Musicals the GOP Needs to See

I offer the following as a public service...

Watching election night coverage, what struck me most profoundly is the massive demographic changes our country is undergoing, as we become a much more diverse nation than ever before, and also how completely the Republican party is on the wrong side of history. Obama won big among Latinos, African Americans, gays, women, and young people. And that does not portend well for the future of the GOP, which may soon stand only for "Grumpy Old People."

And so, as a public service, I offer the GOP the five musicals they should see before the next election, so they can learn a little about this country they want to lead, even if they're all a bit disappointed in the rest of us right now...

In the Heights   One of the few things Democrats and Republicans can agree on after the election is that Latinos made all the difference, with 71% of them voting for Obama. And as Latinos become a larger and larger share of our population and our electorate, the GOP has a serious problem. Despite a few high-profile Latinos in the Republican party (Marco Rubio, for instance), Republicans are on the wrong side of every issue important to this community. GOP pundits and strategists are concluding now that they just have to get their message out to this community more effectively, but they don't understand that the Latino community got their message loud and clear -- they just didn't like what they heard. Maybe if some Republicans could see In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda's authentic, insightful day-in-the-life snapshot of modern Latino life, they might start seeing these Americans as Americans and not "illegals." Musicals always reflect the culture and politics of their times -- Latinos demanded and took a place at the musical theatre table with In the Heights, and now they're doing the same thing in American politics.

Passing Strange   Likewise, the GOP also has a problem with African Americans, who were an even larger slice of the electorate this time than in 2008, and 96% of whom voted for Obama. Once again, Republicans think their problem is a communications issue, but it's really an issue issue. African American voters don't agree with Republicans on the issues -- economic fairness, education, housing, social justice, etc. And on top of that, the 2012 election was without question the most racist election in modern times, sometimes overtly racist, other times more dog whistle. Passing Strange is a show about how complex race has become in our modern society and how it's becoming more cultural than genetic, as we watch the Browning of America in real time, a demographic inevitability which terrifies many conservatives down to their little old pink toes. Maybe if Republicans could see this show, they'd stop thinking of black folks as lazy, criminal, welfare gobblers. Passing Strange only dabbles in explicit politics, but everything about this story is subliminally political -- since race itself is always inherently political today -- especially in an era of a mixed-race President. And let's be fair -- all conservatives are not racists, but almost all racists are conservatives, and the GOP has to grapple with that problem...

Urinetown   In recent times, it's usually conservatives who get over-energized by some fake or misleading movement, and they end up running right off the cliff of sanity and reason, just as they've done in 2012. But liberals have been known to do it too. Urinetown is a very dark, very cynical look at movement politics and how easily true believers will follow someone who looks like they know what they're talking about. Of course, too often the person at the head of the movement is some ass clown like Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann. But the impulse is the same whatever the politics. Urinetown shows us what happens when passion overtakes reason in political movements, whether it's Creationism, climate change denial, trickle-down economics, or in the case of this brilliant musical satire, environmentalism. If ever there was a musical that embodies the "We Are the 99%" movement, it's this one, and it offers prescient insights into Occupy Wall Street and the other populist politics that have dominated 2012. But it's also a story about denying reality, a mindset that only works for so long before reality rears up and kicks you in the nuts. If Republicans continue to reflexively deny facts and truth, they will all end up like Bobby Strong. And the Republican Party will be sent off to Urinetown.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson   As I've been blogging about for the last few months, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is a show about the dangers and inherent weaknesses of populism, and how it often elects the wrong guy. This is a story about how eagerly Americans flock to celebrity, cockiness, swagger, and charisma. They did it with George W. Bush and with Obama. But BBAJ is also about one of the GOP's greatest weaknesses, the difference between campaigning and governing. Dubya was a great campaigner but a complete idiot when it came to governing, so he passed many of the most consequential decisions off to the Dark Lord of the Sith. And you see where that got us. This show brings to mind an argument Lawrence O'Donnell made after one of the 2012 debates -- that our Presidential campaigns don't really test any of the skills the candidates will actually need in office. Once they're elected, they'll never have to stand on a stage and come up with answers to complicated problems without smart people around them advising them. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson plays like a comedy, but it's really a very tragic story, one that Republicans and Democrats both would do well to heed.

Bat Boy   This is a show about how a society treats "the least of these" and about how un-Christian many Christians can be, when irrational fear and self-interest overpower compassion. Substitute "Muslim" or "Kenyan" for "bat child" in the show's dialogue, and you'll see how relevant this show still is. I've been pointing out on Facebook how much conservative positions and values contradict the values Jesus teaches in the Gospels, and Bat Boy speaks to that moral disconnect. For a party that claims Christianity for their own, they sure don't know much about the Bible. You may think this is a joke, but there is actually a conservative movement in America literally rewriting the Bible, so it better comports with their conservative political ideology. You read that right. Today's Democratic Party embodies many of the teachings of Christ, but the Republican Party is really only about stopping abortions (Can't find Jesus' quotes about that? Yeah, me neither.), lowering taxes on the rich, and the unfettered -- and amoral -- Free Market. But I've actually read the whole Bible, and I don't recall a single passage in which Jesus sings the praises of capitalism or lower marginal tax rates. Throughout Bat Boy, the bigoted citizenry yammer on and on about their "Christian Charity," while they practice the worst kind of scapegoating and Golden Rule busting. It's funny but it's not. Republicans need to see Bat Boy and understand how far they've strayed from actual Christian principles.

So there they are. There are other musicals conservatives should see too, but we'll start with these five. You can tell me I'm a brainwashed liberal all you want, but I voted for the guy that the majority of Americans voted for. So if I'm too liberal, so are the majority of Americans. And unlike many on the political Right today, at least we liberals still believe in reality.

But all that has very little to do with my point. Musicals are one of the ways we explore and pass down our history and culture, how we figure out who we are and what we value, and all these shows tell us some great truths about our nation and our times. Those who are on the wrong side of history -- I'm lookin' at you, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell -- would do well to learn from this truth-telling.

I'm just sayin'.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Wintergreen for President

In the wake of President Obama's decisive victory last night, my twin obsessions -- American politics and American musical theatre -- both beg so many questions. And so my last blog post now gets a companion.

It's been an amazing, crazy, infuriating, inspiring, complicated year. What have I learned about this election cycle -- and our collective selves -- from New Line's fall show, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, in terms of the power and pitfalls of American populism, and in terms of America's changing demographics, maybe as stark in 1828 as they are now? What have I learned from Jesus Christ Superstar about resistance to change from the political power structure? What have I learned from Passing Strange about the role of race in this election? What have I learned from Of Thee I Sing (a show I wish we could do) about how easily distracted the electorate can be and how trivialized an election can be? I could keep going...

