The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre

Joy Never Comes for Free

2009-07-07T11:04:00.005-05:00

So last night our pianist/conductor Chris Petersen joined us and I relinquished the keyboard once and for all (well, at least for this show). That first night with Chris always reminds me how incredibly fragile performances are. Even though Chris is playing the same score I've been playing, the fact that it's a different pianist makes a real difference to the actors.

Part of it is that it's very hard for Chris to jump into this already moving vehicle -- the actors and I have established our own tempos, our own subtle shifts in tone and feel, our own musical quirks, and now poor Chris has to adjust to all that. But that's one of the reasons he comes in the week before Hell Week, so he can figure all that stuff out before Hell Week and before the band joins us.

But like I said, even the most subtle changes require adjustments from the actors, and since they're not fully settled into their own performances yet, since they're still finding their own paths, it's hard for them too.

This part of the process -- the Home Stretch -- can be rough on the actors in so many ways. First, we give them a new pianist. Then Saturday we'll give them lights -- especially in this show, lights are an integral part of the storytelling (helping to delineate flashbacks, interior monologues, etc.), an element that the actors really need but haven't had yet. On Sunday, we'll add the band and microphones. On Monday, we'll add costumes and the remaining props.

And then they'll have just three run-throughs to put it all together -- meanwhile polishing their own performances and putting my various notes into practice. This is the main reason why New Line has so many more run-throughs than we used to. When we started the company, we'd generally have one full run-through before Hell Week; now we usually have five or six. We used to move into the theatre the Sunday before we opened; now we move in two and half weeks before opening. At the beginning of New Line, the amount of time we got in the theatre didn't allow for a lighting cue-to-cue rehearsal or a sitzprobe; now we get both.

But as any of our actors will tell you, the more run-throughs, the better. (Although it is possible to have too many run-throughs, to the point of getting bored with it...) Doing this many run-throughs gives the actors time to settle into the show and then still have time to explore and find all those beautiful little moments onstage that reveal character, relationships, story, themes, etc.

This is the part of the process that is a lot like making sausage -- it's not pretty to watch, but you know the end product will be terrific. And it reminds me that no matter how hard or scary my job is, the actors' job is easily twice that...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I'll Make it Happen

2009-07-06T16:01:00.005-05:00

Next week is "Hell Week" (what less interesting people call "Tech Week" or "Production Week"), but this week is Crazy Week!

I have to get postcards in the mail, the program to the printer, posters and postcards for the next show designed and printed so we can put them in the lobby, plus this week is when I'll do the bulk of the polishing. I've been behind the piano thus far, so now I will see everything that's going on, some of it for the first time.

People always wonder how I can direct when I'm behind the piano for much of the rehearsal process. But the secret is that this gives the actors some very valuable play time, time to experiment with their characters and relationships, with their physicality, with bits of stage business, with the pacing of the show, all that stuff that adds so much to a performance without the audience really noticing. If I wasn't behind the piano, I'd be giving them notes and bothering them much earlier and I think it would rob them of that time to explore.

I do give them direction when I'm at the piano -- I've learned over the last 28 years to play and watch at the same time -- but I try only to fix staging problems and give them Big Picture direction. From this point forward, with nothing else on my mind, I will nitpick. I will polish this show like a madman, focus the comedy, "underline" what's important (there are lots of subtle ways to do that), massage everyone into the same style and energy, and get us the last mile of this journey. This is the time when they transform from a bunch of great actors into an Ensemble, and I love watching that happen!

Ticket sales are already doing great -- that's earlier than usual. Order 'em now, people!

Long Live the Musical!

Scott

How Wonderful It Feels

2009-06-25T14:10:00.004-05:00

Rehearsals are going really, really well. This must be the hardest working cast in show biz right now, 'cause this is not an easy show...!

So we've blocked the whole show, and Tuesday night we ran Act I. To my great delight, everyone was mostly memorized and the act ran very smoothly. It was fun to see the actors -- especially the "kids" -- finding the physical side of their characters, now that their scripts are out of their hands. I knew the physicality would be a HUGE part of this, and it really is...

Tonight we run Act II, and I expect it will be in great shape, too.

Nick (Barfee) came over after rehearsal Tuesday and we were talking about how much we're enjoying the show. We also realized that our production does have a somewhat different tone from the original. Ours is a little more serious, a little more real. The laughs are still big and fairly continual, but the acting is less cartoony. And so the emotional moments are a lot more intense and more compelling. I can't wait to see how those moments grow and deepen over time.

The same thing happened when we did Bat Boy. There were huge laughs throughout the show, but there were also very serious, very emotional moments that had been played for laughs off Broadway. The original production had played more like sketch comedy, but ours played more like alternative theatre.

I've come to realize that my favorite kind of theatre is the kind that is both hilarious, wacky, outrageous, on the one hand; but also surprisingly serious and emotional and moving. We've found a lot of shows that operate that way -- Bat Boy, High Fidelity, Hair, Assassins, Forbidden Planet, A New Brain, March of the Falsettos, Hedwig, The Cradle Will Rock, and lots of others.

Maybe musical theatre, with its extreme emotion and its inherent artificiality, is better suited than theatre that lacks music to pull off this wild balancing act...

And maybe I like that kind of storytelling because it seems most honest. Life is continually both ridiculous and serious. Our storytelling should recognize that. Of course, some of our shows consciously focus mostly on the dark side (Kiss of the Spider Woman, for example) but there's always still some humor in there, even if it's really oppressively dark humor... :)

Spelling Bee will be such a terrific finale to this wonderful season. I love my job!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I'm Loving Every Minute

2009-06-12T13:33:00.003-05:00

Two weeks down...

What an interesting piece of theatre Spelling Bee is. And not really what I expected when we went into rehearsal. Having seen the original cast and hearing the audience roaring with laughter all through the show, I made the (silly) assumption that this was a show like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Reefer Madness, Forbidden Planet... sincere but overblown. I was operating under the mantra of the Bat Boy writers, "The height of expression, the depth of sincerity." We operate under that rule quite often...

But Spelling Bee is something else. Like many of the shows we produce, this is a show like no other. It has its own rules. In fact, as we started blocking, I realized I had it backwards -- this show doesn't operate like Bat Boy. The trick to making this show work is to play the kids as real and honestly as possible, with almost no "style" layered on. I've realized the show is built so that the kids are normal people (relatively speaking) in a nightmare world. Sort of like the Jonathan Pryce character in Brazil.

I realized that if the kids are cartoony at all, that undermines the many serious moments when we go inside their heads and reveal the many complicated emotions, loneliness, frustration, and feelings of abuse or even abandonment. The world of the Bee is what's crazy; not the kids. The show makes this Bee as disorienting and confusing and overwhelming for the audience as it is for the kids. That's its genius -- to take something we all either dismiss or find merely cute, and show us what it feels like from the inside, to a terrified ten-year-old.

And that in turn reminds us that we're all still that ten-year-old, still having to audition (literally or figuratively) over and over throughout our lives, still being judged every day in one way or another, constantly finding we're the "loser" in one context or another.

