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[0:00] Teresa Attridge: Ever wonder what it takes to make a new musical sing? Our mission is to give you an inclusive look behind the scenes. We are interviewing the creatives who are changing musical theater one 11 o'clock number at a time. This is your Backstage Pass. Get your Backstage Pass. Get your Backstage Pass.

[0:43] Teresa Attridge: Hello, Barnacles! Hello, everyone! Welcome back! Oh my goodness! It is good to be back. You're back. I'm back. We're back. And let me tell you, we didn't come alone. We have got some very special guests on the pod today. We have got the team behind Trick! The Musical. All right, everybody, give it up for Jeff, Jason, and Arthur. Hey, everybody.

[1:02] Jeff Calhoun: Hello.

[1:03] Jason Schafer: How are you doing?

[1:04] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Incredible.

[1:05] Teresa Attridge: They're so friendly. Whenever there's a lot of people in here, it always sounds like the beginning of Book of Mormon, you know? Hello! Perfect. Hello, hello. Well, Jason and Arthur, it's such a pleasure to meet you. I have really enjoyed reviewing these materials. And Jeff, welcome back. Is Jeff our first ever repeat guest?

[1:17] Jeff Calhoun: No, Joe Barros has been on the show, but Joe Barros is the artistic director of New York Theater Barn.

[1:22] Teresa Attridge: Oh, that's not fair. I think Jeff is our first repeat guest. Look at that. No, we are so happy to have you here, Jeff. It's great to see you again.

[1:27] Jeff Calhoun: Listen, it's great to be back to see both of you, man.

[1:30] Teresa Attridge: Oh, thank you. My gosh. For those that don't know, Jeff has his own episode of the pod that you can go all the way back towards the beginning for if you want to listen for more.

[1:36] Jeff Calhoun: Yeah, we had a great time talking about A Complicated Woman with Jeff and Jonathan Briel that played at Goodspeed Musicals and I heard was fantastic. Barnacles, go back into the season one archives. Check it out.

[1:50] Teresa Attridge: All right. But Jason, Arthur, famously, your first time on this podcast. Can you believe it? How are we feeling about that?

[2:00] Jason Schafer: It's insane. I didn't even know there was a podcast devoted to writing musicals. And so I'm like, I'm in love already.

[2:09] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: You know, I happen to know that there are several musical theater podcasts. Thank you, Broadway Podcast Network. But I don't know if there are other ones specifically dedicated to writing musicals or the process of writing musicals.

[2:19] Jason Schafer: We should probably fact check that. Maybe we should get an intern.

[2:23] Teresa Attridge: Oh my god, Barnacles, if you're out there and you want to be our intern, just send us an email. Also, Jason, funny you mentioned falling in love that you're like falling in love with the podcast because you happen to know something about writing about shows where people are falling in love, don't you?

[2:30] Jason Schafer: I guess I do. I guess I'm doing that now.

[2:38] Teresa Attridge: Amazing. Pals, do you want to go ahead and maybe we can do the bios for our guests just so they know what a big deal this is to have these writers in our room today. Jason, we're going to do you first. Jason Schafer wrote the book and lyrics for the musical Trick and also the original screenplay for the acclaimed indie hit movie, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In addition to being a staff writer and co-producer for Showtime's GLAAD Media Award winning Queer as Folk, he has written for Warner Brothers, Paramount, ABC, and Fox Television. Jason's works for the stage include Bleeding Love, which was at the Nat Festival of New Works, was a Richard Rodgers Award finalist, and was serialized on the Broadway Podcast Network.

Thank you, Broadway Podcast Network. His other works include I Google Myself, which was produced at Theatre Esque and a recipient of a GLAAD Media Award nomination, and Notes on the Land of Earthquake and Fire, which was a winner of a Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and a Fringe NYC Playing Award. He holds a BA in Music Composition from UCLA, is a recipient of the Carol Burnett Award, and holds an MFA from NYU's Department of Dramatic Writing. He is on the faculty of the Humanities Department of LaGuardia Community College, where he is the Film and Television Program Director.

[3:43] Teresa Attridge: That's right. I can't believe what a mouthful it is, so. There you go. I mean, you are all very accomplished individuals. Jason, I'm fucking impressed, Joseph. I didn't know you did all those things, Jason. Wow. Who knew? We have very talented people show up to this Backstage Pass thing.

[4:00] Teresa Attridge: All right, next, Arthur. Arthur Lafrentz Bacon wrote the music for Trick! The Musical and is a composer and songwriter and keyboardist whose work spans pop, rock, film, and musical theater. He most recently co-wrote Billy Joel's hit single Turn the Lights Back On and co-composed the score for the Sundance-acclaimed documentary Kokomo City, which was released by Magnolia Pictures and Showtime. He has written songs for Joey Lawrence, Marion Raven, and Latin supergroup CD9. As a head writer at Look and Company, Arthur composed music for many TV and radio spots, winning two Cleo Awards for Best Original Music. On NBC, he was a member of the house band for The Caroline Ray Show, playing with bandleader and legendary guitarist Carlos Alomar, as well as trumpet player Chris Bodie.