And also, has this election proved me right, that contemporary musical theatre now regularly gets at some of the hardest, darkest truths of our socio-political life, more than ever before in the art form's history?

Why, yes it has.

My entire life is built on the idea that storytelling is one of the most important thing humans do, that we learn from it, that we connect to each other through it, that we grow from it, that we are challenged by it in all the right ways. And now looking at one of the most consequential moments in our history, I have to ask -- am I right?

For a political junkie like me, election day is like Christmas morning, and thanks to cable news, I had a three-day Christmas Eve over the weekend. As a civics geek who happily admits to watching C-Span, and as someone who loves our country really deeply -- its philosophy, its promise, its people, the genius of its founding documents, the energy of its culture -- it doesn't get much better than this. We are so lucky to live in a nation founded by some of the greatest minds of all time, who created the most amazing, most beautiful system of government the earth has ever known (someday, New Line will tackle 1776). As Franklin Roosevelt once said, "Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country." I believe in that. Politics is not a terrible, nasty thing -- it is the way we decide how to live together, what we value, what we believe as a nation. I have no patience for the apathetic or the nihilists who declare that all politicians are bought and sold -- they're not -- and that the people are powerless -- we are not.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson reminds us of that. But it also cautions us to be careful that our heroes are men of substance and conviction, and not just charisma.

I'm fascinated by the election as a storyteller. This election cycle was the first time I made the connection between political campaigns and storytelling, the first time I realized how fundamental narrative is to human communication, the first time I realized that almost every piece of information of value is passed along through our storytelling, even when we don't consciously register that's what it is. It was during this election season that I heard a pundit say the politician's number one job is to "tell the story." It was a smack-in-the-forehead moment for me -- how did I not understand that before now?

As a professional storyteller myself, that really struck me. I instantly saw the truth in it. And a candidate has to tell multiple stories -- the story of America through the lens of their philosophy and ideology, the story of the last four years, the story of the next four years, and in this election, the story of a clash of cultures and how that will or should play out over time. Also, this year, there is the story of America's demographic evolution, and the story of class and justice, and lest we forget, the story of race in America.

And I realize that over this extended campaign, New Line's shows have been remarkably relevant and timely. In summer 2011, as the candidates began campaigning for the Republican nomination, New Line produced the brilliant, powerful pop opera bare, about the failure of institutions in our culture, perhaps never so relevant as it is right now. (Unfortunately, the current New York revival has eviscerated the show in pointless, stupid rewrites, cutting more than half that beautiful score.) bare shows us what a conservative America looks like, rigidly, dogmatically bound to an archaic religious tradition, rejecting community and collective action for an every-man-for-himself view of the world, cold, distant, uncaring, fact-phobic. If ever there was a cautionary tale for our culture, bare is it.

In fall 2011, we produced Passing Strange, another story about the failure of institutions, about conformity,  and this time, also about race in America. Written long before Barack Obama was a candidate for President, it is still remarkable in its insightful, tough look at how we all -- white and black and brown -- think about and "perform" race. In a world of birthers and conspiracy theorists and Obama derangement syndrome (all conservatives are not racists, but almost all racists are conservatives), Passing Strange is a powerful and sometimes uncomfortable exploration of how we deal with race. I learned so much from this show, and I found its political subtext really powerful...

This past spring we brought back to life the hilarious and insightful Cry-Baby, a very political story about class and justice. Sitting here in 2012, one might think the show was inspired by the Occupy/99% movement or by Romney's "47%" video, but the show was written several years ago, and current events have just caught up with its piquant social commentary. It's hard to avoid seeing the parallels between the unjust arrest and imprisonment of Cry-Baby and his gang in the show, and the senseless mass incarceration of the poor and men of color in today's America. In the show, the charge is arson; in today's world, it's usually drugs, but the result is the same. Our War on Drugs has really only accomplished one thing well -- creating a permanent underclass in America. And that's what Cry-Baby is about. The show's fiercely ironic finale, dreaming of a perfect America in the future, is so unsettling because we know none of those utopian visions will come to pass. At least not yet...

This past summer we produced the superficially non-political show, High Fidelity. But though its story is primarily an intimate one, it did carry with it a metaphorical message for America in 2012 -- good things come only from focusing on others, not on yourself. In the show, Rob has to grow up and realize that he will be happier if he works to make Laura happy. It is a subliminal rejection of "rugged individualism" and an embrace of "it takes a village" -- on a personal level, sure, but it has more macro implications too. When everyone's out for themselves, we get the Bush years; when we focus on each other, we get the Obama years.

And this fall, we produced by far the most political show we've done since the last Presidential election. Back in 2008 we produced Hair, running right up to the weekend before the election. We also did Evita since then, but though it has a lot of political content, that show is really a personal story with a political backdrop. But Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson which we just closed a couple weeks ago, is entirely about politics. And though it's set in the 19th century, it's also entirely about the here and now. I've never worked on a show that had so much to say, so intelligently and insightfully, about American politics today.

There is a lot of received wisdom about how musicals are supposed to work, much of which has been discarded, mocked, or both, in recent years. One of those beliefs is that musicals have to be centered on a love story. Since music is inherently emotional, the argument goes, the story must be primarily an emotional one. I agree with that, but I reject the idea that only love stories are emotional stories. The emotion of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson comes from the passion Jackson has for politics and for "his people."

Politics is, after all, intensely human, intensely emotional, as we've seen over the past year...

We say on the New Line website that we believe live theatre is one of the most powerful tools we have for social and political change, and we believe we have an obligation to use that tool to make the world a better place, to engage the people of our region in a discussion about the issues of our times. Acting guru Stella Adler once famously said, "Unless you give the audience something that makes them bigger – better – do not act." We agree. Making theatre is such a difficult, expensive, labor-intensive enterprise -- why would anyone bother unless the end product was something of real value in our lives?

I'll repeat what I've said before, that people do not go to the theatre (or movies, or watch TV) for escape; they go for connection. Storytelling helps us navigate the crazy, craggy terrain of day-to-day life, and it preserves and transmits our culture and our history. There are few things more important than that...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. If you don't recognize this post's title, click here.

Another National Anthem

As I revel in the last few days of the 2012 election, political junkie that I am, I thought I would share with you my favorite political musicals. Almost all the shows New Line produces have some political content, or at least political context, but these ten shows I list below are more overtly about politics. And they're all really great shows. These are the shows I invoke when someone stupid says they think that musicals are all silly and empty, or worst of all, that musicals are not "real theatre." Yeah? Fuck you, dickhead.

