It's More Than a Contest

As all my friends know, I fall in love with almost every show we work on – partly because I get to pick which shows we work on, and we produce only really cool shows.

But Hands on a Hardbody is special. It's one of those shows that I knew was really unique and really well-crafted, but because we're coming at it differently from the original production on Broadway, I didn't really know exactly what it would be like in the end.

I'm happy to report that it's extraordinary. Rich, emotional, funny, insightful, intense, suspenseful, and chock full of human truth and complexity. Watching the final dress rehearsal last night, I got chills a number of times and got really choked up a number of times. And this is after living with the show for months. The finale choked me up just because I felt so overwhelmingly happy at what we've created.

With some shows (Bukowsical, Love Kills, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, etc.), I really have no idea what our audiences will think. With Hardbody I know. People are going to fall in love with this show and this cast.

I knew from the beginning that this would be a show about acting above all. And the acting is remarkable. Everybody's been on the right road from the get-go, but just over the last three rehearsals, the characters and relationships have gotten so much richer, so much more detailed, so much more honest. Our actors really disappear inside these amazing characters.

There are a lot of laughs, but there are also moments of incredible intensity and power. There are moments that are wild and rowdy, but there are also moments of silence and really subtle acting.

My creative process – to just follow the script and score wherever it takes us – has been proven again. We imposed nothing on the material. Our only goal has been to tell this story as clearly and honestly as we can. People often ask me what my "approach" to a particular show will be, and I always answer the same way – just to tell the story. I'm incredibly lucky as a director that I get to work with artists and musicians and designers like these folks. We have such fun in rehearsal – we laugh a lot – but we also work hard. Everyone involved has done such extraordinary work on this show.

I predict not only amazing word-of-mouth and great reviews, but also lots of repeat customers.  There are so many actors onstage for much of the show and there's always something wonderful going on, however subtle, no matter where you look.

And then there's the truck. God bless Rob Lippert. He said he could make this truck for us, and he fucking did it. We have a goddamn truck onstage. I want to just stand and watch audiences as they come into the theatre and see how they react when they turn the corner and see our truck sitting there. We've already gotten requests from two other theatre companies to rent our truck, after we close.

We all make shitty money doing this, but every single person gives 150% and it shows onstage. Opening a show always reminds me quite vividly how collaborative my art form is. We need so many great people doing great work to bring a musical to life, particularly an unconventional musical like this one.

I've tried to explain to the cast just how powerful the experience of seeing this show is. I can't even imagine what it will be like for someone who comes in knowing nothing about the show, having never heard these remarkable, beautiful songs.

Ticket sales are already really good; our presale is the second-highest in our history, second only to Rent. This run is going to be awesome. I hope you'll all come join us. Hands on a Hardbody is everything I think theatre should be. I've never been more proud.

And I cannot get these damn songs out of my head, no matter what I do. But I'm okay with that.

The adventure continues!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Do You Feel the Power?

Now shit gets real.

We have a pretty leisurely rehearsal schedule, and lots of run-throughs, but everything speeds up now. Yesterday we had our lighting cue-to-cue, today we had our sitzprobe (in which we run through the whole score with the band for the first time), then the next three days we have full run-throughs with the band and all the tech. We preview Thursday and open Friday.

I'm not at all worried – we're in great shape. By this point in our process, most of my notes for the actors are really subtle, nitpicky stuff, but as we all know, the reality is in the detail.

It was so wonderful finally hearing the band play the Hands on a Hardbody score today. We've got seven musicians, the biggest band we've ever had – Sue Goldford conducting and on piano, Joel Hackbarth (who also acts in a lot of our shows) on second keyboard, Mike Bauer as always on guitar, Clancy Newell on percussion, Nikki Glenn (who also acts with us) on violin, and two new New Liners, Emily Ebrecht on cello, and Andrew Gurney on bass. Trey Anastasio's instrumental arrangements and the vocal arrangements by Carmel Dean are just extraordinary, and today we got to hear it all together for the first time. Now I love this music even more.

Tomorrow night will probably be the hardest for the actors. We've had a lot of run-throughs, but all at once, they get lights, costumes, props, mics, and the band added to the work they've already done. By definition, all that changes their performances. Sometimes it bums them out because they feel like they took a step backward, but that's not what it is – it's just about getting their sea legs. It's a step we have to go through.

Because we block fairly quickly, we don't focus a whole lot on character, motivation, backstory, etc., in blocking rehearsals. But then we put the pieces together and run the whole show usually nine times, And as they settle into it, get comfortable with it, see the big arcs, understand how they fit into the larger whole, then the acting gets deeper and more subtle. Actors start making really interesting, unexpected choices that delight the rest of us. I start to see the characters' interior lives come alive. I see relationships develop and change. It's the time when the actors start noticing single words in lyrics that change or expand their understanding of the character or the moment.

As I've often written here, I love actors. I love to watch them work and create and explore and play. I was in shows in high school and college, but the last time I played a character onstage was my dream role, Cornelius Hackl, back in 1988. Yes, I know some of you reading this weren't born yet. Shut up.

I know the incomparable high of acting in a musical with an audience that's tuned in. I know the ridiculous amount of work spent memorizing and practicing. I also know the magic of getting truly inside the character, really living as that character onstage, even though the style may be big and exaggerated.

It has been a real pleasure the last couple weeks to watch this cast work. Every rehearsal the acting gets better, the characters richer, everything realer and more honest. Everyone is doing such a good job. Everyone is really inhabiting these wonderful, complicated, flawed, beautiful people.