And these kids show us how we deal with all that. Leaf and Marcy have found their inner Zen Masters. Marcy finally realizes that sometimes losing -- letting go -- is the real road to happiness. Leaf is the one kid who has never really cared if he wins; it's an adventure to be enjoyed as far as he's concerned, not a mountain to be conquered. Olive finds joy in the small act of being taken seriously, victory or not. On the other hand, Chip and Logainne find only unhappiness at not measuring up to Perfection. Even Barfee finds that making a new friend is as big a triumph as winning a Bee.

But for us, the audience, to register all this, the performances have to be very real, more so than one would expect from a show this outrageous. And that was a surprise to me.

What a privilege it is to work on a show this beautifully and artfully written!

Long Live the Musicals!
Scott

It's a Very Big Undertaking

2009-06-07T12:45:00.005-05:00

I've spent the weekend thinking about the show and working out a lot of the blocking. I think our production is going to be more Brechtian than the original, with a clearer distinction between the "real" world and the interior world. The more comfortable and adventurous I get as a director, the more Brechtian my work gets. I think it's just my natural state.

For those who don't generally throw around esoteric theatre terms, "Brechtian" is a style that comes from the German director/playwright Bertolt Brecht (Threepenny Opera), a style that admits the artificiality of the theatre. Brecht's idea was not to let the audience get too emotionally involved in the narrative, to constantly yank them out of the "reality" of the story by continually reminding them that this is just theatre, just actors on a stage telling a story. The really funny part is that Brecht's theories don't really work the way he thought, so good Brechtian theatre often lets you get emotionally involved and engages you intellectually.

There are lots of ways to make Brechtian theatre. In many cases, it's about the actors speaking directly to the audience rather than pretending they're not there. (Spelling Bee does this, but then again, we're at a spelling bee, so of course there's an audience!) But a show like Forbidden Planet does it by using extremely artificial devices -- Shakespearean dialogue and classic rock and roll songs. When Miranda breaks into "Teenager in Love," it pulls the audience out of the story and reminds them of the real world -- while commenting on both the show itself and on the real world context of the song. Instead of feeling sorry for her, you're thinking how funny it is that she's singing this song you know, how strangely perfect the song is for this moment...

Last night I watched a bootleg video (don't tell anyone!) of the new rock musical Next to Normal (with music by Tom Kitt, who also composed High Fidelity). It's an amazing piece of theatre -- powerful, ballsy, darkly funny, incredibly emotional, smart, complex. And a lot of the show is spent with the actors talking directly to the audience. I realize that musical theatre is becoming more and more Brechtian, going back to the mid-90s with shows like Hedwig, Bat Boy, Urinetown, etc. Maybe that's because the conventions of musical theatre are so inherently artificial, that acknowledging that artificiality seems more honest, more authentic somehow, especially in this ironic, self-aware culture of ours. The more a musical admits its artifice, the less the audience feels like it has to "accept" the profound unreality -- the "lie" -- of the musical form.

It's like we're saying to them, "Hey, we know its extremely unnatural to break into song (and harmony and dance numbers), but that's the storytelling language we're gonna use tonight, so go on the ride with us and we promise not to bullshit you."

Spelling Bee is a very complex piece. So silly on the surface, so dark and emotionally messy underneath. It's really going to be fun to stage this and to watch it find its footing over the next few weeks. Luckily, we have a kick-ass cast, and all but two of them have worked with me before, so I know they'll trust me and go down whatever road I lay before us. We have in this cast veterans of New Line's A New Brain, Bat Boy, Urinetown, Johnny Appleweed, Reefer Madness, Rocky Horror, and Forbidden Planet.

They know Brechtian.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Woe is Me!

2009-06-04T22:24:00.002-05:00

Well, we've had a week of music rehearsals and we're almost done learning the score. But Jesus Christ, this is hard music! After working on the extremely easy scores for Hair and Forbidden Planet, I think my music director muscles were getting soft. I had forgotten how hard the other Bill Finn scores were (March of the Falsettos, A New Brain). Our intrepid actors are charging ahead undaunted, but I can tell how hard they're working.

With some shows, I teach the music and it sounds great right away. Those are the shows with easy scores. With other shows -- the really fucking hard shows -- I teach the music, the actors all furrow their brows, the veins stand out in their foreheads, they say shit! a lot, they shake their heads, they frantically operate their digital recorders... and I know (and they know) they'll be doing lots of work outside of rehearsal getting comfortable with the music. Most of these songs have group singing in them, so there's a lot to learn. We start blocking Tuesday, so they have to be in control of their music by then.

But I'm not worried -- these are very talented people -- and luckily, most of the show will have fairly minimal staging (it's a spelling bee, after all!) so the crazy hard music can take up more of their brains for a while...

But I have to give a big shout-out to the cast for all their hard work. It's such a pleasure to be working on material this rich with people this talented and hard-working.

Don't worry, y'all. If the other Finn shows are any indicator, all the music will click soon and it will feel so absolutely right that you'll never forget it.

The adventure continues...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Spelling Bee!

2009-05-28T14:06:00.002-05:00

It's been just a few days since we closed Return to the Forbidden Planet, and it's also just a few days until we go into rehearsal for Spelling Bee. I will miss RTTFP something awful -- it was one of the most fun, most enjoyable theatre experiences I've had -- but I can't wait to get into Spelling Bee.

Nick (who will play Barfee) and I were talking a few nights ago about doing A New Brain back in 2002, and what a joy it was to walk around for all those weeks with that beautiful, amazing music in our heads. As Sondheim has said, living in music is a gift from God. Particularly William Finn's music. Deborah (who will play Miss Peretti) and I worked together on March of the Falsettos, another Finn gem, years ago, and she also was in A New Brain. I believe the rest of our Spelling Bee cast is new to Finn. What a fun ride they have ahead.

In a weird way, tonight sort of launches the fun -- a few of us are getting together to watch the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. I was watching the semi-finals this morning and it's so cool how exactly right the musical gets the kids, the process, the atmosphere, the parents, the suspense, the joy, the agony. I could see several of the show characters in these real-life kid spellers. I think it will help the actors a lot to see the real Bee.

I've been playing through the score a lot this week, trying to get it in my fingers. Finn's music is such a fucking joy to play! It just feels good in your fingers -- like the music of Jason Robert Brown, Larry O'Keefe, and Adam Guettel. Playing this score is a lot like speaking really brilliant dialogue -- it's a gigantic pleasure and you can't help but feel lucky that you get to roll around inside this kick-ass music. It's not the feeling you get from playing less artful scores like Damn Yankees or The Sound of Music or Wicked.

At long last, after decades of divorce, musical theatre and pop/rock are reuniting in a meaningful way, with exceptional scores like Hedwig, Bat Boy, High Fidelity, Songs for a New World, In the Heights, Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, and plenty of others. (You'll notice I am not including calculated, unartful dreck like The Full Monty, Wicked, or Billy Elliot.)