Sure, some musicals have unmotivated singing and pointless tap dancing, though fewer and fewer these days, and lately, some musicals are built entirely on self-indulgent, Hipster Brechtian humor. Some musicals just have dumb, shallow stories. But there are shitty movies and books, too, yet that doesn't mean movies and books are all shitty. Most contemporary musicals being written today -- and in fact, most written in the last twenty years -- are very smart, very sophisticated, and far more likely to include political content or at least political subtext (like Lysistrata Jones and The Blue Flower).

So here they are, in no particular order, my Top Ten Favorite Political Musicals, from throughout the history of our art form. If you don't know any of these, I encourage you to get to know them. And if you do know them all, wouldn't this be a fun time to get reacquainted...?

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson  Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is one of those shows that I will always feel lucky to have worked on. Not only is it incredibly original, it's also one of the most entertaining and most intelligent shows I've ever encountered. Truly one of a kind, with penetrating insights into our culture and our politics, and into the peculiarly American swagger that Jackson embodied. Not just laugh-out-loud comic dialogue, but also heavy, emotional scenes, and piercing, gorgeous, powerful songs like "Second Nature," "The Saddest Song," and "The Great Compromise." I understand why it didn't last very long on Broadway, but it's a remarkable piece of writing and maybe the best look at our political process I've ever seen on stage.

Assassins  I've directed Assassins three times for New Line, and every time I found new wonderful and exciting things in it. It's one of the ballsiest musicals ever written, equalled perhaps only by Hair and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Like BBAJ, it's very entertaining, very emotional, and really, really smart. Like BBAJ, it reveals important things to us about our culture and our society, and forces us to think more honestly about difficult questions. It's the show that really freed me as a director, when I first worked on it in 1994, to stop worrying about convention and just go wherever the material took me. The fearlessness of the writing taught me how vitally important fearlessness is to making really great art. And like all great art, it's really about right here, right now. I think every high school in America should produce this show once every four years -- yes, fucks and all...

Hair  As radical as BBAJ and Assassins both were when they opened, Hair was even more radical, and it was decades earlier. I've also directed this show three times for New Line (another show that taught me so much), and even the last time we did it in 2008, I was repeatedly amazed at how experimental this piece of theatre still feels to modern audiences. There's so much in this complex script and score that a lot of directors miss, which is why I wrote a whole book just about Hair. The commercial theatre certainly learned from Hair and borrowed many of its devices, but the commercial theatre almost never reaches the level of Hair's true fearlessness. Listen to the original off Broadway cast album (the one with the Native Americans on the cover), and you'll see how unlike anything else (then or now) it still sounds. And by the way, the same thing is true of the original Broadway cast album of Grease, one of the shows that grew out of Hair's experiments.

Evita  I saw the original production of Evita on Broadway when I was in high school and it thrilled me. I know that cast album backwards and forwards. When I sing Peron's songs, I unconsciously imitate Bob Gunton. But I also found it kind of cold. Patti LuPone played Eva as the worst kind of ice bitch. When I finally got to work on this show, I found that LuPone and director Hal Prince were not really telling the story Tim Rice had written (and when I made this point in a blog post, Tim Rice himself commented on it!). Evita is a passionate double love story, between Eva and Juan, who love each other deeply, and also between Eva and her people, who also love each other deeply. Populism is both the story's context and one of its love stories. The more I read about the real Eva, the more I saw how much of that reality Tim Rice had woven into his storytelling. What finally made me want to produce the show was hearing the original studio recording for the first time. This was a rock and roll Evita, not a symphonic one like on Broadway. And it was rowdier and wilder and hotter. And the rock and roll vocabulary really underlined Rice's intended parallel between Eva's time and place, and our time and place -- exactly like Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.

Urinetown  I think I laughed more and harder seeing Urinetown on Broadway than at any other show I've ever seen. The whole audience was laughing that hard. It's a dark, nasty show that sort of shits on political populism, but holy fuck, it is funny. The show's hilarious twist at the end is so at odds with my own political idealism and optimism, but I also recognize the uncomfortable, undeniable truth in it. It reminds us that both good and bad people, liberal and conservative people can be wrong. And sometimes people can be most adamant when they're most wrong. Just when we think the roller coaster ride is over, this uber-Brechtian musical throws a wrench into the story at the end that would drive Brecht crazy. What's not to love? The only problem with Urinetown is that people producing the show often misunderstand it, trying to make it into a wacky musical comedy, when it's actually a dark, Brechtian satire. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it's silly.

The Cradle Will Rock  The Cradle Will Rock may be my favorite political musical of all time -- its creator Marc Blitzstein said his "labor musical" was "composed in a style that falls somewhere between realism, romance, vaudeville, comic strip, Gilbert & Sullivan, Brecht, and agitprop.” After seeing Tim Robbins' awesome movie about the show and its political context, and seeing Robbins' recreation of that historic opening night, I realized how much I wanted to work on this show. So New Line produced it, as it happened on that first night in 1937, with the cast playing the entire show out in the audience. And while we ran the show, HotHouse Theatre Company ran a play in rotating repertory with our show, called It's All True, about the creation of The Cradle Will Rock. Pretty cool, huh?

1776  I remember seeing this on TV the first time when I was around twelve or thirteen and it blew my mind. My mom was watching something else on the living room TV, but my brother Rick was upstairs watching 1776, so I joined him, not really knowing what it was. It turned out to be an awesome, original, funny, powerful musical, and I fell instantly in love with it. What I loved about it was its crazy mix -- vulgar humor, real rowdiness (I loved the stick fight!), moral complexity, and really serious political questions -- just like real life. I think I was exactly the right age to appreciate this musical, and its very existence opened up so many new possibilities to me. I only found out later that the film boasted much of the Broadway cast and the original stage director, so it's a pretty faithful record of the stage show. A few days after I first saw 1776, my brother bought the movie soundtrack, and I was playing it so much more than he was, that he finally gave it to me. And I wore that fucking LP out. Not only are the script and score exceptional, not only is it an amazing political thriller -- even though we all know how it ends -- but it also gives us the amazing gift of letting us get to know our Founders as real, flawed, damaged, contradictory, passionate people. More than any other single thing, this show made me fall in love with America. I think every high school in America should show this film once a year. Or produce the show.

Fiorello!  Okay, I've never seen this one, but I've read the script and I love the original cast recording. It's a very old-school musical comedy, but it's a very smart one, with a strong story about one man's political career, and a great score by Harnick and Bock (Fiddler on the Roof, She Loves Me, The Rothschilds), which contains one of my all-time favorite comedy numbers, "Politics and Poker." The show is a slightly fictionalized biography of one of New York's most beloved mayors, Fiorello LaGuardia, and it's a terrific, on-the-ground look at 20th century American populist politics, a very cool snapshot of a moment in time.

Of Thee I Sing  I first saw Of Thee I Sing when I was about ten, when my brother Rick played trumpet for Affton High School's production. And I loved it. Truly, I fell in love with it. Now, if you know this show -- a political satire operetta by the Gershwin brothers and Kaufman and Ryskind, about 1930s Presidential politics -- it's hardly the kind of musical a ten-year-old falls in love with, but this one did. I was not a normal ten-year-old. I have no idea if I fully registered all the political satire, but I thought it was hilarious, and I was singing much of the score for months afterward -- "She's the illegitimate daughter of an illegitimate son of an illegitimate nephew of Napoléon..." It wasn't until years later that I caught a lot of the subtle stuff, like how the words "of thee I sing" are taken from one of our most cherished national songs, "My Country 'Tis of Thee," and comically trivialized into a mindless love song -- "Of thee I sing, baby..." -- the song that literally defines the trivialization of politics at the heart of this sharp satire. I don't think this is a show New Line could produce, but if there's some way to shrink it sufficiently, I'd love to work on it. Zak Farmer has to play Vice President Throttlebottom.

Jesus Christ Superstar  Here’s the truth: Jesus Christ Superstar is about politics, not religion. It's about a political activist, not the Son of God. And it’s about the 1960s, not the Roman Empire. If Tim Rice’s searing, slangy lyrics and Tom O’Horgan’s trippy original production weren’t enough proof of that, just read the lyric of the title song – sung from the point of view of “today” and of “mass communication.” Rice wrote a show about an authoritarian government and institutionalized religion trying to snuff out the voices of enlightenment and of peace, paralleling the 1960s -- and that's the show New Line Theatre produced. But too often today, this amazing show is dumbed down, softened, robbed of the rowdy, rebellious, youthful arrogance that originally made music and theatre history, and instead marinated in a religious pomposity that Rice and Lloyd Webber never intended (notice that the show does not include the resurrection). Rice approached the story as political thriller instead of revealed scripture, and Jesus as radical political figure (mirroring the activists of the 60s) rather than as the Son of God (a label Jesus himself never used in the Bible to describe himself). This Jesus does not point the way to Heaven so much as he points the way toward social justice and to living a moral, engaged life. This Jesus was a community organizer.

Beyond these shows, there are lots of other musicals that are very political, but not really about politics -- like Bat Boy, Cabaret, bare, Cry-Baby, Hairspray, Camelot, Jacques Brel, Man of La Mancha, Pippin, Finian's Rainbow, Reefer Madness, Purlie, The Threepenny Opera, Passing Strange, Lysistrata Jones, The Blue Flower, Avenue X, Anyone Can Whistle, Pacific Overtures, Hallelujah, Baby!, Chicago, and my own Johnny Appleweed, to name just a couple handfuls.

I'll leave you with the words of President Obama, introducing a concert of theatre songs at the White House: "In many ways, the story of Broadway is intertwined with the story of America. Some of the greatest singers and songwriters Broadway has ever known came to this country on a boat with nothing more than an idea in their head and a song in their heart. And they succeeded the same way that so many immigrants have succeeded – through talent and hard work and sheer determination. Over the years, musicals have been at the forefront of our social consciousness, challenging stereotypes, shaping our opinions about race and religion, death and disease, power and politics."

These musicals are all very cool shows. If you don't know them, check 'em out.

And VOTE!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. If you're into Top Ten lists, I've also written blog posts listing my Top Ten Desert Island Musical Theatre Books, Top Ten Really Cool Musicals You May Not Know, and Top Ten Cool Movie Musicals You Should Know.

Fame

And as for fortune, and as for Fame...

I watched Fame again a couple nights ago, for the first time in a very long time. I'm talking about the original, not that awful remake or the awful stage musical, which is sadder than a wagon full of wet kittens (to quote Cry-Baby).

And I realized there's so much more depth to this film than I ever noticed before. I'd like to believe that's because I've evolved as a human and as an artist, but it may be due largely to the shit I was smoking while I was watching it.

When I first saw Fame and All That Jazz, I had similar reactions. I thought to myself, If I can see these movies and still want to spend my life in the theatre, I must want it really bad. Which I did. It was the first time I understood that working in the theatre all my life would require sacrifice. If I had only known...

Fame is about how hard it is to devote your life to making art. There is great, transcendent joy and there is also great challenge and struggle. I guess everything in life has its yin and yang, but it seems to me living the life of an artist makes that opposition more stark. Most theatre artists work only sporadically and make very little money. Most have to have a day job. Most struggle just to get by. But they also get to experience joy like most people never know, when they're making great art with other great artists. And I think the point the movie is making is that you can't separate the suffering from the creation. One informs the other. Being an artist doesn't make life easy, but it helps us understand why it's hard.

There's a great sequence in the film where Doris, Ralph, and Monty, as an acting exercise, all reveal painful -- and transformational -- moments in their lives. And you realize, watching it, that going through that pain revealed something of importance to them. Doris realizes that she's trapped in conformity, being a person she doesn't particularly like. Monty realizes he's an outsider in the world -- as many artists are. Ralph taps into the deep, fundamental pain that he has had locked away behind his comedy, pain that informs his comedy. Ultimately, they all learn that fame and fortune are the wrong goals. Money and fans are false gods. Doing the best, most truthful work you can do is the right goal. Making art causes them pain, but their pain has given them the mental and emotional tools to make great art.

I realize now, watching the film again, that Doris, Ralph, Monty, and the dancer Leroy all four follow the classic hero myth. And at the end, just as the hero must return to his people with his newly gained wisdom, so these four share their new understanding in the finale, "I Sing the Body Electric."

The lyric of each verse relates to what that character learned through their struggle. The hero myth and its lessons are so powerful to us because each life lived is a hero myth unto itself. When we watch Star Wars or The Wizard of Oz or Bat Boy or High Fidelity, these heroes' journeys stand as metaphors for our lives, the struggles, the friends, the lessons, the obstacles, the acquired wisdom over a lifetime. That's why we respond so powerfully to these stories. We recognize, usually not consciously, that they are us.

On a more macro level, "I Sing the Body Electric" starts out in the classical music vocabulary, then transitions into rock and roll, and then combines the two. The entire song is one big summarizing metaphor -- a synthesis of musical languages, a synthesis of the various performing arts (music, dance, drama), and the synthesis of individual artistic talents that only the performing arts provides. And it all underlines the artist's great life quest, to synthesize art and life, to combine them to form something new, something illuminating.

I've always loved Fame but now I understand more deeply why I love it.

There is nothing -- and I mean, nothing -- like a great piece of art. It nourishes the soul. And in this crazy, complicated world we live in, our souls need all the nourishing they can get. I sing the body electric every time I make a piece of theatre...