The show's lyricist and co-composer Amanda Green is flying in during the run to see us, and I'm so glad. I know she was very happy with the original Broadway production, but I think she'll really love ours too. I think the show is pretty different now, maybe mostly in subtle ways, just because we're in a 210-seat house. When no one is more than seven rows from the stage, the actors can't cheat and they can't phone it in. But they also don't need to show us anything; they just have to live honestly in this imaginary world, and this close-up, the audience will believe them and go for the ride.

We've had writers come to see us before – Mark Savage (The Ballad of Little Mikey), Annie Kessler (Woman with Pocketbook), Adam Schlesinger (Cry-Baby), Gary Stockdale and Spencer Green (Bukowsical), and Amanda Green back in 2008, when we were bringing High Fidelity back from the grave, with a production light years away from the original. I think, more than anything, Amanda wanted to know if that show worked, if the problem in New York was the material or the original production. I'm happy to report it was the original production. She loved our Hi-Fi. And now companies across the country are producing it.

As Hardbody has taken shape, we've all been talking about how audiences are going to react to the show. I can't count the number of times I've heard one of us say, "I think people are going to fall in love with this show." I think so too. There's an honesty and fearlessness about the emotion in this show that really knocks you back in your seat. It's going to be yet another New Line show after which we'll always hear, "It's not at all what I expected!" (We hear that a lot.) But let's be honest, what could you expect? A show about a contest where everybody just stands around? And it's a musical? How the fuck you gonna do that?

Come find out. Ticket sales are pretty decent already, but I think this show will be like High Fidelity and Cry-Baby. Once we get through the first weekend, word-of-mouth will be incredible and we may start selling out. Wouldn't that be nice? Our bank account would be so happy.

Even though our show seems on the surface like it could be kind of a downer – desperate people in desperate times put themselves through hell – it's really a joyful, life-affirming piece of theatre. But it's also a very adult, realistic piece of theatre too. No candy-coating, no spoonful of sugar. In Judy Newmark's preview piece about our show, Amanda Green says, “I love these characters, who are based on real people. They need a truck for work, to take their kids to school, to start a new life someplace else. They are all too human, with their fears and insecurities, but they put the best face on things. They are determined to find a niche where they can survive and even thrive. There is something heroic about that. Even if the contest is silly, their needs are real and serious. That spoke to me in small ways and big ones.”

I think the miracle of this show is that it confronts our tough times head on, and at the same time, suggests that tough times can still be full of joy, if you choose to be joyful. Like another of my favorite shows, Zorbá, Hands on a Hardbody argues that you can't just embrace the good parts of life; you have to embrace it all. It's all beautiful. It's all worth it.

I used to think "If I Had This Truck" was the show's anthem, its statement of purpose. But maybe it's really "Joy of the Lord." Norma chooses to see good. She chooses joy. And so do Doug Wright, Amanda Green, and Trey Anastasio. And we're mighty thankful to 'em.

I knew this show was gonna turn out cool. I didn't know it was gonna turn out this cool. Come see us.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

You Provide the Gasoline and I'll Provide the Match

"Burn That Bridge," a song about halfway through Act I of Hands on a Hardbody, has bedeviled me. I just wasn't sure what to do with it. My first instinct was that there's not much movement in this show, so here's a chance to give the audience some eye candy, some musical comedy. But I also knew we were coming at this show as naturalistically as possible. So where does "Burn That Bridge" land?

I often give our actors a sketch of their staging, and let them settle into it and discover cool things, slowly over time. I did that with Dowdy and Taylor (who play the sales manager Mike Ferris and contestant Heather) for "Burn That Bridge." But I also know that at some point if the song or scene isn't finding its natural shape, we have to work through it. So I let them play with it for a couple weeks, try things, experiment, and since Dowdy is also our assistant director, I told him to feel free to suggest solutions. But I could tell neither of them was feeling any more comfortable with it, even after running it several times.

The mistake I was making, a mistake I make often, a mistake I think a lot of musical theatre directors make, was in trying to come up with interesting and/or cool staging. That's not my job. My job is to bring the writers' work to life and make it as clear as possible to the audience. It's great if the staging is clever and original, but that's not my job. I'm not supposed to be looking for staging; I'm supposed to be looking for meaning. I was starting with what can we do here, instead of what is this about.

I had realized early on that, aside from the opening number and the finale, Hardbody is as naturalistic as musical theatre gets, calling for very subtle acting. There's even a "Note on Acting" in the script that says:

Despite their colorful eccentricities and regional turns of phrase, the characters in our story are inspired by very real people. They should not be played broadly, or with an implied "wink." Rather, they should be acted with integrity, with full regard for their ardent hopes, heartbreaking foibles and core decency.

In other words, this is a musical that should be treated like a play. This show doesn't have the speed and wacky energy of musical comedy, the exaggerated reality of many concept musicals, or the melodrama of rock opera. This is just a drama. And so maybe this is a song that should be staged like a dialogue scene.

Like almost all the other songs in Hardbody.

I had been trying to "make up" for the physical stillness of the rest of the show by looking for lots of movement in this one number. Instead, I should be embracing the nature of this story, not trying to compensate for it. Why work against the very nature of our story? That way madness lies...

