This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Broadway Podcast Network: The Game Boy Part 2.

[0:22] 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.

[0:35] Get your Backstage Pass. Get your Backstage Pass. There's a new adventure starting out today.

[0:50] Today. And I'll fly to the stars. And I'll fight all the odds. Now's the time. Now it's right. Now it's fair to say. Now it's my turn to play.

[1:39] You're listening to "My Turn to Play" from The Game Boy. Welcome back to Part 2 of our conversation with Sharone Sayegh and Danny J Rooney about this exciting new musical. The Game Boy follows the story of Omari, a Middle Eastern high school gamer who struggles to fit in with his all-American peers and wishes he'd be more like the majorly cool heroes behind the screen. When he stumbles upon a world-warping wormhole in his school's bathroom stall and gets flushed down the pipes, Omari finds himself in an 8-bit alternate universe having to face his real-world obstacles manifested as gnarly video game foes. Part Super Mario, part Spaceballs, part The NeverEnding Story, The Game Boy is taking musicals to the next level. Listen all the way to the end for a game where we decide which musicals should be transformed into video games.

[2:22] Just to kind of bring it back to this whole ethnicity thing, these games became a part of American pop culture, right? And it was like what everyone was doing as a child in the 80s or the 90s. If you can't connect with me because we look different and our names are different and you have different lunches in your lunchbox, maybe we can connect because we both play this video game together. In terms of video games being inspirational, I think that's actually a great segue into the song "Level Up" because of all the songs I heard, this is one that I immediately thought to myself, oh, I know this tune. Yeah, "Level Up" is a song that basically it's our fun and games song. It's an incredible medley of Omari going from, well, we have a few things going, Omari going from level to level.

He's collecting coins. At the same time, we have the princess and Didi going through the castle trying to escape. And at the same time, we have Lou who has found himself in the game world being chased by ghosts and sleepy fish and a silly green dinosaur. It gives us a lot of the Easter eggs that we want. And it also is, I mean, I imagine, huge dancing and amazing puppetry and whatever. So yes, this is going through the levels.

[3:28] Yeah, and it's kind of like a montage, I would say. At this point, like the way that we recorded the demo was kind of like, this is the basic musical structure, but the song could be much longer, much shorter, depending on how it's eventually staged and which levels we wind up showing on stage and that kind of stuff.

[3:42] And who is performing this song? A number of people. This is an older demo. It's just piano. So Sharone is on there. I'm actually on there. We're the first two voices you'll hear. Natalie Gallo's on there. The Incredible Jeigh Madjus is on there. John Wascavage. Emily Goglia. Emily Golia, however you say her name. We love her. So a number of people.

[4:04] I love it. That's incredible. You know what? I'm going to say here is "Level Up" from The Game Boy.

[4:10] ♪ Musical number: "Level Up" — performed by Sharone Sayegh, Danny J Rooney, Jeigh Madjus, Emily Goglia, John Wascavage, and Natalie Gallo ♪

[6:00] This is the song that gets stuck in my head so. It's from like the star music right from Super Mario. It's loosely based, you know, it's not obviously the same. It's not the same. An homage, not an interlude. It immediately transported me to that game. And I was thinking, oh, but expands on that original melody in such an interesting way with all the different voices growing and growing and growing. And what we sort of failed to say before setting it up is that the people singing this song are mostly our mushlings. Our ensemble mushlings who are kind of like, I always say they're like eclectic but they're the super eclectic band of people.

[6:35] Mushroom people. Mushroom people. They're kind of jazzy, they're kind of hippie. They have their own energy. They've got their own energy. They are peak NPC. I gotta say. They do. And they are really good at tight harmony. As they must be. It's amazing. This song is in fact going on my workout playlist. I'm going to be like fully just kettlebell-ing, ready to go. What's fun in the show is that, and especially with bigger orchestrations, you know what's amazing in this song is that this is another medley type song. That the music never stops, but you have a bunch of funny scenes within it. You know, you go to our bad guy and his assistant and you go to Omari getting to his thing. And there's actually more to this song than you're hearing. There's a whole, there's kind of a whole bridge section where he faces off against one particular bad guy, which this is so weird. But if you've played the games, you know who Birdo is.

