Connection in an Isolating Age

I started this process loving Rent, but I ended up also being endlessly impressed by it and constantly blown away by the level of craftsmanship and artistry in both the text and the music, much of which most people probably don't even register consciously.

I didn't until now.

The more I watched our show, the more I started noticing the various musical themes Jonathan Larson uses throughout the show (the "I Should Tell You" theme, the "Halloween" accompaniment figure, the "Santa Fe" vamp, "No Day But Today") and the many textual themes that are everywhere (fire, especially as a metaphor for life force; references to Mimi's eyes; the idea of "rent" to connote the temporary nature of life and love; and more than anything, connection).

I used to think that Rent was brilliant but messy, and I assumed that was because Larson died before he could do his final revisions. The original production team used Larson's notes to try to make some of those late changes, but we don't know what else Larson would have changed. But now, having spent three months deep inside Rent, I think my perception of the show was wrong. It's not messy; it's wild. It's rock and roll, in its mindset and attitude. But everything about it is very intentional, very carefully wrought. Larson knew exactly what he was doing.

And it's also an incredibly well structured opera, using all the devices of classical opera, recitative, arias, duets, trios, quartets, etc. The end of "Christmas Bells" – intricately built, full-cast, five-part counterpoint – is as operatic as you can get.

But as brilliant a lyricist and composer as Larson was, his real triumph with Rent was its story and its very conception. Producing the show creates the same kind of bohemian family that the show depicts. It hit me often during the run, as I watched our show, that we're not just telling a story about a family of bohemians; we are a family of bohemians. And that built-in reality supercharges the show's and the audience's emotion.

We were all so happy that the hardcore RentHeads all loved our production so much (and many of them saw it multiple times), even though I know many of them were a tad apprehensive beforehand about what New Line might be doing to their beloved show. Quite a few of those RentHeads told us afterward that they've seen the show 20 (or more) times, but they thought ours was the best.

That's pretty humbling.

But the greatest joy for me was introducing Rent to the many people who had never seen it before but came to see ours. A lot of them had consciously avoided Rent for one reason or another. And I also loved convincing the folks who'd seen Rent and didn't like it, that it really is as brilliant and powerful as we all think it is. We converted a lot of people. Including a bunch of reviewers.

The other joy was watching, night after night, the intricate staging, almost all of it bordering on choreography, that we created for this show, this rowdy, soulful, perpetual motion machine. So many of the coolest moments came from my assistant director Mike Dowdy. He can look at a moment onstage and instantly know what would make it a little richer or a little clearer.

Not since The Wild Party have we climbed a mountain like this. Though it was never my conscious goal, though my only agenda was to tell this story as clearly as possible, our staging was so totally different from the original. I see in our Rent staging the many lessons we learned from The Wild Party. Much of our staging for Rent was expressionistic, suggesting the feel and energy of the streets of New York, or the interior emotions of these characters. It was often visual poetry, visual metaphor, more than literal representation.

And like most of our work over the past decade or so, a lot of our staging was very cinematic. I learned from Michael Bennett and Tommy Tune how to use cinematic language on stage – close-ups, long shots, pans, split-screens, montages, focus pulls – and that vocabulary came in really handy on this show (as it had on Wild Party).

One of my favorite things was what we called "the foot traffic." Upstage, behind the action of several songs, the cast simply walked back and forth across the stage, in a perpetual loop. It felt and looked silly in rehearsal, but my gut told me it would work. And on the set, with the lights and costumes, it became the sidewalks of New York. During "Santa Fe," the foot traffic moved from far upstage, to circling our giant moon, center-stage. It was almost like a film close-up, and it gave the impression that these friends were moving through New York as they talked. In "Without You," the foot traffic returned, but this time slow, heavy, melancholy, mirroring the emotions of Mimi and Roger. And together with the lyric, the endless loop of pedestrians suggested time passing, as the leads emerged slowly downstage out of the generic city life, to return to our focus. The foot traffic device was a leap of faith to be sure, but it worked.

And then there was the moon.

In our first conversation about Rent, I told our scenic designer Rob Lippert the one thing I needed was a giant, raked, circular platform, painted like the moon, dead-center, big enough to seat sixteen people around it. And god bless him, he gave me exactly that, and we put that moon to such good use! It was Maureen's stage, a room where the support group meets, tables at the flea market, the beds of our eight lead characters, the table at the Life Cafe, and a kind of abstract limbo space for interior monologue songs.

