Deck The Halls With Broadway Snow Globe; Support Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS
Looking for that perfect holiday gift for the theatregoer in your life?
If you're a regular reader, you already know how much I support this invaluable non-profit, which is one of the nation's leading industry based HIV/AIDS fundraising and grant-making organizations. So I'm pleased not only to share details of the snow globe itself, but also present an interview I conducted with David Gallo.
According to BC/EFA:
Our newest snow globe is the most theatrical one yet, with an eye-popping, multi-layered design from Tony award-winning designer, David Gallo. The subway trains run underneath the snow covered theaters and taxi-lined streets of New York, all of which advertise over twenty Broadway musical logos. Inside the globe, three girls dance on a spectacular stage, which rotates to reveal a surprise glimpse of the goings-on backstage. "There’s No Business Like Show Business" is the perfect anthem for this collectable globe, which stands 5 ¾” x 7 ½”.
On Wednesday, I had a chance to talk with David Gallo about his efforts for BC/EFA. Here's a portion of my interview with this master designer:
Steve On Broadway (SOB) - How did your collaboration with Broadway Cares come about?David Gallo - On this particular project, it was as simple as them just contacting me about doing this. But I’ve been participating in various forms of fundraising for them for probably almost 20 years. I always worked the Flea Market for them and over the years I’ve donated a tremendous amount of artwork.
Whenever I’m asked to sell something of my own to a museum or an individual, I always have the money given to Broadway Cares. So I’ve done that for a long time as well. And occasionally when people want to purchase memorabilia, I always have the money go to Broadway Cares.
But for the snowglobe, it was just as simple as having them call me.
SOB - I only spotted one of your shows in the Snow Globe.
DG - We made sure Memphis was right there in the center.
SOB - Tell me a little about the concept that went into your snow globe design.
DG - I really wanted to be able to tell some kind of a story with it. As an art object, it’s certainly cute enough. But I was hoping to be able to sort of develop into some basic kind of tale and give it a little sense of surprise -- so the notion of it being the street levels of New York and all the taxis and the cars and then below that the subway and then the city.
Then as it sort of spins around, seeing the city as performance -- Times Square and Broadway as performances -- seeing the backstage goings-on with the wardrobe people and the stagehands throwing the snow. It was just sort of meant as New York -- Broadway in the wintertime as kind of the event and let it work on number of different scales. Just sort of be fun from that point of view.
But alternately, the idea was just to tell some kind of silly little tale.
SOB - Have you ever worked on that kind of scale before?
DG - I don’t think I’ve ever done a snow globe before. I wasn’t unfamiliar working in model form because that’s what we do, but usually our stuff ends up getting built bigger. But yes, it really was the first time, certainly the first time.
SOB - I’m looking forward to getting one of my own.
Yeah, it’s cool. It’s actually turned out really, really well. We’re very pleased with it.
I'll have more of my interview with David Gallo next week as I focus more on his award-winning career.
In keeping with the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations that unfairly discriminate against bloggers, who are now required by law to disclose when they have received anything of value they might write about, please note that I have received nothing of value in exchange for this post.
Labels: Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, David Gallo, Holiday, Scenic Design, Snow Globe, The SOB Interview
Getting Reale - Q&A With Tony-Nominated Composer Robert Reale (Part II)Yesterday, I provided the first part of my recent sitdown with Tony-nominated composer
Robert (Rob) Reale.
Today, I'm pleased to provide the second part of my interview in which Reale, discusses the world premiere of
Johnny Baseball, which begins performances this Friday at the
American Repertory Theater (ART) in Boston.
ART describes
Johnny Baseball as follows:
It traces the origin of the Curse to a collision of three orphaned souls: Johnny O’Brien, a hard-luck right-hander on the 1919 Sox; his idol, Babe Ruth; and Daisy Wyatt, a dazzling African-American blues singer and the love of Johnny’s life. These three lives contain both the reason for the Curse and the secret to its end off the bat of Big Papi in 2004. Johnny Baseball packs a thoughtful commentary on American social history into a fun and spirited musical that will bring cheers and tears to baseball fans everywhere.Directed by Tony Award-nominated director
Diane Paulus (
Hair),
Johnny Baseball's impressive company includes
Colin Donnell as Johnny O’Brien,
Stephanie Umoh as Daisy Wyatt,
Burke Moses as Babe Ruth, Charl Brown as Tim,
Jeff Brooks as Tom Yawkey,
Charles Turner as a fan, as well as Joe Cassidy,
Paula Leggett Chase, Kaitlyn Davidson,
Alan H. Green,
Carly Jibson,
Robert McClure and
Kirsten Wyatt.
Here's the second part of my interview with Reale, conducted jointly with Patrick Lee of
Just Shows To Go You:
Reale on Getting Started in Musical TheatreI think at the very beginning, I was most struck by -- it was 25 years ago when I moved here -- and we were doing shows with the 52nd Street Project and we had people donating their time. Like A-List people coming in to help out with these inner-city kids, and I was struck by generous the community is. One of the things I love about theatre in New York and the reason why I think it’s very hard to create theatre outside of New York unless you’ve got an extraordinary town is the support from your peers. That’s extraordinary.
I like to think we’re getting to some of the sweeping stuff. You start out writing musical theatre and you sort of know your own musical history.
For me it was a lot of jazz. I started late. I started at 17. I learned guitar and tried to go to music school and then found out I loved all kinds of music, not just rock and roll. I didn’t get into as much opera in the beginning, but jazz … jazz ensemble … I discovered that.
My brother who founded the 52nd Street Project called me up -- and I was living in Phoenix before I finished school -- he said, “Hey what’s up? Have you thought about writing a musical?” Which I had not. He said, “Because I wrote a play for these seven kids -- a Christmas play -- and now the next year 30 of them showed up, and I don’t know what to do with them. I’ve got to give them a dance number or something.”
So he flew out to Arizona -- we went up to Sedona for a week -- and wrote some songs together and we decided we liked it. I quit the band I was in and moved back here. You know I was out of work for the next ten years. But it was really fun learning to write together. So that’s how we started together. My influences were James Taylor, rock and roll of the time and then a lot of jazz, so I incorporate that.
Reale on Writing Johnny Baseball's Score
This score, it was interesting, and it sounds like a recipe for disaster. It starts in 1919 (but) it’s couched in the 2004 (World Series) Game Four Yankees-Red Sox when Red Sox are on the brink of elimination from the Series, and we’re in the middle innings and a couple characters start telling us the story that happened of why they think the Curse exists, and it’s not in fact the curse of the Bambino -- Babe Ruth had nothing to do with it -- but the curse was based on something else.
In this case, (the curse was) based on racism. The Red Sox were the last team to integrate. So we have an interracial love story, plus love for baseball, and not just Red Sox fans but Yankee fans and any other baseball fans.
It does spread from 1919 to 2004 with the big stops in 1919, 1948 and then back to 2004. So in 2004, I can write whatever I want, obviously. For 1919, I’m restricted to really simple harmonies and then in ’48 I can stretch out a little bit more swing wise, you know. You can still take liberties so when the characters are singing material that is just character-driven, you take a little bit more freedom, liberties with what they’re singing from that point of view.
(In
Johnny Baseball, there are) basically three (musical stylings) – 1919, 1948 is a little more advanced harmonically, and then 2004 or what we call our main musical suit for this show.
Reale on Working with Diane PaulusYou know, we did a reading with Diane before
Hair. We were doing a play called
The Last Snowman and we needed a director. (My brother's wife) Jenny said, “You should really meet with Diane Paulus -- you’d really like her.”
Of course, she hadn’t done any of the good stuff we all know now. But she was great. We did a one week workshop with her and Willie and I felt like this is our first reading, can we have her all the time.
And then we asked her to do this production -- a reading, a workshop, of
Johnny Baseball -- and then she got the ART position. So then the stars lined up. She’s in Boston. We have a show about the Red Sox. It made sense.
Reale on Diane Paulus' vs. the VolcanoDiane Paulus was stuck by the volcano.
We had an extra week of rehearsal built into the schedule, it was great. And she was here for the first two days, we did read throughs, we started working on the big strokes and with this great music department, we had the cast to ourselves for ten days. So they really know that score cold. Before you go ripping songs out and putting new ones in, they knew it, and the steps and some of the movements with the choreographer and all that sort of thing.
Then the day she was supposed to come back, the volcano happened. So then we lost out on her for like another six days. So they really got to learn the music more than they ever wanted to.
But what was so impressive to all of us on the creative team was that she -- they always refer to her as “The Laser” -- because she knows what needs to be done immediately. She blocked the first act in three days.
It’s like you know how you get an assignment and you’ve got to write something. They give you three days to do it, but you know you can do it in a couple hours. But you still have the time allotted. She really asked if she could direct the whole musical in that time. She spent three days on the first act, three or four days on the second act. We got a good sense of what it would look like. So that was our first hurdle.
Reale on Johnny Baseball's BeginningsWillie (Reale) and I talked about this while we were in this process over the last year because we got the idea for the show right after the 2003 Series when the Boston Red Sox collapsed. Rick Dresser -- writing the book -- is a rabid Red Sox fan.
They’ve been picking on me up in Boston a little bit because we’re Yankee fans and they’re saying “You’re not mentioning the fact that you’re a Yankees fan.” It’s not really about the team, it’s about how much you love the game and how much you love the story.
Rick and Willie -- Red Sox fan and Yankee fan -- having an idea that is so dramatic, such high drama, it’s this rivalry and this collapse of this team, how interesting the losers are in life, so we wanted to talk about it. So we started kicking it around and by about 2006, we had enough for a reading.
It goes back to what we were just talking about. Willie and I said look at how long it actually takes us to write a musical because we both write for television for a living to support our families that way. We figured out it took us roughly three months to do a first draft and really focusing on it. We could do it in six weeks, but in three months you have enough time to go away and come back and really write a draft.
Plus there’s everything to do with when are you going to get a director, is there a theatre interested, is this a commercially viable idea?
Reale on Comeuppance when Show Comes to New York:The original title was
Red Sox Nation. The people up there asked, “How come you changed the name?” Rick said, “You know, it’s really because this open to a lot more than just Red Sox fans." Red Sox fans should love it because it takes place in their town. But it’s about a lot more than that. And it’s really about this character Johnny O’Brien who they call Johnny Baseball in the play so it makes sense.
Reale on the Liberating Effects of Musical Theatre:Once you get musical theatre gets into your blood, you’re thinking of any way whether it’s country western, rock and roll or operatic or light opera or even some jazz-type things. There are a lot of things you can do in theatre. You get to take liberties, which I love.
The love for
Johnny Baseball just may begin this coming Friday when the Reale Brothers' musical world premieres at Boston's American Repertory Theater. I'd say "Break a leg," but they'll need them to slide into home.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Boston, Broadway, Johnny Baseball, Musical, Robert Reale, The SOB Interview, World Premiere
Getting Reale - Q&A With Tony-Nominated Composer Robert Reale (Part I)In the midst of the final openings of the Broadway season and on the very day that the would-be
Times Square car bomber failed, I had the opportunity to sit down a few blocks away with forward-looking composer
Robert (Rob) Reale.
A Tony nominee alongside his brother
Willie for their collaboration on the underappreciated musical
A Year With Frog And Toad, Reale has earned his keep as composer for television shows ranging from "
Good Morning America" to "
Inside Edition." But just talking with him, it becomes evident very quickly that his heart belongs in the realm of musical theatre, and his enthusiasm is contageous.
Reale and his brother are currently at work on an original tuner called
Johnny Baseball, which begins performances this Friday at the
American Repertory Theater (ART) in Boston. The Bean Town world premiere is apropos, given how the new musical is about the notorious Red Sox curse and its ultimate repudiation in 2004.
ART describes
Johnny Baseball as follows:
It traces the origin of the Curse to a collision of three orphaned souls: Johnny O’Brien, a hard-luck right-hander on the 1919 Sox; his idol, Babe Ruth; and Daisy Wyatt, a dazzling African-American blues singer and the love of Johnny’s life. These three lives contain both the reason for the Curse and the secret to its end off the bat of Big Papi in 2004. Johnny Baseball packs a thoughtful commentary on American social history into a fun and spirited musical that will bring cheers and tears to baseball fans everywhere.
Directed by Tony Award-nominated director
Diane Paulus (
Hair),
Johnny Baseball's impressive company includes
Colin Donnell as Johnny O’Brien,
Stephanie Umoh as Daisy Wyatt,
Burke Moses as Babe Ruth, Charl Brown as Tim,
Jeff Brooks as Tom Yawkey,
Charles Turner as a fan, as well as Joe Cassidy,
Paula Leggett Chase, Kaitlyn Davidson,
Alan H. Green,
Carly Jibson,
Robert McClure and
Kirsten Wyatt.
Here's the first part of my interview with Reale, conducted jointly with Patrick Lee of
Just Shows To Go You:
Reale on Theatre Bloggers:I love the fact that blogging is coming to the forefront in theatre. I mean, it’s a force to be reckoned with. Is it not? It’s more like, here’s the people’s critic. Here’s another voice.
Reale on Critical Response in Theatre:We’re told when you start out in this business some people will say don’t go near what critics have to say because it will make yourself crazy. They can say that basically you’re the second coming and it won’t feel like enough given everything you’ve put into it.
You’ve been killing yourself off this play or this musical for three or four years and then they like it and you feel like, "What do you mean, you didn’t notice…" There’s a million things you could talk about that went into making that play. And then if they say they hate it, then you have all the more reason not to like them.
Reale on American Idiot vs. Rent and Spring Awakening:The biggest disappointment for me so far (this season) was
American Idiot. I saw that online there was a five minute video of them doing "21 Guns" and I thought, "Oh," because I was a huge
Rent fan.
I saw it and I sat in front of
Jon (Larson’s) parents at New York Theatre Workshop, and you’re swept up and in tears all night listening to the music, and you’re not hearing that the book isn’t working. You’re just sitting listening to the music and crying. And so, of course, it’s going to be great. I still like
Rent. I still love the score to this day.
And then I loved
Spring Awakening – I loved it. I really enjoyed the music.
I just want to hear some interesting music rather than the same old eight notes -- the tired eight notes we’re trotting out to get our points across.
I didn’t care about the story (in
American Idiot). I went with my brother and a new collaborator on the show -- we wanted to get to know each other -- and my girlfriend and we went and checked it out.
We stopped talking about it seven minutes into the appetizer. We were no longer talking about it. There was nothing to talk about. It was like going to a concert. I was bummed. I had such high hopes for it.
Reale on Sondheim and Composers Following in His Footsteps:You have
Sondheim. He’s the greatest. He’s certainly the greatest living. And you put him in with
the Gershwins,
Jerome Kern and
Cole Porter and lyricists and composers through the last century.
And I’ve also met him before and really loved him.
But there’s one tiny disservice he did us, and I think he spawned a generation of people who wanted to be him. And there’s only
one him.
So what I tell the young people -- I write music for television and I have some composers who come in every day -- I just tell them to try and listen to their own voice. They can have all the influences they want, but go your way and don’t try to be somebody else. There was a lot of that in the last 20, 30 years I thought.
I think in terms of what’s on the score. So if I’m hearing a “Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah," it’s all the eighth notes are going long, and I want to hear like Gershwin open up, I want to hear
Puccini, the operatic stuff. It’s like when I went to see
Adam Guettel’s
The Light In The Piazza. It was pretty great. What those guys were attempting was beautiful. I would love to see more of that stuff.
The second part of this interview will focus on Reale's current project, Johnny Baseball.This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: A Year With Frog And Toad, American Repertory Theater, Baseball, Boston, Broadway, Diane Paulus, Johnny Baseball, Musical, Robert Reale, The SOB Interview, Willie Reale
Dori Berinstein - The SOB InterviewIn introducing my very first Steve On Broadway (SOB) Interview, I'm pleased to present my Q & A with Broadway producer, documentary director and three time Tony Award winner
Dori Berinstein (pictured in photo by Anita and Steve Shevett).
My questions touched on everything from her superb "
ShowBusiness: The Road To Broadway" documentary film (now available on DVD) to the possible stagehands strike to her work with
Legally Blonde.
In turn, she provided some terrific, candid comments, including on the one Broadway show that did
not grant her access, why
New York Post's
Michael Riedel needs to find new friends, plans for taking
Legally Blonde on tour and to London, and other intriguing irons she currently has stoking in the fire.
Here's Dori Berinstein - The SOB Interview:
Steve On Broadway (SOB): “ShowBusiness: The Road To Broadway” is clearly a labor of love. I enjoyed it so much, I viewed it twice. How long had this documentary been percolating and what was your inspiration?
Dori Berinstein: Thank you! I loved every second making the film.
I read
William Goldman's extraordinary book, "
The Season," about the 1968 Broadway season behind-the-curtain, when I was in college. I was completely captivated. After years of dreaming about one day producing Broadway shows, I knew then, that I also wanted to bring that vibrant, creative, passionate and insular world to life on film.
SOB: I’ve previously described your documentary as a year in the life of Broadway. Was that your original vision?
DB: I wanted to capture a Broadway season inside out. Of course, so much happens over the course of a year. It's impossible to anticipate which shows will hit and which will struggle. I knew going in that our specific story would unfold as the season progressed.
SOB: The 2003-04 Theatrical Season you chronicled coincided with the last chapter of the
PBS documentary, “
Broadway: The American Musical.” Did that documentary inform any of your decisions going into “ShowBusiness” on where to focus?
DB: Not at all.
I know the team behind "Broadway: The American Musical." They're tremendous.
Our projects, though, we're entirely different.
Michael Kantor aspired to chronicle the Broadway musical throughout the 20th century for television. His epic work spanned 6-parts and relied heavily on archival footage, still photos, on-camera interviews, etcetera.
"ShowBusiness," a feature film, is far more specific and personal. We dove into the dramatic lives of a handful of performers, creators, producers, etcetera ... behind-the-curtain during the course of a specific year on Broadway. We were committed to going wherever our story took us. Choices made by other projects were irrelevant.
SOB: While you devote time to virtually all the major shows of Broadway’s 2003-04 season, you focus primarily on four major musicals of the year --
Avenue Q;
Caroline, Or Change,
Taboo and
Wicked -- why these?
DB: Focusing our storytelling on these four shows was an excruciating task. There were so many extraordinary stories to tell about the season. Editors
Richard Hankin and
Adam Zucker were tremendous partners creatively. Ultimately, we focused in on
Avenue Q,
Caroline,
Taboo and
Wicked for three primary reasons:
One, each show had such a unique "road to Broadway," and each show was jam-packed with extraordinary talent, on stage and behind-the-curtain.
Two, the personal stories --
Jeff and
Bobby,
Euan,
Tonya....etcetera -- elevated our story, we believe, making it much more than a "Broadway" film. We wanted our audience, whether or not they were fans of theatre, to get lost in their roller coaster experiences over the course of the year.
Three, we liked the way these four stories could be interwoven and leave our audience with a sense of what it takes to launch and run a show on Broadway.
We could have made the same film with four plays from that season. It was an extremely difficult choice.
SOB: You offer plenty of drama, whether it’s the tensions among the
Avenue Q team or Euan Morton discussing his resident alien status or even just showcasing the bitter cold winter months’ impact on Broadway. How were you able to gain such incredible access from such a wide range of shows and talent?
DB: The Broadway community ... the actors ... the producers ... the publicists ... everyone ... was extraordinary. I am deeply grateful.
The Broadway Unions and Guilds and AFTRA supported our project from the get go, making it all possible.
I imagine being an "insider" ... a Broadway producer for nearly 15 years, helped tremendously. The community knew I shared a deep love of theatre, and while I wanted to paint an honest, accurate picture -- I wasn't looking at all to make anyone or any show look bad.
SOB: Conspicuously absent from your film was
Hugh Jackman’s Tony vehicle
The Boy From Oz. Was that a conscious decision?
DB: I would have loved to capture the creative evolution of
The Boy from Oz. There were 37 show that season.
The Boy From Oz was the only show that denied us access.
SOB: Which of these shows did you have a chance to personally see in their early stages, and which do you believe ultimately enjoyed the greatest metamorphosis?
DB: I had the great good fortune to see each of the shows early on.
Of course, tremendous work was done on
Wicked between their out-of-town run in San Francisco and their Broadway launch. You really don't know what you have, no matter how great the book ... the score ... or the cast, until you get a show up on its feet. Not every creative team, though, dives in and makes such radical changes before coming in. The way the show evolved, and the choices that were made, were quite remarkable. The results speak for themselves.
I also tremendously admire the work done to adapt
Avenue Q to Broadway. Off-Off Broadway, the show was tremendously intimate. Transferring to a larger venue presented huge challenges. How can that intimacy be preserved in a much larger space? From set design, to staging, to storytelling, incredible work was done to make the transition seamless.
SOB: Of all the shows you featured, did any one become a favorite of yours?
DB: I was so close to each show that season. There was no way to have favorites.
SOB: I loved the kibitzing among the theatre critics and pundits. How difficult was that to accomplish, and was there any reason why
Ben Brantley and
John Lahr were interviewed apart from the rest?
DB: I was eager for the critic "lunch" to be as organic as possible. This group of critics knows each other. Lunching together, chatting about the season, was very conceivable.
Ben Brantley and John Lahr wouldn't naturally be part of that group. I did feel their perspectives were very important -- Brantley, as the lead theatre critic for the tremendously powerful
New York Times and John Lahr, a wonderful writer and great defender of
Caroline, Or Change.
SOB: Michael Riedel makes an astute observation in your documentary that “My peers who are not in the theatre do not go to a theatre, it has fallen off their entertainment landscape.” What must live theatre do to get back on that landscape?
DB: Michael needs some new friends!
I think Broadway has come a long way in 5 years.
Wicked,
Lion King,
Beauty And The Beast, in particular, certainly catapulted interest in Broadway by a younger demographic.
Shows like
Avenue Q,
Rent,
Spring Awakening and
Legally Blonde also have had, and continue to have, a huge impact on teen and young adult theatre-going.
When I look at the shows now in development for Broadway next year and beyond, I see tremendous diversity ... shows that are sure to bring in audiences of all ages.
SOB: You’re currently represented on Broadway through
Legally Blonde. Did you get the box office bounce you were seeking from the
MTV experiment?
DB: We are thrilled with the response to
Blonde on MTV. The ratings surpassed everyone's expectations and our CD catapulted to #1 on
iTunes. Clearly, we're going to benefit from the MTV airing for many years to come. Given the great nationwide response, I suspect we'll continue to see the positive impact of the MTV airing as the
Blonde U.S. Tour kicks off late next summer.
SOB: In making this documentary as an accomplished Broadway producer, did you learn anything new that surprised you about the theatrical art form?
DB: When you work on a show as a producer, an actor, a creator ... you're myopically focused. Time is scarce ... you barely know what's happening outside your theatre walls. It was fascinating to see inside each of the shows that season and realize, irregardless of scope ... of pre-promotability ... of talent involved ... that they all shared this fierce passion for what they were doing. The risks, creative and financial were stark, for everyone. It didn't matter if it was a small play or a giant musical. It's that passion, that risk, that commitment to the art that unites the community. It was thrilling to see.
SOB: I’ve been covering the ongoing labor dispute with the stagehands. Any thoughts on how the current impasse can be broken?
DB: Wish I knew! So hoping the dispute can be resolved without a strike.
SOB: What’s next for Dori Berinstein?
DB: I've just completed post production on a new documentary, "Some Assembly Required," about kids competing in a national toy invention competition and am nearing the end of principal photography on another doc, about the
New Jersey Nets Senior Hip Hop Dance Team.
For Broadway, several new projects I'm tremendously excited about are in the works. As those brew, focus continues on
Legally Blonde in New York, the upcoming U.S. Tour and our launch in London.
SOB: Thanks so much for joining Steve On Broadway (SOB)!
DB: Thank you Steve!
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Related Stories:ShowBusiness: Year In The Life Of Broadway (October 16, 2007)
Labels: Avenue Q, Broadway, Caroline Or Change, Documentary, Dori Berinstein, DVD, Legally Blonde, ShowBusiness The Road To Broadway, Taboo, The SOB Interview, Wicked