[7:32] Oh, Birdo. We just had to put, it's sort of this homage to Birdo, which I love the Birdo in the original translation from the Japanese game. The original translation in the booklet that comes with the game says Birdo is a man who prefers to dress like a woman and be called Catherine. Catherine. That's literally what it said. I'm paraphrasing, but I literally was like, well, that's amazing. I was like, so that's Catherine. So there's a really, really fun bridge section. So funny. There's also a peak ocarina joke in here. I'm like, oh my God. I'm impressed. Oh, listen. I mean, I didn't come here. I didn't. I didn't come here to play games. I came here to talk about playing games.

[8:20] Okay. Yes. Yes. But no. There's a hedgehog. Oh, yeah. There's a reference to it. It's exciting. It's very inclusive. Even if there is a basis of inspiration, the fact that it's able to take so many nostalgia nuggets and leave them there for us to gobble up. Little like spoilers for the gamers. Be like, ooh, love that. Or the Konami code. Up, up, down, down, left, left, right, right is in there. Oh my gosh. It's like a visceral feeling. You like hear it or see it and you're like, ah, your thumbs are moving. And as the show goes on, I also feel like the tone of the show kind of changes as it goes on. It definitely starts really, really fun and really 80s and all of that and really poppy, you know, and as the show continues to go, it gets darker. The music, I think, gets darker. We have like some Mortal Kombat, some Street Fighter stuff going on. It starts to have all the colors. I think that's a great opportunity to talk about your villain.

[9:15] Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. I'd love to hear the genesis of that character. Boxer. Oh, Genesis, Sega Genesis. I'd love to learn how you came up with that character or made the translation for that character into your world. Yeah. Boxer is this really fun character. He's kind of part Doctor Evil and part The Wizard and Wicked before you see him. You know what I mean? There's a little bit of that in the high school scene in the beginning in the opening number. A lot of people have parallels and there's a character in the beginning who is a parallel to Boxer and is the bully who basically sharpies a mustache across Omari's face and, you know, kind of bullies him and Omari ends up locking himself in the bathroom.

So when Omari does get there, Boxer and Omari don't meet until the end, until he gets to the end of the game. So this character Boxer was sort of this, he's the eternal bully. But the fact of the matter is that we don't want to give too much away. But there is something that he's really insecure about, too. And we play with that. It's funny, but it's also it's real. And I think that there's some things in the game. It's hard to not give things away. There's things in the game that we use to get him there.

[10:24] Absolutely. No, the whole to spoil or not to spoil question is very sometimes difficult to answer for this podcast. But I love that you just said insecurity. And I think it'd be great if you would set up "Control."

[10:36] Oh, yeah. Well, "Control," I mean, is essentially what Boxer is looking for and wants. And this song is a trio. This song is when the princess is about to be betrothed to Boxer. Against her will. Against her will. He wants control of her land. And so that's how he's going to get it. This is Boxer and the princess and also Boxer's assistant, who we call Spakitu, who is very reference to another character from the games. They are very, very funny. The character. That travels by cloud. This is sort of them preparing for the nuptials. Who knows how this will be staged? But it's almost like these three people singing this trio are not necessarily like together singing together. You just hear like each individual like, you know, in a monologue kind of thing. But then it sounds fierce all together. It blends very well.

[11:29] And who is performing the song? OK, so this is Jeigh Madjus playing two roles. He's doing the voice of Boxer and the voice of Spakitu because somebody got sick and couldn't come. And amazing. Yeah. You know, fabulous. He can sing anything. He's incredible. We love Jeigh. And this is once again, the incredible Autumn Hurlburt. Incredible. Awesome. Here is "Control" performed by Jeigh Madjus and Autumn Hurlburt.