I sing the body electric,
I glory in the glow of rebirth,
Creating my own tomorrow
When I shall embody the earth.

And I'll serenade Venus,
I'll serenade Mars,
And I'll burn with the fire of ten million stars.
And in time,
And in time,
We will all be stars.

Not "stars" as in famous people, but as in eternal points of light that illuminate our way in the darkest night. That's what art is.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Hold Me, Bat Boy

Often after a show closes, I get all philosophical.

I also get sad and bored. And stoned a lot. But for the purposes of this blog post, let's just focus on the philosophical.

I've been thinking since we closed Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson about New Line and the work we do and the company's improbably long life, having just opened our twenty-second season. I didn't set out to be "alternative" when I started New Line Theatre in 1991. I was working with a community theatre called CenterStage that I had co-founded, but I was looking to be more adventurous than others in the company wanted to be. Though it wasn't conscious at first, when I left CenterStage I was choosing an "alternative" path, away from Hello, Dolly! and No, No, Nanette, and toward shows like Assassins, Anyone Can Whistle, and Floyd Collins. I had been studying -- and loving -- the classics all my life, but I was ready to expand my horizons and challenge both my skills and my preconceptions.

I didn't suddenly hate older, more conventional shows; I just didn't want to work on them anymore. I had learned from them what I could and wanted to move forward to new adventures. Though I hadn't yet started writing my books, I knew instinctively that I was done exploring the past of my art form and wanted to turn toward the future.

That's not to say New Line never produces older shows -- we often do, especially shows from the experimental 1960s and 70s, because those shows (Cabaret, Hair, Jacques Brel, Man of La Mancha, Two Gentlemen of Verona, I Love My Wife, Company, Pippin, Chicago) were moving (or at least, pointing) the art form forward toward the amazing new work that would be done in the 1990s and after, when everything would change -- and the real Golden Age of musical theatre would begin -- and I would fall in love all over again with my art form.

We didn't know it at the time, but New Line was literally at the vanguard of a whole new era in the American musical theatre, when the art form would no longer depend solely on the commercial theatre scene in New York. We New Liners weren't aware of everything going on across the country at the same moment New Line was getting underway (no internet yet), but we were a part of it. The same impulse that drove me and my cohorts toward a new vision of musical theatre was also driving others like us across the country. No one else built a company entirely based on that new vision the way we did, but lots of other artists and companies were part of the movement. Though St. Louis has always been a big musical theatre town, thanks to the Muny and Stages and the Fox, local audiences had rarely seen anything but the most mainstream musicals.

New Line changed that.

We also discovered early on that we weren't going to work like more conventional companies work. From the beginning, we have operated more like the experimental companies in New York in the 1960s, and only a little like today's mainstream regional theatres. That has made it impossible to work with union actors (we tried to make a deal with the union, but they would not bend to accommodate our process), but it allows us a more leisurely, more playful, more analytical, more intellectual, and more artistically pure approach to our work, which in retrospect seems tailor-made for the kind of shows we produce.

Unlike it is with most companies, I direct every show at New Line. It never occurred to me to work differently than we do, partly because there aren't any other directors in town who specialize in the kind of work we do, partly because ours is a company built on a very specific, somewhat unconventional vision and philosophy that comes directly from my own understanding of our art form, and also partly because I literally spend my life thinking, talking, and writing about this kind of musical theatre. New Line shows are more aggressive, more physical, more vulgar, more relevant, more fearless, more emotional, more confrontational, louder, darker, wilder, funnier than the work of most companies in the region.

I'm not saying we're better, but we are different.

One of our specialties, I think, is taking extremely unconventional shows (Passing Strange, The Wild Party, Assassins, Forbidden Planet, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) and making them fully accessible to audiences while still being true to the material and to the creators' intentions. We don't dumb down our shows or pander to our audiences; we just focus like a fucking laser on good, clear storytelling. Nothing is more important. Humans use storytelling to communicate all the most consequential information and ideas, and there's nothing an audience appreciates more than good, clear storytelling.

None of this is to say that our kind of musical theatre is the only kind. In fact, I'm saying exactly the opposite of that. I'm trying to argue instead that the more mainstream, conventional kind of musical theatre most people are used to is not the only kind of musical theatre either. People sometimes tell me they don't like musicals, but I know most of them really mean that they don't like Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musicals. And I agree with them. Rodgers and Hammerstein shows are about as relevant today as buggy whips and dial telephones. And Broadway hasn't been the center of the art form in decades. Far more people see musicals in theatres across the country than in New York. Far more. That's where the coolest work is being done and where many of the new shows being born. New Line has birthed quite a few world premieres and we have also brought back from the dead shows that died an unnatural death in New York, like High Fidelity and Cry-Baby.

My only real point with this blog post is that there is more than one path. Broadway is not musical theatre any more than Family Matters is television. From the beginning of New Line, some folks have tried to define and/or judge us based on old-school conventions that were already outdated when I was born. Musical theatre is a serious American art form, worthy of respect and deserving of the same thoughtfulness one would give to Shakespeare or Mamet or Albee. Several reviewers got angry emails from me in New Line's early days, chastising them for turning their brains off during our shows just because they're musicals. Maybe that was an understandable bias in the 1920s and 30s, but not today. Not anymore.

Just as television evolved into a much more serious art form with the advent of cable TV and the creation of shows like Oz, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Carnivale, and Dexter, so too has musical theatre as an art form evolved beyond the simplistic, mid-century morality of Rodgers and Hammerstein, with shows like Passing Strange, High Fidelity, bare, Bat Boy, Next to Normal, Spelling Bee, and The Wild Party.

I'm a lucky motherfucker. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, when my art form was the most interesting, most adventurous it had ever been before, when the rock musical was finding its voice, when it was finally okay for people in musicals to talk the way people really talk, fucks, shits, and all, and to talk about things that matter. All the things people hate about old-fashioned musicals were fading away just as I came into this world. The last big hit of the so-called "Golden Age" (i.e., the Rodgers and Hammerstein era) was Fiddler on the Roof, which opened the year I was born. Just as I'm on the cusp between the Baby Boomers and Generation X, I'm also on the cusp between old-school musicals and contemporary musical theatre.

And it's a very cool vantage point.

Some theatre people think making theatre is just a job, and that it should deliver job security and a middle-class paycheck. And they get resentful when that doesn't happen. Which it usually doesn't. They call the theatre "show business." But I believe -- and I think many of the New Liners believe -- that making theatre is a calling, a privilege, a responsibility, and only lastly, a job. Being an artist is a difficult, misunderstood, and often thankless job. The pay is low and the work is hard. But we know that we have been favored by the gods, not short-changed. We are lucky beyond all reasonable expectations to get to do what we do. Even if we didn't make any money, we'd be lucky. We are the shamans, the keepers of the flame, the storytellers. Do you know how many people wish they could do what we do?

Long Live the Musical!

Scott

Why Don't You Just Shoot Me in the Head?

Shakespeare loved the soliloquy. These days, most theatre people just refer to a soliloquy as an "interior monologue." It's just the character thinking out loud. Think of "To be or not to be" in Hamlet or that amazing opening monologue in Richard III. (I still think that play needs to be a rock musical.)

Opera turned the soliloquy into the aria. American musical comedy turned it into the "I Want" song -- like "My White Knight" in The Music Man, "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" in Grease, "Being Alive" in Company, or "The I Love You Song" in Spelling Bee. And at about the same time the musical comedy was first blossoming, Bertolt Brecht was in Germany working on surprisingly similar devices, including fourth-wall-ignoring monologues.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson borrows from both these more recent traditions, old-school musical comedy and Brecht. The BBAJ song "The Great Compromise" is a prime example. It functions as a pure "I Want" song for Rachel, and in telling us what she wants, she also tells us who she is, what her relationship with Jackson has become, what she thinks of his politics, and lots more. But it also functions as a Brechtian, split-screen illustration of Jackson's fractured life. The song alternates between Rachel's lament and dialogue between a couple who met and fell in love at a Jackson rally, representing two opposing perceptions of Jackson. And they're light years apart. Rachel sees only the private Jackson and finds him selfish and immature. The couple sees only the public Jackson and they see him as essentially perfect. The last line of the dialogue inside the song is the woman in the couple concluding that "Jackson is love." And yet his wife is miserable and alone. Jackson creates love in the one case and destroys it in the other.

As I've written before, sometimes our heroes are assholes.

The centerpiece of the show is the driving "Rock Star," and like the rest of the score, it works on several levels at once. In the scene leading up to the song, Rachel gives Jackson an ultimatum -- if he runs for office again, they're through. And the last line before the music erupts is Van Buren's "So what're you gonna do?" It's time for a choice. A big one. But as any general knows, you have to assess the battlefield first.

A soloist appears who acts as Jackson's inner thoughts, as he works his way through his dilemma. From the point of view of the singer -- and Jackson -- all the previous Presidents tried to be rock stars, but they all failed. They just weren't up to it.

Washington crossed the Delaware river.
Washington acted like a rock star.
Washington made America deliver.
Washington tried to be a rock star.

But all the fame that he had won,
It wasn't really any fun,
And soon the people started turnin'.
Whoa, whoa, whoa...

That boy who couldn't tell a lie,
Two terms, and then he said goodbye,
And Georgie went back to Mt. Vernon.

Only Jackson can pull it off! Or so says Jackson. Not even Washington could do it. Of course, the truth is Jackson will also fail in many ways, just like the others, because it's an impossible job. But he can't see that. The chorus of this song is brilliantly conceived. Like the show's other songs, it never comes at its subject straight on, but instead from around a corner, through a different lens. Jackson's mind (and lyricist Michael Friedman's lyric) comes at the idea of the Presidency through self-righteous outrage -- outrage, you'll notice, over an offense not yet committed -- or is he still talking about the 1824 election that was stolen from him...?

Why don't you just shoot me in the head,
'Cause you know I'd be better off dead,
If there's really no place in America
For a celebrity of the first rank!

In other words, an America that wouldn't elect Jackson to the Presidency is an America not worth living in. Wow. We see here again that Jackson's ego is considerable, and that will be his tragic flaw. He can't see his own limitations and inadequacies. He has no self-awareness.

The first part of the song is Jackson's inner thoughts, but halfway through, when the soloist introduces Jackson, he is reborn -- "That's right, mothafuckas! Jackson's back!" He has made his decision. He will run again. (Rachel who?) He know he's better than all those other guys. The song transforms itself from interior monologue to stump speech, and in that transformation it moves the story forward, like any good theatre song should. This is the show's obligatory moment, the point toward which everything before it leads, and from which everything after it flows. If Jackson makes a different choice here, his life goes down a different path. Rachel might even live longer (at least in this version of the story). But his decision is based on a self-assessment that is not a serious one.

Now as the song continues, it's Jackson himself singing. He has found his voice and his confidence, he has put Rachel out of his mind, and he's ready to kick some Republican ass. But notice how shallow and simplistic his views of his predecessors are...

John Adams tried to be an American Idol,
Jefferson tried to be a rock star,
Madison tried to make the Presidency vital,
And James Monroe was a douchebag!

The story always ends the same,
It's hard to handle all that fame
If you don't really have it in ya.
Whoa, whoa, whoa...

There's no place in democracy
For your brand of aristocracy,
So take that shit back to Virginia
(Or Massachusetts, Biatch!)

Note that last dig at his incumbent opponent John Quincy Adams, who's from Massachusetts. Jackson might as well be holding a sign that says, "We are the 99%!"

And as he repeats the chorus several times, The People join him. It becomes not just Jackson's opinion, but The People's opinion as well, that the American Presidency should be able to accommodate a superstar. (It's hard to ignore parallels to Obama here.) But as they sing, we hear two melodies in counterpoint to the chorus. One is a variation on the earlier bridge:

You thought you were just a Founding Father,
But everyone wants you to be their father.

And the third counterpoint melody is also one we've already heard, but set to a new lyric:

But all that fame can take its toll,
The people force you into a role,
And soon the tables will be turnin'.

Yes they will...

These three melodies and lyrics bounce off each other, then finally, everyone comes together on a driving, climactic unison repeat of the chorus. The People are with him! This is not only great music and lyric writing, but it's great storytelling. The song starts inside Jackson's head, as pulsing, pounding rock, like a musical migraine in Jackson's brain, throbbing, almost exploding out of him. Then the song moves from the surrogate inner voice to Jackson's own voice, then to the voice of The People, alongside but also at odds with Jackson. This is complicated psychology, politics, and storytelling, all rolled into one seriously kickass rock song.

That's how good and how smart this show is.

We closed Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson Saturday night, but I can't stop thinking about it. I always miss our shows when we close them, but this one is different. It's such a unique piece of theatre, so aggressive, such fun, so powerful, and sitting here with two weeks till the election, it's so fucking timely.

And all the music is totally stuck in my brain. I can think of worse problems.

What a wild, wonderful ride it was. Thank you to everyone who came to share it with us.

Long Live the Rock Musical!
Scott

Populism, Yea, Yea!

Most people who see Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson don't consciously notice the incredible craft and skill in the show's writing. They see lots of wacky comedy, including some pretty sophomoric gross-out humor, they hear very raw language and driving rock and roll, and it doesn't even occur to them that this deceptively complex theatre piece is operating on a much deeper, more sophisticated level than it appears.

Though we don't recognize it in real time, the obscene language and the gross-out humor actually contribute to characterization, to getting at the socio-political zeitgeist of the Jacksonian Era, to the show's central metaphor, and to the show's rejection of Rodgers and Hammerstein that is the lifeblood of this amazing piece of neo musical comedy.

But nobody thinks about all that stuff while they're watching it. It's totally subliminal.

I've already blogged about how the character of Andrew Jackson is more a construct than a representation of the real guy, about how he is a metaphorical stand-in for America as a nation and as a people, about how Jackson and America and the show itself all share the same character arc, evolving from angsty 'tween to sober, self-aware adult, about how even the way the show is narrated has meaning both in the story and also in the context of the evolution of the art form. Yes, all that stuff is in this rowdy, crazy musical.

And more.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is a hybrid of the two new forms in the American musical theatre. On the one hand, it's a Neo Musical Comedy, using the tools of old-school musical comedy melded to the irony, moral ambiguity, and socio-political content of our current Age of Irony (which arguably started in the 60s but took over pop culture in the 90s). But it's also a Neo Rock Musical (and our next show Next to Normal is too), using the tools of the Rodgers and Hammerstein model but jettisoning R&H's ponderous mid-century morality for a more complex -- and more real -- look at human emotion and interaction.

(And on a side note, that's all politics is -- human emotion and interaction -- and that's why politics is inherently dramatic.)

One of those R&H tools that this show retains is the reprise. When our art form was still young, musicals used reprises (a repeat or approximate repeat of a song we've already heard) to remind the audience of the hit tune the producers wanted them to buy (recordings or sheet music) after they saw the show. Or sometimes a reprise gave the secondary leads another musical slot in Act II that they wouldn't otherwise get.

But Rodgers and Hammerstein changed that. Well, really Hammerstein changed that, most famously with Show Boat in 1927, but even more regularly and confidently in his shows with Rodgers. Since Hammerstein, reprises have been more functional and less decorative. In shows built on the R&H model, a reprise revisits an earlier moment, but in a new context, with (sometimes only subtextually) new meaning. A reprise refers back to the first hearing of the song, but it doesn't just repeat it. Either the lyric is different to fit the new circumstances, or the lyric is the same but it means something substantially different in this new context. Probably the clearest example is "Let Me Entertain You" in Gypsy, a song literally designed for its reprises. The first time we hear it, it's an intentionally bland kiddie song; later on, it becomes an ironic symbol of the maturing girls being trapped in their childish roles; and at the end it become Louise's strip number and the lyric takes on a much darker, more complex meaning about sex, objectification, power. This one seemingly simplistic song goes from kiddie number to sexual invitation. Bravo, Sondheim!

And Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson handles reprises with equal intelligence.

The show's aggressive opening number, "Populism, Yea Yea!," operates on so many levels, both sincere and ironically Brechtian at the same time. These characters think this inarticulate cheer means something, but the writers are also telling us at the same time that the characters are shallow and trivial, that they are to be dismissed. And that tells the audience a lot about how this show will operate. And it also immediately sets the debate for the evening -- is populism good or bad? Of course, the answer is it's both. And we see that it is both as we hear the song reprised throughout the show. It returns, really more as a leitmotif than a reprise, marking moments of populism throughout the story, as commentary, counterpoint, even as an acknowledgement of its own dark side when Rachel quotes it in "The Great Compromise." She's sees what's wrong with populism here, but Jackson still doesn't.

The whole score plays with the idea of a leitmotif/reprise. "I'm So That Guy" starts as a new song, but after only one verse, it bursts into counterpoint, with Jackson singing a reprise of "I'm Not That Guy" and the rest of the cast singing the first verse of "Populism, Yea, Yea!" And the counterpoint of these two songs subliminally suggests the immaturity and shallowness behind Jackson's confidence and ambition. While Jackson's vocal soars over the rest, they shift back and forth between the first verse of this number, and the chorus of "Populism, Yea, Yea!" It's a crazy, irrational, passionate mess. Just like Jackson's emotions. Content dictates form.

"Public Life" is another example of this same device. It begins as a new song, an emotional ballad for Jackson, as he mourns for his wife. But by the second verse, his focus is already moving from his wife to his People. Soon the People join him, reprising "I'm Not That Guy," the song Jackson sang the last time he was faced with a major life choice and started off on a new path. The chorus is his inner voice. Suddenly the song bursts into three-way contrapuntal life. On top, Jackson takes on a new melody, with a lyric about "change" that could have come out of an Obama speech. Half the ensemble continues with the reprise of "I'm Not That Guy," and the other half of the ensemble picks up a campaign ditty that we heard in the background of Rachel's "The Great Compromise."  This third lyric -- "Jackson's back! He's got it going on!" repeated over and over -- reminds us of the vapidity and mindlessness of populism in general and Jackson's followers in specific. There is no there there. Jackson may be the voice of the People, but the People aren't really paying attention. By the end of the song, Jackson is singing, "The path is clear and I've made my choice. I'm gonna listen to the people's voice," more empty words, as the rest of the cast returns to the chorus of "Populism, Yea, Yea!"

This number is a remarkable piece of writing. It moves us forward in the plot, it takes us through several different emotional states in Jackson, and it provides a funny but straight-faced, socio-political context for it all, which sets up the complex obstacles ahead for him in later scenes.

The only true reprise in the show is "Crisis Averted," which bookends the first section of the Oval Office scene towards the end of the show, functioning both as commentary and as Jackson's inner voice. This song frames the biggest turning point in the story. It's a peppy little tune, more like They Might Be Giants than an emo band. In "Crisis Averted #1" it's all about optimism, immortality, invincibility. In this first version, they sing:

Crisis averted!
He's taking a stand
And the best part is
Everything he says is right.

I really think
That this will work.
We're young.
We'll live forever.
At least for one more night.
My luck will hold this time,
It always has before.
So I  think, I think it just might work.

Then the cheerleaders leave (more about that in a second), and in "Crisis Averted #2" it's all about the end, mortality, failure. This time they sing, still to the same peppy music:

Crisis averted!
I'm going alone
And the best part is
Everything I say is right.

Did you really think
That this would work?
You're fucked.
You won't live forever.
Your luck won't hold this time.
It won't be like before.
It's never, it's never gonna work.

The perky music accomplishes so much. First it tells us that even the narrators -- the band soloist and the other actors -- don't care what happens to our hero. We've gone from hero-worshipping narrator (the Storyteller) at the beginning, to the band soloist as narrator, to shallow girls (in "The Corrupt Bargain") and later random actors, as the most disinterested narrators of all. But these two songs also bracket the moment when the Good Times turn Bad. It's when Jackson's personal cheerleaders leave the Oval Office because "this isn't fun anymore" and "direct democracy directly applied is totes lame" that the tone changes.

