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[0:00] Teresa Attridge: Ever wonder what it takes to make a new musical sing?

[0:25] Pauls Macs: Our mission is to give you an inclusive look behind the scenes.

[0:28] Teresa Attridge: We are interviewing the creatives who are changing musical theater one 11 o'clock number at a time.

[0:33] Pauls Macs: This is your Backstage Pass.

[0:34] Teresa Attridge: Get your Backstage Pass.

[0:35] Pauls Macs: Get your Backstage Pass.

[0:36] Teresa Attridge: There is a dark, satanic collision.

[0:37] Pauls Macs: Rising from underneath.

[0:38] Teresa Attridge: Something that hunts with laser precision.

[0:39] Pauls Macs: Teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth.

[0:40] Teresa Attridge: I close my eyes and I can envision teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth.

[1:08] Pauls Macs: Hello, Barnacles.

[1:09] Teresa Attridge: Hello, everyone.

[1:10] Pauls Macs: Welcome to season two.

[1:12] Teresa Attridge: I am just smiling ear to ear.

[1:15] Pauls Macs: One could say you could see all of my teeth because we have the team from Teeth here today.

[1:20] Teresa Attridge: Anna K. Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson.

[1:22] Pauls Macs: Woo.

[1:23] Teresa Attridge: Woo.

[1:24] Pauls Macs: Woo.

[1:25] Michael R. Jackson: Yes.

[1:26] Anna K. Jacobs: Thank you for having us.

[1:27] Pauls Macs: We're so excited you're here.

[1:28] Teresa Attridge: Trust us.

[1:29] Pauls Macs: How do you want to give our little book report on our very fabulous guest today for those who have had their head in the sand and don't know who we're talking about?

[1:35] Teresa Attridge: Yeah.

[1:36] Pauls Macs: I don't know who these folks are.

[1:37] Teresa Attridge: I'm sorry.

[1:38] Pauls Macs: Maybe you should do your research.

[1:39] Teresa Attridge: I'm grateful.

[1:40] Pauls Macs: Now you get to know.

[1:41] Teresa Attridge: So, Michael, we're going to start with you.

[1:43] Pauls Macs: Michael is an American playwright, composer, and lyricist, best known for his musical A Strange Loop, which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2022 Tony Award for Best Musical.

[1:54] Teresa Attridge: In 2017, Michael received a Jonathan Larson grant from the American Theatre Wing and was one of 11 winners of the 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.

[2:01] Pauls Macs: He was also a Sundance Theatre Institute Composer Fellow and a 2016-2017 Dramatist Guild Fellow.

[2:07] Teresa Attridge: Jackson was named one of the Black Male Writers of Our Time.

[2:10] Pauls Macs: In 2019, he received a Whiting Award for Drama and a Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting.

[2:14] Teresa Attridge: In 2020, Jackson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Strange Loop, becoming the first Black musical theatre writer to win the award.

[2:21] Pauls Macs: He was also the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Drama and a Fred Ebb Award for Aspiring Musical Theatre Songwriters.

[2:27] Teresa Attridge: Michael received two Drama Desk Awards, two Obie Awards, two Outer Critics Circle Award honors.

[2:33] Pauls Macs: In June 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride Parade, Queerty named him among the 50 heroes leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people.

[2:44] Teresa Attridge: In 2022, Jackson was featured in the book 50 Key Figures in Queer U.S. Theatre with a profile written by theatre scholar Aviva Helena Neff.

[2:51] Pauls Macs: In March 2021, Jackson was awarded the Wyndham Campbell Literature Prize for Drama.

[2:56] Teresa Attridge: At the 75th Tony Awards, Jackson's musical A Strange Loop was nominated for 11 awards, winning Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical.

[3:03] Pauls Macs: Welcome, Michael.

[3:04] Teresa Attridge: We're so happy to have you here.

[3:05] Michael R. Jackson: Thanks for having me.

[3:06] Pauls Macs: And the other thing I'll say is, Michael, I actually remember the first time I heard your music.

[3:09] Teresa Attridge: It was in the year 2012.

[3:11] Pauls Macs: I was at a concert in Seattle and I heard a song called Secretly Hoping about a female identifying person who's in love with a man who has a boyfriend already.

[3:20] Teresa Attridge: And so it's been so exciting to see your career flourish and A Strange Loop happen and all the fantastic things you've accomplished.

[3:27] Michael R. Jackson: Thank you.

[3:28] Pauls Macs: That means a lot.

[3:29] Teresa Attridge: I love that song.

[3:30] Pauls Macs: Listen, actors, it's going in your book, 32 bar, 16 bar.

[3:33] Teresa Attridge: It's happening.

[3:34] Pauls Macs: It's a great comedy song.

[3:35] Teresa Attridge: Anna, we're going to do you next.

[3:37] Pauls Macs: Anna K. Jacobs is a Jonathan Larson and Billy Burke Ziegfeld award-winning composer, lyricist, and book writer.

[3:43] Teresa Attridge: In collaboration with Michael R. Jackson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of A Strange Loop, she wrote the music and co-wrote the book for the Drama Desk Award and Lucille Lortel nominated Teeth, which premiered earlier this year at Playwrights Horizons and is now running at Off-Broadway's New World Stages through January 5th.

[3:57] Pauls Macs: And his new stage adaptation of Moana for Disney Cruise Line also recently debuted at the Walt Disney Theater on board the Disney Treasure.

[4:03] Teresa Attridge: And his other musicals include Pop, a pop art whodunit musical about the 1968 shooting of Andy Warhol, which premiered at Yale Repertory Theater in 2009.

[4:11] Pauls Macs: Anytown, which was commissioned by George Street Playhouse in response to the devastating impact that Oxycontin, heroin, and fentanyl have had on communities throughout New Jersey.

[4:19] Teresa Attridge: And Harmony Kansas, a musical about a gay men's a cappella group in rural western Kansas, which premiered at Diversion Theater in 2012 and received nominations from the San Diego Critics Circle for both Outstanding New Musical and Outstanding New Score.

[4:31] Pauls Macs: Currently, Anna is developing the new musical A House Without Windows, a collaboration with playwright Anna Ziegler about the life and disappearance of child prodigy author Barbara Newhall Follett.

[4:40] Teresa Attridge: Originally from Sydney, Australia, she has called Brooklyn home since 2006.

[4:45] Pauls Macs: So I think something that is so wonderful is when you have the two right people at the right time for a piece.

[4:50] Teresa Attridge: And I feel like especially with everything going on right now, this musical, it feels really, really deeply resonant with where we are.

[4:56] Pauls Macs: But let's head back.

[5:00] Teresa Attridge: How many years has it been now?

[5:01] Pauls Macs: You started in 2009, was it?

[5:04] Teresa Attridge: When you first approached each other?

[5:05] Michael R. Jackson: That's what Wikipedia says.

[5:06] Pauls Macs: So now is your time to fact check, right?

[5:08] Teresa Attridge: So I would love to hear more about who approached who, how you started working together, how you heard about one another.

[5:14] Michael R. Jackson: So I saw the film Teeth on DVD in 2009.

[5:18] Pauls Macs: I thought that it would be an interesting piece to adapt.

[5:22] Michael R. Jackson: I approached Anna, who had gone to NYU's grad musical theater writing program, though not in the same year as me.

[5:29] Pauls Macs: I sort of had an instinct that my music was not the right music for this story.

[5:34] Michael R. Jackson: And also I felt it was important that I work with a female collaborator.

[5:38] Pauls Macs: So I approached Anna, whose work I greatly admired, to see if the film struck any chord with her or if she thought there was anything interesting in it.

[5:46] Michael R. Jackson: We watched it together and things sort of took off from there.

[5:49] Teresa Attridge: I love that.

[5:50] Pauls Macs: Then Anna, how did you feel sort of being approached, being like, hey, do you want to watch this horror movie about a woman having teeth in her vagina with me and see if we can make it a musical?

[5:57] Anna K. Jacobs: Was that like an automatic yes or was it a like, I respect you and your vision, I'll kind of see what's going on?

[6:05] Anna K. Jacobs: Before Michael had brought Teeth to me, we had already been talking about wanting to write together.

[6:10] Pauls Macs: And I was also a big fan of Michael's work.

[6:13] Anna K. Jacobs: The way that I had come into contact with it initially was he had come back to our program as an alumni and was collaborating with some of the composers in my cycle.

[6:24] Anna K. Jacobs: And I would sing their work for them.

[6:27] Anna K. Jacobs: And I was immediately smitten with how bold and original and honest and funny his writing was.

[6:36] Pauls Macs: And so I started going to his cabaret shows that he'd do at like the Laurie Beachman or Lincoln Center.

[6:43] Anna K. Jacobs: So we knew we wanted to write together.

[6:45] Anna K. Jacobs: And honestly, I'm somebody who works with a lot of different collaborators.

[6:49] Anna K. Jacobs: But the one thing that all my projects have in common is that I generally start with a collaborator as opposed to a concept.

[6:55] Anna K. Jacobs: Once I know who I want to write with, then the right concept presents itself.

[6:59] Anna K. Jacobs: And in this case, when Michael brought the film to me, and I watched it, I didn't know how it would translate to a stage musical, but I could see what it might be like as a piece that Michael would be working on.

[7:14] Anna K. Jacobs: And I got excited about getting in on that.

[7:17] Anna K. Jacobs: And the more time that I spent with the material, the more excited I got about the enormous journey that that movie took from starting in a place that was more realistic to ending in a place that was very, very heightened and mythological and very much steeped in horror.

[7:36] Anna K. Jacobs: And I could see a real reason for why music needed to be a primary way to tell that story.

[7:43] Anna K. Jacobs: And I also loved the fact that at the center of the story was a young woman exploring her relationship with her body.

[7:49] Pauls Macs: And that was something I had not seen in a stage musical before.

[7:54] Teresa Attridge: Absolutely.

[7:55] Pauls Macs: I love and I mean, really shout out to you, Michael, for being inspired by a piece, but also saying to yourself, like, I want to make sure I have a collaborator who is tied innately to some of these experiences to make sure we're telling as honest a story as possible.

[8:08] Teresa Attridge: That really speaks to the idea of how art is intersectional and collaborative, and that the people we bring into spaces can only make things better if we're making sure that we're all taking a look at it from a particular, you know, place.

[8:21] Pauls Macs: And in this case, it is a young woman talking about sexuality, her body, shame, chastity.

[8:27] Teresa Attridge: The religious thread throughout this entire story to me was really interesting because I feel like we talk about sort of like shame and sexuality a lot specifically for young women.

[8:36] Pauls Macs: But to explore that in the horror genre and the musical genre simultaneously is really, really fascinating.

[8:41] Teresa Attridge: So when you have this idea of body horror, I mean, who better to tell it than a teenage girl?

[8:47] Michael R. Jackson: For sure.

[8:49] Pauls Macs: Yeah.

[8:50] Teresa Attridge: Can you talk to us?

[8:51] Pauls Macs: You've decided to work together to collaborate on this wild horror movie, Teeth.

[8:54] Teresa Attridge: When you decide to do that, what is the process like?

[8:57] Anna K. Jacobs: And I think you said something on an interview I read that like the first thing was deciding where the song should go.

[9:01] Anna K. Jacobs: I think sort of to piggyback off what Therese was asking before, what is really interesting about this project is that Michael and I come from two really different perspectives on it.

[9:11] Anna K. Jacobs: And I think what's successful about the piece is that there's a real marriage of our two differing perspectives and also like own life experiences that we're bringing to the piece.

[9:22] Anna K. Jacobs: Mine was obviously like having an experience as a woman and also a woman who I think occupied a lot of different male dominated spaces over the years, including writing music for musicals.

[9:34] Michael R. Jackson: And I can speak to his more, but it was very much the sort of religious themes inside of the show.

[9:39] Michael R. Jackson: I grew up in a Baptist church.

[9:44] Michael R. Jackson: I was very, you know, had a very religious background, both sort of as a churchgoer, but also involved in the church and church activities.

[9:49] Michael R. Jackson: And so a lot of the themes that were in the film that were about Dawn, our protagonist, sort of dealing with the collision of religious belief and sexual feelings was something that I was very in touch with.

[10:06] Michael R. Jackson: And sort of the thing I've been saying to people is that while I am not actually a teenage girl with teeth in her vagina, teenage evangelical with teeth in her vagina, spiritually, I am.

[10:18] Anna K. Jacobs: I see that.

[10:19] Michael R. Jackson: Because I just understand that push and pull so well and the confusion that comes out of it.

[10:25] Michael R. Jackson: And so that was what I brought to the story.

[10:27] Michael R. Jackson: The first thing that Michael and I did was just talk about the movie a lot and how we would want to treat the movie and what kind of music we imagined for the score.

[10:37] Anna K. Jacobs: I think that something that's really interesting about songwriting, particularly the type of songwriting that we do, where one person is sort of primarily doing the music and the other is primarily doing the lyric, is that people don't recognize that lyrics are music.

[10:50] Michael R. Jackson: They're a musical element.

[10:51] Anna K. Jacobs: So we dove into that together.

[10:54] Anna K. Jacobs: And one thing that we have very much in common is a shared love of Tori Amos.

[10:59] Michael R. Jackson: It shows.

[11:01] Anna K. Jacobs: I think from the get, we were like, we don't yet know how we're going to get there.

[11:05] Anna K. Jacobs: But we know that we want the journey of the score to be one that winds up in that sort of musical world.

[11:11] Michael R. Jackson: So we did a lot of building playlists and chatting about the themes in the show and what our personal connections were to them or how we imagined them being theatricalized.

[11:21] Anna K. Jacobs: And I had this idea of the Promise Keeper Girl ensemble and wanting to use them like a Greek chorus.

[11:26] Michael R. Jackson: That was something that I was very excited about.

[11:29] Anna K. Jacobs: And once we have this sort of stew of ideas, well, initially, we had to take these ideas to Mitchell Lichtenstein, who is the writer director of the film that we were adapting and sort of pitch them to him.

[11:40] Michael R. Jackson: And he was incredible because at the time, you know, we were two 20 year old folks who nobody really knew.

[11:47] Anna K. Jacobs: We were just very passionate about his film.

[11:49] Michael R. Jackson: He really took a chance on us.

[11:51] Anna K. Jacobs: He's an independent filmmaker.

[11:54] Michael R. Jackson: He understood independent artists and he made an arrangement with us that was very generous and has continued to be very generous over the years.

[12:01] Pauls Macs: You mentioned earlier the Promise Keeper Girls.

[12:03] Teresa Attridge: And so I think we should start with Precious Gift.

[12:05] Pauls Macs: Can you set up that song?

[12:07] Anna K. Jacobs: So we start the show with a sort of abstract moment of Dawn and Brad sort of approaching each other in this sort of mythic kind of kabuki theater moment that then turns into we're in a church in a sanctuary with mostly young women and a couple of young men and the character of the pastor preaching about something that has happened in the community.

[12:58] ♪ Musical number: "Precious Gift" — performed by Alyse Alan Louis and the Promise Keeper Girls ♪

[16:10] Michael R. Jackson: Oh man, I went to an all-girls Catholic school and that just really threw me back. Or that guitar at the beginning. I was just like right into the piece. I know there's an overture, but that just brought me right in. It establishes not only the world we're in, but the rules of that world, which is great. Because not only have we set up where we are, we've set up the stakes of where we are. And we've done so in a way that it's fun, it's raucous, it's cool, but it's a lot of information that's also thrown in there for us. I always love when a number is able to get it all done. That's writing, baby! I do this on the podcast, I read lyrics. A precious gift that's only for a husband. A precious gift that comes wrapped in a bow.

A precious gift with no returns or exchanges. I lost it when I heard that. A precious gift with just one chance to bestow. And then a precious gift, my shiny little diamond. A precious gift is not like sushi a la carte. We were rolling in the audience when we heard those. Ah, it's just such a beautiful marriage of your two artistic voices.

[17:01] Anna K. Jacobs: Thank you. So we did that pitch, we got the right, and then we got to work on sort of making an outline. And that entailed many, many, many diner hangs with index cards and sort of coming up with a first pass at a structure for the show. And once we did that, we were jumping in and writing songs and something that was really helpful to us was right around the time that we started writing the show in earnest, which was 2011, I think, we were contacted by Ars Nova, by Kent Nicholson and Jason Egan, who were starting a new writers group there for musical theater writers. And the idea of this program that was called Uncharted was that the first year you would focus on writing songs and your first year would culminate in a concert of songs and you would write some book around the songs, but the emphasis was less on the libretto and more on coming up with the meat and potato songs.

And then the second year, you develop that into a full script and you got a 29-hour reading with actors and that really lit a fire under our asses. By the end of those two years, we had developed a full script and a full score.

[18:12] Michael R. Jackson: I think some of the earliest songs that we wrote were the theme song Teeth, which I think that was the first song we wrote, but we wrote it as a duet for Brad and Dawn. So it was a very, very different kind of iteration from the one that's in the show now. The Dr. Godfrey song from Girls Like You, because we knew that that was a really iconic scene from the movie that needed to be somewhat lifted and not fooled around with too much. Modest is Hottest was really, really early. Born Again, though it was not really a song for Ryan so much as a song for a character who no longer exists in the show called Kim, who was Dawn's mother, who's now passed away by the time the story starts, and actually possessed a lot of the qualities that ultimately our pastor character came to possess. We had one outing of Kim when we did our 29-hour reading and Orfeh played her. It was incredible. I'm obsessed with Orfeh. That's fantastic. And then we had to cut the character.

[19:13] Anna K. Jacobs: Oh, no.

[19:14] Michael R. Jackson: But we have a lot of happy memories from that experience. And I'm Your Guy was another early, early song. I think the first person who ever sang that one was Alex Brightman.

[19:24] Anna K. Jacobs: Oh, my God. Incredible.

[19:25] Michael R. Jackson: So let's go to Modest is Hottest. Can you set that up, please?

[19:30] Anna K. Jacobs: Modest is Hottest is a moment not that long after Precious Gift where Dawn is talking to the Promise Keeper Girls initially about it's a continuation of what Pastor was talking about earlier, and Toby, Dawn's boyfriend, interrupts, and Dawn sends the Promise Keeper Girls on a break, and she asks him how everything went sort of on the other side of the town with the boys in dealing with the fallout from Amy Sue and getting pregnant by her boyfriend, Brock, who was on the basketball team with Toby, the Eden High Crossbearers. And he tells her that it was sort of a disaster, but that talking to Brock and the other guys about what had happened, reminding him about how perfect Dawn was, and that even the way he dresses sort of epitomizes the purity movement that they both are a part of should be. And that sort of tips us into the song moment.

[20:22] Michael R. Jackson: Yeah, I was going to just add that whereas Precious Gift is sort of our stab at writing a Christian pop number, Modest is Hottest is sort of us taking a stab at a kind of boy band number. All right. Here is Modest is Hottest, performed by Jason Gotay and Alyse Alan Louis.

[20:41] ♪ Musical number: "Modest is Hottest" — performed by Jason Gotay and Alyse Alan Louis ♪

[24:01] Anna K. Jacobs: Boy band vibes, for sure. It's like a slow jam about purity, but boy bandy. I love any song that makes me jam, but also makes me furious because that character pisses me off so much. I think that without giving too many spoilers away, you know, for a movie that's been out for 17 years and a musical that's currently playing, I think all of the promise and then the betrayal, like the inevitable betrayal of Toby and sort of that initial shocking moment for Dawn, the realization of the dentata being a part of her. The song, it's a fantasy, right? It's this idea of, yeah, this is this idea of what's going on in this. And later when she says that she felt set up and that therefore it's her fault for not seeing it, you know, it does tie into the biblical story and imagery of we always blame Eve and we never blame the devil. It's a woman's fault that man fell.

[24:56] Michael R. Jackson: Welcome to Backstage Pass! I'm Michael R. Jackson.

[25:16] Anna K. Jacobs: And I'm Anna K. Jacobs.

[25:36] Michael R. Jackson: We're excited to talk about our musical, Teeth.

[26:02] Anna K. Jacobs: Yes, Teeth is a project that we've been working on for a while now.

[26:22] Michael R. Jackson: It follows the story of Dawn O'Keefe, a charismatic leader of a Christian youth group.

[26:42] Anna K. Jacobs: Dawn grapples with her own sexual desires while dealing with her strict religious upbringing.

[27:00] Michael R. Jackson: The show explores themes of religious oppression and female sexuality.

[27:10] Anna K. Jacobs: It's based on the cult film of the same name, which adds an interesting layer to the narrative.

[27:20] Michael R. Jackson: And when Dawn is violated, she discovers a shocking secret power.

[27:40] Anna K. Jacobs: Yes, her body physically fights back against sexual assault, giving her "teeth" against her attackers.

[27:50] Michael R. Jackson: It's a powerful metaphor for bodily autonomy and empowerment.

[28:10] Anna K. Jacobs: The music really reflects the emotional journey of the characters.

[28:30] Michael R. Jackson: Absolutely, and we have some incredible songs in the show.

[28:50] Anna K. Jacobs: One of the songs is called “Precious Gift,” performed by Alyse Alan Louis and the Promise Keeper Girls.

[29:10] Michael R. Jackson: That song really sets the tone for Dawn's journey.

[29:20] Anna K. Jacobs: Another standout is “Modest is Hottest,” performed by Jason Gotay and Alyse Alan Louis.

[29:40] Michael R. Jackson: It’s a fun yet thought-provoking number that challenges societal norms.

[30:00] Anna K. Jacobs: And then there's “Shame in My Body,” also performed by Alyse Alan Louis.

[30:20] Michael R. Jackson: Each song plays a crucial role in developing the story and characters.

[30:48] Anna K. Jacobs: We really wanted to create a musical that resonates with audiences on multiple levels.

[30:58] Michael R. Jackson: And I think we’ve done that with Teeth.

[31:26] Anna K. Jacobs: It’s been a labor of love, and we’re thrilled to share it with everyone.

[31:36] Michael R. Jackson: Thank you for joining us on this journey.

[31:46] Anna K. Jacobs: We can’t wait for you to experience Teeth.

[31:56] Michael R. Jackson: Stay tuned for more insights and behind-the-scenes stories.

[32:06] Anna K. Jacobs: And don’t forget to check out our website for more information.

[32:26] Michael R. Jackson: Yes, visit teeththemusical.com for updates and details.

[32:46] Anna K. Jacobs: We appreciate your support as we bring this important story to life.

[32:56] Michael R. Jackson: It’s all about creating a dialogue and challenging perceptions.

[33:16] Anna K. Jacobs: Exactly, and we hope to inspire others through our work.

[33:36] Michael R. Jackson: Thank you for listening to Backstage Pass.

[33:56] Anna K. Jacobs: We’ll see you next time!

[34:16] Michael R. Jackson: Bye for now!

[34:36] Anna K. Jacobs: Bye!

[34:56] Michael R. Jackson: And remember, keep the conversation going.

[35:16] Anna K. Jacobs: Yes, let’s keep lifting each other up.

[35:36] Michael R. Jackson: Until next time!

[35:56] Anna K. Jacobs: Bye!

[36:16] Michael R. Jackson: Take care!

[36:26] Anna K. Jacobs: Bye!

[36:36] Michael R. Jackson: See you soon!

[36:46] Anna K. Jacobs: Bye!

[36:56] Michael R. Jackson: Thanks for joining us!

[37:06] Anna K. Jacobs: Bye!

[37:16] Michael R. Jackson: Bye!