And all this led me to the place I always go when I'm lost. I stop myself and ask, "What is this about?" At its core, what is this song/scene/moment/show about? Both its thematic content but even more so its narrative content. How does this song/scene/moment connect to the rest of the show and its central theme, and also what's happening in the story? What is changing? Who is making a decision? Who's learning something?

So I sat down, as I should have in the beginning, and just spent some time with the lyric. All I needed was to trust the text, to go where it leads us.

So what does the text tell us? Mike Ferris and Heather use really extreme language and really sexually loaded metaphors (kind of reminds me of "Deeper in the Woods" from The Robber Bridegroom), and there's a lot of repetition. So what would that language be like if this were a dialogue scene instead of a song? Why would these two characters talk that way? Why would they repeat certain words and phrases? This is obviously not just a straight-forward conversation, like "Used to Be" is. No, it seems to be very playful foreplay, nakedly, comically beating around the bush. (Sorry about that.) Just look at how they talk(sing). First Heather:

Trouble seems to follow me
Like a lost and lonely dog.
I can't shake it, no matter how I run.
And you know and I know,
This heat ain't coming from the sun;
And there'll be lies to say
And hell to pay
Before this deal is done.

Just in case you're wonderin', Mike, Heather's a bad girl. And she puts out. Did you get that? This is a two-way seduction. Notably, those last few lines will prove weirdly prescient. Then Mike sings:

We'll burn that bridge
When we get to it,
Find a fire we can set to it.
Trouble's coming but the spark is lit,
And we'll burn that bridge
When we get to it.

This is the language of destruction. This is a guy who's got nothing left to lose. Why not do this? He goes on:

The sunlight in your smile
Pierces me clean through.
I been on this earth awhile;
I never met no one like you.

Lord knows I'm a sinner,
But something tells me you are too.
And I'll pay tomorrow for what I pray
We're about to do.

I don't know what he thinks they're about to do. She's gotta be back out on that truck in a few minutes. Or is he talking about his scheme? Then they sing the chorus together:

We'll burn that bridge
When we get to it,
Find a fire we can set to it.
Trouble's coming, but the spark is lit,
And we'll burn that bridge
When we get to it.

Notice the imagery is both sexual and violent. But it's also playful, funny, flirty.

Also, notice that lyricist Amanda Green has given us yet another triple rhyme (they're all over this show), this time with a slight variation in the rhyme on the third line. The first two lines rhyme the last three syllables (get to it, set to it), but the third line rhymes only the last syllable. That adjustment nicely underlines the phrase, "but the spark is lit," which holds all kinds of meaning. Then the two of them alternate lines:

Sometimes you got to break the rules
And throw away the book,
Torch the candle at both ends,
And leap before you look.
Oooh! You may be a little crazy,
And God knows I'm no great catch.
But you provide the gasoline
And I'll provide the match.

There's even more foreshadowing here, along with more violent and sexual imagery.

And then they repeat the chorus, finishing the song with a long section just repeating the phase "burn that bridge," and then just the word "burn." Dramatically speaking, what's going on during all that repetition? Maybe it's the escalating build-up of sexual tension between them, the syncopated downbeats in the music mimicking the thrusting rhythm of sex itself. As we approach the climax of the song, the music stops suddenly – and then Mike, Heather, and their three backup singers all hit a long, loud chord at the end that lands and then slides up a step, like a comic (depending on your perspective) musical orgasm. By the end of the song, all that repetition and pounding rhythm have pushed the word burn to take on its alternate meanings of sexual excitement and consumption. And we don't know it yet, but Heather will discover another meaning (or two) of the word before this is all over.

So they work themselves up to this ridiculous fever pitch...! But this is foreplay that leads to... standing around the truck another couple days. Maybe this little foray, this inopportune physical arousal, will compound Heather's trouble later on.

At first, I wasn't sure what kind of scene this was – comic, sexy, intense...? I think the answer is yes. It's also darkly ironic, because the antics in this office during this scene will lead to really serious consequences later. As they gleefully repeat the word "burn" over and over, they're constructing for themselves a really big (metaphoric) bomb that will burn them both in unexpected ways. Is this indiscretion so potentially explosive that Mike might end up (metaphorically) burning down this whole dealership?

In other words, this is a scene about serious, honest acting. Just like all the other songs. It's not about eye candy or diversion or getting 'em to tap their feet; it's about getting inside these characters, what they want, how they're fucked up, and inside their shallow, sort of creepy relationship, because that's all going to pay off later on for the audience. It wasn't long after starting work on this show that I noticed the very smart choice by the writers to give Mike Ferris and Cindy Barnes motivations and backstories as strong, stakes as high as those of the contestants. It's not just about those ten contestants – it's about all of us.

It's so fun and so satisfying working on this material. I think I know how to stage this song now – minimally, dramatically, no posing, no dancing. But I also know there's still so much to discover.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

You're Hell Bent for Glory

We're finally running the whole show now, and we're onstage with our beautiful hardbody truck! Already so many of the actors have really found their characters, and so many moments are already really powerful. And as often happens at this point in our process, I'm finally able to step back, and that allows me to see so much more in this rich material.

One of the things that's really hit me is how much this show is about God. Throughout the show, there are countless references to God and religion, though interestingly, the word Lord shows up a lot more than God. Both the content and the word choice seems tied to the geography and culture of our story. The language gives us time and place.