Last night during strike several of us were talking about how it will never seem right again to see "La Vie Boheme" at a long straight table. Using our moon as the table changed that song so profoundly, to set it at a round table, with some of the actor's backs to us, with all these friends facing each other during this wild, playful number, performing for each other. I think it added enormous energy to the number, it made it funnier, rowdier, more joyful. It gave the number a surprising sense of reality. From the audience, it felt like we were at the next table, rather than like the Act I finale was being performed for us.

The only thing we did with the show that I thought Rent fans would dislike is we moved Angel's death slightly later. In the script, she dies at the end of "Without You." In our production, it happened (more expressionistically) during her solo verse in "Contact." And we left Angel onstage for the rest of the show, up on the fire escape, watching over her friends, literally an angel in heaven. So many people told me how much they loved that. It made that whole last part of the show so much more intense, more emotional, more beautiful.

As our Rent journey comes to an end, I find myself so grateful to this cast of fearless, honest, fascinating actors. Most of the leads were shocked we cast them in these roles, but they all turned in brilliant, subtle, powerful performances. As I have the privilege of doing every so often, I taught them something about what they're capable of, something they didn't know about themselves. Some of them were scared because they aren't the usual physical types for the roles, but our audiences embraced them all so completely. These characters looked like they lived in the real world, rather than on a Broadway stage or in a Hollywood movie. And though I'm obviously biased, I think the acting in our production was the best, deepest, more authentic acting I've ever seen in Rent. And our often very different characterizations made more sense.

Evan Fornachon as Roger was the heart and soul of the show. We had worked with him only once before, in the ensemble of Cry-Baby. He's only nineteen, but he was so easy to direct, so great to work with, and his performance was nothing short of extraordinary. Not a phony moment anywhere. Rather than a bad boy rocker, this Roger was an artistic introvert (we gave him really long bangs to hide behind), which made his scenes with Mimi so much more vulnerable, so much sweeter. He's one of those actors who's completely open to everything, and though he already knew Rent backwards and forwards, he never hesitated for a moment when we led him down a very different Rent road. One other thing about Evan – every single time you give him a note, he says "Thank you." It's a little thing, but it's really nice. To some extent, that's just Evan, the nicest guy you'll ever meet, but it also tells you that he understands the note, and it shows you his mindset, that he knows we give him notes to help him create his best possible performance. Some actors are defensive and perceive notes as criticism rather than building blocks. All those thank yous were so nice.

Jeremy Hyatt as Mark brought such energy and wry humor to his role as narrator. I learned from the 2011 off Broadway revival, that casting these characters as young as they're written to be (which doesn't usually happen) makes the story much richer and much sadder. (Jeremy just turned 21.) The friendship between Roger and Mark felt so incredibly authentic because Evan and Jeremy really are good friends (which we didn't know when we cast them), and they were utterly fearless in their big fight scene in "Goodbye Love." There's nothing more dramatic onstage than a real knock-down-drag-out fight, and they delivered. It was so sad to see these close friends screaming at each other, lashing out, bringing each other to the verge of tears. Evan and Jeremy both have great voices, but they're also already serious, accomplished actors.

And then there's Anna Skidis who played Mimi. She wasn't sure she was up to this at first, but Dowdy and I never doubted her for a second. She has a huge, gorgeous voice, but she almost always plays the wacky character roles. This role was a wild departure for her, but we knew she had this in her. We knew she was a good enough actor to find and inhabit this complicated woman. And we were right. Anna was brilliant every night, funny, emotional, ironic, damaged, sexy, hopeful...

Now everybody knows Anna isn't just a wacky character actor. What's extra cool is that she's now moving on to a completely different kind of role, as Norma in New Line's Hands on a Hardbody. Also, moving on to Hardbody is another of our new folks, Marshall Jennings who played Tom Collins.

I saw Marshall in a production of Parade and was mightily impressed by him as an actor and singer. From the very first rehearsal, I felt so confident about Marshall. He asked lots of really smart questions, and we could tell from those questions that he was on exactly the right path. He was a different Collins, much funnier, less secure, more emotionally open. I can't imagine a better, more interesting Collins. The relationship between Collins and Luke Steingruby's more Zen-like, more ladylike Angel was so cool, so believable, so sweet, that Collins' eulogy was almost unbearably emotional. And this reading of Angel really supported our choice to make her a literal angel for the second half of Act II.

