Heart Like a Hand Grenade

New Line has been in transition the last few years. The Great Plague of 2020 didn't really cause this transition, but it sped it up.

I remember when I turned forty (twenty years ago!!), I told my friends that New Line could not get "middle-aged" just because I was. It's one of the reasons we produce shows like bare and Be More Chill.  

But the biggest change since 2019 has been a turnover in the people who work with us. Some of our longtime New Line veterans left town and/or moved on to other life adventures.

Mike Dowdy-Windsor joined us as an actor in 2009, and he became our Associate Artistic Director in 2012, but he and his husband Dominic moved to California in 2022. But as board member (and occasional performer) Alison Helmer reminded me, New Line has been around thirty-two years, and every so often, we get a whole new generation of New Liners -- even while a good number of our longtime veterans stick around. Sometimes, that new generation brings the return of past New Liners, which is always a treat. And that's our secret sauce.

It's always a little sad when veteran New Liners move on, but it's also really exciting when a new generation joins us. So many of our actors this season are new to our company, and that's very exciting. It's so much fun to see what new things and different perspectives they bring to our work. At the same time, we still have some longstanding New Liners joining us again this season.

Clayton Humburg just played Johnny in American Idiot which opened this current season. Nine years ago, he joined us for the first time, in Heathers, and then as Rock and Roll Boyfriend in our last production of American Idiot. This was Clayton's eighth New Line show. Todd Schaefer first joined us in 2002, for Cabaret and then as Brad in Rocky Horror. Later this season, Todd returns to play Frank N. Furter, in his fifteenth New Line production. Chris Strawhun first joined us in 2010, in Evita, and he returns this season for his tenth New Line show, as Eddie and Dr. Scott in Rocky Horror. Ian McCreary first joined us in 2019 as one of the lovely and dangerous Cagelles in La Cage aux Folles, and this season he returned for his eighth New Line show with American Idiot. Victoria Pines first joined us in 2001 in The Cradle Will Rock, and she returns this season as Magenta in Rocky Horror and as Joanne in Rent, her fourth and fifth New Line shows.

Likewise, Chris Moore first joined us as an actor in Head Over Heels in 2020, but now he's our Associate Artistic Director and he was the lead director for American Idiot, the first time he's directed for New Line. (There will be more.)

It's this great mix that makes such great theatre -- the comfort and familiarity of working with our veteran New Liners, mixed with the energy and excitement of working with new people.

Part of that mix is also a very intentional diversity of race, gender, age, body type, and sexuality. We have actively focused on that diversity in our casting for decades, and I'm happy to say that this season will be our most diverse ever. That's due largely to the amazing new people who came to audition for us. And all those new people came to us largely because Chris Moore cares so deeply about that diversity and did some very active recruiting. I've always been proud that our casting has been race-blind, and we often cast actors of color in leading roles that are traditionally "white." But thanks to Chris, we're doing better in these efforts than ever before. (He's the driving force behind our January concert at the Sheldon, called Broadway Noir.) All of that is really important to me as Artistic Director, so I'm very grateful to Chris.

Sometimes the specific advantages of working with new people are a surprise. It wasn't until we were a couple weeks into rehearsal that it occurred to Chris and me that almost no one in our cast had even been born when the 9/11 attacks happened, and we were doing this show entirely born out of that event. What we eventually realized is that this was an advantage -- the characters had also never experienced 9/11 before. The biggest surprise is that they all found historical and emotional equivalents in today's world. It was welcome proof that this story, so specific in so many ways -- is truly universal and timeless. 

Also, many of these actors had never performed a piece of musical theatre this serious, this dark, this confrontational, and it was genuinely thrilling for many of them. I've been doing shows like this for so long that I forget the rush of discovering that there are so many musicals like this. All of this changed the show in lots of ways, obvious and subtle.

Several people came up to me after performances and told me sheepishly that they liked this production better than our production in 2016 that I directed. Every time it made me laugh, and I reassured them it was okay to like this one better. Of course, that got me thinking about how the two productions were different.

My conclusion was this. I think our 2016 production, much like Michael Mayer's original, was colder, more outraged, more rebellious, more political, more Brechtian -- more of a fuck-you to the audience. In contrast, this new production was more emotional and more human, and so the ending felt gentler this time. I had done my best to keep my fingers out of the process, to let Chris make the show his own, so the two productions really were different -- partly because of the different directors, and partly because of the different cast with different, more indirect connections to the story in these different times.

Same material, very different show, every bit as dramatic and powerful. That's cool.

It took me a while in my directing career, but I finally learned at some point that there are no "right" answers when you're directing a show, only stronger choices and weaker choices. And sometimes there are several strong choices which can take you down several different but parallel paths. As I reminded Chris, we never have to try to make it unique or fresh or different. That happens by itself and we shouldn't force it. Sondheim taught us that in Sunday in the Park with George:

Anything you do,

Let it come from you.
Then it will be new.
Give us more to see.

It feels a little odd that we're producing a whole season of shows we've done before, shows that originally debuted in 1973, 1994, and 2010, and yet they all feel (sadly) relevant again. But I know that in this dark, ugly, fraught time, these shows will help us navigate. We chose shows for this season about lost humanity, sexuality, and community. And because they are all modern musicals, all three are also about connection, and connection's arch-nemesis, "Othering." All things we need to be reminded of right now.

Even though we've produced these shows before, even though you may have seen them before, I promise you this -- we will give you more to see.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. To buy Rocky Horror tickets, click here, and to buy Rent tickets, click here.

P.P.S. To check out my newest musical theatre books, click here.

P.P.P.S. To donate to New Line Theatre, click here