We have an amazing cast for this show, terrific designers, and brilliant material. With the intelligence and crazed energy we bring to almost all our shows, this should prove to be quite a potent cocktail. As I wrote on our Spelling Bee webpage, you'll laugh your ass off and then spend the next week on your therapist's couch. Believe me, if you only saw this show at the cavernous Fox Theatre, then you haven't really seen Spelling Bee...

I'll keep you posted...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Credits

2009-05-24T04:19:00.015-05:00

I just got home from our last cast party. What a wonderful run! Back on March 21, I predicted in this blog that this show would be a really hard one to walk away from. And it really is. But the show is over and it seems to me that a show based largely on a famous movie ought to have credits, right?

There are some serious unsung heroes behind the crazy, improbable success of New Line's Return to the Forbidden Planet.

First, there's Vicki and Ann, the box office and house managers, respectively. They're the ones who have to put up with the mean patrons when we sell out. Believe me, people can be total pricks when a show is sold out. Tonight, this one woman was complaining that we were sold out at 7:55. She kept whining that she had called earlier and "they" (in other words, I) said there were still tickets available. Well, we explained, there were, at 7:00, but not at 7:55. She was a real bitch. Ann and Vicki also had to field the complaints when the AC was out for a show and a half. These ladies are the ones on the front lines, and I'm sure glad they're between me and lots of problems.

Then there's Trish. She's usually our stage manager and lighting tech, but because of a new job, she couldn't work on this show. (She'll be back for Spelling Bee.) We sure did miss her. I got so used to having her there to take care of things! She kept her finger in the pie a little by doing props this time. Although there were only four props. But shit y'all, did you see that awesome giant space wrench???

I have to mention my friend Pat Edmonds, the mad genius. She makes a living creating craftsy stuff for arts and crafts fairs. But because she has to serve her client base, most of what she makes is Very Cute. So she loves it when I call her and ask for a bat baby and a life-size severed cow head (for Bat Boy), a raven puppet (for Robber Bridegroom), an American flag with a giant pot leaf on it (for Johnny Appleweed), and this time, two six-foot long tentacles belonging to the Id Monster.

"What does an Id Monster look like?" she asked. "How should I know?" I replied.

And there's Melissa who ran lights and Robert who designed and ran the sound. They were on the J-O-B every night. We literally could not have done this show without them. Robert's only a senior in high school, but he really is a total pro.

And then of course our brilliant, funny designers. Betsy and Thommy did an amazing job with the costumes. So clever, so original, so funny. They totally meshed with the cartoon world of this show. It's rare that costumes are actually funny, but these sure were. I think my favorite details were the CDs on Miranda's Act II dress, and the whole Ariel the Robot costume -- a laundry basket, giant combs, desk trays, and SLINKYs!

Hans likewise created the funniest lighting design I think I've ever seen. You don't expect lighting to be funny, but this really was, and it added so much to the style and energy of the show. Bravo, dude! Peter Sargent told me you were really good, and you really are.

And Dave and Jeff, who created the wonderful playground of a set. I've never seen actors have so much fun using a set. They just loved it. Again, exactly right in tone and style. And really, really funny. Some nights, people in the audience actually had their pictures taken on the set after the show. It was decked out with pill bottles, phone handsets, smoke alarms, telephone routers, a video game joystick, all manner of silly but perfect crap that always made me think of the salt and pepper shakers Dr. McCoy used as medical instruments on the original Star Trek. Home run, boys.

And last, the real magic in this show, The New Line Band -- Petersen on piano, Renard on guitar, Strathman on reeds, Dave on bass, and Schurk on drums. They've played so many shows together, they have become an incredibly tight band. And for this show, one new bandie, Patrick, who did a terrific job on rhythm guitar. Thanks for the referral, Tawaine.

Thanks to everyone who brought this fucked up gem to life. What a joyful, wonderful experience it has been. I can't imagine a cast and staff more perfectly suited for their roles and for this show. I'll gush about the playful, fearless cast later when I'm less tired and stoned.

Live Long and Prospero!
Scott

One Day I Feel So Happy

2009-05-04T13:22:00.013-05:00

The reviews are coming in, and I think we're a HIT!

First, we got this terrific feature story from Judy Newmark in the Sunday Post-Dispatch, a really interesting exploration of RTTFP and its source play and film. She wrote, "Put it all together, and Return to the Forbidden Planet works on multiple levels: literary, pop-cultural and psychological. [Artistic director] Miller thinks that it compares well with Bat Boy and Urinetown, two smart, irreverent shows that go a long way toward defining the New Line point of view."

Judy's Post-Dispatch review of the show hit their website Monday (it was in Tuesday's print edition), and she says, "New Line Theatre presents a lot of intriguing work, but now and then it gets everything so right that you're ready to see the show again before you're out of the theater. Hair was like that; Bat Boy, too. And so is its new production, Return to the Forbidden Planet -- a smart, giddy, musically ingenious spoof written by Bob Carlton and directed by Scott Miller."

Paul Friswold at The Riverfront Times wrote in his Calendar Pimp column, "Remember the halcyon days when we were terrified of the Russians, they were terrified of us, and Shakespeare wrote his first intergalactic R&B hit, 'It's A Man's Man's Man's World?' Sweet fancy Moses, those were the days. Wait, that never happened. Or did it? Yup, looky here: Return to the Forbidden Planet. It's sweet Billy Shakes vs. Golden Oldies vs. Space Age Love Songs. Just what Dr. Tempest ordered." Yes, that about sums it up.

On Wednesday, Friswold reviewed the show, saying, “Bob Carlton's whimsical take on The Tempest as refracted through a 1950s sci-fi prism features a galaxy's worth of fantastic rock & roll songs, punning wordplays on snippets of Shakespearian monologues and intentionally ‘Pigs in Space’ costuming (courtesy of Betsy Krausnick). But this is no parlor trick of a musical; there's a rich vein of Shakespeare's favorite ingredient — the wondrous depths of the human heart — that elevates the show from cunning stunt to artful meditation on the destructive nature of power and the redemptive power of love.”

Chris Gibson's KDHX-FM review said, "Under the guidance of director Scott Miller, New Line Theatre is presenting a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable production. . . This is a fun show, and Miller has assembled a talented cast and crew that seems to be having a blast."

Mark Bretz' Ladue News review says, "New Line artistic director Scott Miller meticulously blends the comic sensibilities of his talented cast with the brisk, jaunty style of the New Line band to make this foray into outer space a campy and delightful journey. There are stars aplenty in this cosmos."

Andrea Braun's Vital Voice review was posted Monday afternoon, which said, "Forbidden Planet plays for laughs, which it receives in abundance."

Also today, someone posted the nicest note to our Facebook page: "We just got back from the show tonight (5/2/09), and it was phenomenal. Best time I've ever had at a local theater performance. The cast, the band, and the sets were dead on. The space and the sound were fantastic. Really, really good job, everyone. It was shlocky, pervy, funny, and rockin'. I could not ask for more."

