Bluebeard's Castle

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Sponsors

Donors

Opera Roanoke would like to thank our Donors for their generous gifts.

Tributes

Opera Roanoke is honored to acknowledge gifts made in tribute or memory of special friends.

Performers

Kyle Albertson

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Bass-Baritone

Jennifer Johnson Cano

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Mezzo-Soprano

Setting

Songs & Scenes

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Production Staff

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Venue Staff

School Administration Staff

General Director

Brooke Tolley

Artistic Director

Steven White

Community Engagement Associate

Ansley Melton

Musicians

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Board of Trustees

Daniel C. Summerlin III

Robert Nordt Sr.

Paula Prince

Immediate Past President

William "Bill" Krause

Board Members

Sally Adams Barbara von Claparede-Crola Rupert "Rupe" Cutler Isabel Ditzel Frank Giannini James "Jim" Kern Krista Vannoy

Student Advisory Board

Credits

Lighting equipment from PRG Lighting, sound equipment from Sound Associates, rehearsed at The Public Theater’s Rehearsal Studios. Developed as part of Irons in the Fire at Fault Line Theatre in New York City.

Special Thanks

*Appearing through an Agreement between this theatre and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

“Actors’ Equity Association (“Equity”), founded in 1913, is the U.S. labor union that represents more than 51,000 actors and stage managers, Equity fosters the art of live theatre as an essential component of society and advances the careers of its members by negotiating wages, improving working conditions and providing a wide range of benefits, including health and pension plans. Actors’ Equity is a member of the AFL-CIO and is affiliated with FIA, an International organization of performing arts unions. www.actorsequity.org

United Scenic Artists ● Local USA 829 of the I.A.T.S.E represents the Designers & Scenic Artists for the American Theatre

ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents & Managers (IATSE Local 18032), represents the Press Agents, Company Managers, and Theatre Managers employed on this production.

21-22 Season Welcome Letter

Dear Friends of Opera Roanoke,

Welcome to Opera Roanoke’s 46th Season of live performances in the Roanoke Valley. If this past year has taught us anything, it is how vital this art form and its patrons are to our community. We have missed you terribly, but we are ready to welcome you back to the theatre with a line-up of programs that highlight the best of all this art form has to offer – from traditional to contemporary – performances that will expand your mind and fulfill your soul.

At the core of everything we do at Opera Roanoke, is the belief in the power of the human voice to entertain, teach, and connect. With each of our three mainstage offerings this season, there is an opportunity to witness our mission in action. We invite you to explore a world where the ordinary becomes extraordinary through the power of music and singing.

We are excited to share our 2021-22 season with you and we look forward to seeing you {back} at the Opera!

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Sincerely,

Brooke Tolley
General Director
Steven White
Artistic Director
Daniel C. Summerlin, III
President, Board of Trustees

Program Notes

Bluebeard’s Castle

American premiere of Eberhard Kloke’s version for chamber orchestra

Béla Bartók (1881–1945) was a Hungarian composer and an important pioneer in the field of ethnomusicology. During the first decades of his life, he was better known for his work in collecting and analyzing folk music than for his own compositions. He fled fascism to settle in New York City in 1940. At the time of his death from leukemia, his stature as a composer was beginning to grow internationally.

Bartók’s only opera is an intense psychological journey, a powerful drama of inner emotion, and a tour de force for its two singers and orchestra. Loosely based on Charles Perrault’s late–17th-century fairy tale, it tells the grotesque story of a rich and powerful man, suspected of having murdered several wives, who brings a new bride to his castle. In Bartók’s version, the bride, Judith, prods Bluebeard to open seven doors, each of which reveals an aspect of Bluebeard’s life, material possessions, and, by extension, his soul. With the opening of the final door, Judith is engulfed in his dark subconscious.

By the time the opera was written, the Perrault tale had become a metaphor for contemporary psychological questions: How well can two people know each other? How much should they attempt to find out? While such an approach, almost completely without conventional “action,” could easily have resulted in an overly didactic treatment, Bartók’s music makes the opera a thrilling journey. The score resides on, yet not quite beyond, the jagged edges of tonality. Like the subconscious and the dream world it depicts, it sounds familiar enough so as not to be experienced as abstract, yet foreign and disturbing enough to create a feeling of unease. It is a unique achievement in opera and a great challenge to the performers and production team.

Musicologists delight in analyzing the score of Bluebeard’s Castle, but the opera is remarkable for its ability to make a direct and powerful impression on anyone. The music is closely linked to the rhythms of the text, and yet gives it an acoustic power that transcends the strictly syntactic meaning. It speaks to the emotions as well as to the intellect.

The opera opens with a spoken prologue, in which the audience is invited to question whether what they’re about to see is really happening or takes place in their imagination. Bartók builds each of the scenes, represented by each of the seven doors of Bluebeard’s castle, around its own pitch center: beginning in F-sharp, moving to a bright C (expressed in a glorious outpouring of melody) in the fifth scene, and returning to the subdued F-sharp at the end. The whole drama is contained within this sequence: loneliness with a glimpse of the lost opportunity for love and light.

Much of the title character’s vocal line is declamatory and indeed without much color or range. Its power lies in its dramatic delivery. Conversely, Judith’s music covers a wider range. The underlying intention is clear: She is attempting to break away from his stifling presence. The music of Bluebeard’s Castle makes a universal tale of human relationships from a symbolist psychological study.

Bartók began the project, his sole opera, in 1911, working from a libretto by Béla Balázs. Adapting a particular violent story from Perrault’s collection—now often omitted from modern editions—Balázs, a leading intellectual in Budapest circles, had created a new, psychological rendering of the tale. He removed the happy conclusion, in which Judith is saved from the castle by her brothers and, employing Hungarian folk idiom, turned his focus to the strange relationship between Judith and her husband. “My ballad is the ballad of the inner life,” the poet explained. “Bluebeard’s castle is not a real castle of stone. The castle is his soul. It is lonely, dark and secretive: the castle of closed doors.”

In his score, Bartók likewise presented an inner life, not only pumping musical blood into the veins of the two characters but also presenting a précis of his maturation as a composer. His musical education had begun through his parents’ performances at home, as well as by his own exploration of works by Brahms and Schumann. But in travelling from what is now the borderland between Hungary and Romania to the former’s newly established capital of Budapest, Bartók discovered much richer musical landscapes. Attending the city’s Academy, he not only encountered the music of Richard Strauss but also that of Debussy, thanks to his meeting with the man who was to be his colleague and companion, Zoltán Kodály, in 1905. Such diverse musical seams fused in the works that Bartók began both to create and to notate. He had announced in 1904 that he would “collect the finest Hungarian folk- songs and elevate them, adding the best possible piano accompaniments, to the level of art song.” His encounter with Kodály made that ambition a reality. Working in collaboration, they were prolific in their collecting activities and the music they discovered came to infuse their work.

But what is so remarkable about Bartók’s output is not its ability to reflect diverse influences but to sublimate the strands into one, as is clear in Bluebeard’s Castle. Progress with the score was slow. With it, Bartók had hoped to win the Ferenc Erkel Prize in 1911, but he failed both in this and in a 1912 competition run by music publishers Rózsavölgyi, with one judge deeming the work impossible to stage and another thinking it far too dark. Bartók was devastated, but when, after World War I, the opera was finally mounted in Budapest, he experienced at least a partial refutation of those judgements.

As musical drama, Bartók’s only opera offers a decidedly bleak resolution to the oppositions at its core: Judith vs. Bluebeard, light vs. dark, sanity vs. madness, tonality vs. atonality. These tensions are immediately apparent as the ambiguous spoken prologue trails into silence and the score begins, low down in the orchestra’s register. Its music revolves around a penumbrous F-sharp chord, spelled out in folksy, pentatonic terms. Quickly, the woodwinds cut across this dark but sonorous sound, centering instead on a triad of C major. The clash between these elements spells out the interval of a tritone, the middle point in the chromatic scale or, rather, the polar opposite of the very first note we heard.

Such a dichotomy is seemingly resolved at the blinding opening of the fifth of the seven doors in Bluebeard’s castle. Accompanied by full orchestra (including an organ), Judith screams in amazement at the vastness of the kingdom she can see beyond, the music resounding with the luminescence of C major. But as with every door that she unlocks, there follows a shudder, a strange, angular scale, couched in the same sound-world as the clashing semitone that represents the blood covering everything in sight.

Once more, Bluebeard coolly thanks Judith for bringing daylight into the castle, but when, inevitably, she unlocks the last door of his soul, following her forebears into that final room, the music returns to Bluebeard’s dark, modal sound-world. All light is extinguished, and we are taken back to the primordial “Once upon a time” that is, thanks to Bartók’s psychologically acute music, the clarion call of eternity.

— Gavin Plumley

Gavin Plumley, commissioning editor of English-language program notes for the Salzburg Festival, specializes in the music and culture of Central Europe. He appears frequently on the BBC and has written for publications around the world.

Meet the Cast

Kyle Albertson

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Bass-Baritone

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Mr. Albertson made his European début at Opera Köln in Germany as Frank Murrant in Street Scene and will return to Europe in 2022 to perform the title role in Der fliegende Holländer and Wotan in Loriot’s Der Ring an einem Abend for Opera Graz. In addition, he will return to the Metropolitan as Angelotti in Tosca.

He first joined The Metropolitan Opera roster for Don Giovanni and returned for five consecutive seasons in their productions of Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, Dialogues des carmélites, The Merry Widow, and Manon. 2020 and 2021 Metropolitan Opera engagements were to include covering the roles of the Dutchman in Der fliegende Holländer, Claggart in Billy Budd, and Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde. He recently stepped back onto the stage as Scarpia in Tosca for the Phoenicia Festival and performed Wotan in Das Rheingold for Opera Santa Barbara and Virginia Opera.

Jennifer Johnson Cano

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Mezzo-Soprano

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A naturally gifted singer noted for her commanding stage presence and profound artistry, Jennifer Johnson Cano has garnered critical acclaim for committed performances of both new and standard repertoire. For her performance as Offred in Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale she was lauded as “towering…restless, powerful, profound, she is as formidable as this astonishingly demanding role deserves” (New York Times). With more than 100 performances on the stage at The Metropolitan Opera, her most recent roles have included Nicklausse, Emilia, Hansel and Meg Page.

Highlights this season include the premiere of Kevin Puts’s The Hours with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Beethoven 9 with the Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies, and the New York premiere of Marc Neikrug’s A Song By Mahler at CMS Lincoln Center. She performs Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites (Mother Marie) with Houston Grand Opera; the world premiere of Gregory Spear’s Castor and Patience (Celeste) with Cincinnati Opera; and Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle (Judith) with Roanoke Opera.

Meet the Team

Steven White

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Conductor, Stage Director & Scenic Designer

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Praised by Opera News as a conductor who “squeezes every drop of excitement and pathos from the score,” Steven White is one of North America’s premiere operatic and symphonic conductors. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut in 2010, conducting performances of La traviata starring Angela Gheorghiu. Since then he has conducted a number of Metropolitan Opera performances of La traviata, with such stars as Natalie Dessay, Hei-Kyung Hong, Plácido Domingo, Thomas Hampson, Dmitri Hvorostovksy and Matthew Polenzani. In the past several seasons he has returned to the Met to participate in critically fêted productions of Don Carlo, Billy Budd, The Rake’s Progress and Elektra.

With a vibrant repertoire of over sixty-five titles, Maestro White’s extensive operatic engagements have included performances with New York City Opera, L’Opera de Montréal, Vancouver Opera, Opera Colorado, Pittsburgh Opera, Michigan Opera Theater, Baltimore Opera, New Orleans Opera, and many others. In recent seasons he has conducted Rigoletto with San Diego Opera, Otello and La traviata with Austin Opera, La traviata with Utah Opera, and a world premiere staged production of a brand-new Bärenreiter edition of Gounod’s Faust with Opera Omaha.

In the 2021-2022 season, he returns to the Metropolitan Opera for their production of Tosca, which he also conducts for Utah Opera. He continues his close collaboration with Opera Omaha, conducting Eugene Onegin, joins Peabody Opera Theatre as guest conductor for Dominick Argento’s Postcard from Morocco, and returns to Opera Roanoke for Bluebeard’s Castle in the fall and Verdi’s Requiem in the spring.

Tláloc López-Watermann

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Lighting Designer & Assistant Stage Director

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Tláloc López-Watermann is the founder of Light Conversations, LLC, a lighting and video design company based in New York City. Tlaloc regularly collaborates with stage directors Crystal Manich, Copeland Woodruff, Dean Anthony, JJ Hudson, and James Marvel. He has also designed for directors Ned Canty, Timothy Nelson, Tomer Zvulun, Andrew Eggert, Beth Greenberg, Corinne Hayes, and Sarah Meyers.

Tlaloc is fluent in Spanish and German and spent a season working at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Tlaloc has also worked regularly for The Seattle Opera, North Carolina Opera, Opera Louisiane, Toledo Opera, Utah Festival Opera, Todi Music Festival, Opera Roanoke, Opera Naples, and Shreveport Opera. In 2013, Tlaloc was chosen as the festival lighting designer for Lorin Maazel’s prestigious Castleton Festival in Virginia and has been lighting designer in residence for the Janiec Opera Company in Brevard, North Carolina.

In 2016, Tlaloc made company debuts with Amarillo Opera (Le Nozze di Figaro); Opera Grand Rapids (Gluck's Orphee); and Pittsburgh Opera (Ricardo Primo). In 2017, Tlaloc made debuts with Lawrence University (Hydrogen Jukebox), Opera Columbus, and Opera on the James. In addition to his work in opera, Tlaloc has worked with the Ontological Hysterical Company in New York City, In Strange Company in Albuquerque, A Host of People in Detroit, and The Arena Stage in Washington, DC, where he was the Allen Lee Hughes Lighting Fellow. He holds a BFA in Performance Production from Cornish College of the Arts, and an MFA in Design from NYU / Tisch.

Joey Neighbors

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Set Builder & Technical Director

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Joey has been in the theatre all his life. He has worked on countless productions all over the Southeast and Northeast United States. He has his BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He has been the resident builder for Opera Roanoke for the past six seasons. He has worked with Opera Roanoke on countless productions on and off since 1986. Along with his work with Opera Roanoke he also works with Roanoke Ballet Theatre, Southwest Virginia Ballet, Roanoke Children’s Theatre, Off the Rails Theatre in Roanoke, Opera on the James in Lynchburg, and Annapolis Opera in AnnapolisMD. He has owned his own business for 18 years, Neighbors Handyman & Custom Carpentry and Star City Sets, doing small remodeling/repair jobs, tile work, and custom built-in’s and Sets for Opera and Theatre Companies. His joy in life is his family.

John Lipe

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Stage Manager

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John Lipe, Stage Manager, is a native of Carbondale, Illinois. He has worked for opera companies across the country, such as the Opera Company of Philadelphia, New Orleans Opera, Opera Columbus, Boston Early Music Festival, Opera Memphis, Opera Roanoke, Opera Southwest, Tampa Opera, Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Toledo Opera, Opera Nevada, and Utah Festival Opera.

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2021 National Touring Cast

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Exclusive First Listen to WHERE I WANT TO BE from CHESS Cast Album

Emily Wyrwa

April 9, 2026

The 2025 Broadway Cast album of Chess will be released in digital and streaming formats tomorrow, Friday April 10 through Ghostlight Records. The recording will be released on CD and vinyl later this year.

The new album is based on the record-breaking production currently running at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, starring Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele, and Nicholas Christopher.

Theatrely has an exclusive first listen to “Where I Want to Be” performed by Nicholas Christopher.

Chess currently stars Tony Award winner Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele, and Nicholas Christopher, and features Hannah Cruz, Bryce Pinkham, Bradley Dean, Sean Allan Krill. The ensemble includes Kyla Bartholomeusz, Daniel Beeman, Shavey Brown, Emma Degerstedt, Casey Garvin, Adam Halpin, David Paul Kidder, Sarah Michele Lindsey, Michael Milkanin, Aleksandr Ivan Pevec, Aliah James, Sydney Jones, Sean MacLaughlin, Sarah Meahl, Ramone Nelson, Fredric Rodriguez Odgaard, Michael Olaribigbe, Katerina Papacostas, Samantha Pollino, Adam Roberts, Regine Sophia, and Katie Webber.

To pre-save the album, visit here.

CATS: THE JELLICLE BALL Pushes Us Towards A More Fabulous Future — Review

Joey Sims

April 8, 2026

Some fools will look to identify a singular moment in this transcendent Broadway transfer of Cats: The Jellicle Ball—a scene, a song, even a lighting shift—that lands with anything other than graceful perfection.

They may try. They won’t succeed.

“What about ‘Bustopher Jones’?” I hear you asking, foolishly. “That’s one of the weaker numbers in Cats, right?” Wrong. In this Ball, the vivacious Nora Schell has reinvented the “cat about town” as an incorrigible friend to all, a spirited lover of sex, drink and revelry. Bustopher is an icon now—get with it.

“Well, ‘Gus the Theatre Cat’ is always a bit dull, isn’t it?” you might suggest, recklessly. Idiot. Gus has been redefined as a ballroom veteran, still throwing shade from the box seats with the best of them; a wearily witty Junior LaBeija (of Paris Is Burning) owns the stage in the role, provoking waves of laughter with the slightest eye-roll.

“Are you really saying that even ‘The Ad-Dressing of Cats’ somehow lands?” Of course, you imbecile. The final number of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s enduring 1980s musical, which bizarrely chose to conclude with a treatise on proper engagement with felines, has been reframed as a counseling of respect for the ballroom legacy. Now you know—and don’t you forget.

The concept of Cats: The Jellicle Ball, now on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre following a celebrated run at PAC NYC in 2024, is as simple as it is demented: co-directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch have transposed Cats into the underground ballroom scene. A parade of “Jellicles” strutting their stuff here become battling performers in a ballroom competition. Old Deuteronomy (André De Shields) becomes a queer elder judging the competition. The narrator, Munkustrap (Dudney Joseph Jr.), is our catty Master of Ceremonies. And Grizabella (“Tempress” Chasity Moore) is a faded trans ballroom icon of yesteryear, cast aside by the world yet worshipped (if at a distance) by this new generation of “Cats” as a living legend.

It works. It works because the ballroom setting lends weight and specificity to a narrative world that previously felt airless, abstract to the point of nothingness. It works because Webber’s songs translate easily to ballroom categories. Most of all, it works because it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

And on Broadway, it somehow works even better. I did worry that something might get lost in the tighter confines of the Broadhurst—a flexible space at PAC had allowed for both a long runway on stage, and bustling actions on all sides. Could the magic survive the transfer?

I needn’t have fretted. On Broadway, Cats: The Jellicle Ball has both sharpened in its staging and deepened in its significance.

Scenic designer Rachel Hauck has masterfully reshaped the proscenium space, adding stage seating that blends seamlessly with the action. Choreographers Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons utilize every nook and cranny of the Broadhurst, with Jellicles popping up on all sides. Wild movement work and meticulous lighting by Adam Honoré (the two elements working together far more smoothly than at PAC) keep our eyes focused on necessary action while still allowing space for the requisite ballroom frenzy—bodies everywhere, moving as one yet all, uniquely and thrillingly, telling their own individual story.

Dropped into a historic Broadway house, Jellicle Ball also plays more clearly and movingly as a defiant revolt of queer joy against a regressive and unadventurous culture still fighting its way out of the Stone Age. The voguers have, somehow, invaded a house of the establishment. And they’re wreaking gorgeous havoc.

Within that rich context, I found the high points of this production all the more intensely euphoric. The opener, “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats,” is simply electrifying; “The Jellicle Ball” offers an overwhelming explosion of brightness and beauty; and the arrival of Old Deuteronomy, played by the incomparable De Shields, is sheer communal bliss. No other performer could command such a roaring audience response. That Shields is notably just a little frailer of body (though not mind or voice) adds only greater weight to his presence.

Other highlights include Sydney James Harcourt’s scorching hot take on “Bustopher Jones,” and a visit from “Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat,” hilariously transfigured by Emma Sofia into the most fabulous MTA conductor you’ll ever meet.

Far from using the culture as a gimmick, Levingston and Rauch pay loving tribute to ballroom’s rich history. A tasteful history lesson at the top of the second act, paired with “Moments of Happiness,” provides an introduction for under-educated audience members like myself.

Under William Waldrop’s musical direction and supervision, a perfectly modulated band blasts Webber’s score (re-orchestrated to perfection by Webber and David Wilson, with some skillful help from beats arranger Trevor Holder) while never overwhelming the performers. And the already perfectly ostentatious costumes by Qween Jean have gotten a welcome upgrade for Broadway—over 500 looks, each as breathtaking as the last.

Lastly, of course there is Grizabella, the original “Glamour cat.” The sheer presence that Chasity Moore brings to this role elevates Jellicle Ball to devastating emotional heights. Moore’s rendition of “Memory” is ragged, and weary. It carries a weighty history, and years of pain. It is precisely all that history, deeply felt in this momentous staging, that makes both Moore and this production so otherworldly. This Ball is not just a remembrance of things past—it points a way forward, to a more fabulous future.

Jessica Lee Goldyn Is Giving It Her All In GOTTA DANCE

Kobi Kassal

April 7, 2026

I don’t know if I can ever remember the first time I had the privilege to see Jessica Lee Goldyn on stage, but I know every time she is up there, it feels like magic. So earlier this year when I caught Gotta Dance at the York on the Upper East Side, to say it was a true delight is an understatement.

It’s now back, and dare I say, better than ever at Stage 42 here in the heart of midtown. I recently caught up with Goldyn to chat moving this behemoth of a dance show down 34 blocks, working with her partner, and A Chorus Line’s 50th Anniversary. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I caught the show at the York and just completely fell in love with it, so I'm thrilled that it’s back. Tell me a little about how you got involved with this project.

I have had a history with American Dance Machine for over a decade now. And last spring, I did a concert at the York for American Dance machine. I just did Music and the Mirror, Donna McKechnie asked me to do it. And that night, Nikki Atkins said, you know, we're going to do a show here at the York, and I'd love for you to be a part of it. Before that, I hadn't really done anything with American Dance Machine for like 10 years, so it was such an amazing, wonderful surprise and reconnection. I don’t think any of us realized what the York was going to turn out to be. This sold out, people crying in the audience, people coming back multiple times, like what an awesome surprise. To find out we're going to have this life moving forward at Stage 42, it's just been so wonderful to see the response and I'm having the time of my life getting to do all of this incredible work.

Why do you think audiences were so taken and moved by that run you had at the York? What is it about this show that is so special that is having people come back and back and folks crying in the audience?

Every single number that we're doing is so special and brilliant and iconic. I like to say it's like a show full of 11 o'clock numbers for dance. It’s still so relevant today, all of Michael Bennett's work and Jerome Robbins’ work and this storytelling through movement that everyone can relate to. But then also you've got the best of the best dancers in New York on one stage giving their absolute all every single time. It made me cry in the wings witnessing it. I think that's what made people keep coming back, is just wanting to feel that feeling of. It's like when you can feel truth in humanity, you want to be around that and it just uplifts you.

There's so much joy in the show. I would love standing in the wings getting ready to do Music and the Mirror as I Love a Piano would finish and just hearing the roar of joy that would happen every night. It’s just such a beautiful ride. There's a lot of playfulness, it explores everything — something as dark as Pippin and the Manson Trio, which is just so brilliant. We had Stephen Schwartz come and visit us on our last day in the studio and talk about that piece. Then you go into Music and the Mirror and Cassie's humanity and begging for a job and needing to work. I don't think there's anyone who can't relate to that at some point, of just really knowing what it is that you have to do and fighting for that. There’s just a ton of like top tier, Grade A dancing happening all over that stage.

It is thrilling. It's amazing. I'm wondering if you could talk to me a little about how the numbers you chose were chosen.

I've had such a history with a chorus line and in working with Donna McKechnie for the past decade, so Music and the Mirror was always on the table to preserve and present. It's so awesome to share it with this new generation. And then Shimmy, Nikki Atkins came up with Shimmy and it was a number that she'd wanted to explore that American Dance Machine had never done. I have been such an enormous fan of that number forever. I mean, DeLee Lively, I can remember being like 11 years old and running out that PBS special on the VHS at that time. So when she said, “would you like to audition to do Shimmy?” And I was like, “um yes!” Joey McNeely's choreography is so brilliant, so that’s how that came to be. I feel like I secreted that for my whole life. Then this time around at the York, I did a Brass Band from Sweet Charity. This time around, I'm going to be doing City Lights from The Act. That one, when we knew we weren't going to do Brass Band again, the team started cooking up ideas of what numbers might fit well in the show and be good for me. City Lights came up and it wasn't one that I had ever considered, or, that's a lie. I guess I didn't realize I had graduated. The last time I did City Lights and I think probably the only other time it's ever been done, really, post- The Act was 11 years ago. Amara Fe Wright did it at the Joyce Theatre when American Dance Machine performed there. I loved the number so much that I begged to be in the number even though I already had a tall order in that show, I said, “please can I be in that number because it's so brilliant.” So she presented that to me and I said, “wow okay yes.” So, paying homage to Liza [Minelli] this time; it’s such a fun and brilliant number.

I want to talk a bit about you working with your partner because it's not something that always gets to be done and how special that is for you and what that means.

Oh my gosh, working with Blake. It's just the best to have my touchstone in the building. I can just walk across the hall and into his dressing room. We met doing a show, we met during a production of Chicago at the Fulton Theater seven years ago. We’ve had a couple of moments to be on stage since then, and of course, the York. We did the 50th anniversary of A Chorus Line together. But this feels like the first real run that we've ever done in New York together, and that's a cool thing. We were walking home from the theater last night in Times Square and going, “oh, this is our first walk together coming home from work!” It’s awesome. And also he's just the best freaking dancer I've ever. Seen standing in the wings and watching him do what he does. He inspires me and just the support we support each other he's the best.

At Theatrely, our audience tends to be a bit younger, more Gen Z, so I'm curious when young folks come and see Gotta Dance Now at Stage 42. I can only assume a lot of them will be seeing a lot of these dances for the first time. What do you hope they take away from seeing this production?

I think part of the thing that keeps me coming back to all of this material: How beautiful the simplicity in storytelling can be. I think sometimes as theatre has evolved, the stage can be filled with so many things that we don’t even quite know where to look sometimes. It’s like a feast for the eyes, but this is a different feast for eyes. We couldn't have evolved to where we are without this work. And it’s still so relevant. I talk about Beyonce's Single Ladies all the time, and how that was Bob Fosse's Mexican Breakfast, and Gwen Verdon danced that well before Beyonce. Just seeing those roots, and appreciating that. I think these are just gems that people might not have known, especially the younger generation, maybe haven't been introduced to yet. And I believe they're gonna be as obsessed with them as I was at their age.

Absolutely yeah. I want to talk about A Chorus Line, and the whole anniversary that we just celebrated. I was there that night, it was, oh my god, one of the best nights of my life.

You got in?!

Yes, I got in!

Amazing.

I made sure I was going to be in that room. Obviously, Chorus Line has been with you in your career for such a long time, and still is now, and I'm sure will be continuous for many years to come. But I'm curious, when you think back to that night at The Schubert, that was so special. You've had some time to reflect on it since it's been a few months. When you think about that night in 10, 20, 30 years, what do you want to remember most about that experience?

Oh my goodness. There's the image of seeing the originals hit the line and hearing the audience roar and watching their headshot shake behind, and that was very special. It felt like that whole week, felt like the 50th anniversary, not just that night. There were so many of us, alumni from ‘75 on, gathered at 890 Broadway, which was, of course, the building that Michael Bennett owned. And we just danced for fun. [We did] the opening and sang What I Did For Love, and I got to dance Music and the Mirror with Karen Ziemba and Bebe Neuwirth. It was one of the most unbelievable days of my life. And then Baayork’s led flash mob at Lincoln Center, seeing so many generations of A Chorus Line come together, and then the 50th, I think it all culminated in looking around and going, “look at how many lives have been touched by this show, it's still running through your veins.” Once you've done that show, you're part of that family.

I think that's also why I'm so passionate about keeping that flame alive. It's just a beautiful thing. I just said recently, I was talking about it in another interview and reflecting on it. There's something so special about Michael Bennett's work. I've never met Michael Bennett. I've been lucky enough to work with the people who knew him very well, but through his work, he's made me feel so seen in my life. And I think that everybody across the board feels that in doing that show. So it was another layer of that, another night of that. There will never be anything like that night. Oh my gosh, that audience. And just the people in that building, all the Cassies dancing, Music and the Mirror, all of the numbers having so many different generations of the character involved is just so special. I think it was just the love and I got to have kind of the touchstones, the people who taught me the show, all in one place. I don't know that I've really had that yet. You know, Donna Drake and my original mentor, Louis Villabon and Baayork and Mitzi and Donna. It was like looking at the journey in one spot.

A night I’ll never forget.

Never.

Is there anything else for Gotta Dance that we haven't touched upon yet that you want to chat about?

I just think, personally, I've wanted and waited for a dance show like this to happen and on Broadway or in New York, and it's just such a special thing for something like this exist with so many different classic and also kind of contemporary. Shimmy — what was that, the 90s? — same with something like Susan Stroman's Contact, which is very much so kicking around to come back. That was so revolutionary, the first show to win a Tony with canned music, no singing, and all storytelling through movement. It’s a rare thing to have a show like this in New York. So I'm so excited about it, and I hope that it inspires more of something like this to happen, but it's important for audiences to see it because it’s a rare thing.

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Theatrely News

EXCLUSIVE: Watch A Clip From THEATER CAMP Starring Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, and Molly Gordon

Theatrely News

READ: An Excerpt From Sean Hayes Debut YA Novel TIME OUT

Theatrely News

"Reframing the COVID-19 Pandemic Through a Stage Manager’s Eyes"

EXCLUSIVE: Watch A Clip From THEATER CAMP Starring Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, and Molly Gordon

By: Maia Penzer

14 July 2023

Finally, summer has arrived, which can only mean one thing: it's time for camp! Theater Camp, that is. Theatrely has a sneak peak at the new film which hits select theaters today.

The new original comedy starring Tony Award winner Ben Platt and Molly Gordon we guarantee will have you laughing non-stop. The AdirondACTS, a run-down theater camp in upstate New York, is attended by theater-loving children who must work hard to keep their beloved theater camp afloat after the founder, Joan, falls into a coma.

The film stars Ben Platt and Molly Gordon as Amos Klobuchar and Rebecca-Diane, respectively, as well as Noah Galvin as Glenn Wintrop, Jimmy Tatro as Troy Rubinsky, Patti Harrison as Caroline Krauss, Nathan Lee Graham as Clive DeWitt, Ayo Edebiri as Janet Walch, Owen Thiele as Gigi Charbonier, Caroline Aaron as Rita Cohen, Amy Sedaris as Joan Rubinsky, and Alan Kim as Alan Park.

Theater Camp was directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman and written by Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman & Ben Platt. Music is by James McAlister and Mark Sonnenblick. On January 21, 2023, Theater Camp had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

You can purchase tickets to the new film from our friends at Hollywood.com here.

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READ: An Excerpt From Sean Hayes Debut YA Novel TIME OUT

By: Kobi Kassal

29 May 2023

Actor Sean Hayes is what we in the biz call booked and blessed. On top of his Tony-nominated performance as Oscar Levant in Good Night, Oscar, Hayes has partnered with Todd Milliner and Carlyn Greenwald for the release of their new YA novel Time Out.

Heralded by many as Heartstopper meets Friday Night Lights, Time Out follows hometown basketball hero Barclay Elliot who decides to use a pep rally to come out to his school. When the response is not what he had hoped and the hostility continually growing, he turns to his best friend Amy who brings him to her voting rights group at school. There he finds Christopher and… you will just have to grab a copy and find out what happens next. Luckily for you, Time Out hits shelves on May 30 and to hold you over until then we have a special except from the book just for Theatrely:

The good thing about not being on the team the past two weeks has been that I’ve had time to start picking up shifts again at Beau’s diner and save up a little for college now that my scholarship dreams are over.

The bad part is it’s the perfect place to see how my actions at the pep rally have rotted the townspeople’s brains too.

During Amy’s very intense musical theater phase in middle school, her parents took her to New York City. And of course she came back home buzzing about Broadway and how beautiful the piss smell was and everything artsy people say about New York. But she also vividly described some diner she waited three hours to get into where the waitstaff would all perform songs for the customers as a way to practice for auditions. The regulars would have favorite staff members and stan them the way Amy stans all her emo musicians.

Working at Beau’s used to feel kind of like that, like I was part of a performance team I didn’t know I signed up for. The job started off pretty basic over the summer—I wanted to save up for basketball supplies, and Amy worked there and said it was boring ever since her e-girl coworker friend graduated. But I couldn’t get through a single lunch rush table without someone calling me over and wanting the inside scoop on the Wildcats and how we were preparing for the home opener, wanting me to sign an article in the paper or take a photo. Every friendly face just made the resolve grow inside me. People love and support the Wildcats; they would do the same for me.

Yeah, right.

Now just like school, customers have been glaring at me, making comments about letting everyone down, about being selfish, about my actions being “unfortunate,” and the tips have been essentially nonexistent. The Wildcats have been obliterated in half their games since I quit, carrying a 2–3 record when last year we were 5–0, and the comments make my feet feel like lead weights I have to drag through every shift.

Today is no different. It’s Thursday, the usual dinner rush at Beau’s, and I try to stay focused on the stress of balancing seven milkshakes on one platter. A group of regulars, some construction workers, keep loudly wondering why I won’t come back to the team while I refuse proper eye contact.

One of the guys looks up at me as I drop the bill off. “So, what’s the deal? Does being queer keep ya from physically being able to play?”

They all snicker as they pull out crumpled bills. I stuff my hands into my pockets, holding my tongue.

When they leave, I hold my breath as I take their bill.

Sure enough, no tip.

“What the fuck?” I mutter under my breath.

“Language,” Amy says as she glides past me, imitating the way Richard says it to her every shift, and adds, “even though they are dicks.” At least Amy’s been ranting about it every free chance she gets. It was one thing when the student body was being shitty about me leaving the team, but the town being like this is even more infuriating. She doesn’t understand how these fully grown adults can really care that much about high school basketball and thinks they need a new fucking hobby. I finally agree with her.

[She’s wearing red lipstick to go with her raccoon-adjacent eyeliner as she rushes off to prepare milkshakes for a pack of middle schoolers. I catch her mid–death glare as all three of the kids rotate in their chairs, making the old things squeal. My anger fades a bit as I can’t help but chuckle; Amy’s pissed-off reaction to Richard telling her to smile more was said raccoon makeup, and her tolerance for buffoonery has been at a negative five to start and declining fast.

I rest my arms on the counter and try not to look as exhausted as I feel.

“Excuse me!” an old lady screeches, making me jump.

Amy covers up a laugh as I head to the old lady and her husband’s table. They’ve got finished plates, full waters. Not sure what the problem is. Or I do, which is worse.

“Yes?” I say trying to suppress my annoyance.

“Could you be bothered to serve us?”

Only five more hours on shift. I have a break in three minutes. I’ll be with Devin at Georgia Tech tomorrow. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I say, so careful to keep my words even, but I can feel my hands balling into fists. “What would you—?”

And suddenly Amy swoops in, dropping two mugs of coffee down. “Sorry about that, you two,” she says, her voice extra high. “The machine was conking out on us, but it’s fine now.”

Once the coffee is down, she hooks onto a chunk of my shirt, steering us back to the bar.

“Thanks,” I mutter, embarrassed to have forgotten something so basic. Again.

“Just keep it together, man,” she says. “Maybe you’d be better off with that creepy night shift where all the truckers and serial killers come in.”

Honestly, at least the serial killers wouldn’t care about my jump shot.

It’s a few minutes before my break, but clearly I need it. “I’ll be in the back room.”

Right before I can head that way though, someone straight-up bursts into the diner and rushes over to me at the bar. It’s a middle-aged dad type, sunburned skin, beer belly, and stained T-shirt.

“Pickup order?” I ask.

“You should be ashamed,” he sneers at me. He has a really strong Southern accent, but it’s not Georgian. “Think you’re so high and mighty, that nothing’ll ever affect you? My kid’ll never go to college because of you and your lifestyle. Fuck you, Barclay Ell—”

And before this man can finish cursing my name, Pat of all people runs in, wide-eyed in humiliation. “Jesus, Dad, please don’t—”

I pin my gaze on him, remembering how he cowered on the bench as Ostrowski went off, how he didn’t even try to approach me. “Don’t even bother,” I snap.

I shove a to-go bag into his dad’s arms, relieved it’s prepaid, and storm off to the break room.]

Amy finds me head in my arms a minute or two later. I look up, rubbing my eyes. “Please spare me the pity.”

She snorts and hands me a milkshake. Mint chocolate chip. “Wouldn’t dare.” She takes a seat and rolls her shoulders and neck, cracks sounding through the tiny room. “Do you want a distraction or a shoulder to cry on?”

For more information, and to purchase your copy of Time Out, click here.

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Reframing the COVID-19 Pandemic Through a Stage Manager’s Eyes

By: Kaitlyn Riggio

5 July 2022

When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a national emergency in the United States in March 2020, Broadway veteran stage manager Richard Hester watched the nation’s anxiety unfold on social media.

“No one knew what the virus was going to do,” Hester said. Some people were “losing their minds in abject terror, and then there were some people who were completely denying the whole thing.”

For Hester, the reaction at times felt like something out of a movie. “It was like the Black Plague,” he said. “Some people thought it was going to be like that Monty Python sketch: ‘bring out your dead, bring out your dead.’”

While Hester was also unsure about how the virus would unfold, he felt that his “job as a stage manager is to naturally defuse drama.” Hester brought this approach off the stage and onto social media in the wake of the pandemic.

“I just sort of synthesized everything that was happening into what I thought was a manageable bite, so people could get it,” Hester said. This became a daily exercise for a year. Over two years after the beginning of the pandemic, Hester’s accounts are compiled in the book, Hold Please: Stage Managing A Pandemic. Released earlier this year, the book documents the events of the past two years, filtering national events and day-to-day occurrences through a stage manager’s eyes and storytelling.

When Hester started this project, he had no intention of writing a book. He was originally writing every day because there was nothing else to do. “I am somebody who needs a job or needs a structure,” Hester said.

Surprised to find that people began expecting his daily posts, he began publishing his daily writing to his followers through a Substack newsletter. As his following grew, Hester had to get used to writing for an audience. “I started second guessing myself a lot of the time,” Hester said. “It just sort of put a weird pressure on it.”

Hester said he got especially nervous before publishing posts in which he wrote about more personal topics. For example, some of his posts focused on his experiences growing up in South Africa while others centered on potentially divisive topics, such as the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Despite some of this discomfort, Hester’s more personal posts were often the ones that got the most response. The experience offered him a writing lesson. “I stopped worrying about the audience and just wrote what I wanted to write about,” Hester said. “All of that pressure that I think as artists we put on ourselves, I got used to it.”

One of Hester’s favorite anecdotes featured in the book centers on a woman who dances in Washington Square Park on a canvas, rain or shine. He said he was “mesmerized by her,” which inspired him to write about her. “It was literally snowing and she was barefoot on her canvas dancing, and that seems to me just a spectacularly beautiful metaphor for everything that we all try and do, and she was living that to the fullest.”

During the creation of Hold Please, Hester got the unique opportunity to reflect in-depth on the first year of the pandemic by looking back at his accounts. He realized that post people would not remember the details of the lockdown; people would “remember it as a gap in their lives, but they weren’t going to remember it beat by beat.”

“Reliving each of those moments made me realize just how full a year it was, even though none of us were doing anything outside,” he adds. “We were all on our couches.” Readers will use the book as a way to relive moments of the pandemic’s first year “without having to wallow in the misery of it,” he hopes.

“I talk about the misery of it, but that’s not the focus of what I wrote... it was about hope and moving forward,” Hester said. “In these times when everything is so difficult, we will figure out a way to get through and we will move forward.”

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