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When last we were together I spoke about heading out to Denver to start work on the latest version of our musical, The Immigrant. Well, now the show has opened, I'm back (mostly) and ready to discuss the experience. As much as I would have liked to have kept up a diary, as I did when the show was in rehearsals in New York, I was just much too busy this time around to do much more than what was required of me by the production.
We had done a lot of work in the months since the show closed at CAP21 in New York, trimming and revising -- basically trying to tighten and focus the material. The cuts we made for the demo recording actually taught us a few things about what was needed from some of the songs, and so some of the cuts stuck. A pre-production meeting had been scheduled for September 14th in San Diego, but I'll bet you can guess what happened to that. We met, or spoke on the phone, with our collaborators old and new: Randal Myler remained as director; new to the project would be Ralph Funicello (sets), Andrew V. Yelusich (costumes), Don Darnutzer (lights), and Kimberly Grigsby (musical direction). Drawings and plans were presented (mostly via email), but we had no idea of how beautiful the production would actually be. Our last order of business in New York was dealing with the fact that our Haskell, Evan Pappas, would not be able to do the show due to illness. Two days of auditions were scheduled by Paul Fouquet of Elissa Myers Casting -- a day to see the candidates, and a half-day of callbacks -- and Donovan Marley, artistic director of the Denver Center Theatre Company, flew in to join Randal, lyricist Sarah Knapp and myself (bookwriter Mark Harelik was not available due to prior acting commitments) for what we expected to be some tough decisions. Evan had done Haskell for us in all prior readings as well as at the run at CAP21, and we could not imagine anyone else bringing to the role what he had. Luckily it turned out that we would not find that, but would find someone who would bring an entirely different sensibility to the role, a reimagining very different from Evan's portrayal. We saw a lot of brilliant actors, but when it came time to make the decision there was no question for any of us that Adam Heller was the only perfect choice. The fact that he was a baritone did not seem to pose much of a problem since I had written the role Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article Preparing for THE IMMIGRANT
in Theatre is owned by Steven M. Alper. Permission to republish Preparing for THE IMMIGRANT
in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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