[12:17] ♪ Musical number: "Control" — performed by Jeigh Madjus and Autumn Hurlburt ♪

[14:06] Sharone Sayegh: This is a villain anthem. I have to plug, just because we haven't said it yet, our amazing, amazing arranger orchestrator, Steven Gemayel. He's the one bringing all of this. We love him. He's been on the project for so long, and he's incredible. So we had to plug him. He's a big reason why these demos sound awesome. They sound really great. You mentioned earlier that the music gets darker and has a different feeling. When people listen to this podcast, they'll hear the difference from the first song we played, "Maiden in Distress," to this song and those musical colors. They really create the world of the show. Boxer doesn't have as many songs, but it's very clear. You get the feeling of who that person is from this song.

[15:06] Danny J Rooney: Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you say that because Boxer's intro song, the first time we as an audience meet him, I think you're expecting it to sound something like what we just heard, but it sounds totally different.

[15:18] Sharone Sayegh: Very old school Broadway.

[15:20] Danny J Rooney: Which I think is a fun way to flip this evil villain on his head. Then we do give you this villainous song at the end that I'm hoping, once this is all big Broadway musical, then when 54 Below does Villain's Night on Broadway, I'm just going to sing this song.

[15:33] Sharone Sayegh: Oh, absolutely. We're bringing it back.

[15:35] Danny J Rooney: Yeah, his first song is very almost cutesy, soft chew, and then it kind of goes into a CeeLo Green-like "Forget You" place. His first song's really fun. I'm a person who, look, I love 80s music, and I love Cyndi Lauper, and then I love Journey, and then I love Meatloaf. And so that's sort of where we go.

[15:50] Sharone Sayegh: I love that. That leads into a question that I have. When you are creating music that's supposed to feel fresh and new, but also have this sense of nostalgia that you root yourself to, as a musician and a composer, do you start with what are the instruments or what are the sounds, what are the arrangements that feel nostalgic, or do you start with your own original music and then sort of layer those things in?

[16:12] Danny J Rooney: For me, I definitely start with a style. I start with a style that I'm interested in. I sort of like to find a hook, you know? I like to find something catchy. I like that. And something that I really like to try to find something that sounds like you've maybe—why do I feel like I've heard this before? But it's also fresh and new. You know what I mean? I think, you know, I was even watching a thing the other day about Alan Menken, who I love, and working on music for "Beauty and the Beast," and he goes song by song, and he's like, yeah, well, this song is basically Beethoven's this, and I made it sound kind of like that. And that's why it sounds so exciting and familiar to you. I mean, sometimes it just pops into my head. Sometimes the music and lyrics just pop into my head. But other times, I'll listen to a ton of Meatloaf. I'll, like, listen to a ton of Meatloaf and be like, okay, now where do I go?

[17:01] Sharone Sayegh: That's helpful info, because one of the goals of this podcast is for musical theater writers who might hear this and be like, oh, that's a really good approach to writing something like that.

[17:11] Danny J Rooney: Barnacles, you know it, you love it. It's game time. And game time for the Game Boy. Could there be a better scenario? This game is one we like to call Nintendo Raimi, which I'm not gonna lie, I'm very proud of. I'm very proud of you, Teresa. That's one of the best ones you've come up with.

[17:33] Sharone Sayegh: That would have been for all of us, because without each other, it never would have happened. And the idea is, if you could pick any musical in the canon, which one would you most love to experience as an old school Nintendo video game? A couple of examples of things you could choose. So like, I thought "Into the Woods" is so fun, because you're like hunting for items, you're trying to find things to put it together. You have the first thing you think is the big bad, just kidding, a second giant appears. Or I was like, honestly, it's Pokémon, but it's just cats. Like you're just trying to collect all the cats.

[18:05] Danny J Rooney: Oh, yeah.

[18:06] Sharone Sayegh: And you're just like, I found a shiny old Deuteronomy. This is crazy.

[18:12] Danny J Rooney: Oh my god, that's so funny.

[18:14] Sharone Sayegh: And then the end of the Heaviside Lair, done.

[18:16] Danny J Rooney: Oh, right, the end has to be the Heaviside Lair.

