Michael Greif: A couple of things that really appealed to me about Rant when I first encountered it was I liked that it was about a group of people that I knew a little, that I had some interest in, and who weren’t usually the subjects of a musical. There had been some operas about people like the people in Rant, but there was not a modern opera about them. I loved, uh… The kind of tribal community that was set up. I loved how the people took care of one another. And I, of course, loved the score. I thought the way in which they expressed themselves was so spectacular. I also loved the producing organization, which was the New York Theater Workshop. And I knew that there would be a good, intelligent… Development process that came along with this musical, and I knew that Jonathan was very anxious and open to working on this musical and I was very happy that I could be involved in that continued development. A lot of the musicals that I liked most growing up were musicals about community. I loved A Chorus Line, which celebrated the guy and the gal in the back. I loved Runaways. Hearing about these kids who you don’t always hear from. When I was a kid myself, I directed The Me Nobody Knows. So I loved those musicals that gave voice to some people that we generally don’t hear from in a musical expression. So I thought Rant was doing that beautifully, letting us know the hearts and minds and desires of a group of people that usually don’t see in a Broadway musical, certainly, We were really developing it for the East Village. It was a musical or an opera about the East village that we were performing in the East Village. And I can’t really speak for everyone, but my hopes were that it might continue running somewhere in the East Village, I remember Jonathan and I talked about maybe it’ll move into some abandoned club in the East Village? I mean this move uptown was not something that either of us were planning or certainly I wasn’t planning. He certainly never talked to me about that move, although you hear from other people. I mean, we’re both interested in Broadway musicals and traditional musicals. I think we really shared that. And Jonathan was a very dedicated student of Broadway musical. And I think one of the reasons why it works Uptown is because it’s such a good blend of his love for traditional musical forms and his loyalty to La Boheme as a structure, which is… A structure we all know works as a musical, as an operatic form, and then, you know, some of his adventurousness as a composer and also as a thinker. And I’m especially delighted with so many of the things that happen in the musical that we all take for granted, but I don’t think a lot of young people watching Broadway musicals had the opportunity to see before. Women really comfortable with their gay sexuality. Men, comfortable, being gay. Straight and gay people, we’re living together very happily without it being an issue. People of various races living together, I’m really, I mean like hair, I am proud of that tribe that gets depicted on stage and of course, you know, like everyone, I buy into it and my heart is open to it because they’re expressing themselves with such beautiful music and such original kind of lyrics.
Michael Kantor: It’s a broad question. You can take it any way you want. Who was John Parsons?
Michael Greif: I got to know Jonathan well from about early in 1994 till his death, early in 1996. We had met a couple of times before that. Jonathan was a dedicated musical theater composer. He was an adventurous guy who loved a lot of different kinds of people. He lived a life very similar to the characters he actually wrote about in Ren. Weighted a lot of tables, did a lot odds and ends kind of jobs, hoping for his big break, I should say. Hoping for his break where he could actually make a living doing what he loved to do. And he had a great tenacity and a great belief in himself and a courage to keep on going when a lot of people wouldn’t keep on going.
Michael Kantor: What do you think was his dream? Did he have to ever speak to you?
Michael Greif: You know, we focused a lot on making this musical as good as it can be. I mean, that’s really where we lived, and he spoke about that all the time. You know I’ve learned about his dreams and aspirations from other people, friends, families. You know, since the time of his death, what he wanted was, he wanted to be able to make a living doing what he loved and to be to give all of his time to writing theater songs and music and I don’t know what forms he would take on as the years would go on. I knew a lot of three or four of his earlier pieces. I can sort of see how they culminate in Rant. I also know that some of the latest material he wrote for Rant was among the best material in Raint. Take Me or Leave Me was written weeks before we started previewing, and I think it’s a sensational song, so I can only dream of the work he would have done and the musicals would have made. But he was generous and open-hearted and brave, and I think what he really wanted was to be able to quit his job waiting tables and be able to write all the time.
Michael Kantor: Beak, if you would, a little bit about those works that he did. I mean, he did a couple of pieces, but put them in context. They weren’t terribly commercially successful. What did you think of them? What were they exploring? You know what I mean?
Michael Greif: Before Rent, there were a number of other pieces that I’m aware of. Got at some of the same material, I’m trying to think the right way, foreshadowed some of themes in Rent. Tick, tick, boom, which we all got to see after Rent opened. You could see, was a very personal work about if it was worth it to keep pursuing this musical theater career, or whether you should give up, or whether just try to write music for other forms, for other media. This piece is called Superbia, which is about a family and how the people within that family were constrained by traditional values. He was often reimagining what a family could be and how a group of people could take care of one another.
Michael Kantor: How did Jonathan feel like he fit in or didn’t fit in in terms of people producing his work?
Michael Greif: I think Jonathan felt stuck and I think he felt frustrated going into the rent experience. He had had previous workshops of musicals that didn’t get produced. Um, and I think… It was among the reasons why he was in particularly euphoric spirits for our process. Not always, of course. There was a time after we did an initial workshop in 94 where he was frustrated because he was, because Jim and the New York Theater Workshop asked him to start collaborating with a dramaturg, which at first he didn’t think was a great idea, and later he really embraced that idea. He was always very open to suggestions by Jim, his producer, his director, me. We had a spectacular musical director, Tim Wild, that he was very close to. But he forged a relationship with a dramaturg and then soon before we were going to produce… Commercial producers who were involved at that point, Jeffrey Seller, Kevin McCollum, and Alan Gordon, who had given the New York City Workshop some money to produce the musical. And Jim all felt a little stymied by a new draft that he had written. And there was talk of postponing at that time, too, that really frustrated and pissed Jonathan off. But he also got down to work and he addressed a lot of the concerns and issues of that group of producers and Jim and I and Lynn Thompson, Dramaturge, and worked through it. And we went into rehearsal knowing that a draft wasn’t complete, but we were closer than we had been. And of course the draft we went in to in 95, you know, retained everything that was great about 94 and a lot of terrific things that Jonathan was developing.
Michael Kantor: Put that in a bigger, you know, for people who don’t really know the Broadway workshop process.
Michael Greif: This was not the Broadway workshop process.
Michael Kantor: But I’m saying we could easily paint it as, here’s Jonathan Larson, he has an idea, which we know in a way wasn’t this other guy’s idea, Billy Aronson or something. It’s a very complicated collaboration, and just walk us through the general idea that was Ren Jonathan’s idea, and what is the fact that he finished the piece?
Michael Greif: When I first met Jonathan in 94, I knew that he had for many years been working on a modern interpretation of Lobo M. I know that he originally had worked with Billy Aronson. I think that it was Ira Weitzman’s original suggestion to the two of them that they work on it, but you should check on that. And then I know, that after working together for a time, Billy and Jonathan parted ways. I then know. That Jonathan went through a real… Personal, uh… Working through of a number of his friends becoming ill and I think this notion of what illness to young people in a modern, I think him working through his feelings of loss and Grieve men. Got him back to this original, to this material, this Labo M material. And it’s always been my belief that what’s absolutely best and truest and most meaningful about Rent is the stuff that’s closest to Jonathan’s heart and the stuff that is closest to the material which was about him dealing with a lot of friends death from AIDS in the early 90s. So, I don’t know what… Reworking the material was like. I just know that by the time I encountered it in 94, it was charged with some sort of truth. And I don’t know how Billy would feel about it, but he was working from an urgent place. And a lot of, as I said, the best material was coming from a place that felt very true and a real desire to dignify. The coping mechanisms that his friends were going through, the support groups they were attending, the way their relationships with their families were strained, and the urgency they felt in making a mark on the world. I encountered a piece that sort of was charged with that kind of truthfulness and urgency. And I responded to that since I had been living through a number of friends’ deaths as well. You know, this notion of what do I leave behind, how was my time on Earth valuable, were the things that Jonathan was really thinking about because a lot of his friends were thinking about that. And I think he was expressing them in a very truthful way.
Michael Kantor: And somehow he expressed it in a way that reached his generation. Wasn’t that ever something you talked about?
Michael Greif: Yeah, you know, when Renton moved uptown, certainly it found a whole new audience. Jonathan was a very innocent, a very generous, a open-hearted person and very young. And his concerns were young and sometimes they were a little immature and we’re all lucky that he stuck with it in a very kind of immature, tenacious way. And I think that’s why the piece especially speaks to young people who are really finding their feet as adults and really imagining what it’s like making the transition from child to adult. And the way in which everyone in the musical works as a family member, I think, is very comforting to teenagers who are about to leave their own families and seeking new family associations and the friendships they’re making. The families they themselves want to make.
Michael Kantor: Amen. Not as an assistant stage manager, but he wanted this separation of his work and his heart. And so he had this job, which we have a great point of job. Tell us about that job and that moment of freedom of committing.
Michael Greif: I think Jonathan worked as a waiter at the Moondance Diner because he wanted a job in which he could make the most in the shortest amount of time and leave his creative energies unfettered. So I think that’s why he kept these worlds very separate. And I remember when he knew that rent was going into production at the New York Theater Workshop. And believe me, these are modest salaries and modest fees that you’re paid off Broadway. But it was enough to allow him to… Quit his job, and I don’t know if he felt this is it, maybe I’m going to quit my job forever, or if he just felt he was taking a leave, and for a time he could devote himself completely to writing this musical, but it was a big event, that he was looking forward to a check, and that enabled him to leave the job.
Michael Kantor: You know, in this tape, he talks to the customers later. He sort of says to the camera, they were the part of his customer, but he says, you know, I’m a musician and I’m working on this opera. Did he refer to it as an opera, was this idea of it as a?
Michael Greif: Yeah, uh, I, I. I recall Jonathan talking about it like an opera and I remember we spent a lot of time talking about how it was the same as and different from La Boheme. Jonathan knew Labo M very well, and it sort of became my job to know Labo N as little as possible to make sure that the plot, the events, the passions, the personal costs of rent were not dependent on a working knowledge of Labo M. But I think he loved the fact that it was harkening back to that kind of classical form. And I know that when Jim, Nikola, talks about what attracted him initially to Grant, he talks a lot about how in this work he found that there was a wonderful marriage again between contemporary music and storytelling, the likes of which the musical theater hadn’t seen for a while or the opera hadn’t seen for awhile. Opera had become rarefied and he was thrilled that rent was using popular musical forms to tell its story and one of the things I really appreciated was How the different characters had different musical idiomatic voices so that they were so much of modern accessible popular music expressed in the show I Know that I know that Jonathan was devoted to to sometimes work and he was a great fan of his work As am I and many people we know who work in the musical theater, I think we all grew up on how Mr. Sondheim had stretched the form and written musicals about subjects that no one would imagine musicals to be written about. We all thrilled in that imagination and that innovation. And I think Jonathan thrilled in that and was inspired by that.
Michael Kantor: There are very few, you know, you mentioned here, we know Tommy, without sort of reiterating what might have made those work, there’s so few successful rock musicals. What do you think is the trick? What do think allowed rent to, to…
Michael Greif: I think Rent grabs people emotionally and I think, I don’t know if I think of it as a rock musical. I think it is an opera with popular musical forms. It’s very inclusive, Rent. It’s generous in its spirit. And it opens its arms wide to a lot of different kinds of people in the audience and a lot of people with different musical tastes. You know, there are some characters in Rent who revel a little in their being rock musicians, but the musical also points out the fallacy of that, the narrow mindedness of that. So there’s a lot of different kinds of music in there, including very traditional musical theater forms. And I think that’s why a lot of different people can come together and appreciate it. But as I mentioned before, I think it’s also about a group of people at a moment in their lives in which you feel an enormous amount of sympathy and compassion and willingness to open your hearts up to them.
Michael Kantor: You know, as I mentioned before, we’re stuck with this challenge of choosing certain songs, numbers, moments to depict a whole show. What would you, is there a particular song that springs to mind as the best kind of encapsulation of those things, or speak to one song that maybe we’ll talk about in a second?
Michael Greif: You know, Seasons of Love is a song that we often put forward as emblematic of the play. I love that because it’s a whole group singing with one voice. And it’s complicated song because it feels like a celebration, but it has a real flip side to it. It’s actually sung at a memorial service, and it’s actually about. Surviving great loss and great devastation and that’s why I think it has a real elasticity that song so I’ve always been happy to put it out there and I really love the sentiment of measuring your life and love and being able to see our Being able to measure our time here and our success here by How much love we put out and how much love come back comes back to us? That’s a young I think, feeling, but a great feeling and one that keeps us all young, keeps us all human. So I love that song and I think that’s a great, it’s emblematic of that song. When Rent first hit, invariably I’d get a lot of questions, especially from Europeans, about Living in America, a song that was critical of the time and critical of our government. I think those things are true of Rand, but I don’t think that’s really its spirit. I think it’s much more about reaching out and building instead of tearing things down.
Michael Kantor: And the relationship between Off-Broadway and Broadway.
Michael Greif: It was risky of Jim Nicola to produce the musical. It was certainly the largest amount of money they ever spent. And I alluded to earlier how in 95, Jim had linked up with these three, I think, very intelligent commercial producers who saw the workshop in 94 and saw some… Hope in the material. But Jim is in the business of developing material and developing artists. And Jim saw value in Jonathan’s work and wanted to give him an opportunity to develop that work. And Jim helped Jonathan assemble a team to help realize that work, and it was very much a work in progress. And as I said, it was all about making this opera musical as good as it could be, as giving genuine voice to the people that the musical was about, about making a musical in the East Village, about people who lived in the east village. I don’t know that we ever had any hope that people like Mark and Roger would come and see it. I suppose we thought Mark might, and I don’t know that they’d ever think Roger would leave the house to. It wasn’t developed with an eye toward the future of rent, it was developed with an eye towards the future Jonathan. And I think what’s great about the off-Broadway theater, and especially great about the New York Theater Workshop and Jim Nicola, is he invests in people. And it was about, let’s give this artist the opportunity to stretch and develop. It wasn’t, let me, you know, sell the farm. So that I can get the next course line. It wasn’t that at all. You know, it’s been a very, very, very happy. Uh, uh, uh. A very happy situation that it continues to endow that theater, and I hope it can endow that theater for a long time. They really deserve that endowment.
Michael Kantor: You know, talk us through, because before we can talk about it in Broadway, there’s the day of Jonathan’s death. It’s a moment, it’s the last dress rehearsal, right? Or take it through that day, apparently you did this interview, and just how you found out about it, how it then affected the show, what went on.
Michael Greif: During the tech period of Ryan, which was probably four or five days long, Jonathan started feeling ill. We had all come back from a dinner break. Probably minutes after we had returned, Jonathan started feeling ill, ill enough so that some paramedics came and actually took him to an emergency room. We continued teching. The next day, during tech, Jonathan wasn’t there, which was very unusual for Jonathan not to be at rehearsal. And my assumption was that Jonathan had the flu. There was a lot of talk of what might be wrong with Jonathan, food poisoning, a couple of different things which we were hearing. I think Jonathan missed two days of rehearsal and then on that third day, we were going to have a dress that night and it was very important for him to come in and to see the dress rehearsal. And there was also an interview planned with Anthony Tomasini. Of the times linking rent to an anniversary of Labo M. Jonathan came in, I think he rode his bike, or he might have taken a cab and felt like he couldn’t ride a bike. He certainly took a cab home. Jonathan, before the dress rehearsal, probably in the break when the actors were getting into clothes, Jonathan and I did an interview together on the set. And then we did the dress. And then during notes for the dress, Jonathan did an extended interview with Tomasini in the box office, right outside the theater. Jonathan came back from that interview looking very tired, as he had been looking, looking fluish to me. And we had a gentle note session because he clearly was not feeling well. I think that we had started a a more typical and rambunctious notes session, and there was plenty to do, believe me, while he was being interviewed. And when he came back, we gave him the opportunity to talk about what his priorities were, and naturally they were, get the sound better, make sure I hear the lyrics, I mean, really normal things, really, you know, exactly what you’d imagine he’d be talking about. And then we all wished him a good night. The company had already left. It was probably 12 or 1 o’clock around this time. And the next morning, probably about 8.30, Jim Nicola, Lynn Thompson, the dramaturg, and I had a meeting schedule to talk about how it went, where the material would go. We’d hoped Jonathan would join us, but we were all prepared for him needing to sort of sleep in and rest. And it was at that time, I was walking to the Time Cafe Great Jones and Lafayette, where we often had these meetings about how the material would develop, that Lynn and Jim told me that they had heard of Jonathan’s death earlier that And that was surprising and devastating. And there was nothing to prepare any of us for that. There was no indication of it. It was beyond the realm of possibility to us. It wasn’t anything any of was prepared for or would ever imagine. And then, we quickly set about thinking of his parents arrival. I remember talking about that and that afternoon his family was to come and so that was very much on our minds. And informing the company of what had happened And I don’t know that there were any other plans. Jim and I easily came to the conclusion that the work should go on, that that was the best thing we could do for Jonathan. And we knew Jonathan well enough to know that he would want it out there. He’d want his voice to be heard, and he’d want us to continue working. And so it was clear early on that we would find a way to continue rehearsing the show. I remember the company coming in sort of one by one. They had been called by Sue White, the production manager there at the time. It was easy to determine that Jonathan would have wanted us to continue working on the musical and to get his voice out there. I can’t remember how we presented that to the company, but we all knew Jonathan and we knew what he wanted, and he was so thrilled to be produced. It seemed inconceivable that this would stop production. We didn’t know exactly how we would work, but we had a structure in place whereby Tim Weil, Jim Nicola, Lynn Thompson, and I would meet very regularly. And we determined that we should continue that structure and see what might continue happening to the musical. And what happened naturally in those days following his death is that He became a part of the musical, in which there were always bits of Mark in him and always bits of Roger in him. But little by little, he really became. I mean, Jonathan and the musical united. And when Adam started singing about the glory that Roger was hoping to attain. It very naturally began mingling with Jonathan’s aspirations to write a great score and to have his music heard. And the aspects of Jonathan’s personality that were part of each character really came to the surface and he felt very present to us. And of course, those issues in the musical about loss, really became… They pound in our ears and beat in our chests, and we all sort of took a lesson from the musical about how to move forward and how to take care of ourselves in the face of that kind of loss. And it’s unquestionable that that galvanized our process, but I’m always very wary of people who ask about. What would have happened if Jonathan hadn’t died and would rent me the success it was? Because I have no doubts that it’d be better that he’d continue working on it and he’d make it better than it is. And a lot of the things we all criticize about the show would be addressed in a lot of good ways, because I think we all recognize, you know, what work continues to need to be done. But I love that it’s still a work in progress. And, you know I continue to see it and see can feel how far it got and imagine where it might have gone, but also recognize the moment in which it stopped and how that moment crystallized too.
Michael Kantor: So I saw, I think, courtesy of your tickets. Probably. In East Village, because it was hard to get there. And you talked about the company being galvanized. There’s that moment where, is it inevitable? It’s going to come to Broadway. Discuss it with the parents. How does it become a Broadway show?
Michael Greif: Don’t know, never imagined it being a Broadway show. I was never a part of a conversation about where it should go, producers and perhaps the family talked about that. I was very thrilled in terms of its kind of, the amount of people it would reach on Broadway and so there was never hesitation or a question. There was always, by this point we knew the way in which it spoke to different generations. There was plenty for parents and for a more traditional Broadway audience to absorb and to identify with in the show. I didn’t fear that, oh, there’ll be nothing for this audience to see. We had already seen just how inclusive it was, and how it spoke to a variety of different people in a variety of ways, and there was a lot to hold on to. So I was real happy about the amount of people it would reach. I was very pleased about the venue that was chosen for it. And while I had perhaps the foolish dream that we would restage it for Broadway, that didn’t become a possibility. You know, the set of Rent is essentially the back wall of the New York Theater Workshop. And so when I started looking at theaters, I imagined that we were just adapt the staging to whatever theater we ended up in, and we would change it. I was informed that that would be an impossibility given the schedule and the time we were on. And so the set of the New York Theater Workshop has become the set friend, which I also love because I love being reminded of our origins.
Michael Kantor: Would place it, you know, place it opposite Disney’s across the street, right? Is it sort of an anomaly on Broadway? I mean, everyone’s lamenting. There’s the Cadillac Theater, there’s the American Airlines Theater, and here’s the show that’s, is it kind of, does it represent sort of the opposite of that? The question of authority show, I don’t know. How do you, when it got there, did it feel like it was a different? Beast in a Broadway theater or not. Did it feel like, oh, this is natural Broadway.
Michael Greif: It felt like that the size and scope and the dimension of the music and the emotion could fill that house. It felt the size of this musical and the size its heart and the scope of its musical achievement fit here. But it also felt great because the Nederlander was or still is you know, a bastard child of the Broadway theater, and it’s on 41st Street, where Broadway theaters aren’t. And it had been dark for a while, and we chose not to repair the roof and to make sure that, you know. It’s sense of a scrappy underdog house was very much a part of the way in which we presented our scrappy, underdog musical. Or opera, so it felt like it was in the right place and we tried to hold on to its rough edges as much as we could. It was always conceived to be a hybrid opera slash musical theater slash concert event and it felt great to do a concert in the Nederlander for a thousand people instead of 200 people.
Michael Kantor: But so looking around, I guess, does it then feel good to be the scrappy underdog and Broadway can accommodate all that, or?
Michael Greif: I see the show fairly regularly, and I continue to be thrilled with the audience that it attracts. It is a young, diverse… Audience. It doesn’t look like the audience at a lot of other musical theaters. It’s not an audience, it’s an audience that doesn’t look like a lot of regional theaters, a lot of the non-profit theaters. It’s a musical that speaks to young people, and its audience is full of young people. And, you know, I suppose that a chorus line felt like the kind of youthful expression. That I was looking for when I was in high school, seeing musicals. And I’m hoping that people in high school who are seeing this musical will think, well, there’s something here that’s meaningful. And there’s a world depicted that we might not live in, but a world that I hoped we’d live in. There’s a kind of generosity and compassion that I think young people still believe and still hope the world will look like. You know, and their city will look like the city depicted up on the Nederlander stage and the possibility of great things happening to those people or just surviving, you know to the next day, month, year is a real possibility.
Michael Kantor: You look around, you’re working in it.
Michael Greif: Uh, maybe, you know…
Michael Kantor: Use word for it.
Michael Greif: Maybe the recent, the most recent Broadway seasons. Let me start again. When I look around at the newest crop of shows that are really succeeding, I see a lot of satire, and I see a lot a wit. And one of the things that I was real happy about with Rent is that there was some real opportunity for there to be audience involvement. And I hoped that there would be a bit of wit and a bit satire and a bit of poking fun at ourselves. And I see a lot of that. I mean, the producers in Hairspray and Urinetown, I think, are satiric musicals that have a really good time poking fun at the traditions and conventions and the structures of Broadway musicals. I’m particularly fond of Hairsspray because it has the same sort of big hearted inclusiveness that Rent has. But with, I think, more of a satiric edge. You know, it’s polished up, and the colors are brighter. But I think they share a generosity. For a while I thought that satire couldn’t work on this boulevard and I’m looking around and there’s a lot of poking fun at ourselves, which I think is really healthy and terrific and very different from the musicals I think that were dominating the scene in the 80s, which all felt a little air-tight to me, a little august.
Michael Kantor: What about the trend now toward not adapting a novel or what have you, but you mentioned hairspray producers and now you’re working on something.
Michael Greif: Based on
Michael Kantor: all of which are based on a different kind of subject material. What do you make of that trend? People look down on that, I think.
Michael Greif: I think maybe I.
Michael Greif: I think maybe people are looking toward especially a lot of films as a source material for musicals because I think that there’s an economic reality in which it’s believed that there needs to be some point of connection. And even with rent, certainly. When we began, its connection to La Boheme really helped focus us and ground us. So I understand that people are looking for source material that they can hold onto as they begin to adapt and write music for.
Michael Kantor: But what about the people who say, you know, the film, there’s no there, there, it’s, you know, oh, the great musicals are based on these, you know carousel, these great novels, show book, what have you, but are great plays. Yeah. But now there’s this trend toward kind of urban cowboy or movies that don’t have as much. See that or no?
Michael Greif: I guess it’s a matter of, I guess its all about the choice of movie you choose to base your musical upon. I mean Carousel is a great example of a musical adapted from a great play with a big reach. And it was turned into a great musical with a great reach. I think it’s all a matter what great source material I guess could make for a great music.
Michael Kantor: Speak to how important are the cricks in the world of Broadway, and do you think that’s changed, and how it got consolidated, or? Or has marketing evolved so that critics really aren’t what they want to work.
Michael Greif: You know, in a…
Michael Greif: You asked me about the role of critics toward the success of a Broadway production.
Michael Greif: Maybe, uh.
Michael Greif: Critics have a more substantial role in the nonprofit arena. I’m thinking of a number of commercial productions that perhaps are critic-proof or have proven successful beyond critics’ approval. So because of the amount of people who go see those Broadway plays and Broadway musicals, it might be that word of mouth is more important. Or as you suggest. You know, a savvy marketing campaign can make you forget what a critic’s point of view was about a production. I think it might be more difficult in an arena where you don’t have the money or the word of mouth to combat it.
Michael Kantor: When you think of Broadway, what are the adjectives that spring to mind? Think of our opening section. Broadway’s a this, Broadway’s that, Broadway’s another rhythmic thing. What are the words and thoughts and both, it’s a gamble, is it feel risky, is it stressful, is is joyful? I mean, when you think about Broadway,
Michael Greif: another wonderful place to stretch theatrical muscles and to develop different kinds of material. I don’t feel a great difference between work developed for a small nonprofit off-off-Broadway theater and work developed for. I take it all back.
Michael Kantor: Are there different pressures developing work for a not-for-profit and developing work here, or does the work come out differently, or do you think the work is just the work and it may end up in these gorgeous little jewels of theaters, or maybe it doesn’t?
Michael Greif: Well, I, let me see.
Michael Greif: Rent probably feels and looks different from a lot of other Broadway shows because it was never conceived to be a Broadway show. It was a show conceived to work in a theater in the East Village. I’m currently working on a Broadway musical that has always been conceived for Broadway and for the size of audiences of our Broadway house. To relate, to liken to a lot of Broadway traditions and a lot of Broadway conventions, hopefully in an original and joyful way. So I think developing a piece specifically for Broadway is very different than developing a peace. And I hope that I have the opportunity to work in a variety of forums, in a variety of different size, theatrical envelopes. Will you ask me about the first musical I remember seeing, or the first Broadway production? I remember seeing Man of La Mancha. And then I got into the habit of seeing a chorus line many times. I used to go once a week. I was a… A theater student at Circle in the Square one summer. And every Wednesday afternoon, I’d see a course line. And I probably saw a course sign about 45 times. And in a course lines last year, I got a job as an associate director at the public theater. So I felt in a lot of ways, an incredible circle closing. The notion of Broadway, the venue never had a particular power for me. When I started seeing, when I became aware of what I was seeing was probably in the last couple of years of high school, and it was when the public theater was actually putting on spectacular productions at Lincoln Center in large houses. And I would see as much as I could off Broadway. And the move to Broadway seemed very natural and very easy. And I, I would get standing room tickets, or I would second act, whatever I could second act. So while Broadway was expensive, the tickets booth was, you know, a constant. I visited the tickets boots booth constantly. But I never really, there wasn’t a great distinction for made between. What I was seeing off Broadway and on Broadway.
Michael Kantor: What was it about a chorus line?
Michael Greif: What thrilled me about A Course Line? Rent, I really dug the people. I like that there was a whole, there was a group of people on stage that I got to know. And I was very thrilled to get to know the people in the back who you don’t always get to know. I thought that was egalitarian. And it appealed to my sense of social justice. And then the stories they were telling were remarkable and familiar. And I identified with many of the people who felt a little out of step with their families and their communities, and they found a new family here in the theater. And I also was aware of the craft, the artistry involved in getting the people from one part of the stage to another. Michael Bennett’s choreography was very thrilling to me, although I never imagined being a dancer or choreographer. Just the way in which the bodies would move through space. And I remember, you know, I would get emotional, you know with the lighting cue for, for at the ballet. You know, when the music swelled and the little purple lights went on, it was, and, and the mirrors turned, the stagecraft blew me away. The, the, the simple stagecraft, not airplanes landing or, you now, boats sinking. It was a wall turning and. Going from a black void to a mirror in which I saw myself and other people in the audience, got me. Stagecraft got me, the way that story was told got me and I think maybe that’s where I hoped that I would be a part of that stagecraft. You were asking me about how frivolous Broadway musicals are and is there ever anything in a Broadway musical to maybe nourish your soul as an interpretation of that question. I think certainly the musicals that have affected me most were musicals that try to get at some deeper meaning, some sense of connectedness, some sense of belonging, you know, I think about Mano La Mancha, which was maybe the first musical that I was ever aware of. And the ways in which… That guy’s imagination could transform a world, I think, probably resonated with me in some way.