He composed the musical Bleeding Love, which appeared at the NAMM Festival and Fredericia Theater and was a top performing arts podcast in 2020. Shout out. I'm going to go check that out right after we get off this show. Other musicals include Salvage, which was an O'Neill National Musical Theater Conference finalist, Wasp Woman, and Billy Sleepyhead. Born into a musical family in Westchester, New York, Arthur started studying piano at age 10 with renowned jazz pianist Lou Stein. He went on to study piano and composition at SUNY Purchase. His teachers include Dorothy Taubman, Anthony Newman, and Jim McElwain. Arthur is a member of the BMI Lehman Angle Musical Theater Workshop.

[5:11] Teresa Attridge: Shout out BMI, which gets some love in this musical, I think.

[5:19] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Oh my gosh, BMI more like TMI because we're about to get all the tea.

[5:24] Teresa Attridge: Exactly. Well, we're so pleased to welcome you to the pod for the very first time. And yes, Jeff, welcome back. I'm so glad to share this bio with everyone. Jeff Calhoun is a multi-talented director, choreographer, producer, and dancer. Calhoun worked closely with Tommy Tune and performed in the first U.S. tour of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and the stage adaptation of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. His work with Tune earned him a Tony for Best Choreography. Calhoun directed the Disney musical Newsies. That musical boasts eight Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical and Best Director of a Musical for Calhoun. Additionally, he has directed Body Inclined on Broadway, worked on the first revival of Jekyll and Hyde, the 1994 revival of Grease, the 1999 revival of Annie Get Your Gun, 2001 revival of Bells Are Ringing, as well as Brooklyn Musical and Grey Gardens. Calhoun has a close relationship with Deaf West Theater and has helped them put on their adaptation of Oliver and Big River.

[6:12] Teresa Attridge: Can I tell one story about Jeff?

[6:16] Jason Schafer: I need you to.

[6:17] Teresa Attridge: Jeff has done one of the nicest things that any director, especially a Broadway director, has ever done. The first show I directed out of the pandemic was a production of Newsies. And Jeff was very gracious to meet with me to talk to me about the show. And he even recorded an opening night message for the Newsies saying, hey Newsies, welcome back for the pandemic. Best of luck opening night. And all their eyes, they just like, their eyes got huge and their jaws dropped when this message came. What a mensch, look at you. So Jeff, thank you so much. We're so grateful for you and all you do to help out the musical theater community.

[6:45] Jeff Calhoun: Oh please, it makes me happier that it made those kids all that.

[6:51] Jason Schafer: I don't think-

[6:52] Teresa Attridge: Howls was one of those kids at heart.

[6:55] Jeff Calhoun: They loved it. We all are.

[6:57] Teresa Attridge: Absolutely. We're still doing musicals. I mean, we're all still doing musicals, but at least one of us started in film, it sounds like. Not me, really. Jason.

[7:03] Jason Schafer: If this weren't a podcast, I'd be like, raise your hand.

[7:07] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: No.

[7:08] Jason Schafer: I started, so I grew up in Sacramento. Musicals were my first love.

[7:15] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: A Californian, hello.

[7:17] Jason Schafer: Californian, completely. And in fact, I tilted my screen. I know they can't see it. So my dad was a rare book collector and every weekend the family would, not every weekend, like once a month, we'd go to the Bay Area and hit all the used bookstores. And I very quickly found the theater section, found these old musical theater libretti. My parents would be like, do you want anything? And I'm like, I want The King and I or whatever. So this is my stack of like 200 and something libretti. I learned a lot of shows by the librettos, weirdly, before cast albums, like Plain and Fancy, New Girl in Town. Like I would get these librettos. I'm like, oh, that's a musical. I'll just get it and read it. But yes, musicals were absolutely my first love.

I started writing Trick, actually. The idea, I was in BMI. I did BMI in Los Angeles when I was an undergraduate for one year. Then I moved to the East Coast and did it for one year here and then was gonna write a musical, but the musical turned into a screenplay. So that took me into film.

[8:20] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Wow.

[8:20] Jason Schafer: My first love is definitely musicals and definitely theater.

[8:23] Teresa Attridge: Oh my gosh, I stand corrected, which I love when that happens. We love to be educated. That's wonderful.

[8:29] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: There's so much going on there. I'm fascinated. I was the opposite way. I learned by listening to the cast albums first. That was my way in and falling in love with the music. And then of course, the thing is there's always those gaps in musical theater cast albums, which is kind of thrilling. I listened to Maybe Happy Ending before I went to see the show and then to actually see the show and see the ending of the show. Can you talk to me about the experience of looking at these shows, looking at the lyric structure? What was it about that that you loved?