[18:17] Sharone Sayegh: Which is really just, the tire is the champion circle. You know what I mean? It's incredible. So those would be my two. I also threw in "Curtains," because I like the idea of murder mystery games, because I like a mystery game. And I feel like "Curtains" would be so camp as a little video game.

[18:34] Danny J Rooney: Yeah.

[18:35] Sharone Sayegh: Oh, yeah, that would be really fun. I have a couple ideas.

[18:38] Danny J Rooney: Ooh, throw them out.

[18:39] Sharone Sayegh: Throw them out.

[18:40] Danny J Rooney: Oh yeah.

[18:41] Sharone Sayegh: I'm gonna go probably with like two, two of my favorite musicals. First, I'm gonna go "Little Shop of Horrors." I think there's a world of "Little Shop of Horrors." Both of these I think would probably be kind of RPG. "Little Shop," it's like you have to go battle people to get them back and feed your plant and it grows. And then in the end, you have to battle the plant.

[19:01] Danny J Rooney: Oh my gosh.

[19:02] Sharone Sayegh: Or you have to battle the dentist as you're leveling up to get to the plant.

[19:06] Danny J Rooney: Exactly. I think that there's something there. I also always kind of thought there's something about "Little Shop" and our show at the Game Boy. There's something about the characters that are kind of similar.

[19:16] Sharone Sayegh: I love that.

[19:17] Danny J Rooney: Oh, there's an Amari-Seymour symmetry there for—

[19:20] Sharone Sayegh: There's Deemari.

[19:21] Danny J Rooney: And the princess and Audrey. There's something there. There's something about the piranha plant and Audrey too.

[19:25] Sharone Sayegh: It's happening.

[19:26] Danny J Rooney: You know? Your character does not go on the Faustian journey that Seymour does. Your character finds their strength without killing other people.

[19:33] Sharone Sayegh: That we know of.

[19:34] Danny J Rooney: Right.

[19:35] Sharone Sayegh: Faustian.

[19:36] Danny J Rooney: Faustian.

[19:37] Sharone Sayegh: Right. So, and my other one that I would say, I'm like interested in like a "Legally Blonde" situation.

[19:42] Danny J Rooney: Oh my gosh.

[19:43] Sharone Sayegh: I'm interested in like Elle Woods.

[19:44] Danny J Rooney: You don't know what you've done. You don't know what you've done.

[19:47] Sharone Sayegh: I mean, can you imagine Elle Woods as this badass heroine who she's like, I got to get to law school. Then I got to try to get my ex back. But then you know what? No, I have to get this other person. And then, I don't know, like I got to get—

[19:59] Danny J Rooney: You have to carry the dog the whole time.

[20:01] Sharone Sayegh: And then I got to get Orfeh's dog back.

[20:03] Danny J Rooney: Yes. You have to get Orfeh's dog back. We're not editing that.

[20:06] Sharone Sayegh: Yeah.

[20:07] Danny J Rooney: Oh my God. The thing you're not realizing is that Teresa always says Elle Woods as the answer. Almost every game we have, Elle Woods or "Legally Blonde" is the answer. And every time I decide, I'm like, I'm going to pick a different show. We need variety. The guest without fail always picks Elle Woods.

[20:22] Sharone Sayegh: Basically, it's the perfect example.

[20:23] Danny J Rooney: Okay, go. Okay. One of my favorite t-shirts that I've ever seen around Hell's Kitchen, it just says Revive "Legally Blonde."

[20:29] Sharone Sayegh: Truly.

[20:30] Danny J Rooney: Get Autumn on the phone.

[20:31] Sharone Sayegh: That's just all it says.

[20:33] Danny J Rooney: I know, right?

[20:34] Sharone Sayegh: Yeah, right? Okay, this is my answer. It's "Hairspray." And Tracy has to like kill all the racists.

[20:39] Danny J Rooney: I love that.

[20:40] Sharone Sayegh: And then as she kills enough racists, her like beehive grows.

[20:42] Danny J Rooney: She runs.

[20:43] Sharone Sayegh: Oh my gosh, the hair gets bigger.

[20:46] Danny J Rooney: And then, yeah, the hair gets bigger. And maybe she can kill people with her can of hairspray maybe.

[20:51] Sharone Sayegh: It's kind of almost Street Fighter-esque in that it's like the dance moves are the battle moves.

[20:56] Danny J Rooney: Yes.

[20:57] Sharone Sayegh: And maybe like you get better hairsprays that are more intense. It's like power up, you know?

[21:01] Danny J Rooney: Yes.

[21:03] Sharone Sayegh: Ultra clutch, ultra super clutch, ultra super mega clutch, ultra super mega clutch, crunch go.

[21:09] Danny J Rooney: Three double dragon.

[21:10] Sharone Sayegh: Keeps going. I love that. I absolutely love.

[21:12] Danny J Rooney: Howz, did you have one that you wanted to throw in?

[21:15] Sharone Sayegh: Yeah, what's your answer?

[21:16] Danny J Rooney: Yeah, well, funnily enough, I actually play a game right now. There's one game I've been playing for a very long time, and it's Metal Gear Solid V, The Phantom Pain. And the Metal Gear series is probably my favorite video game series. To compare 8-bit to modern day gaming. It used to be that you could just beat the game. But this game, you have to get 100% completion, which is just so annoying. I was thinking, okay, if I were to make a video game that's based off a musical, what would I do? And I would do "Les Miserables." Because I just envision Jean Valjean creeping like Solid Snake through the sewers of Paris and then creeping around the barricades. And then there's a barricade battle. That's where my mind immediately went.

[21:54] Sharone Sayegh: Yeah.

[21:55] Danny J Rooney: No, I know that's kind of cheating, because I play it on PS3. I know there's like a PS5 now, but I'm on PS3. But there's also an 8-bit. There's an 8-bit Metal Gear. The original was 8-bit. So I'm counting it because you can still like sneak around and there's all the elements to what Metal Gear is now. The other one I also thought "Into the Woods" because Final Fantasy VII is my other favorite video game of all time on the PS1. It's funny, that's a game where I still carry the storytelling engagement that that game brought with me in some capacity.

[22:25] Sharone Sayegh: Yeah.

[22:26] Danny J Rooney: And honestly, as we were just chatting, I was thinking about dating sims and "Company."

[22:29] Sharone Sayegh: "Company" is a dating sim like Bobby.

[22:31] Danny J Rooney: Oh, that's so funny.

[22:32] Sharone Sayegh: And you can be Bobby with a Y or Bobby with an I and you know, you can customize your experience.

[22:39] Danny J Rooney: Oh my god. Well, speaking of personal experience, you just made me think like, okay, wait, what if "Fan's Visit" was a video game and you like have to try to communicate in other languages? You're trying to get to Petah Tikva, obviously, right? But you start in Beit Hatikva. And so like, in order to get to the next level, you have to communicate and if you can't communicate, you have to like play an instrument, a musical language. And then there has to be like a roller skating.

[23:03] Sharone Sayegh: It's very RPG. Yeah, you can go talk to the guy waiting at the telephone the whole time being like, have they called?

[23:07] Danny J Rooney: Yeah.

[23:08] Sharone Sayegh: Oh my gosh. Yeah. That song, that song still on my personal playlist, you know, and I listen and I love you answer me. Oh my gosh. Well, those were amazing answers. And Danny and Tyrone, it's been so wonderful to talk with you. Now, I'm sure the listeners are excited to see what's going on next or support your show. Can you just talk a little bit about the journey of the Game Boy and what's going on next with the show?

[23:29] Danny J Rooney: Yeah. So one thing we're really excited about, we're actually not allowed to exactly say what it is, but we are semi-finalists for a very big, exciting musical theater conference. We're not allowed to say which one but send us your good vibes and hopefully that will pan out this year. Because I think that will help us really get this show out of the lot.

[23:50] Sharone Sayegh: Yes, we're sending power ups. We're sending as many power ups as we can.

[23:54] Danny J Rooney: Send us power ups. You can also mail us mushrooms. I mean, not to literally, I mean, the number of times we say it to like level up. We've both worked on other shows. And you know, Sharone's worked on a million, done so many readings and stuff. And that's all well and good. It's important to do readings and all of that. We're excited to get this show up on its feet. We're exploring directors, other—we are communicating with people and trying to get this, whether it's a workshop on its feet or a small production with a university or something. That's where we're actively working on. As you know, we recorded these demos through, we got a little grant through the Jeffrey Ellison Spark Grant, which was really exciting in collaboration with Open Jar Studios. We're excited to have these demos. We have a couple of lyric videos that we're excited about that we're going to put out there onto the social things.

[24:40] Sharone Sayegh: And speaking of putting things out. Oh yeah. Specifically for you listeners, we just put up our new website, right? And if you go to our website, yes, you can listen to some demos, watch some videos. But if you've ever played one of these games before, you know that when you hit a certain thing, something secret and magical might pop out. So we've hidden a little secret Easter egg on our website. So if you go to our website and you punch the blank, you might find a little secret special surprise.

[25:09] Danny J Rooney: Oh my gosh. You gamified your website, the layers on layers on layers. And it all started with a two player team, the two of you. I love that.

[25:19] Sharone Sayegh: So if you go to thegameboymusical.com and then, you know, scroll all around and look for something you might punch in the game and you'll get a little, a little nice little Easter egg.

[25:29] Danny J Rooney: Yeah. The other thing you'll find is the New Work series presentation for New York Theater Barn. And that's really something that would be exciting for people to watch, especially I love the opening sequence in the high school when Amari first went to school. And you can see that stage with music stands, but you can you can use your imagination to see the potential of this piece. And it's a really fantastic opportunity. You can also see the performances from the 54 Below concert. So a great place to check out if you want to continue to support the Game Boy and see more.

[25:57] Sharone Sayegh: Yes. And go on social and follow us on, you know, we're on Instagram and we have an Instagram and a YouTube. You know, it's interesting. Like we were for so long, I think, nervous to put some of our materials out there because we were like, what if we change this song or this scene? And we're like, what if somebody steals this from us? We're like, I don't know. We were so in our heads about it. And then like this past year, we were like, enough is enough. Let's just put our stuff out there. We're not like publishing the script if we want to make changes, we can. How are people going to know about it? And how are people going to help support it if they don't know about it? We're just trying to put ourselves out there more and encourage anybody listening to do the same and support. I always say that a song that you cut isn't gone. It's just going to be the song that that one girl auditions with for college auditions to be better than everyone else. And that's okay.

[26:42] Danny J Rooney: Yeah. Oh, I love that. I also think write the song because if you cut the song, Newsflash, my turn to play that we listened to used to be a song that Lou sang with totally different lyrics and a totally different melody. We cut it. And now the true fans know.

[26:57] Sharone Sayegh: Yeah, you know, there you go. Now we just got to write Lou a new song.

[27:02] Danny J Rooney: There we go. Something new for Lou.

[27:04] Sharone Sayegh: Speaking of ideas being stolen, if we ever see "Les Miserables" or "Legally Blonde," the video game.

[27:08] Danny J Rooney: You will have to contact my attorney. Absolutely. Absolutely. Intellectual property.

[27:13] Sharone Sayegh: Well, Dani, Sharon, thank you so much for being here with us today and for sharing the Game Boy. We've had such a great time speaking with you.

[27:20] Danny J Rooney: Thank you for having us. It was a really lovely conversation. And we're really excited to just keep working on it. So we really appreciate the support.

[27:26] Sharone Sayegh: Total blast. Thank you so much.

[27:28] Danny J Rooney: And of course, Barnacles, we love you. So we're so happy you could join us that you stick with us as Barnacles do. We will see y'all next time. Hear y'all. See y'all. Podcast.

[27:40] Sharone Sayegh: Thanks for listening.

[27:45] Teresa Attridge: Thanks for joining us on New York Theatre Barn's Backstage Pass, hosted by Teresa Attridge and Pauls Macs. And if you believe in supporting original culture-shifting musicals, please like, subscribe and share.