And neither could we. Thanks to everyone who came out to see us this first weekend. If you haven't seen our show yet, come see us soon!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

We Did the Monster Mash!

2009-05-03T02:55:00.007-05:00

Opening weekend went great! Terrific crowds and the show was tight and funny and focused like a laser. This is a hell of a cast and they are in complete control of this wacky freight train of a show. Judging by the audience reaction, I think word-of-mouth is going to be really good.

Sometimes people ask me the secret of how New Line gets so much press -- a little bit of national press now and then, but a ton of local press. I tell them it's very simple -- it has to be news. It has to be something worth writing about, something new. Nobody wants to write about another production of Hello, Dolly!, no matter how great it might be.

But New Line offers the press juicy stuff like Johnny Appleweed, the stoner political satire. And the outrageous social satire of Bat Boy and Urinetown. And a new musical about Rush Limbaugh. And, of course, the science-fiction-rock-and-roll-Shakespearean Return to the Forbidden Planet. We offer them a lot to write about.

Case in point: In today's Post-Dispatch, Judy Newmark has written a very cool article comparing The Tempest to the film Forbidden Planet to the musical Return to the Forbidden Planet. It's a really smart, really interesting peek into what makes this story in its various versions tick.

And it's the best present Judy could have given us! While we usually get Judy's review in the Sunday Post, this time she came to the show Saturday night, so her review won't make it into the Sunday paper. Instead we get this excellent preview piece, which in a lot of ways is even better. It's longer than a review and has accompanying pictures in the print edition. Plus, a day or so later, well get our review. (I'm told she was laughing a lot at the show, so hopefully she'll give us a nice review.)

Paul Friswold at The Riverfront Times also did a very smart, short preview piece, which perfectly captures the kind of show this is. He was at the show Friday, so I assume we'll have that review this week as well.

It's been a tiring week, but I feel so great about this show. It's so smart and also so silly. And somehow, strangely involving. You really get caught up with these crazy characters, very much like Little Shop of Horrors and Bat Boy. This cast is at the top of their game and I think they're all having an absolute blast, and so, the audience is too. That's the real magic of theatre.

Three more weeks! What a ride.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Won't You Please Take Me Along for a Ride?

2009-04-26T20:26:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, we had our cue-to-cue rehearsal, a boring process but a valuable one for the lighting designer. Today, was our sitzprobe (a term from opera), the rehearsal where the actors sing the score with the band for the first time. For a New Line show, it's the first time the band has played the score together and it's the only time we'll run the music without running the whole show. Any potential problems or questions have to be sorted out in this one rehearsal. It's the most stressful part of the process for me, those four or five hours. But we have really talented, skilled musicians, and they pick up so much so fast.

The sitzprobe is a real turning point in each production. By this time, we've run the show several times, but only with solo piano. Particularly for a rock and roll show, it's just not the same. "Born to Be Wild" was not meant for solo piano. At the sitzprobe, the actors hear the incredible energy of the band for the first time, and the songs just leap to life. So, today was hard but it was also awesome -- our band ROCKS.

This is the weirdest time of the rehearsal process. All my hardest tasks are behind me, and yet I still can't think about anything but the show. Every waking hour. I can't accomplish anything that's not about the show. Ack!

As an example... After I got home tonight, in a desperate bid to escape RTTFP-on-the-Brain, I watched the film Frost/Nixon on cable. I had seen the play done extremely well by the Rep last fall The film was different but also very cool, very emotional, setting up those famous interviews as rounds in an existential boxing match. But then -- and I'm not kidding about this -- I started noticing parallels between Nixon and Dr. Prospero! Both of them do bad things thinking (or rationalizing) that it's for The Greater Good. Both their actions cause great harm. Both are challenged over their actions. Both volunteer to meet their fate before it can be thrust upon them.

See what I'm up against?

On the other hand, I am getting more and more zen-like about shows the older I get. For the last several shows, there's a point at which I realize that the end product is now out of my hands. The show is now the property of the actors and musicians. It's not theatre on the page; it's only theatre when performers bring it to life for an audience. I can still steer them a few more times, but it's theirs now. I set us on this road, I shaped our journey, but my work is largely done.

It will be what it will be. Some folks won't like it; hopefully far more will like it a lot. But we've done our best, we're made thoughtful choices, and experimented and played and explored, and the only real test now is that final missing piece: the audience. How will they receive it? Will we connect with them? Will the show be clear to them? Will they enjoy it as much as we do?

We will find out soon. Really soon.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Head Out on the Skyway

2009-04-23T01:09:00.005-05:00

RTTFP Update: Our pre-sale is decent at this point. Hard to say what it'll be like be the time we open. Metrotix says our pre-sale is better than a lot of other local events right now. And the postcards just arrived, so hopefully that'll goose people into action. Also, Judy Newmark is doing a short piece about the show for the Post-Dispatch. We often get something in the RFT the week we open, but we never know beforehand.

I realized, watching a particularly funny run-through last night, that I don't really care if we get huge audiences (although that would be wonderful) and I don't care if everybody likes it (it's rare that a piece of art that's genuinely interesting is also hugely commercial). Whatever the reaction, I know this is a show that was worth doing, a show that was just waiting for us, a project to be proud of. It's twenty years old, but it's never been produced here before. If not us, then who?

When we did the deeply flawed but hilarious Anyone Can Whistle, people actually thanked us over and over for giving them a chance to see it. The same thing happened with The Nervous Set, Floyd Collins, The Cradle Will Rock, The Robber Bridegroom, High Fidelity... It may happen again with this show...

Part of what our company is about is sharing interesting, exciting work that nobody else will produce. Some of it is flawed and some of it is brilliant. Return to the Forbidden Planet is brilliant. And it's built exactly like a Shakespearean comedy -- and a 1950s science fiction movie! Two genres for the price of one! Luckily for us, Bob Carlton possessed the fearlessness to not only conceive of this crazy concoction but also the wisdom to see its potential and to follow through in writing it. There is so much smart and sly and subtle about this show, a lot of which some folks will probably miss. But I know I'll find new nuances every night sitting up in the booth watching my awesome crew literally throwing themselves around the stage. Hmmmm.... throwing themselves around the stage? Yes, very subtle. God love 'em.

New Line doesn't just produce shows I want to work on. It produces shows we ought to share with St. Louis audiences, to lay before them the full range of this amazing art form of ours. And what self-respecting musical theatre lover wouldn't kill to see a rarely produced gem like Return to the Forbidden Planet? That's who this is for.

Next week is Hell Week! Ack!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Get the Motors Running

2009-04-13T13:21:00.003-05:00

We have moved into the theatre! Wahoo!

Well, we've blocked the whole show, the cast is largely off script, many of the costumes are done, and our set is mostly up. Holy crap! Load-in was Saturday afternoon, and thanks to our most excellent set designers, Jeff Breckel and David Carr, much of it was pre-built and just had to be assembled and tacked down. The actors who were there Saturday got their first glimpse of Betsy's spaceship uniforms, which are awesome!

We'll take some PR photos tonight, then run the whole show for the first time. We've run both acts individually and they're both in pretty good shape. But it will be so much fun to run the whole thing all together, so the actors really get a sense of the pacing and flow of the show. My hardest work as director (the actual staging) is done -- although the hardest part of my producing job is yet to come...

Now we get to my favorite part. We'll run the whole show every rehearsal and I get to see what we've wrought and to fine-tune it all. I probably won't give them too many notes this week, as they acclimate themselves to the actual set (rather than just folding chairs outlining the playing area in our rehearsal space). Then next week, after they've gotten fairly comfortable, I'll start fine-tuning and finding solutions for all the little problems and obstacles that will present themselves from now till (or even through) opening night.

I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. I know I get to see our show in full blossom soon, but not quite yet...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I'm Just a Soul Whose Intentions Are Good

2009-04-04T22:43:00.007-05:00

I've been in a dark place this week. I've been having these weird dreams -- every single night I've been dreaming a different but related dream about me not being able to get into a theatre or not having my ticket or there's someone in my seat... you get the idea. The story is always different but I always wake up pissed off. Which I hate.

I finally realized it's my worry over where we're going to find a new theatre when our current space is no longer available in fall 2010. That's only 18 months away, so that problem is always in the back of my mind, and now, annoyingly, it's coming out in my dreams. At least I oughta get my own dream ballet! And my own Dream Curly! (musical theatre joke)

But I also get in a bad mood after the Kevin Kline Awards every year. By most measures, New Line is wildly successful. We're in our 18th season. We get tons of local press and a bit of national press now and then. We have a loyal donor base. We sell out a lot of performances (though fewer recently because we're in a much bigger house now). We get many, many rave reviews and almost no negative reviews. Audiences were thrilled by all three of our shows in 2008 -- Assassins, High Fidelity, and Hair. All three enjoyed repeat customers (a lot for Hair). And yet, in four years and after twelve shows, we've never even gotten a Kline nomination for our shows, for my direction, or for any of our leads. (We have gotten some nominations but none for the major categories.) And no one from New Line has ever won a Kline.

I know, awards don't matter. That's true, they really don't. It's the opinion of seven judges. Hardly something to be annoyed by. And truthfully, I'm incredibly uncomfortable with the very idea of winning awards for making art. That seems creepy and inappropriate to me. The only real measure is: do we connect to the audience in a meaningful way. And we do. And yet it still bothers me somehow that we get "de-Klined" every year. I admit it's ridiculous.

Really, other than my worry over where we'll move in 2010, everything else is going great. Forbidden Planet is going so well, and the cast is so strong and having so much fun. I am positive that our audiences will fall in love with this show. And we've chosen our shows for next season and all three of them positively thrill me!

So why am I in such a dark place? Maybe because I'm 45 now and New Line is 18, and yet it's still so hard to get shows up and opened. And we still don't have a permanent home. I feel like after all this time and all this success and all this praise, at some point it should be easier than it was ten years ago. But it's not.

And yes, I chose this life. I chose to live on the minuscule salary New Line pays me, plus a bit on the side from my books. I chose to start a company that does alternative work, a company that by definition does not attract a wide, mainstream audience, a company that by design operates on a shoestring; and doing often obscure, quirky shows that I'm constantly having to "sell" to actors, designers, etc. Maybe I'm just realizing that it's going to keep being hard as long as I do this. I thought it would get easier.

Part of my darkness is probably just that we're at that nebulous midpoint with Forbidden Planet, where I've poured all my ideas into the show, but it will take a few run-throughs for me to see what the result is, to see how good my work is, and what work still lies ahead. So I'm done with the biggest (and least fun) part of my job, but I don't get the payoff quite yet. I can sort of imagine the end product, but none of us really knows yet what this crazy and beautiful piece of art will be.

I don't have too long to wait though. We move into the theatre in a week and open 2 1/2 weeks later. I can't wait to hear the band and to see the set and costumes! This is the part of the process where I have to have faith and patience. Neither is my strong suit.

Ah, just shut up and go smoke a joint, Miller. Okay, if I have to...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

I'm Gonna Change the World

2009-03-29T20:28:00.002-05:00

Though most of the people who love Return to the Forbidden Planet (and there are tons of them!) might think I'm crazy, I see real depth and substance in this show, underneath all the wackiness and wah-ooo's. The same is true of Bat Boy, Rocky Horror, Urinetown, and many of the crazier shows we've produced.

At the center of this tale is the biggest of all moral questions: should we restrict or block science, even when it crosses into moral gray area? It's a question that's also at the center of American moral debate right now.

In the musical, Dr. Prospero’s discovery of telegenesis (you'll have to see the show to find out exacty what that is) seems to him a great step forward for humankind, an expansion and extension of human consciousness greater than any that has come before. But he doesn’t foresee the inherent downside, that he would greatly intensify the mind’s power without also greatly increasing the mind’s ability to control itself.

In almost any endeavor, increasing power without increasing control usually leads to disaster. It’s a problem we keep bumping up against repeatedly as we evolve. But it's even worse when it comes to the Wild West of the human mind. Consider that old joke, “Don’t think about a pink elephant.” It’s nearly impossible to do because the mind is hard to consciously control. Strangely enough, that's at the center of the story of this show.

Consider this: Decades ago, we discovered nuclear power, but we still can’t control or contain it. The world’s greatest fear today is that Iran or North Korea or, worse yet, a band of rebel terrorists, will get hold of a nuclear bomb and use it. We increased our power without sufficient control over it.

We invented the internet, wildly expanding the reach of human consciousness, but with it came online predators, the loss of privacy, and the erosion of copyright laws through viral videos and file sharing. Again, we increased our power but not our control (although some believe, myself included, that the internet should not ever be controlled).

And two of our newest technologies, gene mapping and embryonic stem cell research already scare people who foresee human cloning and “designer babies.” Imagine how terrified they'd be if someone actually discovered telegenesis. This is the real issue at the heart of Return to the Forbidden Planet, and it’s why this story remains so fascinating. Dr. Prospero believes that Knowledge is Good, but he forgets that Knowledge is often Dangerous too.

Futuristic food for thought.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

2009-03-24T22:24:00.003-05:00

Pardon me while I gush...

I LOVE THIS SHOW!

Now I understand why there is this international cult following around Return to the Forbidden Planet. We ran Act I tonight and it is so fucking crazy! It's funny, it's intelligent, it's just smart-ass enough, it's really well-constructed, and it's one of the highest energy shows I've ever worked on. And when I say that, you have to keep in mind that I've worked on some really high-energy shows. But this is one of those that will leave the cast huffing and puffing at intermission. Especially the smokers.

As I watched it tonight I realized that I just can not imagine anyone not having a blast watching this show. And despite the sometimes dense Shakespearean language, it's so easy to follow the story, the characters, the relationships. There may be a few folks who are so scared of ol' Bill Shakespeare that they'll just tune out right at the beginning, but I think they will be few. It's so easy to understand this stuff.

The other surprise is that there are several genuinely emotional moments -- when Prospero tells us the story of being betrayed and banished by his ex-wife, when Cookie is rejected by Miranda and he gets a juicy Shakespeare-style Mad Scene (incorporating bits of King Lear and the awesome song "She's Not There")... which is followed by Prospero's own Mad Scene (including "Shakin' All Over") as he seethes in anger over his daughter's abandonment of him for the studly Capt. Tempest (and thereby invoking the dreaded Id Monster!).

And I have to give a shout-out to Phil, our Bosun, who is hilarious whenever your eye happens to catch him, just sitting there, watching, reacting. He's so fully in it. He such has a great expressive face, and though what he's doing is pretty subtle, it's very funny stuff...

I offer my kudos to the whole cast. They're all working their butts off and creating some wonderful, funny, beautiful moments. I can't wait to get to work on Act II...

Watch -- they'll all suck now. Just kidding.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

That's Where It Is

2009-03-21T17:16:00.005-05:00

Rehearsals continue apace...

When I first read the Forbidden Planet script, I knew this was one of those shows that reads well, but not nearly as well as it plays. I could tell that as much fun as it was to read (truly laugh-out-loud funny), much more coolness would reveal itself once the show got up on its feet. The same was true of Rocky Horror, Bat Boy, Nervous Set, High Fidelity, and many of the shows we've produced.

It's certainly true of Forbidden Planet. As we block Act I we find such richness in the characters and such intelligence in the comedy. We realized this week that the male characters are all just full of rabid 1950s sexism, trying to cram their women into the 50s most restrictive categories -- either virgin or whore, nothing in between. It's a phenomenon we see illustrated in Grease, Rocky Horror, The Nervous Set, and other shows that comment on those times. But it's extra-funny in this context because this is a 1950s view of the future, so here the future takes on the regressive social politics of the mid-20th century.

We also realized that the show consciously subverts the usual 1950s heroic spaceship captain character by making Capt. Tempest utterly incompetent, ill-prepared, and an all-around terrible leader. He fights with his science officer (who happens to be a woman), he panics in the face of danger, and he's terrible at making decisions. He is the average 1950s American -- baffled by technology, scared of what he doesn't understand, and held back by a hermetically closed mind.

But we also discovered the feel of this show, the energy of it, the pacing, the heightened acting style, the incredibly high stakes for these characters, and so much more. We're having so much fun!

The hardest challenge is meshing these three seemingly incompatible storytelling forms: Shakespeare, 50s sci-fi, and rock and roll. I told the cast they have to really be rock stars when they sing, to find the rawness and sexuality and emotion of these classic rock songs; but at the same time they have to be the same character in the same style whether they're singing rock and roll or speaking the "Fakespeare" lines, all while living convincingly in this sci-fi universe. That's not easy -- but even after only two blocking rehearsals, they're already finding that common ground where all three elements come together.

With some of our more unusual shows, it takes a while for the actors to figure out how this particular universe sounds and moves. Usually, I have to convince them that I know where we're going and they can trust that I'll take care of them. That was true of Urinetown, Anyone Can Whistle, The Cradle Will Rock, and lots of others. But this time, the whole cast seems so tuned in to the material, even at this early stage, and that will make the whole process easier and a lot more fun...

This isn't an easy show to bring to life -- it's such a unique and complex piece of theatre, and it's got fairly serious undertones that can't be allowed to get in the way of the wackiness (much like Urinetown) -- but we're really on the right road. And everybody seems delighted to be traveling that road together.

The fun is only beginning. I predict that this will be one of those shows the whole cast will hate to close on May 23. I know I will.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Great Balls of Fire!

2009-03-18T12:04:00.002-05:00

So we blocked the first section of Act I last night. What a relief! My ideas work and the show is every bit as funny as I hoped it would be. Even in this very early stage, it's really, really funny!

And just as wonderful is this: every actor in the show is so willing to be silly and ridiculous, to throw themselves to the floor when the ship crashes, all of them screaming and singing as they pass through the meteor storm (hence the title of this entry), all of it... It's a very physical show, and every bit as wild and wacky as Bat Boy or Urinetown. And everybody seems ready and willing to go for broke. As we like to say, it's all about "the depth of sincerity, the height of expression" -- the emotions are honest and real, the stakes are high, but the style is BIG and outrageous (like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Little Shop). It's going to be a very funny rehearsal process...

The other cool part is that I'm sure now that this was a good show to put in our season. Having never actually seen the show onstage -- and despite the many, MANY truly terrible YouTube videos of college productions -- I read it and listened to the cast album and felt that this was a really original, interesting show, something our audiences would enjoy, high energy, big laughs, a bit of seriousness underneath it all, and my favorite thing of all -- a genuine roller coaster ride.

We've only staged 17 pages, but I am so sure now that audiences are going to fall in love with this bizarre show. I can't wait to share it with them! After all, we do all this for the audience -- without them, it's not a show, it's just a run-through...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Go Now

2009-03-08T13:22:00.002-05:00

Such are the trials and tribulations of a small professional theatre company:

A while back I had emailed the "Forbidden Planet" cast with details about when rehearsals started, etc., and I had heard back from all but one of them. So last Friday, a few days before rehearsals started, I called Wayne, the one actor I hadn't heard from. But I couldn't get through -- his phone had been turned off. Luckily, another friend had a number in Colorado where Wayne (to my great surprise) was at the moment.

I talked to Wayne, who said he'd be back in St. Louis that weekend and he'd be at the first rehearsal Monday night. He said he was just in Colorado for a dance performance he was in.

Monday night, Wayne didn't show up. We tried that Colorado number, but no one answered. So after rehearsal, I sent him an email and messages on both MySpace and Facebook, asking what was up. The next morning, Wayne had uploaded pictures of himself and his friends drinking in Colorado, but he did not answer any of my messages. And then he didn't show up Tuesday night either.

Then I noticed on both his MySpace page and his Facebook page, he now listed Colorado City as his city. Huh??? I left more messages, email, voice mail, the whole shebang... And to this day, a week later, he will not respond.

I realize now Wayne has moved to Colorado to stay. (He's even offering dance lessons to people in Colorado City on his MySpace page.) And it seems pretty clear that he already knew that long before he and I talked on the phone and before he promised me he'd be back to start work on the show.

This doesn't happen often, but actors do drop out on occasion, sometimes for legitimate reasons, often not... But because we had already started rehearsals and were already learning the score, replacing Wayne was urgent. I put the word out to all my theatre friends that I needed a replacement.

Then I get a call from Nick Kelly, longtime New Liner -- actor, director, and our official fight choreographer when we need one -- he teaches acting and he knew an actor who was interested in stepping in, Mike Dowdy. I had seen Dowdy do improv (he's hilarious) and heard him sing (terrific tenor voice), so I talked to Mike about the details, and the Deal was Done. Crisis Averted.