[8:56] Jason Schafer: So I first kind of became interested in musicals just because I think my grade school was gonna do, we were gonna do Tom Sawyer. I don't even know what version. I was cast in it and then they didn't do it. I'd already kind of fallen in love with the idea of musicals at that point. I think that's what just led me to check out the theater sections and used bookstores. And I think the very first script I ever got was King and I because I'd heard of that. And I knew what that was. I think I had a cassette. But then as the years went on, then you would find these random shows that I didn't even know existed. And I will say, I mean, it's kind of an amazing thing because you're learning the story, you're learning the characters.

And some of the books aren't great. Some of them are really amazing. But it's really, it's really interesting to kind of see what a piece that is a performance piece looks like on the page. And in Sacramento, we have the Sacramento Music Circus. So I used to go get season tickets to that with my mother and my grandparents. And so I would see eight musicals every summer. And so sometimes like I would see Mame, which I'd already read, but I would get to go, okay, I know what it was like on the page. And now I get to see what Mame looks like in the round at Sacramento Music Circus. I mean, nothing prepares you for Mame until you see someone play Mame, you know what I mean? Marianne Hartley was Mame and Gretchen Wyler was Vera.

Oh, great things at Sacramento Music Circus. We saw Faith Prince in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Three guys in dolls. It was like, I just thought I saw a star being born. It was pretty phenomenal.

[10:27] Jeff Calhoun: Honestly, you did.

[10:28] Jason Schafer: Yeah, I did. I did. I didn't know you knew it yet.

[10:30] Teresa Attridge: On the other side of things, we're talking about sort of the books, but let's get into the music as well. Arthur, I know it said in your bio, you started with jazz. I mean, you studied under some incredible tutelage. How did you sort of go from jazz into musicals? Or is it similar in where you fell in love with one stumbled into the other? I mean, music, of course, you get to learn across genre pretty early. But can you tell us more about how you got into music and through that got into the musical theater specifically?

[10:54] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I grew up in northern Westchester in a musical household. There were six of us. I was the fifth and my mother was a pianist and guitarist and she wrote songs. She also was a published writer. She ran the children's choir at the church, which is like the pop choir. That's how I started. It was just singing in the choir like when I was like five. She loved the sound of music so much and The Wizard of Oz and West Side Story. Every day since I was a little kid, she would play songs from all these musicals and Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. We would also sing them in church. Somewhere around eight or nine, I started just playing what she was playing. We'd watch The Wizard of Oz and she'd sit down and play some songs and then I'd kind of do the same thing.

And then she was like, OK, I'm going to send him to I had the privilege that she could send me to a wonderful teacher who was pretty well known. She sent me to Lou Stein. Yes, he's a great jazz pianist, but he learned everything. I think the first thing he showed me was like a Gershwin song every week. One of the things one of the many things he would give me is like a standard song, which mostly came from musicals. And I didn't know it at the time later. So by the time I was 13, I probably played, I don't know, 50 or 100 standard songs that came from musicals that kind of gets in your bones. And I always knew that musicals were there and I was going to be writing them. But I had some goals before that because there's like a limited time and like pop music. So I wanted to write a hit song. I wanted to be...

[12:18] Jason Schafer: In a signed band. I kind of did those things and they weren't as fulfilling as I thought they'd be. Then I had a chance to, when I started at BMI to start writing musicals and that was, has been incredibly fulfilling for me. In a way that nothing else has been. It's hard to describe. It's just incredibly fulfilling to see the marriage of like your music, pushing a story along and especially when it's right, when it's what it really happens and it's cohesive and it's an incredible feeling. But Mr. Stein's, what he taught me when I was a kid, just how to write melodies to lyrics and by playing so many standard songs is just a great training to someday write, you know, musicals. And then I also, when I was like 15, got super interested in classical music and I started studying that pretty intensely, which I still do play a lot of classical music today.

And that helps so much with orchestrating because the songs are written to trick, at least the music, very quickly. And I think I find that most of the time when that happens, it's most true and honest. It just comes out. But then the orchestration process and arranging process can take a while and playing a lot of classical music helps with that. So when you hear like OG song, there's a lot of fancy stuff going on. But what was wonderful about seeing the show in Atlanta, we just had basically a little pit band. It was just piano most of the time. And the show just came across like that. That was really wonderful. But for our demos, we were like, oh, let's let's make them because I have on my computer all the sounds that, you know, to make it sound really lush and full.

So we went ahead and did that. The recordings sound incredible. The music sounds so good. Also, I will say Artie coming from the pop world, he understands what you can do in the studio. And that's been an education with me. When we're going to the studio with these singers and he's incredible. One song he kept like upping the BPM. He's like, what if we do it? 130, 130, like every 15 minutes I was getting a faster version of it. Actually, it's original song by Gabe. And he is meticulous about getting the right BPM for every track. And it's kind of amazing. And then we were up in Massachusetts recording drums and the drummer was like, what was the BPM on that? And they were talking about how great the 72 BPM is.

