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
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
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
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
...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."
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."
I'm Sitting on a Business That Has Zero Growth Potential
We start High Fidelity rehearsals tomorrow and I couldn't be more excited! Well, excited and scared...
Scared because pop music is not my home turf. Theatre music is. I only listened to mainstream pop music during one period of my life, senior year in high school through sophomore year in college, 1981-1984. During that time I listened to Casey Kasem religiously -- especially the year-end countdown! What suspense! (I hope you know I'm kidding. A little.)
But I've slowly been giving myself a History of Rock education over time -- early 1950s rock & roll for Grease; 1960s protest rock and acid rock for Hair; 1970s glam rock for Hedwig and Rocky Horror... I totally recommend the Time Life 10-part documentary, The History of Rock and Roll -- it's really good... tons of performance footage...
But High Fidelity is just amazing, a really smart, interesting, truthful, emotional show about the power of pop music in Americans' lives. Anybody who came of age after the early- to mid-1960s experiences music differently than those who came before us. Before that, pop music was an accompaniment to life; after that, it was an elemental part of life. I know some folks will argue that the 1950s were like that, too, but they weren't for most people, only for the dedicated few who understood and appreciated early rock & roll. But even for average, suburban teenagers, from the 1960s onward, music wasn't just fun; it was autobiographical.
To this day, the Top 40 songs from my senior year in high school pack an enormous emotional wallop for me because they carry with them such associations. When I hear the introduction to Kool & The Gang's "Celebration," I am once again cruising down Big Bend with my best friend Dave Englehart and we're singing at the top of our lungs. When I hear Alan Parsons' "Time," I'm back in the fall of 1982, after all the rest of my friends had left for college, but school didn't start for me till mid-September. I was so miserable, left alone with almost no friends, and "Time" would console me.
(Or did it make me sadder? Sometimes I wonder about that. To quote Rob in High Fidelity, did I listen to pop music because I was miserable or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?)
I understand the characters in this story on a gut level. I think this may be one of those shows that a certain portion of our audience will only partly understand, but for its target audience, it will connect to them in a way very few shows can.
This is going to be the most wonderful adventure, and I have an amazing cast to share it with. The whole cast is terrific (along with eight new people!), but my four leads are people I just love spending time with -- Jeff Wright as Rob, Aaron Lawson as Dick, Zak Farmer as Barry, and Kimi Short as Laura. We are going to have so much fun, we probably won't even think about how little money we make doing this...
I'll write more after the first rehearsal -- Lawson's on his way over to smoke some weed... Wait... I mean... uh... to talk about character and motivation... yeah, that's it...
I've said it before and I'll say it again -- I LOVE MY JOB!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Scared because pop music is not my home turf. Theatre music is. I only listened to mainstream pop music during one period of my life, senior year in high school through sophomore year in college, 1981-1984. During that time I listened to Casey Kasem religiously -- especially the year-end countdown! What suspense! (I hope you know I'm kidding. A little.)
But I've slowly been giving myself a History of Rock education over time -- early 1950s rock & roll for Grease; 1960s protest rock and acid rock for Hair; 1970s glam rock for Hedwig and Rocky Horror... I totally recommend the Time Life 10-part documentary, The History of Rock and Roll -- it's really good... tons of performance footage...
But High Fidelity is just amazing, a really smart, interesting, truthful, emotional show about the power of pop music in Americans' lives. Anybody who came of age after the early- to mid-1960s experiences music differently than those who came before us. Before that, pop music was an accompaniment to life; after that, it was an elemental part of life. I know some folks will argue that the 1950s were like that, too, but they weren't for most people, only for the dedicated few who understood and appreciated early rock & roll. But even for average, suburban teenagers, from the 1960s onward, music wasn't just fun; it was autobiographical.
To this day, the Top 40 songs from my senior year in high school pack an enormous emotional wallop for me because they carry with them such associations. When I hear the introduction to Kool & The Gang's "Celebration," I am once again cruising down Big Bend with my best friend Dave Englehart and we're singing at the top of our lungs. When I hear Alan Parsons' "Time," I'm back in the fall of 1982, after all the rest of my friends had left for college, but school didn't start for me till mid-September. I was so miserable, left alone with almost no friends, and "Time" would console me.
(Or did it make me sadder? Sometimes I wonder about that. To quote Rob in High Fidelity, did I listen to pop music because I was miserable or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?)