The triumph of Shawn Bowers' portrayal of Benny was that in our production Benny wasn't a dick (which is what I've usually seen in Rent). He was a basically decent guy (okay, aside from cheating on his wife) who really did not understand his friends' Bohemian worldview, a guy who really was trying to do something he thought would be good for him and his friends. Shawn's Benny seemed not to understand how he and his friends had grown apart. He was more complicated in more interesting ways. And once again, Shawn was totally easy to direct. Any note Dowdy or I ever gave him would be fully integrated into his performance the next time we ran that scene, even if it was just twenty minutes later.

The same was true of Cody LaShea who played Joanne, also new to us. Some actors legitimately need time to merge our notes with their work, but actors like Shawn and Cody, who deliver instantaneously, are such a gift to a director. Cody's Joanne was so real, no artifice, no "acting." And she was always open to anything we asked of her. One of the big surprises of our production was the obvious, palpable love between Maureen (played by the world's most versatile actor Sarah Porter) and Joanne. Because Sarah's Maureen wasn't the ice bitch she usually is, because our Maureen was so funny and so weirdly charming, the audience really loved her, which made the audience invested in Maureen and Joanne's relationship. In so many nonverbal ways, Sarah and Cody gave us a detailed arc of the ups and downs of their relationship, as they both learn how to accept and love each other as they are. At least in our production, this is the relationship that has the best chance of lasting.

And let's be honest, nobody's ever seen an "Over the Moon" like Sarah's. Not only was it brilliant and hilarious, it also made every other version look bland and uninteresting by comparison. The only direction I gave her was two specific moves to match certain words, and then I told her all I needed beyond that was that every choice in the performance was something Maureen had thought about a long time; no matter how bad her choices are, she fully believes in them. I told her she could do anything she wanted and it didn't have to be the same every night. (That's not something I often say to an actor, but I really trust her.) This wasn't an "Over the Moon" designed to get cheap laughs (though Sarah is a brilliant comedian), it was designed to come as organically as possible from the character. And that's what made it so very funny. It really was a revelation. Which I don't think anyone expected.

Our cast as a whole was extraordinary, not only when they were singing, but also in the detailed characters they all created in each scene, even when they were just in the background. This wasn't an ensemble; this was a community. And that brought such life and reality to the story. And our musicians and designers also did extraordinary work. And while I'm at it, it's so nice to have two people in our booth, Kerrie and Gabe, who are really good at their jobs, incredibly nice people, and both planning to stick around for a while!

I also want to offer up a public thank-you to Mike Dowdy. He's been acting with us since 2009, and in 2012 we made him New Line's associate artistic director. He's directed Next to Normal and Rent with me, and for the foreseeable future, he's now going to direct all our shows with me. He's a master problem-solver when I get stuck, but he's also a fount of great ideas. And we're so utterly on the same wave length. Many times during Hell Week, I'd lean over and whisper something to him and he'd laugh because he'd just written down that same note. He and I have exactly the same taste and aesthetic, and I do much better work when he's at my side.

Finally, I wish I could thank Jonathan Larson. I often have the privilege of talking to the writers of the shows we produce, which can be so helpful. But I'll never get to tell Jonathan how deeply we loved working on his show, how much we all owe him, how much we all wish we could have seen what else he would have written.

It's as if Sondheim had died after Company, or as if Kander and Ebb had died after Cabaret.

We can't thank Jonathan, but we can bring his story to furious, joyful, rowdy, beautiful life, and we can share it with the thousands of people who came to see us during the run. We can keep Jonathan alive because he's everywhere in this show. Larson wrote before he died that Rent is about celebrating life, even in the face of death. That's also what life's about. And that's how we keep Jonathan alive.

We celebrate.

We have to say goodbye to the Alphabet City Avant Garde now, but we've all been touched so deeply by this show that these Bohemians will always be with us. Like Hair, working on Rent changes you.

And really, if you don't walk out of the theatre different than when you came in, what's the point? You could just stay home and watch a sitcom. As I've said for a long time (and will keep saying for a long time), people don't go to the theatre (or the movies) for escape; they go for connection, "in an isolating age."

It's so hard to let go of something this wonderful. But a week from tonight, we have our first rehearsal for Hands on a Hardbody. So I have to move on. But I'll never forget this experience.

I love my job, and I love the New Liners.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

No Other Path, No Other Way

I've always been uncomfortable with awards. I hate the idea of competition in art. The dozens of theatre companies in St. Louis are not in competition with each other. Someone can see a New Line show one weekend and a HotCity show the next weekend. It's always bothered me when local theatre companies claim to be the "best" or "premier" something-or-other. It's both nonsensical (who's to say who's "best" and by whose standard?) and it's sort of uncool too, explicitly saying you're better than the rest of us...