It's like this other world to me, but the studio guys are just like incredible. It's the heartbeat of the song. And there's a magical place. It could be one BPM different and there's a magical place that a song kind of exists and oh, that's right. And you hear it and you feel it. And yeah, the BPM is important. I sometimes act as the avatar for the listeners. But Arthur, I believe you're referring to the world premiere production that was in Atlanta. We were talking about how music came across. No, no problem. That's what I'm here for. First off, fantastic that you had a world premiere production in Atlanta. That's so exciting. So we have musical theater fans. Jeff, I don't want to exclude you for sure.

The last time we chatted, we were talking about Mr. Kinley and rightfully so and respectfully so his immense role in your development as an artist. But did you want to share anything about how you became obsessed or had fallen in love with musicals? And then Jason, I want to go back and talk with you a bit about even though you're a musical theater fan, your journey to writing a screenplay for Trick. Because it became, you know, as we know now, what was described as a gay cult classic. But Jeff, I want to make sure I make room for you.

[15:29] Jeff Calhoun: No, this is about the writers. And I have to tell you, this is fascinating for me too, because I'm getting to know Arthur and Jason even more because our relationship and our marriage is relatively new. I mean, Jason obviously goes way back 30 years with this project. And then Arthur's been with him for a while. And I'm the new kid on the block. So I didn't know that you they did show tunes Arthur in church.

[15:51] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: They sang show tunes in show.

[15:52] Jeff Calhoun: Oh my mom.

[15:53] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Yeah, we would do. Well, let's say Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar.

[15:56] Jeff Calhoun: Yeah.

[15:56] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Okay, but but like at home we would do. My church had played show tunes.

[16:02] Jeff Calhoun: I may have stuck around a little longer.

[16:05] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Yeah, my mom was my mom was super cool and hip and to be you know, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were her idols, but so was Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin. So yeah, we would sing anything a lot of pop stuff.

[16:16] Jeff Calhoun: Yeah, this is great for me just to get to know everybody, but I didn't really know about Broadway. I don't think I wanted to become a dancer. I started as a dancer. All my inspiration came from television watching the Cal Burnett dancers or watching Fred Astaire movies or Gene Kelly movies on TV. I knew that before I knew that there was Broadway shows, even though I did shows in school or in community theater. I guess I didn't put it together that they started in this place called Broadway. I just thought oh, here's a show we're going to do. Oh, that was fun. It wasn't till I was 16 that I really went and saw my first Broadway show and understood. Oh, wow. Maybe this that's what felt like church to me. The television that got me in and then community theater inaugurated me into the stage, but it was that trip to New York at 16 that I realized what Broadway really was and that's what I thought I'd love to make my life doing what those people are doing up on stage.

[17:06] Jason Schafer: I was also 16 the first time I came to New York and saw a Broadway show. I saw a hundred and ten in the shade with Audra McDonald. It was the first show on Broadway I ever saw and let me tell you seeing Audra McDonald in your first ever Broadway show.

[17:19] Jeff Calhoun: And she met her husband there I believe as well.

[17:21] Jason Schafer: Oh my gosh. Yes. I mean I still think about it. The rain coming down at the end. I was like it happened. The rain, it was the most magical thing I'd ever seen.

[17:30] Jeff Calhoun: I want to say a quick thing to all the 29 year olds out there who saw their first Broadway show at 29, which was me. It's okay if you don't start at 5 or at 16. There's no bad age to start. You got to get out there and see that show.

[17:42] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: What was your first musical you saw on Broadway?

[17:44] Jason Schafer: The first show that I saw was Natasha and Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.

[17:48] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Okay. Well, I started strong.

[17:50] Jason Schafer: I did not want to leave that theater.

[17:53] Jeff Calhoun: We can talk more about this. I want to keep the focus on these wonderful guests. Also, opportunity there. We're all talking about the first show we saw on Broadway. This could be a really great way to get into that first song about why Gabe has moved to the city and then we can talk about what the show is about.

[18:09] Teresa Attridge: Everyone's like, ah! Everyone's nodding their head right now. That was a really good segue, Teresa. Before we- I'm going to read very quickly the synopsis of the show.

[18:19] Jason Schafer: I want you to.

[18:20] Teresa Attridge: I know you do. I know you do. All right. Trick the Musical is a stage adaptation of the 1999 queer cult classic film. The story follows Gabriel, a shy songwriter, and Mark, a go-go dancer, who try to find a place to hook up in Manhattan only for the romantic endeavor to be hilariously interrupted by friends and bad luck.

[18:37] Jason Schafer: That's so short and sweet.

[18:38] Teresa Attridge: The thing that I resonated with this story right from the very get-go was the fact that I was doing research on it, was that this story was told and it was just like a love story. Two men wanting to hook up with each other in New York. At that time, for that to be told on film, revolutionary. It was a big deal. People could see themselves represented in that film. I just love that synopsis because it's so to the point of what the show is, but also is like the beauty of the show, if you ask me.

[19:02] Jason Schafer: I have a little story that when it premiered at Sundance, we'd not had it in front of an audience. And I remember the first screening. You know, here's this gay romantic comedy, and you don't know how it's going to be received. And I'd been introduced before the film, and when the film ended, there was a woman behind me, and she leaned forward. The first thing I heard after the end of the first screening was, I can't wait to share this movie with my mom. That was just such an eye-opener because I was writing from a very kind of explicitly gay perspective. And at that time, there wasn't a lot of gay crossover. To have a woman just say immediately, I want to share it with my mom, the previous generation, it was kind of crazy.

And I mean, also for some of our listeners who are younger too, the fact that it was 1999, also really important, right? Because, you know, previously with the AIDS epidemic and sort of the aftermath of that and being able to do something that was proudly queer, celebratory, a love story, something that was both deeply humanizing, but also so funny and something that people could really relate to, that is even more powerful in the context of when it was. That's what prompted me to write it, is I hadn't seen my story. I was fortunate to come to New York and not have to deal with a lot of the trauma of the gay experience, especially at that time. That was a tremendous privilege, but it also kind of allowed me to kind of envision this story as filling maybe a gap in what was out there, even in queer entertainment, because the gay films were a lot of AIDS stories.

That was a lot of really what people were making. It was just a natural response for me being in my early 20s and wanting to write something, and it mirrored my experience, and I'm fortunate that it kind of resonated with others.

[20:51] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Love.

[20:52] Teresa Attridge: Well, and talking about mirroring experience, I happen to know, because I watched an interview earlier, that you moved to New York and had like a one-bedroom apartment.

[21:00] Jason Schafer: Oh, just like Gabriel.

[21:02] Teresa Attridge: Just like Gabriel. Do you want to tell us about the song, I Got a Place?

[21:05] Jason Schafer: Well, sure. Yeah. I Got a Place is—Actually, this is great to include Jeff, because we—

[21:10] Jeff Calhoun: All roads lead to Jeff.

[21:12] Jason Schafer: Yeah. So we did the show, and I'll talk about that a little bit later, about the Atlanta experience, which was amazing. But when Jeff came on board, Jeff is so incisive and so smart, and he kind of directs us in a very succinct way to kind of look in another direction. And we gave him a new opening scene, and then very gently he says to me, well, you know, that song doesn't work anymore. And I said, yes, I know. So Artie and I had to go off and write a new opening for the show, which is the one you hear. I also love this song, because it's the only song in the score thus far that Artie and I actually wrote in the room together. Usually I write lyrics first and send them off. That one we wrote in the room and then spent three weeks fixing it. But it was prompted by Jeff, and it was just an amazing shift in the show. Amazing. So we begin all together.

[22:05] Jeff Calhoun: We begin all together.

[22:06] Jason Schafer: And yes, so I moved to New York. I had some friends from UCLA. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment, four girls and me. I lived in the living room behind a curtain I bought at Bed Bath & Beyond, the size of my full bed. The bedroom looked like a sorority with four twin beds, and we lived there. And so Gabriel, I adjusted it. I had to reduce. I couldn't have him live with four women. That's too many characters. So I made it one straight guy and made it a studio to simplify it. But it is based on that early experience. If you haven't been able to tell, Trick, as originally written, was very autobiographical. And so you're going to hear a story of a young man who moved to the city to make it big on Broadway. And that's what the song's about.

[23:56] Teresa Attridge: Fantastic. And who is performing this song?

[23:58] Jason Schafer: Yeah, this song is being performed by Charlie Franklin, Brooke Sterling, and Joanna Parson are the voices you will hear. Here is I Got a Place, performed by Charlie Franklin, Brooke Sterling, and Joanna Parson.

[24:14] ♪ Musical number: "I Got a Place" — performed by Charlie Franklin, Brooke Sterling, and Joanna Parson ♪

[24:36] ♪ Musical number: "I Got a Place" — performed by Charlie Franklin, Brooke Sterling, and Joanna Parson ♪

[28:49] Jason Schafer: I love this city! I love that this feels so appropriate to Gabriel's character, because it's this big, broad opening number of a big Broadway musical. You can feel in the music that he's following his dream, just in the way that the music is written and the way that he's singing it, even though it's not working out exactly as he hoped. It was just the great tension in the song. I need to tell Gabe he needs to go write some jingles, and then I could fund his musical theater writing.

[29:13] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: I mean, honestly, yeah, I love a jingle. I mean, yeah, Arthur, you wrote jingles for Pepsi, and that's some of your biggest claim to fame, but is that like a very nice source of income for you? I mean, look, yeah, making a living in New York writing music was unbelievable. It was incredible, because then I used, we had access to two 24-track studios, and that's how our band got signed. And you instantly meet all the people in New York, wonderful singers and amazing musicians.

[29:43] Jeff Calhoun: Well, Arthur, you're in good company, right? Didn't Barry Manilow make a career writing jingles?

[29:49] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Yes, I love Barry Manilow. And great, I mean, great jingles, really classic. Yeah, he's amazing. Teresa, we got to write some jingles. And it's a great way to just keep in the flow and stay in the zone. You just write it right on the spot, and bam, it's a great thing to do. There's more needle drops started coming in that, you know, people are like, oh, we don't want jingles. We want the David Bowie song. It used to be that artists would never let, that was like a terrible thing to do, let their music being heard being used by like Pepsi or Coke or something. Now, record companies have a dedicated person who's just trying to get their band's songs on any advertising that they can because there's so little, you know, music's basically free. Like you can go on Spotify or YouTube and listen, you know.

[30:30] Jason Schafer: I mean, I would argue that what is a jingle but just like a 20-second musical?

[30:34] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: I think there's an alternate ending to this musical in this conversation right now.

[30:39] Jeff Calhoun: It has to be catchy.

[30:40] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: It has to be catchy. I mean, it's just a jingle is just the hook of a song.

[30:44] Jason Schafer: Absolutely.

[30:45] Jeff Calhoun: The most important part.

[30:46] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: There's a reason. Everyone remembers a jingle from their childhood. Do you know what I mean? And if you think about it, cartoons were like the first MTV hit.

[30:52] Jason Schafer: And a good cartoon theme song. I mean, pals, you know, we grew up at the like peak of cartoon theme songs.

[30:58] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: We truly did.

[30:59] Jeff Calhoun: Oh, Nickelodeon.

[31:00] Jason Schafer: Like Disney, Cartoon Network, I could sing 32 right now.

[31:04] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Oh yeah, amazing.

[31:04] Jeff Calhoun: Unfortunately, our good friend Gabriel has not figured that out, which creates conflict in the show, which is great.

[31:10] Jason Schafer: One of the things I love about this opening number is that we actually do see so much of what's going on with Gabriel's world, right? We see what he's here for. We see his initial conflicts. We see like his friend. We see not his antagonist per se, but we see his shitty roommate. We're gathering so much information.

[31:27] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: And one of the things we talk about on this podcast a lot is that the opening number really sets up everything that comes after it. I think that this one did a really great idea of we have really high stakes. We know exactly what's going on. We know who this character is. We know what they want. We know what's in their way.

[31:41] Jeff Calhoun: And yet it's that whole idea of initial conflict versus main conflict, right? Because he's just trying to get to this musical theater workshop to follow a dream. But then at the workshop, we also learned there's something kind of deeper going on. And this is sort of an homage to BMI, it sounds like, right?

[31:56] Jason Schafer: Oh yeah, the workshop song, which by the way, I love the workshop song. But I am curious because I don't think we've actually gotten into this on the podcast with writers before, especially since you've both experienced BMI at different times. When you're workshopping pieces with a group of your peers, right, a mentor and peers, I'd love to know what is that process like when you're presenting work that feels so personal? And how much of it do you take? How much of it do you sort of stick to your guns? Did any of that play into Gabriel's development when he comes to his initial conflict in this show and his main conflict, really?

[32:31] Jason Schafer: Well, actually, yes. And I think before I wrote Trick, I was not writing personally at all. And I'm talking about the original screenplay. So I was writing musicals set in ancient Greece in the roaring 20s, and it had no relevance at all to my life. And actually, I had a friend at college, wonderful friend, still my friend to this day, Molly Bass. She lives in North Carolina, and she's a playwright. And she had the exact opposite approach where everything she wrote was completely personal. And so when I wrote Trick, I was like, oh, I'm going to try Molly's thing of writing about my own life. That was it. So in a way, I don't have the experience, the workshop experience of bearing my soul to BMI because I wasn't doing that at the time. But I had the Gabriel experience of presenting something that is maybe not reflective of the whole person and having to learn that lesson.

[33:25] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: So in the show, Gabriel is attending like a workshop that's like BMI. It's not BMI, but it's like BMI and gets some really critical feedback. I don't know how autobiographical that was, but I hope it's not a spoiler to say, but goes on a very similar journey to what you did, which is what by the end of the show, he's kind of been pushed to write something more personal.

[33:46] Jason Schafer: And the funniest thing is about for me, the wonderful challenge is that Gabe writes these old school musical theater songs, which is totally not typical of someone who's like, he'd be writing like, you know, Weezer. For me, it's so much fun. You can write a song like Julie Stein. And then later on in the score, I have a song on Madonna. I think there's also a lyric later where they describe him as very Jerry Herman. That was the very first lyric I wrote in the show.

[34:10] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Very Jerry Herman?

[34:12] Jason Schafer: Yeah.

[34:13] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: You're very Jerry Herman.

[34:14] Jason Schafer: Well, let me tell you, it was one of my favorite lines of the show. So I'm so glad I brought it. I love a little internal rhyme. Really got me. It ended up not being in the song proper, but I got it back in the reprise in act two. So good ear.