I remember in Bill Maher's terrific documentary Religulous one scene in which Maher is talking to a group of truckers, and he admits that it's a luxury to be an atheist. He says:

I think being without faith is something that's a luxury for people who were fortunate enough to have a fortunate life. You know, you go to prison and you hear a guy say, ''You know what, buddy? I got nothing but Jesus in here.'' I completely understand that. I think not having faith is a luxury sometimes. If you're in a foxhole, you probably have a lot of faith, right?

Or in a decades-long economic crisis. The fact that Doug Wright and Amanda Green have put so much religious language into these characters mouths tell us a lot about who they are, their background, their culture, and about the precarious lives they all lead.

In the opening number, the contestants sing:

But only one can grab that ring,
And God alone knows what he'll bring.
It’s a human drama kind of thing.

They are all at the mercy – the whims? – of an omnipotent and capricious God. It's human lives as Greek drama – both the contest and the musical. All the world's a stage and God is a divine Will Shakespeare. Just like Benny's first few lines at the beginning of the show, this last line ("It's a human drama kind of thing.") acknowledges why this story belongs on the musical stage. Musicals are primarily about emotion because the abstract language of music communicates emotion better than words alone can. And the core of Hands on a Hardbody is human emotion.

The spokesperson for God in our story is Norma Valverde, the kind of Christian that even atheists like me can respect, a person who genuinely walks the walk. Norma talks to God a lot. In the opening number, she sings:

Lord, it's been a real tough year.
Thank you for this chance right here.
I'm shaking and I'm sick with fear,
But can I bend your ear a minute?
Look at all these people in it!
Jesus, I just got to win
This truck...

Early in the show, Norma says to Ronald, "My husband and I been praying for a truck, and I believe that this is what God wants me to do." She has a monologue soon after that about how many people are praying for her to win, and it offers some real insight into American fundamentalist Christianity:

Oh, I'm not alone. I don't got people with me, but I got their prayers. Over at our church, they made a prayer chain for me. About a hundred families asking God to let me win. My brother in San Antonio, he started a chain at his church, too, so that's another six hundred or so. And my cousin in Waco, she goes to one of them Mega-Churches, they call 'em "Prayer Warriors" down there, must be two thousand. So every day, the Lord's got almost three thousand people prayin' "Give Norma that truck!" So I feel real blessed.

But she and her multitudes don't understand that those prayers are asking for the wrong thing. They're asking for a thing, when a good Christian should be asking for the strength and understanding and courage to lead good and decent lives, for wisdom, to walk the walk. As I wrote about in another blog post, the real prize in this contest isn't the truck; it's self-awareness. Like in every Hero Myth, the prize is never a thing; it's the newfound wisdom the hero learns. There is a moral argument being made here by the show's creators (consciously or not) about how people (particularly Americans) use religion. Only Americans could create "prosperity theology."

In the show's second song, "If I Had This Truck," Norma sings:

When I win this truck,
I'll give thanks to the Lord,
Till the day that I go
To my proper reward.

Norma assumes that if she wins, it will be because God helped her win it. But does God really stick his fingers into truck contests in East Texas? She's asking for the wrong thing, and she'll pay for that later. Norma explains to Chris at one point, "God forgives us, but forgiving Him can take a very long time." It's a lesson she'll have to grapple with herself, when she has her own crisis of faith.

But there's a positive side to her religiosity too. In "Hunt With the Big Dogs," when Benny's at his worst, she sings, "Oh Lord, forgive him." When Chris screams at her and short-circuits her song, "Joy of the Lord," the others are pissed, but Norma is immediately forgiving. She sees what's behind Chris' outburst and she chooses to see the good in him, despite his obvious psychic damage and the wall he's built around himself. One of the reasons Norma wants to win is so she can "drive us all to the Lord's house on Sunday." When Ronald asks her where she gets her strength, she says, "Lord shows me strength I didn't know I had." (Though, as I argued in a recent post, I think it's the ordeal that shows her that.) She's the most empathetic, most decent person in the contest, but she succumbs to covetousness along with the rest of them. As in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, those sins must be paid for.

There are religious references throughout the show, but two songs are overtly religious, Norma's joyful shot of energy, "Joy of the Lord," and Benny's shattering breakdown, "God Answered My Prayers." During "Joy of the Lord," the others join in the fun one by one, but Janis and Benny choose instead to mock Norma in brief bits of counter-melody. Chris is the only contestant who never joins the song.

In "God Answered My Prayers" and the scene before and after it, we see Benny grapple with the idea of God, of sin and punishment, we see him grow into the wise Texas philosopher we met in the documentary, more self-aware than any of the others. He asks Norma, "Yo, Norma. You talk to God a helluva lot. He ever. .. (a vulnerable hitch in his throat) ... he ever talk back?" Norma doesn't answer because as far as she's concerned, you can only understand it if you understand it. Benny's been a religious tourist. But he goes through a powerful transformation in this scene. After mocking religion for the entire show, now Benny sees the hand of God, the humbling hand of God, in his own life. Is that just psychosis from being up for ninety hours, or is it the cleansing physical exhaustion of this ordeal that opens his eyes for the first time?

Or is it Norma's example...?

Interestingly, Ronald uses the word Lord a lot, but never in a religious context, always as just an exclamation. Chris uses the word God several times in "Stronger," but again only as an exclamation. Not everyone here is religious, even though we're in East Texas...

Mike Ferris invokes religious imagery in his raunchy seduction number with Heather, but he's mocking religion, not calling upon it:

Lord knows I'm a sinner,
But something tells me you are too;
And I’ll pay tomorrow for what I pray
We're about to do.

Though I don't really understand why people still believe in 2,000-year-old myths – or perhaps because of that – I find religion endlessly fascinating. I read a lot of books about religion. (One of my favorites is A History of God.) I'm pretty confident that I know more about the Bible than most American Christians. (Another great book is Misquoting Jesus.) And I've actually read the entire Bible, cover to cover, which I bet most Christians have not. Though, like trickle-down economics, it seems to me so obvious that religion has failed us, time after time, that it too often leads to horrific abuses and corruption, and that it's responsible for most of the wars in human history.

When I point out Christians behaving badly, lots of people who claim to be Christians tell me that the "bad" Christians (the bigots, homophones, misogynists, etc.) aren't real Christians. But who gets to decide that? My instinct is to say that Norma is about as "real" a Christian as I've encountered, but the truth is she's strictly a New Testament Christian. Like my good friend (and ace Facebook debater) Rodney Wilson, it seems to me that Norma's Christianity isn't really "pure" Christianity; instead it's an adaptation, preserving all the good stuff (mostly the things Jesus taught) and rejecting all the bad stuff. Norma and Rodney are good and decent people who treat everyone they meet with respect and compassion. But neither of them probably thinks that smartass kids should be stoned to death, as Leviticus requires...

When I wrote about Les Misérables for my first book, From Assassins to West Side Story, I realized the entire story (at least as adapted for the musical stage) is about the tension between the angry, vengeful Old Testament God (represented by Javert) and the loving, forgiving, New Testament God (Valjean). I discovered at the time that many Bible scholars think these two faces of God really are two different Gods, one tribal and nasty, one universal and awesome.

In Les Miz, the New Testament wins out. In Hardbody, Norma clearly believes more in the philosophy of the New Testament. Benny, on the other hand, clearly sees God in Old Testament terms; but by the end of "God Answered My Prayers," he seems to reconsider that position.

I can't give all the credit for these rich textual themes to Amanda Green and Doug Wright. The original documentary film also focuses on God and religion a fair amount, maybe because it focuses so much on both Benny and Norma, clearly two of the coolest "characters" I've ever seen in a documentary. I'd love to hang with both of them. (Side note: The real Benny Perkins and I are Facebook friends. Jeff Wright, who plays Benny in our show, is also FB friends with him. And Benny's been really cool about answering questions and such for us. He really loves the show.)

Maybe the reason I like these themes in both Hands on a Hardbody and Les Miz is that both shows explore the complicated relationship between people and their beliefs. There are no pat answers here, no cliches, no assumptions, just exploration, questions. I can't give you the two examples of the most interesting writing about religious belief in this show, because both scenes contain spoilers. But come see the show and you'll see what I mean.

We've had two run-throughs on the set, with our beautiful truck, and I've been sort of surprised at how far along a lot of the acting is. We don't open for two weeks, but there's some amazing acting happening on our stage, not just individually but among the ten contestants. And now after writing all this, I think that's partly just because the writing is that good.

I can't wait to share this show with our audiences!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Drop Dead Cherry Red

From the first time I heard the Hands on a Hardbody score, I knew I wanted to produce and direct this show. It's so rich, so truthful, so deeply human, so unlike everything else. But I also knew the show requires a full-sized pickup truck onstage, and our theatre is on the second floor and has only normal single doors, so there's no way to get a large set piece through the doors – you'd have to build it onstage.

Think about that for a second. We need a truck, but we have to build all large set pieces onstage. Ack!

As I was pondering last year whether we were up to this challenge, we were also looking for a new lighting designer. Rob Lippert applied for the job, and when I saw his website and production photos of his past shows, I saw that he had built a full-sized truck as scenic designer for a production of The Grapes of Wrath.

I mentioned to him that we were considering Hardbody but had to first figure out if we could do the damn truck. I asked him if he could pull it off and if he'd be willing to do it for us. He immediately said yes. We talked for a long time about whether we should try to just suggest the truck or if we could really get a real-looking, brand new(-looking) Nissan pickup truck onstage. We discussed more minimalist options (like just creating the outlines of the truck in PVC pipe), but ultimately decided the realer the truck looked, the more the audience would believe in the reality of the story.

So we made the decision to go forward with the show, which we now know will be the first production since it was on Broadway, or as I call it, "the American regional premiere."

But how would we get the truck into the space? We finally decided the only way to do it was to buy a real truck, take it apart, discard the insides, build a new wooden core structure, and then reassemble the truck body onto this new structure.

Thank god Rob's on the job.

As director, I made the decision that I did not want the truck to move, dance, and spin, like it did in the original production. I want as much reality as I can get here. And trucks don't dance. Of course that decision also made Rob's job way easier.

So last fall, Rob started shopping for a truck. We found one that looked great but didn't run, so we bought it for about $2,000. And then it lived at Rob's studio while we worked on Night of the Living Dead and Rent. Then Rob set to work, and he's kept a really cool blog, describing the whole process in great detail, the dismantling and re-mantling of the truck, the difficulties and obstacles he faced, the painting of the truck (it was tan, but we need it red), every step along the way.

I repeat, thank god Rob's on the job.

As I type this, he's putting finishing touches on it all at his shop – while also finishing up the other set pieces, including a scrim billboard which will stand up-center, with the band behind it on a platform, and some parking lot lights. Then this weekend, he'll pack it all up and move it all to the theatre, where we'll carry it up to the second floor and set about putting all the pieces back together. If all goes as planned, we'll have our truck to work with Monday night when the actors and I move into the theatre.

Samuel French licences the show, and they've already been asking us if we'll rent out our truck to other companies after our production. (We will.) Like us, other folks want to produce the show, but don't know how to deal with the truck. So throughout the process, Rob has always been keeping in the back of his mind, that this massive set piece has to repeatedly come apart, since we expect a number of other companies to use it after us.

Rob just joined New Line this season, but he's already given us two very cool sets – the three stories of the farm house in NOTLD and the beautiful, expressionistic set for Rent, complete with my giant, raked moon in the middle. And now this damn truck! I can't wait to watch as audiences come into the theatre each night during the run and encounter a fucking truck in the middle of our stage.

Over the years, some really extraordinary artists have worked with us, theatre artists truly at the top of their game. It's not for the shitty money; it's for the fascinating, endlessly challenging work we do. Rob is definitely in that category. We're very, very lucky he's come to work with us, and it looks like he'll stick around for the foreseeable future.

And I'll promise him, right here in public, I'll never ask him for a truck onstage again. Although, I think we'll need at least the front end of Bonnie and Clyde's car in the fall... No rest for the artsy...

The adventure continues!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Keep Your Hands On It

We finished blocking Hands on a Hardbody last night, but I'm not entirely satisfied with the way I staged the last song, "Keep Your Hands On It." It's partly a wrap-up for each character, á la Animal House and Spelling Bee, but it's also a thematic epilogue, a philosophical summation of the evenings. Like the show's opening song, the finale addresses the audience directly. The writers have used contemporary musical theatre conventions to bookend this unusual documentary form they created, to give the audience a more familiar way in and out of the story.

Hardbody's opening, "It's a Human Drama Thing," is a textbook example of contemporary, 21st-century musical theatre writing, the kind of opening that evolved out of the opening numbers of Sondheim and Prince, and Tommy Tune. It's both a concept musical opening and a book musical opening at the same time. Just like "The Last Real Record Store on Earth" in High Fidelity.

But this finale stymied me. I staged it last night but I didn't like it. So I talked to Dowdy after rehearsal and went through my usual routine – what is this song about at its core, what's the point of it, why is it the finale, and how does it relate to the central theme of the show? I wrote about some of this in a past blog post, but there I think I was getting more at the cultural, political context, rather than the show's real core.

After one of the contestants (I'm not telling who) wins the contest, the show ends with "Keep Your Hands On It," at first a fairly literal statement from JD about almost being stupid enough to let his wife go. But it becomes everyone's anthem by the time the song is over. What does that title phrase mean for the rest of them? Don't give up. Don't quit trying. Yes, but more than that, more specific, more meaningful, more insightful. There's something in there I wasn't seeing.

I re-read the lyric. JD sings:

If you want something,
Keep your hands on it.
Cling with all your soul
When you find your fit.

I kept re-reading it and I realized it's not about holding on tightly or desperately; it's about nurturing and caring for and protecting what we value, a very timely topic in these tough times. Hugging it to us not out of fear but out of love. Meaningful connection.

Every one of these contestants thought this truck was incredibly important, their salvation, their only hope. In the first two songs in the show, they tell us how high the stakes are for them, how desperately they need to win, how it will change or even save their lives. In terms of the classic Hero Myth structure, the truck is everyone's magic amulet, like Luke's light saber or Dorothy's ruby slippers. But then all but one of them lose, and we find out in this last song that they're all still doing just fine. They were wrong about the truck.

By the end, they all learn what to value and how to nurture that, how to keep their hands on what counts.

The truck wasn't the point after all, they discover. It was the journey, not the destination, the ordeal, the striving, that taught them all what they needed to learn. On the other hand, many of them wouldn't have taken that journey (ironically enough, with a truck that never goes anywhere), if not for this contest. In a way, they all needed the truck (the magic amulet) to find what they were missing. The contest shows them that they were on the wrong path. They were valuing things and by the end, they've all learned that people – human connections – matter more. Benny was right after all, it is a human drama thing. It's Into the Woods, except they're standing still for 94 hours.

So at its core, "Keep Your Hands on It" is about learning what to value and being faithful to that – people, dreams, the future.

If you want something,
Let your purpose show.
Hold it close to you,
Don't you let it go.
Let it be your guide,
Star of Bethlehem.
If you want something ...
Don't let go.

In other words, don't be distracted by the zero-sum, stuff-centric cultures that teaches us to be consumers and economic combatants, rather than members of the human family. Know what you value and hold it close. After all, this contest is really just a PR promotion, a way to sell trucks, an entirely commercial enterprise. But these people need something beyond that.

So does this lead us to any revelations about how to stage the finale? It has started to. I had considered making the truck a big part of the focus at the end, but after Dowdy and I talked about it, I saw that the whole point of the end of the show is that it's really not about the truck. With a direct-address song like this, my first instinct was to line the cast up across the stage, like "Seasons of Love." That staging is so honest, no pretense, no suspension of disbelief. We're just talking to you. I subverted that instinct because I didn't think musical theatre conventions apply to this show, but Dowdy suggested I reconsider my subversion. And I think he may be right.

In this song, every character directly tells the audience how they're doing and what they learned, and then the whole cast gives the audience a final summation. As I wrote earlier, the form of the song is sort of a modern musical theatre convention now, so maybe a modern musical theatre staging convention is exactly right, after all. Maybe the simplicity and directness of a "Seasons of Love" line is exactly what's called for here.

The more I ponder it, the more that seems right to me.

So I think we'll restage the finale and then live with it for a while and see how it feels. If it doesn't feel right, we'll keep pondering. There are no "right" answers when you're making theatre, but there are choices that make the story more clear and choices that make it less clear. Clarity is always the goal. Sondheim has said he cares less about whether an audience "likes" his show, since that's so subjective; what he cares most about is whether his show is clear, whether the narrative and themes of the show are as clear to the audience as possible. Because storytelling is his job, and clarity is a prerequisite for good storytelling.

We've still got four weeks till we open, so there's plenty of time to explore.

The adventure continues.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Jesus, I Just Got to Win

They announced the Tony Award nominations a few days ago. Yeah, big fuckin' deal. I care less and less about that as time goes on, and as the art form moves on beyond Broadway. Once upon a time, musical theatre and Broadway were the same, but not anymore. When I was a kid, the only chance to get a real taste of new work was to watch the performances on the Tonys every summer. Today, the coolest new work in the musical theatre is being produced all over the country, much of it by New Line.

True, many of the shows we produce start life on or off Broadway, but most of them are also not successful in New York, either because they're just not commercial enough (like Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson or Hands on a Hardbody) or because the Broadway industry isn't flexible or open enough to understand unusual new work (like High Fidelity or Cry-Baby). I can't blame writers for wanting a Broadway production; if successful, the financial rewards can be substantial, but it's also a deadly trap.

One immediate casualty of the Tony announcement was Jason Robert Brown's new musical The Bridges of Madison County. It got four Tony nominations, but other shows got more, and Bridges didn't get nominated for Best Musical. So it has to close. It just opened February 20. It will close this month after 137 performances.

I haven't seen it, but I love the songs I've heard, and most of my theatre friends in New York think it's really wonderful. But even if it's just a solid B+, it's still a solid B+ from Jason Fucking Robert Brown. He's my generation's Sondheim. And my impression is that it's much more than a solid B+.

So I posted to New Line's Facebook page, "Jason Robert Brown's The Bridges of Madison County didn't get enough Tony nominations so it has to close. Fuck the Tonys. There will be a tour of the show in 2015." And then I expanded on that on my own page: "This is why I hate awards and award shows. What would Broadway be like if producers didn't have to bow down to the Tonys, The New York Times, and tourists who don't speak English? Well, it would probably be more like the amazing, thrilling theatre going on across America every night... We'll just keep snatching up the wonderful work the tourist audiences can't appreciate and produce it here..."

Fuck yeah!

Then Jason Robert Brown posted to Facebook:

In the Unsurprising News Department, I don't love this business, you know. Whatever fantasy version of show business I thought I was getting into when I first moved to New York, well, I think that was over a long time ago, and it took me way too many years to adapt to the reality that the theater that Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim shaped and polished had been supplanted by something shinier and far less fragile. I don't know that I would have signed up for this version of Broadway, as if I ever had a choice in the matter, but what can I do? I put my hands on the keys and what comes out is this Musical Theater stuff. Can't help it.

The Bridges of Madison County is a beautiful show. I don't just mean that the songs are pretty or that the backdrop looks great, though I think both of those things are true – I mean it's a show that celebrates beauty. Beauty and passion and connection, and those are all things I believe in. Marsha said today that you're not really a writer until you know what YOUR story is, what the one story is that you're going to spend the rest of your life telling, and I think my story is about connection and passion, the yearning for them, the fighting for them, and the celebration of finding them. This is what I write. I'm so proud of it, and so proud of this show.

I don't feel unappreciated, let me assure you of that, and I also don't feel angry and I don't feel especially sad. It's hard watching my shows struggle, and I've done it every time a new show of mine opens – it's a relief to know that the struggle is over. I will miss these amazing performers and this beautiful production, but there's a new chapter ahead in this show's story; I'm looking forward to turning the page and getting to it.

But first, there are 20 more performances, and you will never hear this score sung better, or performed with more passion and connection, than by this cast and this orchestra. My best friends are in that orchestra pit, and we all got to make music together for several months. If you haven't experienced what they all can do when they are supported by a first-class production, you should go to the Schoenfeld before May 18. And if you have experienced it, you might want to go again if you can. I just think this is a very special thing we all did, and I'm looking forward to celebrating it as often as I can before we close down.

Thank you all for your wonderful notes and letters and tweets and statuses supporting the show; it has meant so much to all of us. We got a chance to put beauty into the world; the rest is just show business. What we do is that we love.

I pick good artistic heroes.

One of my New York friends posted about all this and said it was "unfortunate" for the art form. I responded, "I partially disagree. It's not unfortunate for the art form, just the commercial arm of the art form in New York City. Jason's show will have a long, healthy life in regional theatres all over the country for years to come, just like his other shows. Which is great news for the art form." She thinks Broadway is the art form; I think musical theatre is the art form.

I know I have a massive bias here, but if you just want to talk about the art form – not money, not career, not profit, just the work itself – then Broadway is only one piece of the puzzle. It's not insignificant because the "Broadway" label still helps sell tickets in St. Louis, to people who knew Broadway was once the center of American theatre and think it still is. I admit to using the "Broadway" brand in our press releases, because for some people that still matters. After all, I'm a producer as well as a director. I have to make the budget balance.

So call me a hypocrite. I'll cop to that, I guess. But Broadway only occasionally serves the art form. New Line serves the art form often. Because of New Line, High Fidelity, one of the most original, most well-crafted musicals in years, now has further life in regional theatres across the country, after its shameful molestation by both the Broadway industry and the Broadway critical establishment. The same thing is beginning to happen to Cry-Baby, which suffered a similarly ignominious fate on Broadway; and we fervently hope it will also be true of Hardbody. We redeem the shows that New York rejects. We prove that they are worthy and wonderful.

It's New York's loss. New York audiences never got to see High Fidelity or Cry-Baby done right. They never got to see how great both shows really are. St. Louis audiences did. That's how we serve the art form.

New Line produced Jason Robert Brown's Songs for a New World back in 1998, just three years after it made its low-profile, 12-performance, off Broadway debut in New York. Also that year we produced Bill Finn's March of the Falsettos, at that point still a little-known Playwrights Horizons project from the early 1980s. And in 1999, we produced Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins, which had run for just a few weeks at Playwrights Horizons a few years before, but never transferred to Broadway or off Broadway. Even back in the early years, New Line was seeking out exciting new work, whether or not those shows had long runs or won any awards, especially work that the commercial New York theatre industry couldn't or wouldn't understand.

Hands on a Hardbody got only three Tony nominations last year – two for actors, one for the score – and didn't win any. Maybe that makes large regional theatres think twice about producing it, but not us.

Back in 2004, the New York Times' public editor, Daniel Okrent, wrote a scathing piece about the Tony Awards, titled, "There's No Business Like Tony Awards Business." He wrote, "The awards are a real estate promotion, restricted as they are to shows put on in the 31 houses owned or controlled by the Shuberts, the Nederlanders and Jujamcyn, plus another nine thrown in by accident of geography or affinity to the idea of the Big Musical."

He also made this point:

If you ask people what awards recognize achievement in live theater, few will cite any but the Tonys. But if a play or musical doesn't appear in one of the Tony theaters, it just doesn't count. Nothing from the various Off or Off Off Broadway houses, even though they launched all but one winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama in the last decade (the exception originated in a nonprofit theater in Florida); nothing from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which in most years presents the most challenging theater in New York. You could put Anton Chekhov together with George Gershwin to collaborate on a musical directed by George Abbott, but if the curtain rises in a theater on 37th Street, tough luck. Unless the theater happened to be owned by Shubert, Nederlander or Jujamcyn. Given their near stranglehold on the Broadway business, they've got the throw weight to change the boundaries.

Is that really the measure we want to use to assess the quality of work in our art form? And now lots of cities across America have created local versions of the Tonys. In St. Louis we briefly had the Kevin Kline Awards, which were mismanaged into oblivion, and now we have the more modest, less problematic St. Louis Theater Circle Awards. But why do we need awards? Why do we have to declare one show or one performance "better" than another? I've never understood that.

I will never choose a show to produce because of awards. Or reviews. We've produced too many shows over the years, to universal acclaim from critics and audiences, that got no awards in New York and earned nothing but insults from the New York critics. But who cares, as long as the show itself is great?

Not long ago, we announced New Line's upcoming 24th season: Bonnie & Clyde, Jerry Springer the Opera, and The Threepenny Opera. The only criteria in choosing these shows were whether they were worth working on for us and whether we think St. Louis area audiences ought to see them. Bonnie & Clyde got nothing but brickbats from the critics, but I saw it in New York and I know it's a strong, interesting, well-crafted piece of theatre. I know our audience will love it.

People often say to me, "Remember, it's show business." Well, no, it's not. At New Line, it's theatre. Perhaps what they do on Broadway and at the Fox is show business, but what we do at New Line is art, not capitalism. It's not a business in any conventional sense. Does any legit business operate by losing money on every project and asking people to give money to offset that loss? Only nonprofits. The government created nonprofit tax status decades ago because they understood that some things should be beyond considerations of profit, that some things are inherently valuable to society. As fundamental as storytelling has always been to human existence and happiness, surely that's something that shouldn't be subject to the whims of the "free market," any more than our healthcare should.

So why do we make these great American storytellers – Stephen Sondheim, Jason Robert Brown, Bill Finn, Andrew Lippa, Stephen Schwartz, Tom Kitt, Amanda Green, Adam Guettel, Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, Steve Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens – suffer the indignity of being required to make a profit and win high-profile awards? Wouldn't it be better if all we required of them was their best work?

Well, at New Line, we couldn't give two shits over whether Hands on a Hardbody or The Bridges of Madison County were nominated for Best Musical Tony Awards. We don't produce Tony Awards; we produce musical theatre.

After reading Jason's thoughts about all this on Facebook, I'm even happier that I get to work here in St. Louis, away from all that bullshit, that I get to work for audiences who are open and adventurous, that I get to work with really brilliant, fearless artists on every show. People ask me why I'm not in New York. It's because I don't want to make commercial musical theatre. I just want to make good musical theatre, whether or not it's commercial, and the most interesting work usually isn't. Which is why ticket sales account for only about half our budget.

When a show costs millions of dollars to open, and is expected to earn that all back, what happens to the art? It gets forgotten or subverted.

But not at New Line.

Watch us prove to New York that they were as dead wrong about Hands on a Hardbody as they were about High Fidelity, Cry-Baby, bare, Passing Strange, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and The Wild Party.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. Read my 2012 post about the national high school musical theatre awards...