Up till now, the cheerleaders in the Oval Office seem like a cheap running joke. But here we see they represent the public, the voters, us; and the relationship between them and Jackson takes on fascinating, much more complicated colors. When the cheerleaders turn on him, we have turned on him, just as American liberals did to some extent to Obama in 2010. And when Jackson loses the people, he loses everything. He feeds on them. (As I typed that last sentences, I got a great idea for a Zombie Jackson musical...) His whole persona is wrapped up in his populism, his status as the People's President, but can he still be the People's President when the people don't want him anymore? As the song says, "You're fucked." (Notice that the first version of "Crisis Averted" contains no obscenities, but the second version does.) Things are different now, these songs tell us. "It won't be like before."

This turning point (the cheerleaders leaving) is really important, but because it's subtle, these two matching songs underline it for us. Just the way Brecht liked it. And they're funny songs too. And that's great writing.

I expect no less from this brilliant piece of rock theatre. I fall more in love with it at every performance. There's truly nothing else like it.

Just three more shows!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Corrupt Bargain

One of my recent blog entries was about how the authors of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson used obscene and vulgar language to create a theatrical parallel to the lawlessness and chaos of those times in our early history. But the show uses another parallel to the wild, untamed world of the frontier -- the show itself.

Just as the show matures along with Jackson and our young nation, it also fully embodies a rejection of rules and conventions that parallels a similar rejection of the rules of New England by Jackson and the frontiersmen. Stephen Sondheim famously believes that Content Dictates Form, that the story dictates the kind of storytelling. In almost every way, this show's creators, Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman, have created a show that is its story.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson careens from style to style, from serious to wacky to darkly ironic, from introspection to ironic detachment, from the Marx Brothers to Brecht. It keeps us off balance. There are no conventional signposts to grab onto here. And that's part of the point.

One great example of this is the scene-song "The Corrupt Bargain." We get to Jackson's first real defeat and the show stops the story cold to explain the politics of what just happened. Brecht would love it. So would Sondheim. This song purposefully breaks every rule of musical theatre. It describes action instead of showing it. It offers commentary, but it's unreliable commentary. It's literally embodies the absurdity of the politics it describes in its mindless, comically pointless dance breaks. The song uses both direct narration to the audience and dialogue, but there's something wrong with these narrators, and as this reveals itself over the course of the song, it once again throws us off course. We can't trust the narrators?

Who is the narrator in this show, by the way? It starts out being the Storyteller, but once she's removed from the story, the bandleader takes over. But sometimes the actors narrate. There's no consistent voice to the story's narration and once again, that's a conscious choice. There is no objectivity in American politics, TImbers and Friedman are telling us. Everyone has a different perspective and that colors what they see and how they talk about it. And this lack of a consistent narrative voice is also subtextually a commentary on storytelling itself, on bias, on narrative agenda, and on our current struggle to talk about our world in a time when the two opposing sides of American society (liberal and conservative) can't even agree on what is objectively true and what is not.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson fully and consciously embodies this moment when facts have become a matter of opinion, and the show plays around (a lot!) with how that affects the retelling of history.

And even within this one song, whose voice do these girls represent? They're not The People here, and they're not on Jackson's side or his opponents' side. But they're also not omniscient or objective like conventional narrators. On top of that, they're both shallow and bad historians. Every time the girls seem to be invoking the perspective of an historical figure for a little extra insight, they also short-circuit that reference at the same time. For example...

Alexis De Tocqueville says something in French
That none of us can translate...
. . .
James Madison said something prescient about this
But he was kind of a dick...
. . .
I'm sure Michel Foucault would have an opinion
But he hasn't been born yet...

You get the idea.

These girls are objective only in the sense that they don't much seem to give a shit about any of this. On the other hand, they sorta seem to agree with the Washington elitists. Just look at how they describe Jackson: "Do you really want America run by a man from Tennessee?" And even more potent, "Do you really want the American people running their own country?" -- that was a real debate at the time! Who is 'worthy" of voting rights? John Quincy Adams had written to a friend, “Depend upon it, Sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end to it. New claims will arise; women will demand the vote; lads from twelve to twenty-one will think their rights not enough attended to, and every man who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other, in all acts of state.” What? Women and poor people VOTING???

Adams would have been right at home with the GOP's 2012 campaign of voter suppression. Notice how the conservatives talk about the American people in this song, satirically but powerfully putting 2012 audiences in mind of Romney's infamous "47%" comments, even though those comments had not been made yet when the show was written.

Adams: The people are stupid.
Clay: They can all go rot.
Calhoun: They're lame.
Adams: They suck.

Inside all this silliness, satire, dancing, and jokes, the song actually paints for us a very accurate and accessible picture of how Adams, Clay, Calhoun, et al. literally stole the 1824 election from Jackson. By the end of the song, we really do understand the infamous Corrupt Bargain. And for modern-day liberals, it's hard not to see a parallel to the controversial Bush v. Gore decision by the Supreme Court in 2000.

Like the rest of the show, this song delivers on plot, satire, entertainment, and contemporary political commentary. It contains the three elements of good art -- Poetry, Popcorn, and Politics, or in other words, artistry, entertainment, and substance. The song is incredibly well-constructed and deceptively subtle in its agenda. Like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, this song (and the whole show) is both hilarious and serious at the same time (though I think the original production short-changed the serious side). Brecht would have been very proud.

We have only one week left of our run and I continue to find amazing buried treasure in this script and score, incredible craft and skill and intelligence. Like many of the shows we produce, this is one that no doubt will be given lots of shallow productions by people who don't realize all the wonderful things hidden inside this rowdy, vulgar, outrageous show.

I'm already working on my next book, an exploration of the New American Musical in this new millenium, and there will be a chapter on Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson so people can see what's so genuinely brilliant about this under-rated, freakishly original, and surprisingly powerful work. It has been a real privilege exploring it and sharing it with our audiences. It's been such fun to read the rave reviews that each found different treasures in our show. For people who thinks musicals are all old-fashioned and trivial and simplistic, this powerful piece of rock theatre will disabuse of them of that ridiculous notion.

This is a show about important, consequential things, about America, about our politics and how we choose to live together in this experiment we call American democracy, about the dark side of populism (Sarah Palin, anyone?), about the complexity of morality and the impossible choices our leaders face every day.

In short, like almost every show New Line Theatre produces, this is a show about the real world and about us. And that's what makes thrilling, potent theatre.

It's been an amazing ride. Thank you, Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott