Breraking Out in Harmony (1994)

a world premiere
Book, Music, and Lyrics by Scott Miller
March 18-26, 1994
New City School Theatre, St. Louis

THE CAST
Tucker Goodman – Kent Hobson
Steven Goodman – Kevin Collier
Anne Goodman – Dena O’Malley
Darcy Bowles – Kat Smith
Sherman Bowles – Michael Shreves
Lydia Bowles – Kim Wolterman
Bash Crockett – Dan Sattel
Trish Young – Amy Jayne
Marge Blodgett – Kinsella Berry
Christy Cable
Whitney Furlow
Curtis Singleton

THE ARTISTIC STAFFDirector – Scott Miller
Production Consultant – Sara Lee Hart
Lighting Designer – Steven P. Dohrmann
Stage Manager – Amy Lanning
Set Coordinator – Kevin Collier
Logo Design – Steve Kutheis

THE BANDPiano – Chris Hegarty
Percussion – Adam Kopff

THE REVIEWS
“There are a lot of truths – and a lot of questions – in Breaking Out in Harmony. . . Miller has dealt with a subject that continues to make news and cause controversy. . . There are many problems in the New Line Theatre production, but the drama has sufficient backbone to stand upright and deliver its message. . . Despite the shortcomings, Miller has written a musical that is ‘about something,’ and about something important too. It’s worth seeing, thinking about, and most important, acting on.” – Joe Pollack, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Some of Breaking Out’s songs are rousers.” – Harry Weber, The Riverfront Times

DIRECTOR’S NOTES
In this new musical, three members of the school board of the fictional Harmony, Missouri school district break into their high school library after hours and remove eleven “objectionable” books. Their teenage children find out and launch a protest (one of the kids even figures out how to turn the issue into a profit-making venture), and the controversy divides the community. Despite the students' protests, the board votes officially to keep the books off the shelves, so the students go to the local ACLU for help. The actual case on which the show is based, Pico v. Island Trees, went on for seven years and ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

But this is not an isolated case. In fact, since Ronald Reagan took office in 1980, censorship cases have been increasing dramatically every year. Parents continue to demand the removal of everything from Dr. Seuss and Stephen King to the Bible. An organization in Washington, D.C. called People for the American Way tracks the hundreds of challenges to materials in schools each year. Nearly half of the challenges are successful.

But our show isn't only about censorship. The other big issue in Breaking Out in Harmony is the question of when a child is old enough to make his own way in the world. The students believe that by age 17 they can make mature decisions for themselves. Yet with the continuing increase of guns and drugs among American teenagers, their parents believe they have good cause to worry about their children and about the many influences on their children's attitudes. Who can honestly say they have nothing to worry about?

Breaking Out in Harmony doesn't try to answer these questions. It merely explores the fears and motivations behind the people on both sides of these very complex issues. In an increasingly dangerous world, parents find it more and more difficult to stop protecting their children. And in the midst of an information explosion, teenagers see so many things they want to explore and discover, and they don't want their parents holding them back. Unfortunately, a case like this one puts the concerns of parents and their children into direct conflict.

The New York Times said about the original case, “The controversy . . . points directly to fundamental questions about the nature of community in modern American society.” One of the judges ruling on the case wrote, “The use of governmental power to condemn a book touches the central nervous system of the first amendment.” And the debate rages on today, over everything from Madonna's book, Sex, to the author of the Winnie-the-Pooh books.

Thank you for joining us tonight for this roller-coaster ride through the American education system, the American family, and the U.S. Constitution. We hope you enjoy yourselves, and we hope you find lots of things to talk about on the drive home.


REMEMBERING BREAKING OUT IN HARMONY
I’ll never forget one performance during Breaking Out in Harmony. One of the leading women was very difficult to work with, and one night, an hour before a performance, she showed up with her parents and demanded free tickets for them. Now, we didn't give actors free tickets for family members. But this actress told me that either I give her free tickets or she’d quit the show right then. (Being a small company, we did not have understudies.) I didn’t see how I could give her tickets without giving all the other actors tickets, which would kill our ticket sales. So I stood my ground and refused. She stormed out of the theatre screaming at me that she quit. The cast went crazy. Would she come back? Was she really quitting? I calmly assured everyone that she would be back, secretly terrified that she would not. Finally, she returned to the dressing room about four minutes before curtain and put on her make-up and costume quickly without saying a word to anyone. She did the show and finished the run, though she never said another word to me. Since that incident, I’ve become very attuned to “attitude,” and if an actor shows even the hint of attitude in auditions, I won’t even consider them. I don’t ever need to go through that again.

– Scott Miller, author and director

Breaking Out in Harmony taught me a really big, important lesson about writing – that conclusions belong in the audience. Good theatre never tells an audience what to think. It presents a story, issues, questions, and then asks the audience to think about it and come up with their own answers and draw their own conclusions. But in Harmony I told the audience exactly what I thought they were supposed to think in the finale, and though the finale was a pretty good song, it sort of emasculated the show. I was starting to feel good about myself as a writer and, without realizing it, I got pretentious and self-righteous. It hurt the show. But I learned my lesson. I hope.

-- Scott Miller, author and director

A Tribute to the Dark Side (1993)

a world premiere revue featuring songs from Little Shop of Horrors, Grand Hotel, City of Angels, Guys and Dolls, Grease, Sweet Charity, Mack and Mabel, Chicago, Working, Show Boat, Dreamgirls, Company, Jesus Christ Superstar, Promises Promises, Les Misérables, Miss Saigon, and other shows
Conceived by Scott Miller
October 15-23, 1993
New City School Theatre, St. Louis

THE CAST
Beth Boschert-Duello, Kevin Collier, Michelle Collier, Tracy Collins, Rose Marie Fischer, Holly Gulick, Lisa Karpowicz, Tim Kent, Judy Kreisman, Mike Monsey, Keith Price, Dan Sattel, Johanna Schloss, Quenten Schumacher II, Darin Wood, and Paul Schankman as the Emcee

THE ARTISTIC STAFF
Directors – Scott Miller and Steve Kutheis
Music Director – Scott Miller
Technical Director and Lighting Designer – Steve Dohrmann
Costume Coordinator – Tim Kent
Stage Manager – Amy Lanning
Promotions Manager – Keith Price
Advertising Manager – Kevin Collier
Poster/Program Cover Design – Tracy Collins
Interior Program Design – Ron Crooks

THE BAND
Piano – Scott Miller
Keyboards – Chris Hegarty
Guitar/Bass – Kurt Eichholz

DIRECTOR’S NOTES
The history of the Dark Side in the musical theatre is a long one. Our survey tonight goes back as far as 1925's No! No! Nanette!, which was only dark in the most innocent way – supposed adultery that was (of course) just a misunderstanding. The first true musical tragedy was 1927's Show Boat, which presented real people in difficult real life situations – racism, marriage to an alcoholic and compulsive gambler, single parenting – but Show Boat turned out to be a fluke, and it wasn't until 1943's Oklahoma! that a new trend really began.

Then in the 1950s, director/choreographer Bob Fosse arrived, the Grand Master of Dark, and creator of many dark works, including Sweet Charity, Chicago, Pippin, and the movies Cabaret and All That Jazz. Never before or since has a director been so obsessed with the Dark Side. It became his trademark. And Stephen Sondheim, more concerned with constantly trying new things than with being consciously “dark,” forged a parallel path through the years with shows like West Side Story, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, Company, Into the Woods, and Assassins. Many of his musicals explored society's ills – gang war, the disintegration of marriage, oppression of the working class, etc.

In 1968, amidst anti-war protests and demonstrations in Washington, Hair, the first rock musical, hit Broadway with all the anger, resentment, and disillusionment of the generation of which it was born. It was perhaps the angriest musical ever on Broadway, and its words and music heralded a new age – the age of the realistic and “relevant” musical, which in today's society also meant “Dark.” Soon, other rock musicals followed with equally unpleasant themes, including Pippin, The Rocky Horror Show, Dreamgirls, Little Shop of Horrors, and others.

In the late 1980s, the “Pop Opera” came into its own – stories told in the structure and epic proportions of grand opera and in the vocabulary of popular music, owing their genesis to the rock operas of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, including Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. These shows, Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, and others, with their tragic plots and characters, were the inevitable union of classical opera and the Broadway musical.

It has been fascinating for us during the creation of this show to see how different writers approach that side of us we try to suppress, some using comedy and others tragedy to explore that twilight zone of the human psyche where revenge is just and murder is justified. It gives us a deeper understanding of the human condition and of that uniquely American art form, musical theatre.

That said, we hope you enjoy Dark Side II, dedicated to everyone who loves the musical theatre and, more importantly, to those who think musicals are only silly love songs and sappy happy endings.

Note: If this is Dark Side 2, where’s Dark Side 1? The reason this is Dark Side 2 is that the first Tribute to the Dark Side was done by many of the same people with CenterStage Theatre Company several years earlier.

REMEMBERING DARK SIDE 2

Before each performance began, we were to gradually filter onto the stage and sit at tables, cocktail-style, in the “nightclub,” and create characters who would chat realistically while the acts would go on. Tracy, Beth, and I were assigned to a table. At one of the first rehearsals, one of us – the memory escapes me as to which one – began a conversation about our fictional boss at the department store. The other two joined in, badmouthing this fictional boss. Throughout the rehearsal process and into performances, we kept these department store worker characters, and the improvised chatter grew more and more detailed until we not only knew our own characters, but we had assembled an outside life at this imaginary job which consisted of another twenty or so people with whom we worked. (Most of them were slackers, of course.) I admit there were times that our work stories became so involved and entertaining that we were slightly disappointed when the songs, the real focus of Dark Side II, began. During the show, the cast members all took turns performing songs and placing ourselves as the clientele in this nightclub. After one particular number, Quentin and I were dressed up and were to filter to the tables while Kevin sang “Wanting Things.” Each night during this song, Quentin and I created a background tableau. We'd notice each other, make brief eye contact, then make prolonged eye contact, then offer a smile. This little affair built throughout the song, with Quentin making suggestive winks and I dabbing the glow of perspiration from my throat. When the song ended, neither had made a move from our chairs, and I'd leave, with only a backward glance shared to tell what might have been.

– Johanna Schloss, cast member

I always felt really terrible for Michelle Collier when she had to choreograph me. I am the type of actor whose body refuses to cooperate with me when it comes to learning dance moves. This was no exception in Dark Side 2. Kevin, Keith, Tracy and I were to perform a Motown-esque song called “Steppin' to the Bad Side” from Dreamgirls. Kevin and Keith had rhythm and picked up on the moves pretty readily. Tracy and I, on the other hand, weren't so fortunate. I must say, however, “Steppin' to the Bad Side” turned out to be very cool and a big part of its success was due to the amount of time Michelle spent with us. I appreciate all she did and if you're reading this, Michelle, thank you for not letting me look like a complete idiot!

– Dan Sattel, cast member

Though it was unconscious on my part, I think this show kind of announced to the world what kind of company New Line was going to be, that we were going to be doing musical theatre about sex and drugs and death and every potentially offensive topic ever to headline a newspaper. I was determined to make “Big Spender” true to Bob Fosse’s original intentions, to be about carnality, not sexiness, to be lustful and hard and disturbing. I wanted people to sit up and listen, to pay attention like they didn’t usually pay attention when they went to a musical. I wanted to say to them, “musicals are not always what you think they are” and prove to them that musical theatre was just as substantial, just as serious, just as powerful, just as muscular as theatre that lacks music. This was just a few months before we would tackle Sondheim’s Assassins and change New Line and St. Louis musical theatre audiences forever.

--Scott Miller, director

A Tribute to Stephen Sondheim (1993)

a world premiere revue featuring songs from West Side Story, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Evening Primrose, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, The Frogs, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, and Assassins
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Conceived and Researched by Scott Miller
March 19-27, 1993
Center of Contemporary Arts, St. Louis

THE CAST
Winona Black, Beth Boschert-Duello, Kevin Collier, Michelle Collier, Tracy Collins, Rose Marie Fischer, Alison Goldstein, Joel Hackbarth, Tim Kent, Steve Kutheis, Tracy Paul Muchesko, Keith Price, John T. Ricroft, Jeremy Sher, Renée Trudell

THE ARTISTIC STAFF
Director – Scott Miller
Assistant Director – Dan Guller
Additional Staging – Tim Kent
Production Consultant – Sara Lee Hart
Instrumental Music Director – Kurt Eichholz
Set Designer – John T. Ricroft
Lighting Designer – Steve Dohrmann
Costumer Coordinator – Tim Kent
Stage Manager – Amy Lanning
Business Manager – Holli Folk

THE BAND
Piano – Scott Miller
Keyboards – Chris Hegarty
Bass – Kurt Eichholz
Percussion – Adam Kopff

DIRECTOR’S NOTES
“Of all the artists who have tried to transform the Broadway musical since Oklahoma!, no one has been more persistent than the composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.” (Frank Rich, New York Times). Few of his shows have been hits. Many have been controversial in one way or another. All of them have been interesting.

It's difficult to put together a sampling of his work for two reasons. First, there's an almost endless supply of interesting material to choose from. Second, it's hard to take his songs out of their original contexts. To merely sing his songs makes it hard to see how masterfully he weaves characterization and plot throughout his songs. For instance, “Send in the Clowns” is a beautiful song, in or out of its show. But when you know the singer is a fading actress, the show business metaphors take on new meaning. When you know the man she's singing to once wanted to marry her, but she wasn't ready, it's even more ironic that now when she's finally ready, he's found someone else. When you know the background, it hurts more when she sings:

Just when I'd stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines, no one is there.

“Pretty Women” becomes more than just a pretty song when you know that Sweeney Todd is shaving the corrupt Judge Turpin, waiting for the perfect moment to slit his throat. “It's Hot Up Here” is so much funnier when you know the singers are figures in a painting, doomed to spend all eternity in the same pose in the same spot with the same people. “I Remember” becomes much more touching when you know the girl singing it has lived her life in a department store, and can only barely remember the last time she saw the sky.

We realized as we rehearsed the show that we would be demanding a lot from our audiences with this material, that they wouldn't be able to just sit back and listen. These songs demand as much from the audience as from the performers. Sondheim proves with every project that the musical theatre doesn't have to be a place where you turn off your brain; it can be a place for high drama, dark comedy, social commentary, and thoughtful looks at the human condition.

With this tribute, we present songs that are more truly musical scenes. And so that you can experience the full power of these moments, we present them as they were written to be performed. Stephen Sondheim is a great composer and lyricist, but he is also a great innovator and a great maker of theatre. His work deserves no less.

So prepare yourself for a tour of some of the most important work in the musical theatre in the last thirty-five years, from 1957 and West Side Story through 1991 and the controversial Assassins. As Sondheim wrote for Gypsy: Curtain up, light the lights, We've got nothing to hit but the heights.

REMEMBERING A TRIBUTE TO SONDHEIM

I remember auditioning for New Line’s Tribute to Sondheim back in 1993. I was nervous, and Scott was accompanying me on “Maria” from West Side Story. I can’t remember who else was in there, but I kept thinking to myself, “You’re an actor, not a singer, dummy, what are you doing this fo—” and that was my cue. What did I know? I’d listened to the music and practiced it a hundred times, but I had no idea what they were expecting. I don’t know what I was thinking, but the first million and a half bars of the song were, as I remembered them from recordings, echoey and somewhat off in the distance, like voices floating around. “The most beautiful sound I ever heard…Maria (Maria, Maria, Maria...).” I thought, “Well, that part of the song must come from someone else, so I’ll just breeze past that part in the audition and get to the good stuff.” I mumbled those words, on key, mind you, but I mumbled them nonetheless. I thought Scott would just say OK and jump to the good stuff, but NO, he stayed true to the music, so I mumbled on, until he asked me what I was doing. Uh, singing the song, dummy, I wanted to say. But that would’ve hurt my chances, so I just started singing the lyrics the way they were intended to be sung. I got a part (not that part), and took the graciousness and gentleness of those auditioners with me on the next million and a half auditions, and I remember them all.

– Jeremy Sher

Stephen Sondheim was becoming an important part of New Line Theatre at this time. A few months before this Tribute, we’d held a celebrity auction and received autographed items from Julie Andrews, Jerry Herman, Hal Prince, Gwen Verdon, Elaine Strich, Raul Julia, Jim Lapine, Harnick and Bock, Kander and Ebb, Marvin Hamlisch, and many other Broadway stars. Stephen Sondheim sent us an autographed copy of the private, never released cast album (on LP) of his 1966 television musical Evening Primrose. And I was presumptuous enough, when I wrote to thank him, to also ask him for a cash donation. He sent one. I then thanked him for that and asked if he would be an honorary member of our board. He wrote back and said he would be delighted. Doing this concert of his songs was very special for me because of how incredibly kind he had been to this new, small company way out in St. Louis. And it became a kind of prologue to New Line’s first ten years, as we would go on to produce his shows Assassins (twice), Company, Sweeney Todd, Passion, Into the Woods, Anyone Can Whistle, and another Sondheim concert, Extreme Sondheim. In addition, when we put Out on Broadway together several years later, about a third of the show was Sondheim’s songs. He has had more of an impact on New Line than any other theatre artist, and we couldn’t be prouder to count him among our supporters.

– Scott Miller, director

Smokin' Santa (1992)

a world premiere revue
Conceived by Scott Miller
December 3-4, 1992
Center of Contemporary Arts, St. Louis

THE CAST
Ellen Buck, Kevin Collier, Michelle Collier, Holli Folk, Holly Gulick, Chris Johnson, Steve Kutheis, Eric Pendleton, Keith Price, Dan Sattel, Deborah Sharn, Jeremy Sher, Linda Smith

THE ARTISTIC STAFF
Director/Pianist – Scott Miller
Lighting Designer – Steve Dohrmann

REMEMBERING SMOKIN’ SANTA

I’m a Jew in a Christmas concert. Sure I’ve heard these songs before, but never the words. Not really. Caroling to me was dancing around the house like Mrs. Brady, and we didn’t do that very often either. So I decided to open my mind and heart and just listen to the spirit of the music. That’s when I heard Holli singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” onstage. I was in the back of the house lacing up my Chuck Taylors when the sound hit me. A deep, velveteen alto with all the depth of an ocean. And the sentiment, not just the words, hit me in one vast wave. I started crying like a baby, uncontrollably like when cutting onions, and I heard the song. I really heard it. It’s a beautiful song. And Holli’s a beautiful woman. Wow, what a voice.

– Jeremy Sher

Smokin’ Santa was an interesting experiment, our first foray into cabaret style theatre. It was an eclectic… no, let’s be honest, a bizarre mix of traditional carols and pop songs, novelty numbers, parodies, and classical pieces, everything from “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” to the eleventh movement of Bach’s Magnificat in D Major (performed with a swing beat and sunglasses), to a parody number called “The Song About Hanukkah” written by my friend Dan Guller to the tune of “America” from West Side Story. The show also included one song I wrote called “The Christmas Tree Fell Over and Our House is Burning Down.” But despite the generous amount of silliness, it was also a very personal show for me. In high school, we did a vespers concert every year at Christmas, put together by the greatest choral teacher I’ve ever encountered, Jim Buffalo. Jim retired a couple years after I graduated and the vespers concerts ended. Smokin’ Santa was in part my admittedly odd personal tribute to Jim Buffalo, and I included several pieces from the vespers concerts, including a processional of carols he put together, the comedy song “Fruitcake,” the Bach piece (though with my own twist), a fourteenth-century motet called “In Bethlehem,” and Jim’s own, gorgeous arrangements of “O Holy Night.” I’m not sure it entirely succeeded as a theatre piece, but it meant a lot to me, and it taught me a lot about building revues.

– Scott Miller, director

Attempting the Absurd (1992)

a world premiere
Book, Music, and Lyrics by Scott Miller
July 17-18, 1992
Center of Contemporary Arts, St. Louis

THE CAST
Darcy Bowles – Jenni Ryan
Jason Christopher – Dan Guller
Mrs. Christopher – Rose Marie Nester
Chaz Williams – Kevin Collier
Danny Hooper – Charlie Robin
Alex Throttlebottom – Dan Sattel
Mary – Mara Hesed
Val – Catherine Edwards
Audrey – Amy Willard
The Playwright – Joel Hackbarth
Floyd the Cop – Peter Wilson
The Judge – Joel Hackbarth
Alison Goldstein
Amy McInerney
Susan Schloss
Emily Shavers

THE ARTISTIC STAFF
Directors – Scott Miller and Steve Kutheis
Music director – Scott Miller
Orchestrations and Conductor– John Gerdes
Set Designer – Steve Kutheis
Lighting Designer – Brian Joyal
Set Coordinator – Kevin Collier
Business Manager – Holli Folk

THE REVIEWS

“Miller has a nice sense of the ridiculous. He also shows a good feeling for whimsy and, most important, he has a deep and abiding love for classic American musicals. I liked the show better than I thought I would; it’s collegiate, sometimes sophomoric, but there are moments of great charm.” – Joe Pollack, St. Louis Post Dispatch

“About as good an evening of first-view musical comedy as I’ve seen for a while. . . Miller’s book, music, and lyrics range widely, intelligently, unsentimentally, and wittily over familiar and unfamiliar territory.” – Harry Weber, The Riverfront Times

REMEMBERING ATTEMPTING THE ABSURD

My first experience with New Line was working on Attempting the Absurd in the summer of 1992. Absurd is a quirky little musical about a guy who knows he’s only a character in a musical (‘I have only a sketchy memory of my past, I feel like everything I do is controlled by someone, somewhere behind a word processor, and I never go to the bathroom.’). I loved playing Jason. He was equally at home in his fictional world as in the real one. He moved through life knowing that someone else was pulling the strings. He was a paradox wrapped in a contradiction wrapped in a bright red shirt.

One of the toughest parts of the show for me came in the second act with a song called “Old Time Musicals.” Scott, obviously in the throes of sophisticated artistry, started the song with Jason rattling off a list of about eighteen different musicals. Being the professional that I am, I expressed my concern about such a lyrical challenge: “Scott, I will never, ever, ever be able to memorize this crap!”

“Dan,” said Scott with the certainty of one who would bet the life of his pet orangutan that he was right, “It’s a list song. It’ll take you a little longer to learn, but you’ll remember it forever.”

“Right,” I countered, secretly sure that nobody had ever been more wrong than Scott Miller was at this very moment. So I worked on that masochistic list and, lo and behold, one day I noticed I was able to recite it without the script. Not only was the show as much fun for the audience as it was for the performers, but I didn’t flub a single show from that list.

Well, here it is, almost ten years later, and guess what? “Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, 42nd Street, South Pacific…” Damn it. Scott was right. Good news for the orangutan. Happy Tenth, New Line!

– Dan Guller, “Jason”

It is the peculiar curse of the American Musical Theatre that it is never realistic. No matter how gritty and real Tony & Maria's Spanish Harlem or Tevye's Anatevka might be, it will never be realistic for them to break from spoken word into song. Bob Fosse solved this problem with the film version of Cabaret by using only the songs performed onstage at the Kit Kat Klub. But by eliminating the other songs, the show really stopped being a musical in the strictest sense. This problem was a constant topic of discussion among the musical theatre crowd at college. There must be a way, we decided, to get around it. And then, senior year, it struck me – if the characters know they're in a musical, then their singing is realistically motivated. They sing because they are characters in a musical. Of course, this then presented lots of new logistical and philosophical problems, problems my roommate David Flores and I argued over for the entire school year. After graduation I set to work, and six years later, my aptly named Attempting the Absurd became a reality, and fittingly, as the second show of my new musical theatre company. Because it’s so much about musical theatre – a parody, a deconstruction, a loving tribute – and because, in an odd way, it’s the ultimate musical comedy, it will always be my favorite of the ten shows I’ve written. It’s not my most sophisticated score or my most artfully built script, but it’s awfully funny and it still makes me giggle. What more can I ask?

– Scott Miller, author, composer, director

A Tribute to the Rock Musicals (1992)

a world premiere revue featuring songs from Hair, Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease, Pippin, The Wiz, The Rocky Horror Show, Working, Evita, Dreamgirls, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Little Shop of Horrors, Cats, Chess, Miss Saigon, and other shows, conceived and Researched by Scott Miller
April 10-18, 1992
Center of Contemporary Arts, St. Louis

THE CAST
Vincent Paul Boyle, Ellen Buck, Kevin Collier, Michelle Collier, Holli Folk, Michael Kaiser, Steve Kutheis, Loren Madden, Brendan O’Malley, Eric Pendleton, Ray Proctor, Patrick Ryan, Daniel Sattel, Deborah Sharn, Linda Walsh, Keve Wilson,
and John Gerdes as “The Professor”

THE ARTISTIC STAFF
Directors – Scott Miller, Steve Kutheis
Music Director – Scott Miller
Additional Staging – Michelle Collier, Vincent Paul Boyle
Production Consultant – Sara Lee Hart
Technical Director – Amy Lanning
Sound – Greg Rosebrock
Set Painting – Amy Lanning
Set Coordination – Kevin Collier
Business Manager – Holli Folk

THE BAND
Piano – Scott Miller
Keyboard – Claudia Baskind
Lead Guitar – Jim Folk
Electric Guitar – Brendan O’Malley
Rhythm Guitar – Joe Hermann
Bass – Mike Monsey
Saxophone/Flute – Kelly Rogers
Percussion – Adam Kopff

DIRECTOR’S NOTES
Opera had supplied the world with popular music since the early 1700s. For two centuries, as late as the premiere of Puccini's Madama Butterfly in 1906, many of the tunes people hummed on the streets of Europe and America were from operas. But in America during the first decade of this century, the public's taste for popular music turned to the operettas of Sigmund Romberg, Rudolf Friml, Victor Herbert, and Gilbert & Sullivan.

Then the First World War suddenly turned public sentiment in this country against all things Germanic, including the operetta. America became tremendously isolationist, and for the first time, the “young Americans” took over the musical theatre – Cole Porter, George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, and a little later, Rodgers & Hart. The war gave them a chance they might never have gotten otherwise to have their shows produced, shows that were decidedly American in content, character, and pacing. By the end of the war, American popular music was coming largely from musical comedy. And the sounds of jazz were a big part it, thanks primarily to George Gershwin.

But the musical theatre had grown away from the well-written, integrated book. The scripts written for musicals during the teens and twenties were little more than glorified vaudeville sketches. In 1943, that trend was reversed with Oklahoma!. And with that reversal, the music of the stage also reversed and headed back toward a more serious and somewhat “classical” style, instead of continuing in the same direction as pop music – the sounds of jazz and the Big Bands.

By the early 1950s popular music and stage music had split. And rock and roll (which had evolved from jazz) took over popular music. Some of the “young Americans” from the 1920s and ’30s were still writing theatre scores, but were no longer the ones writing songs for the radio. The people who were writing for the stage didn't know rock and roll, and the new “young Americans” who were writing rock and roll songs didn't know stage music.

It wasn't until 1968 and the Broadway opening of Hair that theatre writers were brave enough to use rock and roll in a musical. And rock musicals grew more numerous and more sophisticated during the 1970s, including a few attempts at Rock Opera (Jesus Christ Superstar, Tommy), which worked artistically but didn't take hold because adults, who were the majority of theatre-goers, still didn't like rock music. The albums sold well, however, to the much younger record-buying public.

The mid-1970s was an exciting and experimental time for the rock musical. This decade turned out some remarkably successful shows, including Grease, the longest-running show in Broadway history until that time; The Wiz, a big step in the progress of the Black musical theatre; The Rocky Horror Show, a flop at first but a major cult classic soon after; and A Chorus Line, one of the most important and groundbreaking works of the musical theatre, and also the longest-running Broadway show in history. In fact, five of the ten longest running Broadway shows are now rock musicals. By this time, the teenagers of the 1950s and 60s had become adults, for whom the radio industry had created “adult rock” stations. And these new adult theatre-goers enjoyed theatre scores written in the style of rock and soft rock, the music they had grown up on.

The early 1980s saw great innovation. Dreamgirls employed almost continuous music for an entire show, very much in the tradition of melodrama and opera, and pioneered the use of cinematic scene changes – dissolves, fades, close-ups, etc. – a device used most recently by City of Angels. Cats carried the notion of the plotless, non-linear concept musical to the extreme and the gamble paid off. And by the end of the decade, a new form had appeared on Broadway, by way of London and Paris – the Pop Opera.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, pop opera took hold in shows such as Les Misérables, Chess, and Miss Saigon. Pop opera used the structure of classical opera and the musical vocabulary of current popular music. It was the first time in almost a century that operas were being written in contemporary popular style, and it revitalized a stagnating musical theatre. For the first time since the rock operas of two decades earlier, songs from the stage were regularly crossing over to the radio and being recorded by pop singers, just as the show tunes of the Twenties and Thirties had.

The American musical comedy is still young as art forms go, less than one hundred years old (not counting its various precursors). And its first generation of creators have only recently died and left the field open to new voices, voices raised on the sounds of rock and roll. The musical theatre had begun to wither because it was so hard for new voices to be heard. But now that the old voices have gone, perhaps the musical theatre will return to the legacy from which it came – speaking to its audience through the sounds of today, uniquely contemporary, uniquely brash, uniquely American.

Note: How can this be A Tribute to the Rock Musicals 2, if it is New Line’s first show? The reason this is number two is that the first Tribute to the Rock Musicals was done by many of the same people with CenterStage Theatre Company several years earlier.

THE REVIEW

“…the impressively – sometimes overwhelmingly – enthusiastic, talented, skilled, and well-trained cast and band made A Tribute to the Rock Musicals 2 … a high-energy, highly entertaining evening.” – Bob Wilcox, The Riverfront Times

REMEMBERING ROCK TRIB 2

I was 18 years old when I first encountered New Line Theatre and Scott Miller. My only theatrical experience up until then had been a production of Guys and Dolls at St. Louis University High School and a production of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Muny – both of which were chorus roles. I was a rock musician that had sung in bands since my younger years and was in love with Superstar for the incredible rock score. It blew me away.

One day I saw an advertisement for auditions of New Line’s Tribute to the Rock Musicals 2 and the Superstar logo jumped out at me. I ran home, put on my Superstar CD and searched for an audition piece. I decided on “Everything’s Alright.” I wanted to sing the part of Jesus.

Not having had much auditioning experience, I was very nervous when I arrived. It must have taken me half an hour to fill out the audition sheet. I sat there, afraid that I was going to humiliate myself, and almost wimped out several times. I somehow managed to muster up the courage to stay until my name was mispronounced and fumbled into the audition room.

When I walked in, there were two women and a guy, Scott, sitting behind a piano smiling. All were very friendly, but I was still nervous as hell. Scott began to play some ascending scales and asked me to sing along to get an idea of my range. Well, I totally choked. I couldn’t find a pitch to save my life. Scott stopped and told me to relax. We started over and it was a little better, but certainly nothing I was proud of.

I prayed that he would at least let me sing my prepared piece so there might be some semblance of redemption for the audition. Luckily, he did and it went very well. He had me sing the Judas part as well as the Jesus part and kept mentioning to the other two women that we had found the guy that could sing “Pity the Child.” I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, but it sure sounded promising. I left the audition feeling like I had accomplished something, although I didn’t quite know what.

About a week later, I received a letter in the mail congratulating me and welcoming me to the cast of Tribute to the Rock Musicals 2. I was ecstatic! I was completely enthused until I looked at the enclosed song list. Scott didn’t cast me to sing the one song they were doing from Jesus Christ Superstar —”Everything’s Alright.” Being as that was the sole reason I auditioned, I was pissed. I contemplated not doing the show, but as corny as this may sound, something told me to stick with it. I decided to try something new and just give it a shot.

That was one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made in my life. Little did I know at the time, but I was about to embark on an eye-opening journey that would educate me, entertain me, and reveal an inner passion that even further enhanced anything I had experienced with music alone. Rock Trib was a revue that was designed to teach the audience about rock music and its evolution on the stage. It definitely accomplished that goal, but it also ROCKED! It was that combination of knowledge and entertainment that made me fall in love with New Line.

Since then, I have been a part of many, many New Line shows and have worked with some utterly amazing casts. I would like to thank Scott Miller from the bottom of my heart for his incredible vision and the countless bits of information and advice that he has shared with me over the years. I treasure every moment I’ve had with New Line.

– Dan Sattel

Looking back, Rock Trib 2 was almost insanely ambitious, assembling in one evening some of the biggest show stoppers from rock and pop musicals of the last twenty-five years – and as New Line’s very first show! The most ambitious – foolish? – part was including the Montage (“Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen”) from A Chorus Line, a seventeen-minute musical sequence that included some very difficult solo work and some ridiculously difficult ensemble work. But this was the most talented cast I had worked with up until this time, and I think by sheer force of will we pulled it off. We recreated one of the most amazing, most emotional, most exciting musical sequences in the history of musical theatre, and it worked. It was exciting as hell. I’ll never forget the first performance. When we finished the number, and the actors slowly melted back into that famous silhouette on that famous line, as the band hit that final musical button, the audience went wild. Cheering, screaming, whooping. It was a portent of things to come for New Line – repeatedly jumping off metaphorical cliffs into the waiting arms of enthusiastic, adventurous audiences. I carry that moment with me forever, every time I wonder if we can pull off my latest folly, every time we start rehearsals for a Sweeney Todd or a Passion or a Floyd Collins and I think, “How on earth can we do this?” The answer is that I don’t know how, but I know we will.

– Scott Miller