space or possibly our performances."

The Ivory has not been especially hospitable to audiences, either. The theater's stadium-style seating keeps viewers suspended over the stage and seems more suited to a concert than a play, says Riverfront Times theater critic Dennis Brown. "Both at second and Assassins, I felt removed from the production."

In the end, both New Line and NonProphet have decided to pick up stakes and go elsewhere. "We agreed it was in their best interests for them to move out," says Allen.

NonProphet has now returned to its previous home, the Tin Ceiling. New Line will stage its next show, High Fidelity, at Washington University's A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre in June, but will be homeless again come fall.

This is not the first time a St. Louis theater has disappointed its tenants. In 2005 the Soulard Theatre lost all five of its resident companies. But the theater did not remain dark for long; other groups took over the space.

"The great problem in this town is performance space," Brown says. "No question about it. All these vagabond companies are looking for a home."