I understand the characters in this story on a gut level. I think this may be one of those shows that a certain portion of our audience will only partly understand, but for its target audience, it will connect to them in a way very few shows can.
This is going to be the most wonderful adventure, and I have an amazing cast to share it with. The whole cast is terrific (along with eight new people!), but my four leads are people I just love spending time with -- Jeff Wright as Rob, Aaron Lawson as Dick, Zak Farmer as Barry, and Kimi Short as Laura. We are going to have so much fun, we probably won't even think about how little money we make doing this...
I'll write more after the first rehearsal -- Lawson's on his way over to smoke some weed... Wait... I mean... uh... to talk about character and motivation... yeah, that's it...
I've said it before and I'll say it again -- I LOVE MY JOB!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Best of the Best - Tech Edition
While I'm gushing over Assassins (and avoiding my pre-production work on High Fidelity), I have to mention two elements that brought everything else together -- the lighting and the set.
David Carr and Jeff Breckel created such a wonderfully dark fantasy environment for this unusual show, from the strangely skewed target dominating the center of the stage, to the nightmarishly crooked carnival podium that leaned over to become a nightmarishly crooked bar in the saloon, to the Lichtenstein-esque pop art panels hanging above the assassins, one with a gun pointed at the audience, one with a comic book "POW," and a third with a red (blood-soaked?) woman screaming. Holy shit. This was one of those sets that was so perfectly in synch with both the material and with my approach to the show.
And then there was Steve Moore's lighting, truly one of the most beautiful lighting designs New Line has ever had, with beams of light slashing through the action (thanks to copious amounts of stage haze, courtesy of the ever-helpful Rep), shadows, shapes, bold, weird colors. This was expressionistic lighting to go with an expressionistic show. And it was truly beautiful, genuinely artful lighting. This Moore dude is fucking terrific! I hope he comes back to play with us some more...
These smart, exciting, inventive designers gave our show exactly what it needed -- the feeling of non-reality and also emotion. Musicals are, after all, about emotion before all else, but it's only the best designers who can evoke emotion in their designs. And these three guys nailed it.
Bravo, boys. And thank you.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
David Carr and Jeff Breckel created such a wonderfully dark fantasy environment for this unusual show, from the strangely skewed target dominating the center of the stage, to the nightmarishly crooked carnival podium that leaned over to become a nightmarishly crooked bar in the saloon, to the Lichtenstein-esque pop art panels hanging above the assassins, one with a gun pointed at the audience, one with a comic book "POW," and a third with a red (blood-soaked?) woman screaming. Holy shit. This was one of those sets that was so perfectly in synch with both the material and with my approach to the show.
And then there was Steve Moore's lighting, truly one of the most beautiful lighting designs New Line has ever had, with beams of light slashing through the action (thanks to copious amounts of stage haze, courtesy of the ever-helpful Rep), shadows, shapes, bold, weird colors. This was expressionistic lighting to go with an expressionistic show. And it was truly beautiful, genuinely artful lighting. This Moore dude is fucking terrific! I hope he comes back to play with us some more...
These smart, exciting, inventive designers gave our show exactly what it needed -- the feeling of non-reality and also emotion. Musicals are, after all, about emotion before all else, but it's only the best designers who can evoke emotion in their designs. And these three guys nailed it.
Bravo, boys. And thank you.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
The Best of the Best
Assassins was the last show on which I'll have the enormous pleasure of working with Matthew Korinko (for reasons he can reveal if he wants). Not only has he been one of the best friends I've ever had, but he's also been one of the finest, most talented, most intelligent actors I've ever worked with in my 27 years in the theatre. I shit you not.
Back in the fall of 2005, we were casting The Fantasticks, and we just didn't find the perfect guy to play El Gallo (i.e., The Cock), a kind of Devil/God/Zorro/Don Juan kind of guy, who seduces everyone in the show and speaks almost entirely in Beat poetry. He had to be good-looking, a strong singer, and -- because of the way I wanted to approach the show, as the product of the Beat Generation of the 1950s, returning the show to its intellectual and artistic roots -- he also had to be a hell of an actor, one who could handle speaking verse onstage.
So we finished the audition process and didn't have an El Gallo. And then we called in Thommy Crain, who had been working the check-in table for the audition, and we asked him if he could think of anyone who'd be right for this role. Without hesitation he said, "Matt Korinko." I had never heard of him (or at least I thought I hadn't; Matt swears he had auditioned for me for A New Brain but I still have no memory of that). Apparently, Matt had done The Fantasticks on the Goldenrod. Thommy thought our music director Chris Petersen would know how to find Matt.
Sure enough, a few days later, Matt arrived at my door to sing for me. The minute he opened his mouth I knew he was right for it. Handsome, masculine, smart, funny, with a terrific voice. I offered him the part and he accepted. Turns out he hadn't been on stage in three years and wasn't sure if he'd ever return. He had even stopped going to theatre because it depressed him to think that he'd never be back on stage.
He was brilliant in The Fantasticks, finding a depth of emotion and a complexity of character that I had never seen in this role. Matt's El Gallo had a past. He had regrets. He had an agenda that slowly revealed itself over the course of the show. Along with the rest of the outstanding cast, we made a hell of a show. (Thank you Thommy and Petersen!)
I knew during Fantasticks rehearsals that we were going to restage Bat Boy that spring and that I had to re-cast the role of Dr. Parker. (Jason Cannon had done it for us in 2003 and I thought he was wonderful in the role, but he had joined the union since then, so we couldn't use him again.) I waited until we were actually running Fantasticks scenes, to make sure Matt was as strong an actor as he seemed. He was.
So I offered him Dr. Parker. He accepted. And once again he was brilliant. Instead of making Parker a joke villain or a psychopath, Matt gave his character damage, pain, regret, sadness. Like Sweeney Todd, we understood why Dr. Parker became a monster. And in the climactic moment of the show -- "Your eyes, Meredith... He has your eyes..." he had the audience in tears. And believe me, it's not easy to get an audience to cry when your hero is a half-boy, half-bat. But that is the quality of the Bat Boy script and score, and the quality of the artistry of Matt Korinko onstage. He's just that good.
That fall, I offered him a role in a new musical I had written, the very strange, very fucked-up political satire Johnny Appleweed. I offered him the role of Jesus. As in Christ. This was an amiable, joke-cracking, pot-smoking, new-agey, fashionably ironic kind of Jesus, and it was perfect for Matt. He found such warmth and humor and joy in the part. He was nominated for a Kevin Kline Award for his performance. (And then at the award ceremony, the original Judge Turpin, Edmund Lyndeck, presented that category and totally mangled Matt's last name. We teased Matt endlessly about it.)
In spring 2007, we produced Grease, putting back all the obscenities (and there was a lot about that show that had been sanitized), putting it back the way it was in the beginning -- rough, raw, rowdy, vulgar. But we didn't have a Vince Fontaine (my personal favorite role). Even though it was a small part, I asked Matt to step into it, and he was really wonderful, totally capturing the sound and manner of those early rock and roll DJs. What a fucking trouper he is!
Then came Urinetown. Who else could have played Officer Lockstock? It's like the role was written for him, honest-to-God. He was utterly brilliant -- funny, scary, disturbing, ridiculous. He and Amy Leone (now Amy Kelly), who played Little Sally, were an oddball match made in heaven. The whole cast was outstanding, but Matt gave one of those once-in-a-lifetime performances. The audience just fell in love with him every night.
Then came Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll -- a new show we created, a sort of abstract concept musical, more than a revue but hard to categorize. He sang the heart-wrenching "One of the Good Guys" but also the hilarious "Smut." Another excellent performance.
And then his final performance with New Line, John Wilkes Booth in Assassins. When I first got the idea that we should bring this show back (while watching the news coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings), the very first thought in my mind was, "I've got to get Korinko and Aaron Allen to play Booth and Oswald." And so I did. And they were both magnificent. Korinko has such incredible stage presence, such emotional power in his performance; but also profound honesty and depth. I've done Assassins three times now, and I've seen other productions, including the recent Broadway revival, but I've never seen a Booth of the caliber of Korinko's. Not even close.
I will miss him so much both personally and professionally. He's truly one of a kind, and I have been so fortunate in having him to work with, having an artist of that level of skill and intellect to realize onstage my often bizarre ideas. He and I were a true artistic match. We belonged together as director and actor. We wanted the same things from theatre, we believed in the same kind of theatre, we both deeply loved the work we did together.
There's no way I will let this man fade out of my life, and though I won't see him as much now, he will never be far out of mind. And if I'm really lucky, he'll come back once in a while as a Guest Artist. That would be awesome indeed.
I adore you, Matthew.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Back in the fall of 2005, we were casting The Fantasticks, and we just didn't find the perfect guy to play El Gallo (i.e., The Cock), a kind of Devil/God/Zorro/Don Juan kind of guy, who seduces everyone in the show and speaks almost entirely in Beat poetry. He had to be good-looking, a strong singer, and -- because of the way I wanted to approach the show, as the product of the Beat Generation of the 1950s, returning the show to its intellectual and artistic roots -- he also had to be a hell of an actor, one who could handle speaking verse onstage.
So we finished the audition process and didn't have an El Gallo. And then we called in Thommy Crain, who had been working the check-in table for the audition, and we asked him if he could think of anyone who'd be right for this role. Without hesitation he said, "Matt Korinko." I had never heard of him (or at least I thought I hadn't; Matt swears he had auditioned for me for A New Brain but I still have no memory of that). Apparently, Matt had done The Fantasticks on the Goldenrod. Thommy thought our music director Chris Petersen would know how to find Matt.
Sure enough, a few days later, Matt arrived at my door to sing for me. The minute he opened his mouth I knew he was right for it. Handsome, masculine, smart, funny, with a terrific voice. I offered him the part and he accepted. Turns out he hadn't been on stage in three years and wasn't sure if he'd ever return. He had even stopped going to theatre because it depressed him to think that he'd never be back on stage.
He was brilliant in The Fantasticks, finding a depth of emotion and a complexity of character that I had never seen in this role. Matt's El Gallo had a past. He had regrets. He had an agenda that slowly revealed itself over the course of the show. Along with the rest of the outstanding cast, we made a hell of a show. (Thank you Thommy and Petersen!)
I knew during Fantasticks rehearsals that we were going to restage Bat Boy that spring and that I had to re-cast the role of Dr. Parker. (Jason Cannon had done it for us in 2003 and I thought he was wonderful in the role, but he had joined the union since then, so we couldn't use him again.) I waited until we were actually running Fantasticks scenes, to make sure Matt was as strong an actor as he seemed. He was.
So I offered him Dr. Parker. He accepted. And once again he was brilliant. Instead of making Parker a joke villain or a psychopath, Matt gave his character damage, pain, regret, sadness. Like Sweeney Todd, we understood why Dr. Parker became a monster. And in the climactic moment of the show -- "Your eyes, Meredith... He has your eyes..." he had the audience in tears. And believe me, it's not easy to get an audience to cry when your hero is a half-boy, half-bat. But that is the quality of the Bat Boy script and score, and the quality of the artistry of Matt Korinko onstage. He's just that good.
That fall, I offered him a role in a new musical I had written, the very strange, very fucked-up political satire Johnny Appleweed. I offered him the role of Jesus. As in Christ. This was an amiable, joke-cracking, pot-smoking, new-agey, fashionably ironic kind of Jesus, and it was perfect for Matt. He found such warmth and humor and joy in the part. He was nominated for a Kevin Kline Award for his performance. (And then at the award ceremony, the original Judge Turpin, Edmund Lyndeck, presented that category and totally mangled Matt's last name. We teased Matt endlessly about it.)
In spring 2007, we produced Grease, putting back all the obscenities (and there was a lot about that show that had been sanitized), putting it back the way it was in the beginning -- rough, raw, rowdy, vulgar. But we didn't have a Vince Fontaine (my personal favorite role). Even though it was a small part, I asked Matt to step into it, and he was really wonderful, totally capturing the sound and manner of those early rock and roll DJs. What a fucking trouper he is!
Then came Urinetown. Who else could have played Officer Lockstock? It's like the role was written for him, honest-to-God. He was utterly brilliant -- funny, scary, disturbing, ridiculous. He and Amy Leone (now Amy Kelly), who played Little Sally, were an oddball match made in heaven. The whole cast was outstanding, but Matt gave one of those once-in-a-lifetime performances. The audience just fell in love with him every night.
Then came Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll -- a new show we created, a sort of abstract concept musical, more than a revue but hard to categorize. He sang the heart-wrenching "One of the Good Guys" but also the hilarious "Smut." Another excellent performance.
And then his final performance with New Line, John Wilkes Booth in Assassins. When I first got the idea that we should bring this show back (while watching the news coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings), the very first thought in my mind was, "I've got to get Korinko and Aaron Allen to play Booth and Oswald." And so I did. And they were both magnificent. Korinko has such incredible stage presence, such emotional power in his performance; but also profound honesty and depth. I've done Assassins three times now, and I've seen other productions, including the recent Broadway revival, but I've never seen a Booth of the caliber of Korinko's. Not even close.
I will miss him so much both personally and professionally. He's truly one of a kind, and I have been so fortunate in having him to work with, having an artist of that level of skill and intellect to realize onstage my often bizarre ideas. He and I were a true artistic match. We belonged together as director and actor. We wanted the same things from theatre, we believed in the same kind of theatre, we both deeply loved the work we did together.
There's no way I will let this man fade out of my life, and though I won't see him as much now, he will never be far out of mind. And if I'm really lucky, he'll come back once in a while as a Guest Artist. That would be awesome indeed.
I adore you, Matthew.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Post-Mortem
Now that we've escaped the mind-numbing, truth-mangling insanity of working at the Ivory Theatre, now that we never again have to talk to Donna Perrino, the crazy bitch who "managed" the theatre (in the loosest possible sense of that word), I can stand back, free of Pepto and Pepcid both, and look back on the misadventures of the past eighteen months a little more objectively. Was it worth it? Tough to say. The Ivory was the worst place to work we've ever encountered in our 17 years of operation...
But...
Back in the fall, when we opened the Ivory with Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll, the St. Louis Archdiocese successfully got a court order to shut down our preview, though they backed off when they saw how stupid they were being, and the rest of the run went on as scheduled. But it was all over the papers, on TV news, all over the web -- and though it was a horrible, chaotic mess we had to wade through, it did pretty much permanently cement our reputation as "the bad boy of musical theatre." How many other musical theatre companies have been shut down by the Archdiocese? Hmmm...???
Yeah, I didn't think so.
And with Assassins in March, we sold out several nights and came close on others -- and this in a house that held 202, about 50 seats more than we had at the ArtLoft. So it was good we were in a bigger house for Assassins. And though the Ivory never felt aesthetically right for the kind of work New Line does, it really had the perfect look for Assassins. The red velvet curtains and all the conventional theatre trappings really made it feel "historical," like it was Booth's theatre, like he had invited us all into his home to tell this story. And the horror of the show played out more ironically and more disturbingly in this old-fashioned-looking "jewel box" theatre than it would have in a funky downtown blackbox.
So was moving to the Ivory a mistake? Yes, in most ways it was. A really big mistake. But in other ways, it wasn't a bad way station for us. Staying there any longer would have put me in a mental hospital, but for these two particular shows we did there, maybe it wasn't quite as wrong as it sometimes felt...
Or maybe it's just easier for me to stand back and be philosophical now that WE'RE FREE!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
But...
Back in the fall, when we opened the Ivory with Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll, the St. Louis Archdiocese successfully got a court order to shut down our preview, though they backed off when they saw how stupid they were being, and the rest of the run went on as scheduled. But it was all over the papers, on TV news, all over the web -- and though it was a horrible, chaotic mess we had to wade through, it did pretty much permanently cement our reputation as "the bad boy of musical theatre." How many other musical theatre companies have been shut down by the Archdiocese? Hmmm...???
Yeah, I didn't think so.
And with Assassins in March, we sold out several nights and came close on others -- and this in a house that held 202, about 50 seats more than we had at the ArtLoft. So it was good we were in a bigger house for Assassins. And though the Ivory never felt aesthetically right for the kind of work New Line does, it really had the perfect look for Assassins. The red velvet curtains and all the conventional theatre trappings really made it feel "historical," like it was Booth's theatre, like he had invited us all into his home to tell this story. And the horror of the show played out more ironically and more disturbingly in this old-fashioned-looking "jewel box" theatre than it would have in a funky downtown blackbox.
So was moving to the Ivory a mistake? Yes, in most ways it was. A really big mistake. But in other ways, it wasn't a bad way station for us. Staying there any longer would have put me in a mental hospital, but for these two particular shows we did there, maybe it wasn't quite as wrong as it sometimes felt...
Or maybe it's just easier for me to stand back and be philosophical now that WE'RE FREE!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
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