[34:26] Jeff Calhoun: All right. I believe that song that he shares at the workshop is like, C'est De De Chateau. It's a tap show.

[34:31] Jason Schafer: They're like, hmm, what is this doing here? Write something from your soul.

[34:36] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: It's a tap show. Exactly.

[34:38] Jeff Calhoun: I want to say a word for BMI. So we had Janine McGuire and Ari Lawton-Simon on the show, who are part of the steering committee of BMI. One of the things they said on their podcast was, very often the best way to meet a character in a musical is through music. I was thinking of that when I heard this song. When I heard, I got a place. I just got a feeling of who Gabriel was. And even there's a sense of, like, gratitude that he's feeling. Gratitude is the attitude when things aren't going his way.

[35:05] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Well, music gives you the emotion of the character.

[35:06] Jason Schafer: It really does.

[35:08] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: But it was so easy to write because Jason's lyrics, it was a dream writing the Jason's lyrics, because they were all so well thought out and worked on and beautiful. And they were completely finished. It's like a dream. Their songs kind of wrote themselves.

[35:19] Jeff Calhoun: I can't believe we didn't ask this at the beginning like we usually do. How did you two meet and start working with each other? I would love to hear how Jason and Arthur met. And then I would love to hear how Jeff came into the process. But why don't we start with how Jason and Arthur met as collaborators?

[35:33] Jason Schafer: So I knew an actor. I knew him as an actor. Actually, Jeff knows him too, Harris Duran. He'd done a reading of one of my plays. And he invited me to a musical that he was writing with Arthur. And I went to an amazing reading of their show, Salvage. And then afterwards, I had a drink with Harris. And he said, well, if you ever want to write a show, I said, I'd love to. And then he asked me if I had any ideas. And I pulled out an old story. And he said, we want to write something commercial. We didn't talk about it. Then a year later, he called me up and was like, what was that story again? And we talked. And Arthur was his collaborator. So for Bleeding Love, I did the book. Harris did the lyrics.

Arthur did the music. We had a great experience with that. I love the show. I'm so proud of it. And I always knew I wanted to do another show with Arthur. And then when Trick was going to be a musical, I was happy to call him up and happy that he was excited to work on it with me.

[36:37] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Amazing.

[36:37] Jeff Calhoun: And Arthur, had you seen Trick prior?

[36:40] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Well, I'll tell you the story of how I first heard about Trick was right after it came out. I had one of my best friends was studying piano at Juilliard. And he had great taste. He called me and he said, hey, Art, there's this movie that just came out. You have to see it. It's called Trick.

[36:55] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: So we got together really soon after that and watched it. I thought it was just so beautiful and courageous. I'd never seen anything like it before. One of the most amazing things to me, and my friend Darren, who knew the pieces I was playing on the piano, saw Gabe's character in the apartment. He's playing Beethoven Opus 109, which is his 30th piano sonata, a middle movement, and I was playing that piece at that exact time. So that just kind of blew my mind. I was like, how does a writer know that obscure Beethoven piece that's in this movie? I couldn't believe that. It's incredible how many invisible strings there are that just kept you two connected until it was the right time. That is fascinating. To think that, okay, that exact scene now, I replaced that music with a love song for my future boyfriend, and Jason has this incredible gift of doing something very poignant, but then just something very funny. Can I tell the joke, Jason?

[37:56] Jason Schafer: Sure, and they can decide whether to keep it in or not. We'll probably keep it. We keep most things. So Gabe plays this just from his heart, this love song for my future boyfriend, just on the piano, basically naked. Both boys are in their underwear. They're about to hook up, and Mark asked Gabriel to play a song. I knew when I came up with that scene, I was like, oh, this is going to be the promotional image for the show forever. Two boys in their underwear, one sitting at a keyboard, one listening. Yeah, so during that song, or during what Gabe's playing, Mark is supposed to be doing something underneath the keyboard, but Mark is so transfixed with the song. They get through the song, and Mark's like, that was truly just amazing, and then Gabe has the line, which just brought the house down. I was like, weren't you supposed to be underneath the keyboard? Should I be the avatar listener and explain to them?

[38:48] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: You know, yeah, well, Mark was supposed to be performing oral sex on Gabriel while this beautiful piano song was happening, but the idea being the music was so entrancing that Mark got distracted and was not able to fulfill his duties. And so then the other thing about Trick was like, I was living at Hudson Street and Barrow, and the ending scene was filmed right on Seventh Avenue, like right there. And so there were all these things. And when I met Jason, I'm sure I told him all these coincidences. And I'm so glad this is on the podcast. Yeah, it was kind of amazing. And to think that I get to do that music was like very special. Jeff, this is making me think of something you said during our talk about Newsies.

Every time musical theater works, it's like a miracle. How is this working? You know, people are singing and dancing and acting, and somehow it's incredible. I've had the same feeling when I'm talking to writing teams about how they come to write musicals together. That story, it just feels like destiny was pulling you together to tell this story.

[39:48] Jeff Calhoun: Yeah, I mean, one could argue that Gabriel and Mark met very much on the same sort of cross path of destiny as well. Can we talk about how Jeff joined the collaboration?

[39:58] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Let's. Oh, sure. Jeff, I don't think even knows this, and I might be making up this story a little bit, but this is the way it feels to me is that for some reason, over the course of once we started working on the show, Jeff's name would come up occasionally. And there were a couple of people who specifically said Jeff would be great for it. And for some reason, it was like a little bell would ring every time. It's like, oh, yeah. And finally, and I'm kind of shy about reaching out and wanting to wait till we're ready. Arthur's wonderful about going, no, no, no, let's do it. Let's do it. So Arthur was like, let's reach out to Jeff. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if we're ready. And Arthur was Arthur gave me the push.

And Jeff responded so quickly. And it was just the most wonderful response. And his very first take where I knew this is the perfect person was he said, you've written an unjaded show for these jaded times. I think I didn't really understand it until that moment. But I realized that's what I respond to in the work of Jeff's that I've seen is his ability to be kind of open-hearted and unjaded. And I really felt like that's what this show is. That's where Arthur is, too. But that's what really excited me and thought, well, Jeff is the person that I really want.

[41:20] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: I mean, between the three of you, there seems to be this really synergetic sense of like genuine earnestness, like there's not a self-consciousness about loving what it is. And I think that when you have three people who love wholeheartedly love big, want big, that's when the miracles start to happen. That's when we are open in the universe for these coincidences to come by. But sometimes when you love big when you are big, someone comes in who's like real big at a time you really don't want them to be. Can we talk about Catherine?

[41:47] Jeff Calhoun: Yes, Catherine is Gabriel's best friend. She's an actress with a capital A, probably a musical theater actress with a capital MTA. And she owns Gabriel in her mind. Their relationship hasn't really been tested until this particular night. This is a little bit of a change from the movie. But in the musical, she is opening in an all-female production of Kiss Me Kate the night that Gabriel happens to meet Mark. Unfortunately, when Gabriel and Mark get back to his apartment, Catherine is there. And so they can't get down to business as quickly as they were planning. And Catherine being an actress sees this as a perfect opportunity to perform for Mark, her new audience. And that brings us to her song, which is called Original Song by Gabe. And you'll hear our amazing performers from the Atlanta production on this recording. So this is Leah Keelan as Catherine, and you'll hear some lines by Avonlea as Gabriel and Will Franklin-Eller playing Mark.

[43:03] ♪ Musical number: "Original Song by Gabe" — performed by Leah Keelan, Avonlea, and Will Franklin-Eller ♪

[46:46] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: I love that you said MTA with a capital A. This song is just such a great introduction.

[46:50] Jason Schafer: Oh my gosh.

[46:51] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: It exudes old-timey Broadway performed by off-off Broadway star. And also it gives us more great insight into Gabe, what he's writing, which is not exactly new experimental musical theater.

[47:03] Jason Schafer: Oh my gosh. And also just this beautiful, they have such a funny relationship and that it's so who they were in high school, but they are growing out of who they were in high school, right? And we're sort of seeing the disconnect of Catherine being like, this is who we are. And Gabe is trying to be like, I'm truly trying to do something different for maybe the first time ever right now. She's like, no, you're not. You're coming to see my show later.

[47:27] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Which incredible. And did you, I know you said so much of this is autobiographical. Did you have a Catherine when you first moved to the city?

[47:35] Jason Schafer: Yes, I still do. But I would say the character is really a composite of two characters. One was my bestie at UCLA and another is my friend, Sherry, who's still one of my closest friends to this day. So yes, absolutely.

[47:52] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Let me say one thing actually about the music because I knew Artie more like as a pop guy. And so when he was writing the music, the part I was a little unsure about is how he would tackle the musical theater stuff. And obviously, when I heard the music that he wrote for this, that was not a problem in the least. And in fact, that's where I called him Art for years. And then Artie Bacon became his name for me because it seemed kind of like Julie Stone.

[48:23] Jason Schafer: I love that.

[48:23] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: Look at that. I will say this is also like this is a brassy Broadway, babe. This is Broadway. You ever look at a character and you're like, this is my type of cast. I know exactly who this is. I know this person.

[48:34] Jason Schafer: Very that energy.

[48:36] Arthur Lafrentz Bacon: This person's very evocative of several people I know in my life.

[48:40] Jeff Calhoun: Oh, yeah. I look in the mirror and I'm like, there she is.

[48:46] Jason Schafer: Thanks for joining us on New York Theatre Barn's Backstage Pass. Join us next time as we continue our conversation with Jason Schafer, Arthur Lafrentz Bacon, and Jeff Calhoun about their show, Trick! The Musical.