Of course, now Mike has to do a lot of catch-up. But I think he'll be great. And I doubt he'll move to Colorado any time soon.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Return to the Forbidden Planet

2009-02-27T13:46:00.002-06:00

Today's my birthday. But that's not the reason I'm happy. The real reason is that after eight agonizing weeks of not being in rehearsal or performance, I'm finally going back into rehearsal Monday, this time for Shakespeare's forgotten rock and roll masterpiece, the deliciously bizarre Return to the Forbidden Planet.

This is a show I had heard about for years, but it always sounded like a silly, shallow catalog musical to me. It first opened in London in the late 1980s and was a surprise hit, winning the Olivier Award (their version of the Tonys) for Best Musical, beating out Miss Saigon. It's (really loosely) based on Shakespeare's The Tempest and on the 1956 film Forbidden Planet (which itself was also based on The Tempest). But what the show's creator Bob Carlton did with the material was pure wacky genius -- he based his musical on both sources, using character names from both, using some dialogue from the original Shakespeare, and around that built a show with fake Shakespearean dialogue (we call it Fakespeare), a 1950s sci-fi acting style, and a classic rock and roll score.

For no particular reason I can remember, I got hold of the London cast album last year and listened to it for the first time. Luckily, it's a live album, so not only can you hear the hilarious dialogue leading into many of the songs, but you can also hear the audience's laughs and cheers. I realized that there was much more there there than I had originally thought. Uncharacteristically, I had judged this weird show without even hearing or reading it. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I realized this might be a show we'd want to do. So I got hold of the script. And I just couldn't stop laughing. It's that funny. I sat alone in my living room reading it and repeatedly laughing out loud. But I also discovered that the show is really, really smart, retaining the serious themes of the two earlier versions, but also trading in the sly self-referential humor that musical theatre embraced so fully in the 1990s and still today. Return to the Forbidden Planet fits in quite nicely next to other quirky shows that came after it, like Hedwig, Urinetown, and High Fidelity, but also reaching back to the mostly subliminal social commentary of The Rocky Horror Show, Grease, and the original Star Trek.

(Hey, maybe we need a rock and roll Star Trek musical next...!)

Just like its precursors, Return to the Forbidden Planet is still about a central theme -- the idea of expanding human consciousness with technology (or Jedi-like magic in the original), unknowingly releasing the dangerous power of the human id, and thereby butting up against that timeless and universal truth, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There is serious stuff at the core of this show, but it's easy to ignore that part if you're so inclined. As the editors of Mother Jones magazine once wrote in an anniversary issue, "Better to give us thanks for knowing the importance of being un-earnest, of taking undignified chances, for having the courage to risk all, risk being wrong, risk looking foolish. If there is in fact any secret at all to our amazing longevity, that's surely near the heart of it: knowing how to act the fool like the future depends on it."

We've done that before and Lord knows we can do it again. It's sort of becoming our specialty.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Creative Genius

2009-02-14T19:48:00.006-06:00

With this entry I embark upon treacherous and uncharted seas -- I'm about to talk about my art without the benefit of cannabis. I don't do that very often, because I believe God's Goofy Green Goodness opens up my puny human mind in ways that are uniquely worthy of the discussion of art. But this time is sorta different.

My buddy and fellow writer Sparger sent me this link to a video, a talk by author Elizabeth Glibert on the nature of art and creativity and genius -- and the unfair pressure we artists impose upon ourselves. It's about twenty minutes long, but it is soooo worth your time, I promise...

As often happens with such things, Sparger couldn't have had better timing. As I sit uncomfortably in the middle of a two-month break between shows, Ive been thinking a lot about stuff like this. I realized a while back, after reading director Anne Bogart's brilliant (and reassuring) book A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art in Theatre, that what I do is not about A Career or A Body of Work. It's not about Accomplishment or Achievement. It's just about doing good work. Just showing up and doing my job. The stakes are no longer so high for me.

I no longer believe that every piece of work I do has to be better than the one before it. I no longer have to "top" myself with each show or each book. It just has to be a serious, honest effort to say something of value in an interesting way. That's all. If it's a flop, then I'll learn some lessons from it. And if it's an incredible success, I probably won't really know why anyway...

Gilbert talks about how the ancient Greeks and Romans did not believe that genius (which really just meant creativity) resides inside a person but rather was an external divine force. I love that.

I like to think of myself as an antenna, always scanning the skies, listening to the world, being ready to receive, being ready to write down whatever fascinating things come charging into my neural circuits. I don't think of myself as the source of those things, but instead merely as the recognizer of them. And yes, that's where the pot comes in. A heaping bowl boosts the strength of my antenna, allowing it to pick up weaker signals I might otherwise miss, signals I might otherwise dismiss as just white noise. There's a lot of wonderful stuff in there! The pot rescues me from that overly judgemental internal editor that leaps to assess the value of every thought before it's fully explored.

I agree with Gilbert. It's time to free ourselves from Great Expectations and allow ourselves to be what we are at our artistic best -- a conduit, a servant. Because just being that is enough and it's more wonderful than most people will ever understand.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Obama's Economic Recovery Bill and US

2009-02-05T15:28:00.004-06:00

It's so interesting to watch the debate over President Obama's economic recovery bill. It's kinda like a Terry Gilliam movie. It's as if the Americans voters had not in fact rejected Republican economic policies both in 2006 and 2008. It's as if the election a few months ago never even happened. The Republicans are incredibly pissed off because this bill isn't exactly the same thing they've been doing for the last eight years.

Which, as we can all too clearly see, did not work, as half a million people lose their jobs each month...

One interesting aspect of the surrealistic debate going on, on Fox News, on conservative talk radio (yes, I do listen to Hannity for laughs, but I can only listen for about 10 minutes at a stretch), and on the internet, is that the definition of "pork" has completely changed. "Pork," in legislative jargon, used to mean earmarks, those pet projects that were stuck into bills without debate or vote, usually in the conference committee. Of course, the truth is that though McCain bet his entire campaign on his pledge to eliminate pork, it's really only a tiny, tiny percentage of the Federal budget, less than 1%. So McCain's quixotic quest to clean up earmarks may have had philosophic appeal, but it would have changed virtually nothing in the real world.

But "pork" isn't just earmarks anymore. These days, "pork" is anything the Rabid Right doesn't like. So even though there are zero earmarks in the recovery bill, Hannity and the other fringe lunatics are as enraged as ever over all the "pork." (Have you also noticed they're trying really hard to replace the word "Democratic" with "Democrat," as in "the Democrat Congress"... maybe someone needs to remind them about the difference between adjectives and nouns. They are not interchangeable.) One of the Republicans' biggest outrages is funding in the bill for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). "That's not stimulative!" they all shout. (Clearly, they've never seen a New Line show...)

This is mostly because they hate the NEA in principle. They are as afraid of art as they are of science and France. What they refuse to consider (among a thousand or so other things) is that the NEA gives much of its money to the state arts agencies, in our case the Missouri Arts Council. And then that money goes in large part to PAYING WORKING ARTISTS.

The screaming fringers want to keep stock brokers employed but not artists. Why? Because artists reveal the truth, and that terrifies the Right. The truth is that our country is significantly worse off than it was eight years ago. The truth is that Bush Jr. did not keep us safe -- we were attacked by Al Qaeda on his watch, well into his first term. He destroyed our economy. He almost destroyed our government. (Why do we ever elect hard-core Republicans who keep telling us that government doesn't work? If they don't think it can work, why would we hire them to run it...???)

Every civilization that survives requires art and artists. As I've said before, we are the tribe shamans. We tell our stories. We record our civilization. How many of us have ever read English history books? But lots of us have seen English history through the lens of good ol' Will Shakespeare. The artists always get the last word.

And there's nothing the Crazies fear more than that. Well, except homosexuals...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Rock Trib 2

2009-01-29T01:44:00.010-06:00

I just watched a videotape of New Line's very first show back in 1992, a revue I put together called "A Tribute to the Rock Musicals 2." Why "2," you ask? Because I had already done a "Rock Trib 1" with CenterStage Theatre Company, and so though it was New Line's first show, it was my second "Rock Trib."

What a trip to see that show again! (Shhh, don't tell anyone we videotaped it!) I remember at the time getting a lot of attention for it. We got one review, from The Riverfront Times, and it was really positive, not quite a rave, but not far off...

Now watching it 16 1/2 years later, there are a few cringey parts and a lot of brilliant parts, most notably the entire (well, almost) 17-minute Montage ("Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen") from A Chorus Line. It was fun seeing a whole bunch of people I haven't seen in years, some of them in New York, others who knows where...

The most interesting part of the show to me was seeing me stretch my conceptual muscles as a director. I had directed several shows with CenterStage, but none in which I could really experiment. So I tried a shitload of experiments in this show. So many of the tools I use now I can see myself trying them out for the first time in this show. I had never before had complete artistic freedom to do anything I wanted. Some of my experiments didn't totally work; others totally worked.

The funniest thing to me was the show itself. It was less a revue and more a lecture-demonstration. I'm not kidding, it was a lecture on the history of rock musicals. There was actually a "professor" at a podium lecturing between songs. How the hell did I get away with that? But the audience loved it. Watching the video, there's virtually no coughing, rustling, talking, etc. The audience is totally tuned in. Part of that is because the musical numbers had an incredible energy about them, a lot like our much later productions of Bat Boy, The Robber Bridegroom, March of the Falsettos, Assassins. The Riverfront Times review said the cast was "impressively – sometimes overwhelmingly – enthusiastic, talented, skilled, and well-trained."

As that review suggests, the best part of the show was the voices! Jesus, how did we get that lucky on our first show? Almost everyone in the cast had an amazing voice and real control of it. The power ballads rocked. It was one of those shows where the audience actually cheered after some of the songs. What a cool way to start a company like New Line... Sorta like a statement of purpose...

Yup, it's fun to revisit the roots.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Obama and Us

2009-01-22T15:02:00.010-06:00

This has certainly been the most active, most aggressive, most hard-working first two days I've ever seen from a new president! Not just undoing some of Dubya's more obnoxious misdeeds, but also making extremely strong statements about how his administration will operate. Today Obama signed two executive orders that were particularly relevant to what we do.

He put a freeze on senior staff salaries (in other words, no raises), and he announced really strict rules about lobbying his administration. Why? Because he thinks government should be about public service, not personal gain.

And he fuckin' means it, yo.

So why is that relevant to us? Because nonprofit theatres are different from for-profit businesses in one big way. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court decided that arts organizations could have the same nonprofit status and benefits of hospitals, schools, and other social service groups. Why? Because presenting the arts is inherently educational. It is a social service. We are here to serve our community. And too many theatres forget that.

Our primary goal is to serve, not to make money or win awards. (Although, in all fairness, we do have to make enough money to keep the doors open. Still, that is not the primary goal.) We are, by legal definition, a social service organization. That means we always have to be thinking about if we're serving our community, how well we're serving the community, and most of all, how we can better serve our community. That means being aware of racial diversity, onstage, backstage, in the office, and on our board -- so that our company looks like our community. It means doing everything we can to keep ticket prices as low as possible, so that we don't exclude the folks who make minimum wage. It means making it clear to our audiences how our shows relate to events and issues in their real lives, and showing them how powerfully live theatre can address social and political issues. And it also means serving and developing younger audiences.

Obama is trying to make Service to the Community cool again. And here at New Line, we love that. We created the New Line Free Seats last season. We just announced our first college scholarship to be offered. We're working on developing closer relationships with local schools. We're working on making people of color feel more welcome in our casts and audiences. Our board of directors is 28% African American and 14% Asian American, but we're still working on that too.

And we ask our audiences and our supporters to help us with all this. Help us bring in audiences of color. Help us get actors of color to audition for us. Help us reach out to young people. Help us serve our community. And tell us when we fall short. Help us make our corner of the world a little bit better.

We're not just singing and dancing, folks. We're trying to make a difference.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Check

2009-01-13T00:49:00.004-06:00

This week I begin a long and lonely stretch of seven weeks before I'm back in rehearsal. I haven't had this much time between shows since college. (You know, back when we wrote our papers on typewriters.) The calendar at our new space is really different, but it's a small price to pay for the use of the space.

So I spent the day today uploading production photos to our Facebook page, pretending to myself that was productive in some small way because surely some folks find us by browsing around Facebook and so our Facebook page should be as nice as possible, right...?

Then around 5:00 p.m. I realized I hadn't yet eaten. So I headed out to pick up some Subway, and on my way out I checked the mail. I thumbed through it and, to my great surprise, found a little treasure.

A check to New Line for $10,000.

It happens once a year. Anonymously. And always at exactly the right time. Sounds like a musical, doesn't it?

This has happened several times before, but this was the first time I realized that it means something more than "support" of New Line. It means that this person believes that the work we do matters, that it is important, and that this person trusts us to use their money wisely and effectively to share our art with the community. Writing fundraising letters all the time, I forget what "support" really means. It's not just a compliment. It's a vote of confidence and a vote of trust.

And we have to remember that when we create our work. We owe all those people everything we can give, to make smart, exciting, surprising, provocative, engaging, relevant, emotional theatre. We theatre people sometimes joke about what a shame it is that the days of royal patronage of artists is over. But it's not over; it's just democratized. Now it's public "patronage" of artists. That's the whole point of legal nonprofit status -- the idea that arts organizations are inherently educational and beneficial to the public and therefore should be relieved of tax obligations, so that money can be spent directly on serving the public. The public (though tax policy) pays us to serve them. And we owe them something for their money.

That's my New Year's Resolution: to keep the contributors and audience foremost in my mind all the time. I love my work more than I could ever explain, but we do theatre for the audience, not for us. Without an audience, it's not a performance; it's just a run-through.

Happy New Year!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott