Salina is the drag persona of Jason De Puy. De Puy is someone I first met while he was in college working on his degree in musical theater. He did book a few gigs: two runs as Don in local productions of A Chorus Line and also a role in Celebration Theater’s production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The opportunity to do drag soon appealed to De Puy, though he was a bit reluctant, and thus Salina was born.

Salina is one of the cagelles in La Cage Aux Folles. That is the ensemble of queens who perform at the nightclub owned by George (Cheyenne Jackson) and Albin (Kevin Cahoon). The musical, written by Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein and inspired the film The Birdcage , tells the story of George’s son (Ryan J. Haddad) who has invited his girlfriend’s very conservative politician father and his wife over for dinner. In order to not destroy his shot at marrying his girlfriend, he wants all signs of homosexuality and drag queens removed, including Albin, from the dinner and their home.

A few days before opening, I spoke with Salina about her path to this show, the significance it has for her and whether being on stage in this musical is as scary as being on the runway facing down criticism from RuPaul, Michelle Visage and the judges. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: When I first met you, you were going to drama school in Los Angeles. This was 11 plus years ago. I remember our having conversations about how much musical theater meant to you and how you wanted to really pursue that. What does it mean to you, this many years later, to be part of this production of La Cage Aux Folles? 

It’s a dream I forgot about because I started doing drag about ten years ago and that kind of took over. Drag became my own version of theater for myself. I got to self-produce, create and play any role that I wanted. Drag Race, of course, happened. The universe has brought me back into this realm of musical theater. It feels so wild to be back in the musical theater world in this way, combining drag at the same time. So it’s kind of like full circle.

For people who only know you as Salina, this truly was the dream. 

Ultimately, it really was. Being a part of this production of La Cage definitely awakened that dream in me and has opened up ideas of new dreams for me. This is actually a road I can walk down again. I’m thinking about that because people at the Pasadena Playhouse told me we’ve worked with Alaska [Thunderf*ck] before [Head Over Heels]. I was like, Whoa. Alaska’s trajectory literally brought her to Pasadena Playhouse and now she’s off-Broadway in New York City with her own musical [DRAG: The Musical at New World Stages]. The possibilities are endless, you know? 

What makes this production of La Cage compelling for you?

I absolutely am honored to be working with [director] Sam Pinkelton and Ani Taj, the choreographer. Them together are creating such a beautiful, joyful, fun, quirky rendition of the show that we’ve never seen before. Since Drag Race I’ve gotten to travel the world and visit many different drag scenes in the country and beyond. What they’re doing with this is really getting to the core of what the show is about and presenting it in a very real way that’s true to what drag is. 

You are being billed as Salina in instead of your real name. Is Salina any part of this show? Like, for instance, are we going to see Salina’s identity as part of what you bring as a cagelle?

My character’s name is Bitelle and it’s definitely inspired by Salina. Salina will be on that stage and you’ll see her pop out because there’s no denying the crazy personality that I am when I’m dressed up.

What do you think La Cage has to say about the world we live in today?

It’s wild because we had Tuesday/Election Day off from rehearsals. Wednesday we came back with the news of who had won and we are all so exhausted from rehearsing and from the chaos of the world. To have been there together with each other on that Wednesday after the election results and then to do the show; the show flourished in a very interesting way because it became a lot more real to our experience. Something shifted. Art reflects life and imitates life. Here we are putting on a production that is so much fun and so much joy, so much love, so much like chosen family, real family, love and community.

La Cage is, for me, is my version of how I would love America to be. Not even drag queens, glitter and glam, it’s more just the love and joy that we’ve created in the show is how I wish we were in the country.

Cheyenne Jackson has always been impressive in each show I’ve seen. What’s been your experience of working with him?

When I was in college and I was 18 years old they said pick a leading man on Broadway right now that you would love to model your career on. I had picked this photo of Cheyenne in his blue booty shorts and skates from Xanadu. This guy is talented, gorgeous and what I want to be like. Here I am, 20 years later, in a show with him, and it’s been so cool. He’s the sweetest and most talented and most sincere.

His take on George, the father in the show, is so funny because he’s also a father, a husband and has two kids. I used to make protein shakes for him at my gym I used to work at. Watching his father journey in real life now translated into the show where he is the ultimate father of the Cagelles…he is daddy.

Is his is still a career you’d like to see Salina have or you as Jason have? 

Yes. Part of me had let go of the musical theater dreams because I’m a drag queen performing in drag bars. But drag queens, especially from RuPaul’s Drag Race, have shown us there is endless possibility for where we will show up. Alaska is on her way there. There’s no reason why I couldn’t be there. I would love to say if there’s ever a musical of To Wong Foo, to play Chichi Rodriguez would be a dream role. I don’t know if anyone’s writing it, but that would be the perfect role for me.

If you were asked to finish the sentence, I am what I am and what I am is… What would you say?

An illusion.

Yes, but that’s the lyric.

I think I am what I am. And I’m present right now. I’m in my body. I’m experiencing what needs to be experienced. I’m showing up and I’m stepping up to the plate. As scared as I am, I’m excited. And I’m here, as Cynthia Erivo sang.

You threw a little Color Purple there. Is it more daunting getting on stage in front of an audience to do this than it is to get on stage in front of the judges at RuPaul’s Drag Race? 

They’re two very different worlds, of course. Here we’re rehearsing every single day to create a work of art. And on Drag Race you have one shot on that runway to show off something you made in two days. You’re just walking the runway in an outfit. Here I’m getting to explore and showcase every aspect of my talents from drag to my singing, my dancing and my acting. I’m very much more excited right now in this moment.

This is a bit of a RuPaul question. But if you could go back to when you had the first inklings of this is what I want to do to where you are today, if Salina today could give you advice, what would it be?

I think it would be trust the process. When I graduated musical theater college, my final performance song was Today for You, Tomorrow for Me, which is sung by Angel in Rent – who presents as the drag queen. At that time, I never thought I would be a drag queen. I did not want to be a drag queen. I was trying to be Cheyenne Jackson. To have gone today for you, tomorrow for me, as my final song, somehow the universe knew where I was headed before I did.

And look at me today. So I would say just trust the process. Step into those heels, honey. I resisted the heels for a long time. I would quit drag and go back and quit drag and go back because I’m like, no, I’m a boy who performs this way. But like, no, honey, you’re a queen, be a queen.

To watch the full interview with Salina EsTitties, please go here.

La Cage Aux Folles continues at the Pasadena Playhouse through December 15th.

Main Photo: Rhoyle Ivy King, Salina EsTitties, Sun Jade Reid and Kay Bebe Queue in La Cage Aux Folles (Photo by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse)

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She was the producer/director and co-showrunner of One Day at a Time that starred Justina Machado and Rita Moreno. She’s also the woman behind the Amazon series With Love. But what many people don’t know about Calderón Kellett is that she is also a playwright. Her plays include Plane Strangers, In Her Shoes and Baggage and now One of the Good Ones.

One of the Good Ones is having its world premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse where it will play through April 7th. Calderón Kellett takes the classic idea of the daughter bringing home a man and her parents don’t know what to think of him. Yoli (Isabella Gomez – also from One Day at a Time) is the perfect Latina daughter. But is Marcos (Nico Greetham) good enough for her or her parents (Ilana and Enrique played by Lana Parrilla and Carlos Gomez)? Can anyone be good enough for her? The issue here, told as only Calderón Kellet can, is not about his ethnicity. It is about how each of the five characters in the play define themselves and what it means for each of them to be an American. It’s not always the same thing. Or is it?

There are multiple surprises that await theatergoers. But Calderón Kellett says one of them is the very setting of her play.

“Part of this play was also intentionally set in Pasadena with a wealthy family because we never get that,” she revealed. “That certainly exists all over the city. There’s a lot of Latinos that have money, that have generational wealth. What does that look like? Those stories deserve to be told as well. So it was all very intentional. There will be people in the audience that do not know that Pasadena was Mexico.”

That’s just one example of the fascinating conversation I had with Calderón Kellett as One of the Good Ones was in the final weeks of rehearsals. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: In a 2021 interview that you gave to latina.com you said, “I feel really fortunate that my brain defaults to comedy in dark moments.” What was your initial inspiration for One of the Good Ones? Did it come out of a dark moment and when did you start writing it? 

It did come out of a dark moment. A dark and a light moment. When I did One Day at a Time, which was more based on my life and experience, people suddenly really wanted to talk to me about being Latina – which I’m happy to talk about. I love being Latina, but it was very interesting that the panels and the discussions would be either about being female or about being Latina, and very little about being a writer or a showrunner. I was happy to take that. To sort of take that bullet initially because it felt like we’re in a time where that’s still so rare that I’m going to talk about it. But also, how weird that it’s so rare that we have to talk about it. 

I had to talk about Latinidad so much. Trying to make people understand we are 19 plus countries under this umbrella of Latin. That in the United States Latino, as a term, is supposed to encompass all of us. It can’t possibly, because we all come from different backgrounds and different places. So it felt like it would be interesting to talk about identity in a comedic manner, and how could I do that? I love the challenge. I love writing myself into corners. I love the challenge of 90 minutes, no intermission.

In that same interview you talk about having three generations when you grew up and you were the kid for so long. Then you’d transitioned into your parents and were in the middle. “It’s a sandwich and I’m the meat in between my children and my parents and I’m trying to navigate that.” How much is One of the Good Ones your response to that place you find yourself today?

Absolutely. I see myself always in the female characters in such a strong way. And then the male characters really reflect so many of the males [in my life]. Enrique’s very my father. My husband has said, I like when your dad’s here because a man’s in the room. That’s the kind of man my dad is. He’s like an old school man. There are things about that that are so comforting. And my mom is sort of this old school mom. She’s always beautiful: always a heel, always a lip. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen my mom without that lipstick.

I also feel a lot of the Yoli of it. I was the first one to go to college. When I came back I was wanting to have these conversations. They were both so excited to have me go off to college and be the first to go to college, and then somewhat threatened by these new conversations and thoughts that I was bringing in the house. I really want to poke the bear and talk about the things. We see obviously the guest who’s coming to dinner. We’re all familiar with a Black man coming into this home and the conversations that arise [Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?]. When I brought my husband home, who’s a lovely white guy, my family was very warm, but I do feel like they were disappointed I didn’t bring a Cuban guy home.

Yoli says early in the play, “We can’t put off conversations because they might be unpleasant.” What are you hoping the conversations will be, pleasant or unpleasant, after people get a chance to see your play? 

I hope they’ll first say, that was so fun and funny. Then it’ll be like, wow, there’s a lot there I hadn’t thought about. Some of my favorite thoughts of the play are surrounding the melting pot idea. I’ve really, I think, benefited from walking so deeply in the history of my ancestors. It gives me such purpose. I think that so often people think America is cool, but it has no culture because it melts away. So these are the conversations I want people to have. If people are able to walk away talking about their own identity as well as understanding a little portion of this Latino family’s journey, I think that would be really cool.

At another point Yoli responds to something said to her by saying it is filled with the kind of dialog that sort of smacks of everybody respecting every possible thing, which, of course, the characters can’t sustain through the entire play. What is your personal view of how far one should go in order to be respectful of every aspect of one’s identity?

I think more than being PC, I think we need to be kind. If somebody is trying we give them the grace of knowing that they’re trying. They might not be perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good. If we’re trying to be kind and if we have genuine questions…I was in a room during One Day at a Time where half the room was queer. I am a straight lady. Before everything I’d be like, I’m so sorry. I’m probably going to say this wrong, but I have a question and I’d say the question. And they were like, no, it’s okay. That’s great that you ask that. Let’s get into it, because they know that I’m trying. We need to try.

I love the fact that Marco’s parents are named Marty and Elayne. As somebody who lived in LA my whole life, is that a nod to the entertainers that once frequented the Dresden Room?

It is. I’m so glad you caught that. 

The lack of Latino Hispanic representation is only getting tougher right now, not easier, because all we’re seeing about people from Mexico, Central America and South America is the immigrant crisis on the border. Has that crisis created a reluctance in the entertainment industry, from your point of view, to support stories about people who come from these places?

100%. We have been seeing that for a long time. That’s my work. I talk about the immigrant experience, but you would be shocked by the amount of drug narratives, border-crossing narratives, cartel narratives that I turn down every single year. It always hurts my heart because once you point that out to people, their brains kind of explode. What stories of ours do they give the most money to? Griselda! I don’t think that they have the wherewithal to know how damaging it is for us. But man, I would have killed for part of Griselda‘s marketing budget for my little show about a family that loves their queer son when he’s getting married. It makes me so sad to know that Narcos narratives are the ones that still get the most money and the most marketing.

They are resistant to buy just a normal American family living their life. I was so fortunate that we got to make four seasons of One Day at a Time. I’m so grateful because, true to Norman’s [Lear] incredible work, that ended up being a time capsule of what it was like to live as a Latino in America during the Trump administration. I think a lot about the damaging narratives that we’ve seen. I also worry that that’s the only way they see us.

Yoli says in the play, “Mexicans come in all colors.” Apropos of our conversation about the industry, is there this belief that Mexicans are all one thing?

Yes. I think that people think that Mexicans are just what they see on these border crossing stories. I mean, Mexico City is very white. There’s also a ton of Afro-Latinos. Afro-Latinos are an enormous part of this American population and they get lumped in with Black most of the time because they’re not allowed to be the totality of their ancestry. That was an important thing that I did on With Love. I purposefully cast an Afro-Latino family and that was the first time either of those actors had played the totality of being Cuban and being Black. We’re Black. We’re white. We’re indigenous. We look like all of these things because of colonization and what that colonization brought. It’s important to let people know that there are blond Mexicans, there are Black Mexicans and everything in between. 

So many people know you from television, but don’t know your other plays. What can people learn about who you are as an artist and who you are as a person, not just from One of the Good Ones, but from Plane Strangers, In Her Shoes or Baggage?

They’re all explorations of humans. I think what you can learn about me is that I’m a person that is also trying to figure it out. I am the proud daughter of immigrants. It’s always the first thing I say because I think it largely defines who I am and what my purpose is, which is to understand people who were in an oppressive regime and what they would do. My grandmother was my age and my daughter was the age of my mother when she sent her to the US in the hopes that people on the other side of the water would be kind. And they were. The promise of this country is that here you can be free to say what you want. So the sacrifice of my grandparents, to get my parents here so that I could speak freely. To try to hold up a mirror to society, with humor, heart and good intention, and lead conversations that can be healing and that can make the world a little bit brighter and kinder. That is my goal as an artist. I really try to do that with great intention when I’m making anything that I do, whether it’s a sitcom or a play.

Rita Moreno, one of the stars of One Day a Time, is quoted as having said, “I really started to understand that everyone has a responsibility to others and to a community, that you were not the only person in the world you simply represent, whether you like it or not.” I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you agree with her. But what is the responsibility you feel, and what would you like to do most with that responsibility moving forward? 

I think the responsibility for me is to try to send the elevator back down. To hopefully blaze this trail so that it is open for others to come through it. I think that storytelling has become a little stale. I mean, the city is on fire right now. Not in a good way because of the need for commerce versus storytelling like authentic storytelling we’re chasing. I think that the people in power are chasing the high of money versus the impact that stories can actually have on community.

The divide of the country can directly be lined up to how we are not watching the same things anymore. There used to be shows that all of us would watch. There would be a commonality in a conversation that we could have with people of different economic, socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities because all of us were watching Friends or something that brought us all together. Those days are gone. It has replaced it with echo chambers where people are just yelling to each other. I don’t know that that’s moving us in the right direction. So using entertainment, as a mirror to society, as a way to bridge, to foster conversation, is something I do feel very morally and ethically responsible in trying to provide. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing while I’ve got breath in this body.

Main Photo: Gloria Calderón Kellett (Photo by Abby Guerra/Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse)

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In Los Angeles he’s appeared in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard as Lopakhin. He played James Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. He also memorably portrayed Andre in Florian Zeller’s The Father at the Pasadena Playhouse directed by Michael Michetti.

This weekend Molina can add the role of Henry Drummond in the 1955 play Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee to his resume. Sunday is the official opening night at the Pasadena Playhouse production where the show will run through November 26th.

Inherit The Wind is a fictionalized dramatization of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial from 1925 in which a teacher was put on trial for teaching Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in a public school in violation of Tennessee state law. In the play, Henry Drummond is the defense attorney for teacher Bertram Cates (Abubakr Ali). The prosecutor, a devoutly religious man himself, is Matthew Harrison Brady (John Douglas Thompson). The goings on in the courtroom are reported by E.K. Hornbeck (Chris Perfetti) who is not above stirring things up.

The play remains surprising topical which is where I started my conversation with Molina earlier this week. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel. Also note that this interview does contain spoilers if you are unfamiliar with the play. Those questions have been annotated with an asterisk.

Q: I would like to start by asking about the resonance that this place still has 68 years after its debut. Re-reading the play, it seems more reflective of our world today than perhaps it was back in 1955. 

I think you’re absolutely right. It’s one of the reasons that the play, I think, has been something that Danny Feldman, the Artistic Director at the Playhouse, has been wanting to do it. Precisely because of the timeliness of it. The play’s about the schism between the state and the church; between the teaching of evolution and creationism. All of these things which were hot button topics at the time, still are. Particularly book banning. I think that the resonance of the play is what is taking audiences by surprise. 

Is there anything this production did to update it or make it more topical?

We’ve taken a broom and cleared away some of the dustier areas of it. We’ve done this obviously with the support and permission of the estates of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. I think what we’ve discovered is a play that speaks very much to us now. Not just in obvious ways, but also in very subtle ways. There are lots of social and cultural points in the play that really show how far we’ve come. But also at the same time, how far we’ve still got to go.

*As with the Scopes trial on which it was based, in spite of a blistering defense by Clarence Darrow in the real courtroom drama, and by Drummond for Bertram Cates in the play, no matter how compelling, no matter how persuasive, people’s opinions were not going to be changed. There was nothing you could do. We’re so entrenched in our beliefs today that I just don’t think we’ve gotten very far at all. 

The play also makes a case for if you can’t change someone’s mind, that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily wrong or that you are wrong. That two points of view can coexist in a society and a culture that can still function. That’s what the play, I think, hits on now for a contemporary audience. I think that element in the play is almost as hard-hitting as any of the issues that it talks about in terms of the trial. 

Clarence Darrow is quoted as having said, “Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.” Is he correct? And does that apply to an actor putting a character together, whether for film or stage?

It kind of does. It’s interesting how that quote of Darrow is slightly massaged in the sense that Drummond, in the play, talks about having no belief in reality at all, but belief in truth. And he says at one point, “Realizing that I may prejudice my own client, reality has no meaning to me whatsoever. But truth has meaning.” I think that for an actor is absolutely crucial, because the fact is that when we’re doing a play, what we’re doing isn’t real at all. It’s the absolute apex of artifice. But if it’s truthful, then it becomes much more authentic. 

Is Drummond an honest man, or is he a persuasive man?

That’s an interesting question. I think he’s an honest man. The way he talks about himself in the play suggests that he understands his failings and understands that what he does is has limited effect. But it’s important that the work is done. Both men have a kind of nobility in their beliefs, in the purity of their beliefs, in the way that they stick absolutely to their beliefs. But neither of them are above sneaking in a few nasty ones. And I think that is what makes these characters so wonderfully human, very approachable and relatable, too.

*For me, the emotional turning point in terms of my response to Drummond, actually happens at the very end after his adversary has passed away and how respectful he is. Hornbeck says to him, “You hypocrite! You fraud! You’re more religious than he was.”

There’s a real truth to that because one of the things that the play surprisingly doesn’t quite land as well – it’s touched on very lightly – is the relationship that they had before this. That Drummond was actively supporting Brady in his presidential campaign. There’s a mutual respect. There’s an admiration. There’s also, I think, the vestiges of a friendship that maybe has gone a little sour because of events or because of positions that both men have taken. Which, of course, is incredibly prescient.

You think about the way that families have been split up through having differing political opinions and taking different positions on cultural issues or political issues and how those schisms seem completely unbridgeable because of it. The play is in many ways a plea for tolerance.

In an interview you gave to The Guardian in 2015 you said, “I don’t put myself through some terrible pain or create anguish for myself. That’s therapy.” Spencer Tracy, who played Drummond in the film, said the role of an actor is to, “know your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.” Do you share Tracy’s perspective or is it more nuanced than perhaps that quick statement would allow?

With all due respect to the memory of Mr. Tracy, I think his remark, to me, sounds like him not wanting to engage in a conversation with this particular journalist. It’s a great quote and I’ve heard it a million times from other actors. There is a certain efficiency to that approach, but there is a certain nuance to it. 

I do feel that the storytelling in any form, whether it’s acting or playing music or dancing, should be a joyful, creative experience. It shouldn’t be one that is anchored in torture or self-doubt or misery. When you’re playing characters who are going through those kind of emotions or anguish of any kind, you have to be separate from it. Otherwise you can’t portray it effectively. If you’re in it in any way, it seems to me, you’re denying yourself and the audience a level of authenticity. If you’re so lost in the role, then it’s psychodrama. It’s not entertainment anymore. Yeah, it’s therapy. 

You do not shy away from challenging roles. Drummond is a challenging role. I saw your performance in The Father at Pasadena Playhouse. How much do you want to continue tackling these rich, but complicated roles?

I would like to continue doing it as long as I’ve got two brain cells to rub together and I can still avoid bumping into the furniture. I’m fully aware that it’s not a level playing field. If you were talking to a female actor, they would have a very different perspective on this because that’s one of the one of the very unfair things about our industry. But speaking as a male actor, if there are parts that I can play, I’ll carry on doing it till I drop. If, touch wood and God forbid this doesn’t happen, but if something does happen where I find myself unable to fulfill the requirements, then I hope I’ll have the grace and the courage to call it a day. But until then, I’m happy to keep doing it. 

When we last spoke nine years ago you mentioned that Pygmalion was a play on topping your list of things you’d like to do. Does that remain on your list? 

It does. Very much so. I think it’s a wonderful play and it’s a very different thing from the musical version and the movie version. 

I would love to see you play Archie Rice in The Entertainer.

That’s another play I’d love to have a go. Archie Rice, in particular, has a kind of tragedy to it that’s very much in the Arthur Miller world. There are these roles that have a kind of epic tragedy set in a very small, domestic, almost banal setting. Which, of course, makes the tragedy even more heartbreaking. It’s all very well to see a king or an emperor brought down. But when it’s someone who is living in much more domestic and ordinary circumstances, who happens to think he may be an emperor? That is even more heartbreaking somehow.

I read an interesting analysis of the Scopes trial in the Journal of Americans in Studies from May 2021. Tom Arnold-Forster argued that it wasn’t just the debate about scientific progress and religious reaction in that trial, but that it also framed a debate about the relationship between cultural conflict and media spectacle in the United States. Of course, media spectacle today is far greater than it ever would have been in 1955.

The debate at the heart of the play between science and religion is still very much there. There’s also the battle between these two men and their egos and the people they think or feel they represent. Brady, in the play, has a following and plays to that following. He plays to his base and this is something that we’re all very aware of now in modern politics. You throw enough red meat to the base and they will always follow you. Drummond also has a following, but they just don’t happen to be present in the trial. He’s very much isolated in the trial. He’s surrounded by the enemy, if you like. It’s a battle between two men who were once friends and who have a history together. 

The way we’ve staged it sends a message about how media speculation and media coverage started to become a huge component in how it affects people’s minds. How it affects people’s opinions. You throw enough media attention on something and you actually can change minds. You can influence the way a person sees something. All these things make the play incredibly timely and very relevant now. 

*Drummond tells Bertram Cates at the end of the play, “You don’t suppose this kind of thing is ever finished, do you? Tomorrow it’ll be something else.” What are your hopes that this line will someday be a relic of a time gone by and what do you think the role of the performing arts is in helping us get to that place?

I think the performing arts should, and deserve, to have a huge part in the social discourse of any culture, any society. The problem comes when that discourse or that that art form becomes completely dominated by money. I think there’s a problem when you can buy culture. When you can smother other points of view.

The social discourse being provoked by theatrical productions is somehow seen as less worthy or less valuable or less useful. But if we are truly aiming to be a democracy, then there will always be someone dissenting. That’s at the heart of democracy. There will always be someone saying, wait a minute, this isn’t working. Or, wait a minute, this isn’t right. And let me tell you why it isn’t right.

That right to be able to say this is being drowned out by money. When someone’s going to the theater and experiencing a play, you’re seeing characters or stories basically saying hear my voice. I think that’s a really important value that theater [and] the performing arts can offer. 

I would hate it if we reached a point where, in the social discourse, everyone just kind of went, okay, that’s it. We’re done. We’ve covered everything. That would be awful because things constantly change. Democracies change the way we live. Our lives change. There’s always going to be someone or something that needs to be fixed. Something that needs to be improved on. Something that needs to be reworked or re-valued or just made better. That’s a constant process and I think that it’s important to be part of that conversation and to welcome it as well.

To see the full interview with Alfred Molina, please go here.

Main Photo: Alfred Molina (Photo by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse)

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Brenneman is currently appearing in Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside at the Pasadena Playhouse. She plays Bella, a 50-something university professor battling cancer who strikes up an unconventional relationship with one of her writing students (Anders Keith). This isn’t an exploration of sexual dynamics the way David Mamet did in Oleanna. Rather it is the gradual revealing of layers about who these two people are and what they need/want from life at this exact given moment in time.

Cameron Watson directs the play which continues at the Pasadena Playhouse through October 1st.

In one of the last weeks of rehearsals, I spoke with Brenneman about the play, her approach to Bella and the role of fiction in all of our lives. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: The title of the play comes from a line that Bela writes over and over again, “Listen to the sound inside.” What does that title mean to you? 

The circumstances of my life are very different from Bella’s and I don’t have the decisions that she has to make. But I feel a lot of kinship with her. I feel like at a certain point in life, or maybe always, the most difficult thing for me to do is to hear my own voice and hear my own instinct. We are bombarded by other people’s opinions when we’re growing up, our parents’ voices in our heads, what other friends are doing and now with social media. It’s quite difficult. But I think that is the way forward with authenticity for individuals – certainly for myself. So when I get to that part in the play, I cheat. Well, she takes me on a ride the whole time. I just go on this magic carpet ride. But literally at that moment, I try to listen to my next impulse.

Something we should probably all do on a more regular basis than we do. 

Exactly. There’s always moments, and certainly this is the circumstance of this play, when we are out of bounds of anything we’ve known before. Or there’s no rules, there’s no clear path. What am I supposed to do? Well, you can do this, you can do that. But you have to listen to your own truth and it does take practice.

Adam Rapp gave an interview where he talked about how another actress had been going down this path with him before The Sound Inside was ever produced, but when she saw the “sea of words” that were in front of her, she stopped instantaneously because of the sheer volume of it. What are the challenges for you and how do you tackle this sea of words that Adam Rapp has given you?

First of all, they’re great words. It’s a well-written play. When I have an underwritten or poorly written role, I have to put on my writer’s hat even if I don’t change the words. How to make it work. How to make it palatable. It’s the opposite. There’s an abundance. I literally said to my husband this morning, it just keeps unfolding. It’s like this Christmas tree where there’s more and more gifts. Rather than thinking it’s my role, how do I make it mine?

In terms of the actual memorization, it’s a bear, but it’s all I need to move my body. That’s the other thing. I record the whole thing myself, just reading it, and then I just listen to it over and over. There are chunks to her story that are pretty distinctive, but it’s a supremely articulate play because she’s a very articulate person and I get very inspired by those kinds of words.

And you speak, at times, directly to the audience.

I love breaking the fourth wall. I feel really confident and excited about creating a relationship with each audience. I love it. As a person that’s lucky enough to go back and forth in different acting mediums, I’m always thinking what can this medium do that that medium can’t do, right? The main juicy thing that we get to do is establish a living connection with the audience and just say, I’m on stage. You’re in the audience. Hello? And Bella literally does that [in] the first line of the play. So I find just the meta of that absolutely delicious.

Bella describes herself as the equivalent of “a collector’s plate mounted on a wall.” You learn that she has far more than that over the course of the play. But if that’s one of the first hints as to who this woman is, what does that give you as a launchpad for the arc that you can build with this character? 

She described herself as mediocre. She described herself as unremarkable. She is a world of all sorts of things. But then she has the cover, right? She has this job. She has students. It’s hashtag MeToo. She has to keep herself fairly restrained for lots of different reasons. So I think one way to look at the story is she just becomes less restrained. She lets her outsides begin to match her insides and she just kind of glows from within over the course of the story. 

There are multiple references to different books and different authors that are built into The Sound Inside including David Foster Wallace. I found a quote from him that I thought was apropos of this play. He said, “Fiction is one of the few experiences where the loneliness can be both confronted and relieved.” It almost sounds like he’s talking about this play.

That is an element of Bela that I don’t practice in my day-to-day life. I have a pretty populated life. Although, weirdly enough, literally this month I’m now an empty nester in my house for the first time ever. I’m not a big novel reader. I know what it is to love. If you find anybody in the world, a novelist, a movie moviemaker, who you feel understands you, it’s like, Oh, I’m not alone in the world. And it is alleviating.

But that person is not in the room with you. Bella, and probably Christopher, feel like I know I’m able to connect emotionally, right? I’m able to feel like I’m not alone because of these works of art. Then the next thing is to be with a flesh and blood human next to you and trusted.

Mary-Louise Parker, who originated the role of Bella, was doing some press for this play when it was on Broadway. She said “Apparently it’s a thriller” as if that was that wasn’t part of her thinking about what the play was. Then she said everybody has a different theory as to what happened. Is that how you view this play? Is The Sound Inside a thriller?

I love that she said it. I completely agree. I didn’t see her performance. I tread lightly on reading too much about past productions. But certainly it’s like a thriller. It’s a taut thriller. I did have a moment [when] I said to Cameron, our director, “Should I be playing this a little bit more noir? And he’s like, “Oh, get that out of your head.” I think it’s a thriller in as much as these very heightened things are discussed; things get pushed quite to the edge. You don’t actually know what’s going to happen, do you think? I know when I read it, I thought it was going to go in a certain way. Never did. So I think in that way it’s a thriller, but I think it’s more of a a beautiful unfolding. 

I’m going to paraphrase something that Jesse Green of the New York Times said in his beautiful review of this play when it was on Broadway. What is the role of fiction “both the kind we read and the kind we live in our world today?”

I think, in this moment of alternate truth and alternate reality, people are spinning lots of stories all the time. We’re in a time of constant storytelling and remaking and rebranding. To the point where it’s like what is the truth? We’re in this moment.

Bella starts the whole story with her memory of helping her mother die. I’ve suffered three illnesses. I have not had cancer, nor did I really look at mortality in the eye, but I was sick. And I think that the body is the truth, right? I think Bella is in her body, which is failing her, and she can tell all sorts of stories to herself. But she knows what’s going to happen. She lived it. So what I love to ponder is that fiction only lives in our imagination and in our minds. But the body is living in a much more elemental, grounded way.

Main Photo: Amy Brenneman in The Sound Inside (Photo by Mike Palma/Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse)

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Now is sung by Fredrik who has been married to his 18-year-old bride Anne for 11 months. He is still waiting to consummate the relationship. His son Henrik is in love with his stepmother and is constantly told that his cello playing and the things he wants to discuss have to be put off until Later. Anne promises Fredrik that she will have sex with him Soon.

The brilliance of Sondheim is that after each character has their solos, all three sing of their desires and needs in a very complicated trio that ultimately reveals more about each than they ever intended.

Being a fan of this particular part of A Little Night Music, I wanted to find out what it takes to perform Now/Later/Soon. So during rehearsals for this production, I spoke to Michael Hayden (Fredrik), Chase Del Rey (Henrik) and Kaley Ann Vorhees (Anne) about the challenges of this number and what it tells us about their characters and, perhaps, about us as an audience. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To watch the full interview, please go here.

Q: Sondheim was quoted as saying in 2003, “Every time I see A Little Night Music I trudge in like a schoolboy to class. Then I’m always surprised by how much I like it. It never fails.” What do you think he and Hugh Wheeler did so right with this that that schoolboy could suddenly be converted into a happy theatergoer?

Hayden: To get a really complicated and, at times, dark story to also be incredibly entertaining. And because of the different ages of the love stories, to speak to people at different ages in their lives, is a really deft piece of construction. This book is a great book. Not a good book. The scenes are complicated. They work. It’s a full meal. It’s a feast. It’s not a snack.

Del Rey: Sondheim is the highest level of where complexity, in terms of telling a story through music, is communicated to an audience. When you get your hands on something like A Little Night Music it’s a treat because they don’t come around as often as you think they would. Musically it’s amazing. The book is fantastic. The characters are rich and complex and I think this attracts actors. It doesn’t just attract musical theater performers.

Voorhees: The great thing that I think Sondheim does, and that the book does, is that it’s about humanity.You’re really thinking about different levels of humanity and how people interact with each other. I think that it’s attractive to all ages and it tells a story about people. You can come into it thinking what’s the through line? What’s the story about? You’re really feeling like you connected with something because the characters are well-written and easy to connect to.

Q: The reality is the story’s about us, isn’t it?

Hayden: Absolutely. Every character, whether they’re the more silly ones or the more dramatic, this play circumvents tone. There’s no tone of the characters. It’s a roller coaster in the best way where every character gets a moment. Even the silliest ones have dignity.

Q: Sondheim regularly talked about how you need to let the audience know in the first few minutes what they can expect musically and story wise from a musical. What does Act One, Scene One in which Now/Later/Soon appears tell us about the show that’s going to follow? 

Vorhees: Initially it tells you that the story is going to be told from more than one perspective and that it is about the relationships between the characters rather than one specific character. The focal point is the relationship rather than the person. You hear it both in the words that are spoken and musically. We each have our own sections of it Now/Later/Soon. We each tell our own story. But when we all come in together for the end of that trio, ultimately the thing that is most interesting is how they overlap. 

Q: Sondheim called each of these three pieces inner monologue songs in which the characters “describe their deepest thoughts, almost never singing to one another.” What are the challenges in creating your own monologues so that monologue is clear for you and also for the audience so that when all three songs come together we can still keep track of what each person needs and wants?

Hayden: By the time we get to the trio, we have a very strong sense of what the conflicts are that they sing about anyway. This trio ends with the word Desiree. That, of course, pops her right into our consciousness. That is just a brilliant piece of storytelling. We know that we have a group of people on stage that are going to start weaving throughout the piece.

With verse it’s rare that you have subtext, so to speak. You have an inner life, but you say what you mean. You’re sharing a secret with the audience so that they know a secret about you, which creates the underbelly of all the action that comes after. So the audience is in on a secret sometimes that you don’t even fully know. Frederik doesn’t know that he mentioned Desiree’s name. We’ve got this complicated relationship taking place that’s about love, longing, hunger. So we know this is going to be a sexy, hungry story. At the end of that trio all those things are in play and we’re ready.

Q: Kaley, Sondheim also said that amongst his mistakes in his career was writing for an octave and six range, which he did, because Victoria Mallory, who originally did the part, could accomplish that. She could sing the low ends and the high ends. Anne has to go very high in A Weekend in the Country. He said, “I straitjacketed all subsequent singers into this rare combination.” Is he right? Is it as challenging as he fears it was? 

Vorhees: I absolutely know what he’s talking about. It’s a wide range. You have to be ready for it. It’s Sondheim. So it has a sense of quickness and a sense of patter that is difficult to sing. But it’s honestly a lot of fun to do and it stretches you in a way that is exciting. 

Q: Chase, Henrik is, by his own definition, “dammed up inside.” He’s repressed. What is the work you have to do so that all that repression is palpable for the audience, yet is never demonstrative, thereby removing that whole sense of repression?

Del Rey: The stakes are very high for him. What he wants more than anything is actually to be outside of being damned up inside. He’s confused. He bumbles through a lot of the show. That can be tricky because he’s not graceful with so much of his interactions on stage. I think there’s a couple of moments in the play where I just want him to be clear and defined.

He can’t stand these people out in the country. It drives him insane. He lets it break through in certain moments, especially in Act Two during that dinner scene. That moment should feel different. The audience should not know that Henrik was capable of getting to that place. The second [issue] is the love that he won’t allow himself to have.

Finally he gets to the point in both of those instances where the audience should, I hope, feel the release that Henrik is feeling. To feel that he was a person that needed love so badly and here’s a person that needed to say what he meant so badly about why everybody is so obnoxious.

Q: Michael, you you mentioned how brilliant it is that the last word in the trio is Desiree. What does that tell us about the journey that Frederik is on through this show? How does that take us to who Frederick is in the dialogue section that is in the middle of Send in the Clowns? 

Hayden: Just in terms of basic storytelling we hear about Desiree. You know, boom. So we know where we’re off to next. You’re talking about Henrik’s character being repressed. You could rehearse this play as though we all came into rehearsal and we wore a coat of armor. We were going to rehearse this play as though each scene tore away a piece of that armor. So at the end of the play we were exposed for the first time. We discovered something – which is brilliant. For each character that only happens in the very last second of the play. Their eyes are open and they see what they were missing. Which is glorious, because then the audience gets there. They’re in the know. 

By the time we’re done with Send in the Clowns, he’s done what he did again 14 years ago – broke her heart. It’s cruel what he does. I think it’s important to remember to listen to how many times the word death is brought up in this play. It struck me yesterday as I was listening to it. I was clocking each time it was said. I don’t think you can’t really experience a fullness of love or growing through whatever extraordinary events we go through in our lives. There is a depression. There is a kind of death and grieving. You leave something before you can get to the other side of something. It’s not pretty. It’s messy and everyone has to be stripped completely down before we see each other and admit exactly who and what we are. Then when we see each other that all falls away. Fantastic! That’s what I think Sondheim does which is so great. Wake up. Wake up! Wake up!! We finally do.

Q: By the time we get to the trio, the person who wants now becomes the person who is singing about soon. The one who wants later is singing about now. And the one who’s singing about soon is the one who is embracing later. What’s the journey each of your characters takes to get from what you originally sing about in the beginning to what you ultimately sing about at the end of the trio?

Voorhees: I think there is very much a moment that I am playing as acceptance because I think soon is sort of her struggle. At the end of the song you want there to be some big resolve. It obviously gets turned on its head a little bit with the very last line or the last couple lines. But I do think that there is a character arc of greater understanding of one’s self.

Del Rey: The stakes rise throughout that final crescendo with all three of us. It gets to the point, I think for Henrik, where he knows that he hates later. He hates that nothing ever begins. Then the word he says in repetition is soon. Soon. Come to me soon. If I’m dead, I can wait. But I want to live now. I’m ready for things to start. Soon. Soon, Soon. Soon. He says it four times. And it’s a big moment musically. That’s a huge arc of a song to go from I hate what this feels like right now. What do I want? I want things to start soon. Eventually [Henrik] gets to now. He gets to I’m ready.

Hayden: Those three words are primal. Those three words have everything to do with the conflicting desires of when you’re ready, when you’re not ready. I’ll do it. If. When? Later? Soon? But the words themselves are primal and they’re hungry. 

Del Rey: They’re all about timing. Once you get to like the lyrics in Send in the Clowns, was my time wrong? Would my life have changed if I would have just started earlier? Did I miss out? Did I regret what I didn’t do? Will I regret it if I don’t do it? I think everybody has a version of that in this play. I think a huge throughline is timing. And Now/Later/Soon are all huge timing us for different reasons.

Q: In the prelude before Scene One, Madame Armfeldt tells Frederika about the smiles of the summer night. One smiles on the young. The second on the fools and the third on the old. How is the summer night smiling on each of you? And how is that reflected in your appearing in A Little Night Music?

Hayden: I’ve been really lucky in my career to get to do a decent number of pieces that I would call a feast in that we really did it right. Which is rare. To get to go on the ride that this guy goes through, being middle-aged myself, and telling a story – as all great love stories do – about coming back to life, that’s a great story to tell. For it to be a romantic, too, that’s a great story to tell right now. It’s always a great story to tell. It’s maddening how hard this piece is at times and I love every second I’m there. I don’t ever forget how lucky I am to be doing this play. You don’t always feel that way. That’s how I feel. I can’t wait to battle it out every night on stage in front of an audience. It’s going to be glorious.

Voorhees: I feel that we’ve all been smiled upon with the the casting which is fantastic. Everyone has been nothing but a joy to work with. I feel like I’ve learned so much from just watching and observing other people do their scenes and go on their journeys. More than just the the leads or people who you’re watching their characters grow. Even the chorus sounds amazing and they’re so dedicated to it and it’s going to be beautiful. I think that a lot of that has to do with the people that were brought into it. I feel very lucky and that this group of people is has the potential to create something that is beyond a lot. 

Del Rey: I always want to run towards projects that scare me. This show has challenged me so much already. It’s going to make my art better. It makes me think about art better. It makes me strive to be better. When you get to go to work every day and dissect and there’s always more, that’s what makes me feel like I’m smiled upon. It’s really refreshing to be on stage again and to be reminded of why people go to the theater and why some of the best actors in the world start on stage and continue to circle back to the stage. There’s nothing else like it at all.

A Little Night Music continues at the Pasadena Playhouse through May 28th.

To see the full interview with Michael Hayden, Chase Del Rey and Kaley Ann Voorhees, please go here.

Main Photo: The company of Pasadena Playhouse’s production of A Little Night Music (Photo by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse)

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Both lead actors play two roles in the show. Act One depicts painter George Seurat’s intense mission to finish his masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. His muse and mistress is Dot. In Act Two, which takes place one hundred years later, a descendant of Seurat’s, also named George, is giving the world premiere of one of his works. Joining him for that premiere is his grandmother, Marie, who claims to be Seurat’s daughter and that her mother is the woman featured prominently at the front of his painting.

This is Alabado’s first time in a Sondheim musical. She’s appeared on Broadway in Mean Girls, American Idiot and American Psycho. On tour she’s also appeared in Spring Awakening and Evita.

Earlier this week I spoke via Zoom with Alabado about the dual roles she’s playing, specific lyrics of Sondheim’s found in the song Move On and about her experiences working with David Bowie on the musical Lazarus. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

As Dot you sing in Move On, “Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new. Give us more to see.” How does playing this role allow you to see more of yourself as an actor and a singer?

This is my first time, in my 15 years of doing this professionally, of being able to tackle Sondheim. Which didn’t come out of not wanting to, but rather just the way that my career has gone. It just has never taken me in the path of Sondheim.

Also, I am a Mexican Lebanese woman. I think that, in the last five years maybe, this is the first time that we’ve seen different types being cast in these beautiful, huge Sondheim shows that possibly didn’t have that kind of accessibility for somebody like me in the past. So I feel very privileged and honored to be tackling this work. 

I didn’t know Sunday in the Park very well. Every time I sing those lyrics in Move On I learn and find something new in them. I feel like I am changing as an actor, as a singer, as a performer with the incredible messages that Dot is trying to relay to George throughout the piece and the messages that Sondheim and James Lapine are trying to give us as the artists interpreting them. It’s been very moving for me.

When you’re tackling the work of Stephen Sondheim it’s obviously different than tackling Mean Girls. Not to belittle Mean Girls, but they don’t aspire to be the same thing at all.

What’s great about musical theater is we have so many different types of musicals. Sondheim is, as we all know, a complete genius in the art form – possibly the greatest musical theater composer creator that has and will ever have lived and touched all of us with his incredible work. I think tackling this is completely different than tackling Mean Girls.

I did American Idiot and Spring Awakening, all these different types of musicals. There is a density of this material that requires a different piece of you. You have to give yourself to it differently. Also, my brain has to activate in a certain way that takes a lot of focus as an actor as well. Not that I’m not focusing in those other shows, but this is a little bit of a different muscle.

I looked at an interview that your director, Sarna Lapine, gave to The Interval New York in 2017 when this production appeared on Broadway with Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. She was talking about the arc of the show as, “The mistress is the muse in Act One and she becomes the teacher in Act Two.” Did you and Sarna have any conversations about that way of looking at these two women that you’re playing?

Not in particular like that. But one of the things that we and Graham have always been in conversation about is what does Dot get from George? What does George learn from Dot? What does Marie teach George act two? What does George teach Marie in turn? How are all of these people still helping each other?

Dot and George have a harder time because they both want different things that Dot knows deep down she can never get from him and he can never get from her. [That’s] why it’s such a heartbreak what ends up happening for George and Dot. Me and Sarna had many conversations about the wisdom which Marie gives to second act George and where that comes from. It comes from the song Children and Art. It’s this idea that all we can do is learn the lessons from the people that we have passed, that have passed through us, that have come through us. 

Do you think that her approach might be different as a woman and that she may have brought different resonance, different tones, different ways of depicting and telling this story?

Yes, absolutely. Sarna saw the original when she was eight years old. She talks about that. She talks about how deeply important this piece is to her, to her family, but really her personally. 

What’s beautiful about reviving shows or trying them in different ways is that the show originally was interpreted so specifically by these two people that created it. The beautiful lesson that we all get to take when we revive or try shows again later on is that this gift was given to us, which is the original interpretation. [That] also involved Bernadette and Mandy. Everything about the original was crafted with this group of people so specifically. Then our job as interpretive artists is to find our way and new ways into it. How is the world different? How are we different? How do we interpret art differently? I can’t wait to see what Sunday in the Park with George interpreted in 2050 would be.

But as a woman with a woman director, which I don’t get to do very often either, we’ve had incredibly deep, wonderful conversations. Me, Sarna and Graham have really been so connected in this process. I think that Sarna, interpreting it through the eyes and lens of a woman, has given us wonderful new ways to see things and try things.

She’s given you new things to see. You get to do things in a new way. You’re living out what Sondheim wrote, aren’t you?

Right because that’s all we can do as artists.

I read an interview that Bernadette Peters gave thirty years after Sunday in the Park with George. She was talking about singing Move On and she said that it, “got to be like meditating. It was so healing and uplifting.” What do you experience when you get to that moment in the show?

The first couple of times we sang it I could not help but sob through it because it’s just cathartic. It’s oddly a release, but it’s a release in the most peaceful way, which is why the song to me is so incredible. The wisdom that is given to us in those lyrics, and that Dot gets to impart on George, is so moving. It’s what all of us desperately need to hear as actors, artists, creators. It’s, I agree, a meditation, a self-healing moment for me personally, for Dot or George, for Graham, for our company, for the audience. And it feels like this big moment of what we all need to hear right now. So I find it to be very healing in that way.

I do want to ask you about one new musical that you did, because I am a massive fan of another genius, a gentleman we used to have on this planet called David Bowie. What was the process like of working on Lazarus with, in and around David Bowie? 

That’s a for a whole other hour of talking. But in short, it was one of the most unexpected, incredible things I’ve ever gotten to do in my life. When I was thinking I was going to do musical theater for a living, did I think I would get to work closely with a legend like that? The whole thing from start to finish was magical and zany and so unexpected and just so cool.

I started my career doing more rock musicals. So I was in that world. But then being able to find this with David and with the creators of Lazarus, with Ivo van Hove the director, what an opportunity and memories that I will never, ever lose because he was such a good person. And he loves musicals, which I didn’t really know about David until we were working on it. He was so grateful that we were all doing it. Everything he wanted was to write a musical and to have it performed. So it was just really important to him and, in turn, important to us.

We recorded the cast album on the day that he died. We didn’t know. It was a very interesting time. I hold it very dear to my heart in many, many ways.

I want to finish up our time by going one last time to Move On because it has my favorite lyric that I think has ever been written. “I chose and my world was shaken, so what. The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not.”

That’s my favorite lyric of the whole show.

Does that thinking play a part in how you move through your career, in your life, not only during Sunday in the Park with George, but for whatever else comes after that?

If anyone wants to know what it’s like to be an actor it’s that. Everything that we do feels like a little leap of faith. You never know what’s happening. I find that to be why my life is so rich and full of experiences and emotion. I could never be the person I am without having done this.

What we do is complicated. It can be very, very challenging, very hard. And it can also be really complicated to find levity in a business that sometimes can feel really difficult. I think that lesson in itself is why I love what I do so much. You do just have to choose. You have to take a leap.

You maybe made what could be interpreted as the wrong choice. But doing it is what was the right choice. All we can do is just keep going. I think that will always stay with me moving forward after this show, because that’s one of the hardest things I find as an actor is choosing and making choices and not being afraid of that. I think Dot is trying to teach us, and teach George in that moment, that just choosing and going forward is all we can do. We can’t know if it’s right or wrong, but all we can do is do it.

To see the full interview with Krystina Alabado, please go here.

Sunday in the Park with George continues at the Pasadena Playhouse through March 19th.

Main Photo: Krystina Alabado and Graham Phillips in Sunday in the Park with George (Photo by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse)

The post Krystina Alabado Moves on With Dot and Marie appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

CABARET

Two shows stood out for us this year. The first was Kim David Smith’s Mostly Marlene which we saw at Joe’s Pub in New York City. His gender-bending tribute to Marlene Dietrich was massively entertaining. This performance has apparently been recorded and will be released next year. Check it out. He’s got a great voice.

The other show was Eleri Ward‘s concert – also at Joe’s Pub. Her lo-fi renditions of Stephen Sondheim‘s songs seemed like just the tonic we needed during the pandemic when she first started posting videos filmed in her apartment. Ward ultimately received a recording contract and has her second album coming out next year on Ghostlight Records. She also opened for Josh Groban on his tour this year.

CLASSICAL MUSIC

This was a year in which Duke Ellington was acknowledged as being more than a jazz musician and composer. With that acknowledgment came long overdue recognition of Billy Strayhorn. The Los Angeles Philharmonic performed two different Ellington concerts in January called Symphonic Ellington and Sacred Ellington in January (with Gerald Clayton – whose Bells on Sand was one of the year’s best jazz albums – appearing as a soloist for the first and a member of the ensemble for the latter). In December the perennial holiday classic The Nutcracker was performed. But rather than playing just Tchaikovsky’s music, the LA Phil also performed the Strayhorn/Ellington arrangements of music from the second half of the ballet.

J’Nai Bridges singing Neruda Songs by composer Peter Lieberson was also a highlight at the LA Phil. So, too, was seeing Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas performing Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony and also his own Meditations on Rilke was a great way to have begun 2022.

Composer Osvaldo Golijov‘s Falling Out of Time had a COVID-delayed LA debut when this staggeringly powerful work was performed at the Wallis in Beverly Hills.

JAZZ

Easily topping our list this year are Cécile McLorin Salvant’s concerts at Blue Note in New York City. We saw two shows and had we had the time and the ability we would have seen them all. Salvant performed music by Handel, original songs, a song from Gypsy and more. It was a truly memorable show. Her most recent album, Ghost Song, is one of the year’s best.

A close second were the two shows we saw Dee Dee Bridgewater and Bill Charlap perform. We first saw this remarkable pair at Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood. We caught a second show at the Oasis Music Festival in Palm Springs.

Terence Blanchard at the Ford Theatre and Wynton Marsalis performing All Rise at the Hollywood Bowl also easily make our list.

MUSICALS

You might quibble with us about one of these, but here goes:

Our favorite musical of the year was the Tony Award-winning musical A Strange Loop at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City. Bold, adventurous, thought-provoking and moving, this is everything a musical should be – at least to us. The show is still running but only until January 15th. We strongly recommend seeing it. For tickets and more information, please go here.

The revival of Little Shop of Horrors was absolutely delightful. Two hours of entertainment that makes you forget about everything else going on in the world. When we saw the show Lena Hall was playing “Audrey” and Rob McClure was “Seymour.” Hall is still in the show and her new Seymour is Tony Award-winner Matt Doyle. The show has an open-ended run. For tickets and more information, please go here.

Into the Woods, which began its life at New York City Center’s Encores series, was pure pleasure from the first note to the last. If you are or will be in New York, you can still catch it at the St. James Theatre until January 8th. A US tour begins in February. For tickets and more information, please go here.

David Byrne’s American Utopia doesn’t quite qualify as a musical per se, but it was another utterly enjoyable show. We also saw Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story at the Hollywood Bowl with live orchestral accompaniment by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. That performance made Spielberg’s under-seen film even more powerful than when we first saw it in theaters.

OPERA

For the first time we finally saw a production at the Metropolitan Opera. Ariadne auf Naxos is not necessarily our favorite opera, but soprano Lise Davidsen’s powerfully strong voice could probably be heard in the lobby of the Met even with the doors closed. It was a staggering performance we will not soon forget.

Countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński gave an incredible recital at Broad Stage in Santa Monica. It was our first time seeing him and we can’t wait for the opportunity to see Orliński in an opera production. We also have to give him special mention for his patience. Someone’s cell phone alarm went off and either the owner was oblivious to the noise or didn’t care. Orliński stopped the show, sat downstage and said he’d wait it out.

Getting the opportunity to revisit the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Tristan Project late this year was a treat. We had experienced it when it first happened and its return was more than welcome (and perhaps a bit overdue). This collaboration with Bill Viola, Peter Sellars and the LA Phil remains breathtaking.

Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce turned Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours into a mesmerizing and emotional new opera. Written for Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato and Kelli O’Hara, this is an opera we experienced through the Met Live in HD simulcast.

Intimate Apparel by composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Lynn Nottage was absolutely first-rate at Lincoln Center. Nottage did a wonderful job adapted her own play for this opera. Gordon wrote a stunning score. The end result is an opera that is equally as powerful as the play.

PLAYS

We’ve always loved Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. But until the new Broadway revival, we never had such a visceral and emotional response to Willy Loman’s story. That’s largely attributable to the impeccable performances of the entire cast including Wendell Pierce, Sharon D. Clarke, McKinley Belcher III, Khris Davis and André De Shields. By now you know this is a Black Loman family. That gave Miller’s piece an added resonance that no doubt contributed to the tears streaming down our faces. The use of music was brilliant. The show is still running at the Hudson Theatre in New York through January 15th. For tickets and more information, please go here.

Perhaps nothing moved us as much as the last 15 minutes of the first half of Matthew López’s The Inheritance at the Geffen Playhouse. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. If the second part of this mammoth work doesn’t end up resonating as strongly as the first, it was still a powerful day in the theater (It’s nearly 7 hours long).

Watching Holland Taylor as the late Ann Richards (former Texas governor) at the Pasadena Playhouse was an opportunity to watch a master class in acting.

That’s our complete list of the Best of 2022! What will inspire and move us in 2023? Come back to find out and to meet the artists, creators, performers and more who make it happen.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Photo: Cécile McLorin Salvant at Blue Note New York (Photo by Craig L. Byrd)

The post Best of 2022 appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Alikhan is a very much in-demand director these days. He has directed several plays that opened in the last six months. Amongst them were Snow in Midsummer at Classic Stage Company and On That Day in Amsterdam which just closed at Primary Stages (both in New York.) A month after Sanctuary City‘s opening, Geva Theatre Center in Rochester will open a production of Somewhere by Matthew López (Tony Award-winner for The Inheritance – now in previews at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.)

Sanctuary City is a play he’s loved since he first saw a production in 2021.

“I actually got to see the original production of this play at New York Theatre Workshop and it was one of the most harrowing and precise and gorgeous nights in the theater I’ve ever had.” He knew from that moment that this was a play he’d love to have the opportunity to direct. But that wasn’t something he necessarily expected to happen.

“It is so unique to read a contemporary American play that really revolves around the lives of three young people of color,” Alikhan said last week during a Zoom conversation. “And it’s so unique for a theater with the visibility of the Playhouse to then program a play that does that. And for an artistic leader like Danny Feldman to commit to a process led by another young person of color.”

In Majok’s play two characters, B (Miles Fowler) and G (Ana Nicolle Chavez), are navigating their status as undocumented immigrants attending high school. When G is naturalized the two try to figure out a way for B to also receive legal status. With the introduction of a third character, Henry (Kanoa Goo), things don’t necessarily work out as planned.

“What’s so unbelievably fascinating about this play is that these characters essentially don’t have time for sentimentality,” he said of the play. “The circumstances under which B, G and Henry’s lives exist are so entrenched in their lives.”

Alikhan goes on to describe how he understands Majok’s concepts of these characters.

“What I think Martyna is ultimately doing in creating a play like that is [it] forces audience members to learn. There’s nothing comfortable. There’s nothing being spoon-fed to audiences in the text of this play. It is really an opportunity for, I think, the average audience member to go and see and hear and partake in and absorb life that is so different from their own or for those who resonate with the lives of the people represented in this play.”

The son of two immigrants, Alikhan has a way into the play that offers both a unique perspective and a shared one.

“I think something that is extremely true of my experience growing up in this country is definitely feeling on the outside of a system.  It’s the first play that I’ve directed that’s kind of both a period piece and very of my era. I lived this high school experience right around the same time they did. My experience of being a young, Brown person in America, especially a young Brown person that grew up Muslim in a Muslim family right in the aftermath of 9/11. That meant how scary that could be.”

The difference between Alikhan’s upbringing and those of the characters in Sanctuary City is that he never had to live with the fear of being deported.

“What feels fundamentally different is that my experience is not one of undocumented immigration. So it’s been a really important part of my journey with this play to, as authentically as I can, understand the lives of undocumented Americans and understand the very specific corners of life that undocumented Americans both occupy and are kind of forced into by virtue of the systems and structures of this country.”

Immigration remains a hot-button topic in the United States. Just look at very recent stories about immigrants being shipped to New York, Martha’s Vineyard, Washington, D.C. and other locations. Alikhan was a bit surprised when asked if he considered how those who are unsympathetic to the plight of immigrants might respond to Sanctuary City and how that might impact his cast.

“It’s funny. I’ve never really thought to talk with the cast about that. One of the most educational experiences of my career so far has been touring with Hamilton [as Resident Director] and taking a project that is primarily cast with people of color around the country and telling that story in so many different markets that were equally ready and not ready to experience that play on stage. It kind of taught me that the best that we can do is to present the work that we’ve done and be authentic and honest with that work and then allow people space for the educational experience that is seeing that thing.”

Alikhan added, “What I do want to say is it’s just as much for them as it is for people with whom the play does deeply resonate. Whether it immediately resonates with you or not, that might teach you something about your own way of life and how you walk through the world.”

There is an additional issue that comes up in the second half of Sanctuary City that is also topical. Alikhan agrees that we should leave a sense of discovery for audience members, but acknowledges current events have given extra weight to that component of Majok’s play that it didn’t have when he saw the play in New York.

“As an audience member in 2021 I knew something that these characters don’t know about what’s going to happen in the world and how this circumstance will be fundamentally different just a few years in the future. I wish I could transport time and space and tell them that. I found that to be such a fascinating experience.

“And then as we were getting ready to do this production Roe was overturned. We read Clarence Thomas’ opinion on Roe where other fundamental rights were called into question. It was a time, especially working on this play, where I thought to myself, oh my God, the theater is a living, breathing animal. Because the experience that I had watching this play eight months ago is now fundamentally different than the experience our audiences are going to have watching this play three months from now.”

From the outside looking in at Alikhan’s career, it seems as though it is the most deeply-felt plays that pique his curiosity and get his attention. He’s directed plays by Award-winning writers Lucas Hnath (Red Speedo) and Annie Baker (The Flick). Adding Majok to the list just makes a certain sense.

“What’s so fascinating to me about them is how they really put a magnifying glass again on people who really rarely get to be at the center of a story. Especially as a young, queer, Brown kid, it took so long for me to see myself represented in any kind of media. So I think something that really draws me to a project is being able to, first and foremost, say what is the impact that the story’s going to have on the community that surrounds it? What kind of story is uplifting that maybe it’s never been told before? How can I be in conversation with both the creative team and the writer to make a version of it that feels both authentic and uplifting to those people in that community?

“Something that Martyna does that is so that is so gorgeous and effortless is she lifts the stories of these three characters to the highest of value that you can in a play. She centers the story around the lived experiences of these three people whose lived experiences are very different than many of our audience members may be. [It’s] the playwright saying, ‘I value the lives of these characters and thus I value the lives of the people.’ These characters reflect myself and my team. We value first and foremost the lived experiences of the actual people that these three characters reflect. We value the contribution of every single person that lives in this country. We value the stories. We value you and want to uplift the histories, the triumphs, the joys, the grief. Through this play I really hope that we are able to honor and inform the lives of Americans who rarely get to occupy the space of being on stage and of having their stories told.”

Sanctuary City runs at the Pasadena Playhouse through October 9th.

Main Photo: Miles Fowler and Ana Nicolle Chavez in Sanctuary City (Photo by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse)

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#1: The Return of Live Performances

There isn’t any one show that could top the fact that we were able to finally return to the glorious experience of live performance in theaters, concert halls, outdoor venues and more. As great as streaming programming, it could never replace the centuries old practice of communal celebration of life through plays, musicals, concerts and dance.

Yes there were new rules to get accustomed to. Some required masks, others didn’t. Proof of vaccination became required (and that’s a good thing in my book). The first time I returned to a theatre and found my seats was the best possible therapy for my soul. If you read Cultural Attaché I’m sure you feel the same way.

#2: Fire Shut Up In My Bones – Metropolitan Opera

While I wasn’t able to see Terence Blanchard‘s powerful and moving opera in person, I did take advantage of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series to see a live transmission from New York. Blanchard and librettist Kasi Lemmons have taken the memoir by Charles M. Blow and created an opera that is going to be performed around the world.

So rich is the storytelling, so brilliantly was the production directed by James Robinson and Camille A. Brown (who also choreographed), so spectacular was the singing, Fire Shut Up In My Bones was easily the single most impressive performance of the year.

Hopefully the Met will add additional showings of Fire Shut Up In My Bones via their Live in HD series or make it available for streaming online.

The opera will be performed at Lyric Opera of Chicago beginning on March 24th of this year. For more details and to get tickets, please go here.

#3: Caroline, or Change – Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54

I’ve been a fan of this Jeanine Tesori/Tony Kushner musical since I saw the first production (twice) in New York at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in 2004. I loved the show so much I saw it a third time when it came to the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles later the same year.

Color me pre-disposed to like this revival. What surprised me most was that even though this Michael Longhurst production was more lavishly produced than the original, it never lost one bit of its heart. Hugely contributing to the emotional wallop of this show was Sharon D. Clarke’s towering performance as Caroline. She’s definitely going to receive a Tony Award nomination and deserves to win for her remarkable work.

Caissie Levy, Kevin S. McAllister, Harper Miles and N’Kenge all made incredible impressions. Plus it’s always great to see Chip Zien on stage – I’ve been a fan of his since Into the Woods.

If you are in New York or going this week, you still have time to catch this amazing production before it’s last performance on January 9th. For tickets go here.

#4: Santa Fe Opera 2021 Season – Santa Fe Opera

I had never attended a production at Santa Fe Opera prior to this summer. I don’t intend to miss any seasons going forward. This is a truly magical place to see opera. This summer found a smaller line-up than in non-COVID years, but the four consecutive nights in early August were a great introduction to this wonderful tradition.

On tap this year were The Marriage of Figaro, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Benjamin Britten), the world premiere of The Lord of Cries (John Corigliano and Mark Adamo) and Eugene Onegin. My personal favorite was Britten’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play.

Each night, however, had plenty of joys to be found: whether it was my second time seeing Anthony Roth Costanzo in a opera (the first being Ahknahten), revisiting the joys to be found in Tchaikovsky’s brooding opera, enjoying the staging of Mozart’s classic opera or experiencing the tailgating experience that is de rigueur before each performance.

I’m excited about this summer’s season as my favorite opera, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, is being performed at Santa Fe Opera for the first time.

#5: West Side Story

I was completely skeptical about what Steven Spielberg would do with one of my favorite musicals. That he had Tony Kushner working with him gave me some optimism. Try as I could to wrangle details from colleagues who were working on the film, I was completely unable to glean any information about what kind of updating and changes were being made.

When I saw the movie on opening weekend I was thrilled to discover that my concerns had all been for naught. Simply put, I think this is a vastly superior film than its Oscar-winning predecessor. I’ve always found this Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents musical emotional (let’s face it, it’s Romeo and Juliet), but seeing it so close on the heels of Sondheim’s passing probably intensified my emotional response.

Sondheim said how excited he was for audiences to see what had been done to West Side Story. I know he wasn’t a fan of the original film – feeling it was too close in presentation to the stage version – so I had my fingers crossed he was right. And he was. If you haven’t seen the film yet, do so. It’s the kind of film that must be seen on a big screen with terrific sound.

#6: Head Over Heels – Pasadena Playhouse

If you had asked me what the odds were that a jukebox musical using the songs of The Go-Go’s would be a show I would see at all, let alone twice, I would have given you huge odds against that happening. And I would have lost my shirt! What Sam Pinkleton and Jenny Koons did with this production was create the best party of the year.

Alaska 5000, Lea DeLaria, Yurel Echezarreta, Freddie, Tiffany Mann, George Salazar, Emily Skeggs and Shanice Williams put their hearts and souls into this story of family, acceptance and love. The all-female band rocked the house.

Both times I saw the show I opted for the on-stage/standing room seats and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. At the first performance Lea DeLaria made a comment during the show about my pants. For the second performance I had a better idea where to position myself to have an even better time than I did at the first performance.

This was a party I never wanted to end.

#7: desert in – Boston Lyric Opera

This streaming opera/mini-series is definitely not your parent’s opera. It is guided by its own rules as it tells the story of a unique group of strangers (or are they) who congregate at a seedy motel.

The music was composed by Michael Abels, Vijay Iyer, Nathalie Joachim, Nico Muhly, Emma O’Halloran, Ellen Reid, Wang Lu and Shelley Washington. The libretto was written by christopher oscar peña.

Appearing in desert in are mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (for whom the project was written), soprano Talise Trevigne, Tony-nominated performer Justin Vivian Bond (Kiki & Herb Alive on Broadway), actors Carlis Shane Clark, Alexander Flores, Anthony Michael Lopez, Jon Orsini, Ricco Ross and Raviv Ullman with vocal performances by tenor Neal Ferreira, Tony Award-winner Jesus Garcia (La Bohème), baritone Edward Nelson, tenor Alan Pingarrón, soprano Brianna J. Robinson, mezzo-soprano Emma Sorenson and bass-baritone Davóne Tines.

The project was directed by James Darrah who also oversaw the Close Quarters season of films from Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; directed a production of Les Enfants Terribles for Long Beach Opera (that took place in a parking lot) and, underachiever that he is, also directed The Lord of Cries at Santa Fe Opera.

You can still stream desert in. Go here for details.

#8: Cécile McLorin Salvant – The Ford

Without a new album to promote jazz vocalist Salvant took to the stage at The Ford in Los Angeles for a concert with Sullivan Fortner that was nothing short of pure joy. She and Fortner have such a musical bond that she can make up the setlist on the spot and he’s ready to dive right in to dazzle the audience. As they did on this late September evening.

The only problem with seeing Salvant perform is you can never get enough. Truly. Rare is the performer who can so thoroughly enrapture an audience with their skill the way Salvant can.

That should come as no surprise for an artist who has won three consecutive Grammy Awards for her three most recent albums. Her newest album, Ghost Songs, is being released by Nonesuch Records in March. No doubt the next Grammy Awards season will find Salvant’s latest album on their list of nominees.

#9: Billy Porter: Unprotected

Porter’s memoir was released in the fall and it is one of the most inspirational and entertaining memoirs I’ve ever read. He’s a Tony Award (Kinky Boots), Emmy Award (Pose) and Grammy Award (also Kinky Boots) winning performer. He’s also been setting the fashion world on fire with his inventive and creative looks on runways from the Academy Awards to the Met Gala in New York. Let’s just say he knows how to make an entrance.

In Unprotected Porter details the many obstacles put in his way through challenges at home to being subjected to harsh criticism from his church to casting directors who thought he was too much. Though it all he remains steadfast in his individualism and his talent. It’s a lesson we can all use. As he says in his memoir, “My art is my calling, my purpose, dare I say my ministry.” I, for one, found a lot to learn from his ministry.

Gay men and women are not the only audience for Porter’s ministry. The life lessons he endured and his response to them is precisely the nourishment our souls need today. You can also clearly hear Porter’s voice in the book. So engaging and entertaining is his book I read it in one sitting. I found it impossible to put down. I think you will, too.

#10: Ledisi Sings Nina Simone – Hollywood Bowl

Anyone who is brave enough to tackle material made famous by the incomparable Simone either has a lot of guts or a lot of talent. Ledisi proved she had both in this memorable concert at the Hollywood Bowl in July (which she performed elsewhere as well.)

Ledisi wisely chose not to emulate her idol. Instead she made each song her own while still retaining a sense of what Simone’s original recordings offered. She released a seven-track record, Ledisi Sings Nina Simone, but added more songs to her concert. It was particularly interesting to her performance of Ne Me Quitte Pas and then hear it performed by Cynthia Erivo less than a week later at the same venue. Who sang it better? Let each who saw both shows answer that question.

Runners up: Vijay Iyer’s latest album Uneasy; Veronica Swift for her album This Bitter Earth; The Band’s Visit touring production at The Dolby Theatre in Hollywood; Jason Moran solo piano performance as part of LeRoy Downs’ Just Jazz series; Springsteen on Broadway; MasterVoices’ Myths and Hymns and Cynthia Erivo singing Don’t Rain on My Parade at the Hollywood Bowl.

Here’s hoping there’s even more to see and hear in 2022. What’s on your list? Leave your choices in the comments section below.

Happy New Year!

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Pinkleton and Jenny Koons (the other half of the creative team) have put together a show that feels both of the moment and just what we need in this moment. Anyone who knows such songs as We Got the Beat, Vacation and Our Lips Are Sealed already knows how buoyant they are. To experience those hit songs as part of an audience given a chance to be on the stage with the cast is a gift after so much time during the pandemic wondering when the isolation might end.

Halfway through rehearsals I spoke with Koons and Pinkleton about taking on a significantly revised version of a musical that, frankly, failed on Broadway. Their journey began when they saw Head Over Heels in New York.

“We saw Head Over Heels together in New York on Broadway,” Koons says, “and had a great time and really fell in love with the joy of it and the way that the Go-Go’s music had been integrated.” It should be noted that the storyline is based on Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney which was published in the late 16th century.

As much as they both enjoyed the musical, it wasn’t the type of show they usually do. The two have collaborated on Burn All Night at American Repertory Theatre and a new production of the Elizabeth Swados musical Runaways in New York.

“The way that it was presented on Broadway, which was very much a proscenium musical with two acts, was not necessarily how either of us works,” Pinkleton revealed. That wasn’t the kind of show the Pasadena Playhouse had in mind either.

Koons says, “When the Playhouse approached us about imagining this in a different form as a party – people on the floor, everyone dancing to the beat – it felt like a question of can we take what we loved about the experience we had and make it amplified even more. So it was less about how do you reduce something and more about how we take what we love and make those things even louder in real life.”

As both Pinkleton and Koons began their exploration as to the best way to answer that question, it became apparent that they were doing more than just a production of a pre-existing show.

“It feels like a gift that we are coming at this with fresh eyes; making new musicals is really hard and really ugly,” said Pinkleton. “I feel like we’re having the process of making something new, even if the script in the show is kind of a given.”

Along with the team at the Pasadena Playhouse, there was a reason they wanted to do something different with Head Over Heels.

“In this moment of twenty twenty one,” Koons says of their thinking, “what is the story that we’re all telling as we come back together. I think how we’ve approached this, from looking at it with the Playhouse, was as an invitation back. Welcome home. Welcome back! What does it mean to be gathering again in person.”

It’s an invitation that for anyone and everyone – whether your knew The Go-Go’s music or the story in the show.

Pinkleton explains. “Welcome back to people who just happen to be walking down the street. Welcome back to people who would never expect to come into a theater. I don’t think that that’s something we’re imposing on this show. I actually think that’s the heartbeat of the show. I think there’s a queerness and an openness and a curiosity – the show is about that. It’s the story of people who go on a journey to discover that everything they needed, they had the whole time.”

What Koons and Pinkleton did so well with the show was to assemble a cast where anyone who sees the show will find themselves represented on stage. The cast includes Alaska 5000 (best known from RuPaul’s Drag Race season 5 and the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars season 2); Yurel Echazarreta (a member of the Broadway cast of Head Over Heels); recording and drag artist Freddie; Lea DeLaria (jazz singer and star of Orange Is the New Black); Tiffany Mann (Be More Chill and Waitress on Broadway); George Salazar (Pasadena Playhouse’s Little Shop of Horrors); Emily Skeggs (Fun Home on Broadway) and Shanice Williams (The Wiz on NBC).

That was precisely the point offers Koons.

“The goal has been to create something unique for the performers and artists that we gather. I feel like we’re constantly on our toes for how we really shape this to them. We made a joke in the first week that it’s like the Queer Avengers. How do we make sure that all eight and that the humans we have gathered feel able to be there for ourselves in a way that can invite audience members to do the same.”

They two directors also made sure that their vision was shared by the cast they hired Koons offered.

“With the performers that we have gathered this feels very much like a shared mission. Yes, we’re doing a show, we’re doing it in the midst of a crazy moment in time. And all of us are coming to this with the spirit of an open invitation that really is for everyone.”

As much as you might enjoy the show, Pinkleton believes it’s something more that will be part of the experience of seeing Head Over Heels.

“The thing we’ve been missing the most is bodies,” he says, “living, breathing humans. So nothing is going to be more spectacular than the humans. And that’s true for the performers, and that’s true for the audience.”

As someone who experienced the show on the stage with the show happening all around me, I can vouch that the greatest joy came from dancing, celebrating and enjoying this shared space with so many wonderful people.

To watch the complete interview with Jenny Koons and Sam Pinkleton, please go to our YouTube channel here.

Head Over Heels continues at the Pasadena Playhouse through December 12th. For tickets go here.

Main Photo: Lea DeLaria, Alaska 5000, Shanice Williams and George Salazar in Head Over Heels (Photo by Jeff Lorch/All photos courtesy Pasadena Playhouse)

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