But awards kind of do the same thing. You're the best, so you're not.

In my experience, the companies that do really exceptional work don't have to tell us they're exceptional; the work, the audiences, and the reviews speak for themselves.

Full disclosure: During the years when St. Louis had the Kevin Kline Awards, and now with the St. Louis Theater Circle Awards, New Line has been nominated for multiple awards every year, but none of us ever won anything. But that's more than fine with me. We often joked that winning anything would ruin our reputation as "the bad boy of musical theatre."

Our proud losing streak was broken this week when Rob Lippert won the St. Louis Theater Circle Award for his lighting for Night of the Living Dead. Thanks for ruining everything, Rob! The rest of us who were nominated this year had the decency to lose again!

But also that night, the Theater Circle presented me with a special award for New Line's body of work over the past twenty-three seasons. As always, it made a little uncomfortable, but at least in this case, it wasn't about "winning" or competition; it was just a really nice compliment, an acknowledgement of our longevity and the fascinating, alternative work New Line has become known for.

My folks came to see me accept the award, and to my surprise, so did my high school drama teacher, Judy Rethwisch, who set me on my current path more than any other single person.

Lynn Venhaus of the Belleveille News-Democrat, introduced me (with text written by Judith Newmark):

Spend a few years on our side of the lights, and gradually you're bound to notice something: Point of view. You learn what kinds of material, performances and style different theaters cultivate. In time you may conclude that different theaters, like different actors or singers, have their own voices.

Since 1991, when it was founded by artistic director Scott Miller, New Line Theatre has developed one of the clearest, most distinctive voices we have heard. You know a New Line show from the minute you walk into whatever intimate room it's making its current home.

That voice will be socially aware, and it will be politically to the left. It will be musical, and there's a fair chance it will be music from a show you've never seen, or possibly heard of, before.

On the other hand, it will probably feature performers you recognize, members of New Line's informal repertory company. It won't offer much in the way of eye candy, but it will probably boast a stripped-down, ripped-stocking style that has its own louche charm.

Above all, it will be smart.

Sometimes people love New Line's shows. Sometimes they find them offensive. Occasionally they even may shrug. But no matter how the audience reacts, Scott Miller has built a theater with an unmistakable voice of its own. That's something to cherish, and, for us, to honor. We are happy to present Scott with a special Theater Circle award for New Line's body of work.

And here's what I said when I accepted the award:

Literally since before I can remember I was in love with musical theatre. They tell me when I was four they took me to see The Sound of Music and I sang out loud during the entire film. I would’ve been really angry if I was in that audience.

All I’ve ever wanted to do my whole life – literally my whole life – is make musicals. But you cannot do that alone. And I’ve realized over the years that all my crazy ideas, and all the bizarre shows I pick, and all the adventures I want to go on, don’t really matter unless I have really talented, smart, and really fearless artists working with me – actors, musicians, designers, tech people, everybody. New Line is what it is because of the people who work with us, and I’m really grateful to everybody who’s worked with us over the years.

And I want to make sure everyone remembers that St. Louis is an amazing theatre town. And I also want to make the point out that our art form, the American musical theatre, has never been this exciting, or vigorous, or varied, or surprising, and I’m incredibly thrilled that I get to work in it every day. So thank you very much.

And I really meant all of that. New Line may be guided by my ideas, but the cool work only happens when a whole bunch of theatre artists buy into my ideas and go on the adventure with me.

It was particularly nice to receive this award during our sold-out run of Rent, because this show embodies one of the things New Line does really well, giving audiences a fresh look at a show they thought they already knew. People who've seen Rent done the traditional way twenty times still love our production, and so do the people who've never seen Rent, and to our great surprise, so do the people who've seen Rent before but didn't like it. Until now.

Awards mean very little to me (other than discomfort). Audiences are what matter to me. But this award was a little different. It was about New Line's contribution to the artistic life of our city. And that's pretty cool. And the award came from the local reviewers, who've all seen our work over time, who all write very intelligently about our work, who all really know our body of work.

It makes me uncomfortable when people come up to me after shows and praise me personally. I love it when people come up and gush about our work. It's not me who makes that magic onstage – I'm just the shepherd. So getting this award for New Line's "body of work" honors not just me, but all the New Liners.

As it should be.

The rest of the Rent run is sold-out, and then we get one week off before Hands on a Hardbody rehearsals start. No rest for the fearless.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Everything is Rent.

It's been about three weeks since I've blogged. Sorry about that. Opening a show always takes a lot out of me, and usually leaves me half brain dead. (I don't know how I once did this while also holding down a full-time job.) And even though 90% of my job is done on opening night, it's still very hard for me to focus on anything else during our four-week run. Sometimes I have to, sometimes we have to audition the next show, but not this time.

Though despite my art-stupor, and thanks to ridiculous, record-breaking ticket sales, I was able to pay some bills that we wouldn't otherwise be able to pay till we close. Or well after we close...

Getting Rent ready and opened wasn't super-hard, but it was overwhelming. There was just so much to work out in this show – not only a big cast, but lots of tech, including sound effects and sixteen body mics. Luckily, we have exceptional people working on every aspect of this show, so everything came together beautifully. No crises, no big problems to solve. But it was still overwhelming.

Even more overwhelming has been the reception to our show. We've already sold out five of our first six shows, and it looks like the rest will probably sell out as well. I knew Rent would sell well, but I didn't know it would sell this well, far better than Hair, Rocky Horror, Bat Boy, Grease...

And my favorite part of this experience is that people who've never seen Rent before all seem to love our production, and people who've seen Rent fifteen times also seem to love our production. I was worried about that second group because our Rent has turned out completely different from any other Rent I've ever seen, and I thought the hard-core Rentheads might object to those differences. Character interpretations are different, the actors' physical types are different, the costumes are very different, the set is wildly different, which also means the staging is wildly different – we've staged the death scene in Act II so utterly unlike any other production. But it turns out that not only do the Rentheads accept this very different take on the show, they fully embrace it.

And there's a third group – people who don't really like Rent. Several reviewers have admitted they were in that camp... until they saw our production. That may be the biggest compliment of all.

Check out these reviews...

“If you think you've seen Rent before, you really haven't. . . This is a must-see show, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. . . Scott Miller's direction, with the able assistance of Mike Dowdy, is a revelation. . . Rent is a modern classic, and New Line's wonderful production shows us why.” – Chris Gibson, BroadwayWorld
Read the whole review here.

“This Rent has a completely different vibe from the big show that toured the country. Intimate and raw, this production makes the story coherent and the music effective, instead of merely loud. Yes, size matters – but not in the way we usually think it does.” – Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Read the whole review here.

“This is a Rent that is sharp, incisive and viscerally moving. These characters matter; their struggles to find themselves in the wastelands of their early twenties are a potent reminder of what it's like to feel lost in your own life, and that even small steps toward maturity can feel immense. In New Line's hands, Rent is a show that deserves every bit of its formidable reputation as the musical that revivified musicals for the next generation. . . It is a masterpiece of stagecraft, a composition as visually stunning as it is sonically powerful.” – Paul Friswold, The Riverfront Times
Read the whole review here.

“Jonathan Larson's 1996 rock musical unfolds to epic proportions in this lively new production. It's also sweet and funny and beautiful, under the direction of Scott Miller. . . It almost seems Mr. Miller is choosing his seasons nowadays for sheer emotional complexity, along with New Line's usual focus on strong musicianship. And the results have been enthralling. Rent continues the company's recent trend of bringing stunning characters furiously to life, in all their contradictions.” – Richard Green, TalkinBroadway
Read the whole review here.

"An intimate, emotionally charged production filled with memorable performances. . . Director Scott Miller and assistant Mike Dowdy have assembled a uniformly talented, fearless cast, and the two excel in pulling out the small moments that illuminate character development. The presence of a guiding hand is clear throughout the production, yet the movements and character nuances feel almost organic, as if each actor pulled his or her role from the inside out. The result is a unified cast that creates a truly bohemian community on the stage. And this feeling is intensified in the group numbers, where layered harmonies blend seamlessly, rising and falling with the emotion of the story." – Tina Farmer, KDHX
Read the whole review here.

“With the current local production of Rent, the question was could New Line Theatre show me something the national tour hadn’t? The answer came last Saturday night: Yes. Yes, they could. . . Undoubtedly, the intimacy of a small production helps to make the story more sincere, but it’s more than that. Director Scott Miller has removed sole focus on a handful of characters to focus on the cast as a whole, and this helps to view the work as a singular organism, with a singular meaning and purpose. Even the music seemed better, with the excellent voices and performances by the cast and the New Line band under the direction of Justin Smolik, two things you can always count on at New Line. . . Everything works together throughout the entire production, top to bottom, for a powerhouse evening of theater.” – Christopher Reilly, Alive Magazine
Read the whole review here.

“Leave it to New Line Theater to give this seminal work a fresh spin. The result is an electric, enthralling presentation of the landmark Pulitzer-Prize, Tony-winning musical that ran for 12 years on Broadway. . . [The actors'] zeal propelled the show's intensity, and it seemed like we were seeing some of these characters for the first time.” – Lynn Venhaus, Belleville News-Democrat
Read the whole review here.

“The new concept and the advantage of intimacy that New Line always offers, makes this one a big, fat hit. . . It’s a total effort that shows the diversity and depth of New Line talent. Scott Miller has once again put his personal stamp on a classic show and it turns out to be yet another audience pleaser. . . this score is pulsating, tender and just a pure delight. Now we have a production that matches these great songs and makes you actually like the people who populate the show. This one’s a big hit, folks.” – Steve Allen, Stagedoor St. Louis
Read the whole review here.

“I was admittedly one of those folks who didn't get all the hype around Rent after I saw it for the first time several years ago. Well, now I get it. The characters this time around, though dealing with major issues that would be tough for anyone, have an affable quality that was lacking the last time I saw it. Could it be because seeing a show like this in New Line's intimate space makes the theatre experience not just something you see, but something you feel? Yes. But it's also New Line's artistic director, Scott Miller's knack for gaining a deep understanding of whatever he puts his hands on, and translating that to his cast, who in turn translate that to us, reaching out to the audience, in this case literally, with invigorating connection. way better than the touring production. There. I said it.” – Andrea Torrence, St. Louis Theatre Snob
Read the whole review here.

“I’m glad directors Scott Miller and Mike Dowdy have chosen to follow their own vision for the show. New Line’s version is full of youth and energy. It’s also staged with a sense of immediacy that brings a lot of life to the show. Although the passage of time has turned Rent into something of a period piece, New Line doesn’t treat it that way, and that’s as it should be. It’s an iconic show made achingly real, with all the truth and energy brought along with its humanity. It may have taken New Line many years to finally do this show, but this production is well worth that wait.” – Snoop’s Theatre Thoughts (local blogger)
Read the whole review here.

I love this production so much. I love all the performances. I love the band. I love all the design work. I love so many bits of staging that Dowdy and I created. And every night I watch it, I find new things in the text, new uses of musical themes. This show really is a masterpiece of the art form and it fully deserved its Pulitzer Prize for Drama. I love so much that we can give this new, fresh, reinvigorated take on the show to all those people who've experienced Rent only through tired touring productions, or community theatre imitations of the original production's set and staging, or worst of all, that godawful film version.

Since New Line's founding twenty-three years ago, it has been important to me to serve both our audiences and the art form itself. And I feel like we're doing that with this production. We're proving again what a serious, powerful, artful, intelligent piece of theatre this is.

Someone asked me what "my approach" to the show was. The answer is Tell the Story. All we did is work hard to tell this story as clearly and fully as possible. It may feel to some like a radical take on the show, but remember what radical means: "of or relating to the origin : fundamental." In that sense, this is a radical interpretation of Rent because "my approach" was just to discard all the Rents I've ever seen and go back to the text. In fact, that's our approach to pretty much every single show we've ever produced.

It always works. Just tell the story.

I frequently remind myself that none of my ideas, none of my insights matter at all, without intelligent fearless artists making those ideas come to life. The actors don't work for me; they are my collaborators, and every one of them has brought so much to their roles and to the show. They do as much work as I do to create this beautiful piece of art. I like to think of making theatre in terms of comic book art: I give the actors the pencil sketch, together we ink the lines, and then the actors fill in all the colors. We block shows pretty fast (usually 15-20 pages a night), and then take lots of time to run the show, so the actors have time and space to do the important work of fleshing out this imaginary world. That's what gives our shows such emotional honesty and it's what allows us all to take so many artistic risks. In the last part of the process, I'm just there to edit and polish; the bulk of the work is the actors'.

As stage and screen director Sam Mendes says, "Theater is the writer's medium and the actor's medium; the director comes a distant third." That's as it should be.

I could not be prouder of this show and I'm thrilled at how much padding we're gonna have in the bank account now...!

We're halfway through the run, and though nothing big will change anymore, the performances just keep getting richer and deeper and more interesting. That's the joy of live theatre.

If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, you should do it now.

Everything is Rent.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott