This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:02] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation.

[0:14] David Armstrong: The podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process.

[0:25] David Armstrong: I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode a story worth writing.

[0:30] David Armstrong: My guests today are writers Bob Martin and Chad Begulin.

[0:35] David Armstrong: Bob Martin is perhaps best known as the co-creator and original star of the hit Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone.

[0:42] David Armstrong: And he also co-created what I think is one of the greatest and most hilarious TV series of all time, Slings and Arrows.

[0:50] David Armstrong: If you've never seen it, I highly recommend that you find it and stream it immediately.

[0:54] David Armstrong: Chad Begulin is a six-time Tony nominee who wrote the book and lyrics for the Broadway musicals The Wedding Singer and Disney's Aladdin.

[1:03] David Armstrong: Together, they collaborated on the book for Elf the Musical, as well as the show they joined me to talk about today, The Prom.

[1:10] David Armstrong: The Prom is currently on tour across America and opens at Seattle's Fifth Avenue Theater, My Old Stomping Grounds, on May 31st.

[1:19] David Armstrong: Then over the summer, it will play San Francisco, Dallas, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Bloomington, Indiana, and Buffalo, New York.

[1:27] David Armstrong: In this episode, Bob and Chad take us inside the creation and eight-year development of The Prom, including the real events that inspired it.

[1:36] David Armstrong: And they also give us at least a hint about the real people that some of the leading characters are modeled on.

[1:41] David Armstrong: More on that later.

[1:43] David Armstrong: In addition, they share the very important impact that the story and themes of the show have had and continue to have on audiences who see it.

[1:52] David Armstrong: I've done several episodes exploring the question of whether any work of art, especially an upbeat musical comedy, can actually be a force for positive, tangible change in our society.

[2:03] David Armstrong: As you will hear, this is one show where I can definitively say the answer is yes.

[2:09] David Armstrong: Here we go.

[2:10] David Armstrong: So welcome, Bob and Chad to Broadway Nation.

[2:13] David Armstrong: I'm so thrilled to have you with us today.

[2:15] David Armstrong: So excited to talk about The Prom.

[2:17] Bob Martin: Yay, glad to be here.

[2:18] Chad Begulin: Yeah, nice to be here.

[2:20] David Armstrong: Let's start at the inspiration for the show. What inspired this show to happen? I know our friend Jack Vertell had something to do with it. And writers often talk about the hardest thing about a show is coming up with the idea for it. So where did this idea come from?

[2:33] Chad Begulin: Yeah, well, this one was ripped from the headlines, basically. But Jack Fertell came up with the comic concept for a show that was inspired by actual events. Do you remember that whole meeting in his office, Chad?

[2:47] Bob Martin: Yeah, it was a very sad. Do you remember what you—oh no?

[2:50] Chad Begulin: I don't do dates.

[2:54] Bob Martin: A long time ago.

[2:55] Chad Begulin: Yeah, it was pretty funny. Jack had this idea, and he was working with Casey on a show for Encos, and he said, I have this idea, and I think it should be Bob, Matt, and Chad and you and come into my office. And so he basically said, you know, there are all these kids that are not allowed to bring their same-sex partners to the prom. And it was story after story kept coming out about this. And he had the idea that what if these sort of down in their luck Broadway actors who get crucified in the Times review of their new show, decide they need to get some good publicity. So they go down and try and make everything right. And of course, they're horrible narcissists and make everything 10 times worse. But you know, in the end, both sides grow and sort of learn to accept the other side. From the very beginning, the central premise of the show was right there.

[3:41] Bob Martin: Absolutely.

[3:42] Chad Begulin: Yeah, Jack just expressed it very economically. These Broadway people come down and try and help. That was basically what he said. And then we extrapolated from that the sort of celebrity activist angle and their vanity and the fact that they knew nothing about the Midwest, and this sort of Republican-Democrat kind of blue and red sort of conflict. And it all just sort of grew out of a very strong comic idea.

[4:05] David Armstrong: So you've been given this idea. It's very intriguing and seemed like a great idea. But then the hard part is actually then turning that into a story and then a show. What was your process there? And talk a little bit about your collaborators first who aren't with us today. There's four of you building the show off of Jack's idea. Chad, talk about your partner in crime.

[4:21] Chad Begulin: Matthew Sklar is the composer, and I've worked with him since the 90s. He and I—we first worked with Bob and Casey on the musical Elf. That's when we sort of all realized we got along really well and sort of were able to feel comfortable enough to spitball bad ideas and improve on each other's thoughts. So Casey Nicholaw, who I had worked on, Elf and Aladdin, which of course we did one of our out-of-towns at York Theater there. So we basically just sort of sat in a room and tried to figure out basic treatment or outline. And then Bob and I would go off and write scenes. Matt and I would go off and write songs, and we would get back together and read it out loud, or sometimes if we were lucky enough, we'd get some friends and actors to read it for us. And that was sort of the process. It was just a lot of what if this happens, what if that happens? Sort of a thing. But we outlined it fairly quickly, right?

[5:09] Bob Martin: Yeah, yeah, we did.

[5:10] Chad Begulin: And that outline changed a million times, especially at two. But yeah, we sort of were able to dive in pretty quickly. Like I remember this project being—I mean, it did change, the details changed, but the actual shape of the show remained pretty well set after the first outline that we created, which we created in just about a week. The whole show took eight years to develop. But you know, it's a tribute to Jack's comic sensibility that the idea was clear enough that we knew we would end with the fake prom in act one, and we knew we would end with a real prom. It's always that top of the second act stuff that's a little bit tricky. But basically, the shape of the show presented itself very early on.

[5:48] David Armstrong: And did you do much research on the real-life events that had inspired it? How much is it based on actual facts, or is it a lot of things put together?

[5:56] Chad Begulin: Yeah, it's a lot of things put together, basically. Yeah, because unfortunately there were many of these incidents. And then we tried to apply as much of our own experience with prejudice and fear and everything. Wouldn't you agree, Chad?

[6:07] Chad Begulin: Yeah, I definitely think you know, we did our out of town, and we sort of realized, and this was from Casey, that it felt a little bit like these musical theater people were going to a musical theater town. It wasn't real enough. I'm from a small town in the Midwest that has a lot of the same issues that our town that we made up has. Factories are closing, it used to be a coal miner's town, just sort of everybody's worried about money and everybody's looking for somebody else to blame. And so, as far as any research, there was a lot of just sort of talking about what was going on in my town and how that sort of was, you know, a mirror of a lot of towns like it. And of course, you're dealing with a universal event, one of the few nearly universal events in the world, the prom, where everyone has either gone to the prom or didn't go to the prom, but the prom was looming in their lives in some way.

[6:55] David Armstrong: Did your personal experiences with the prom enter into this? Did you draw from anything from the four of you?

[7:01] Chad Begulin: Oh, yes. You want to talk about the costume, Barry's costume?

[7:05] Bob Martin: Yeah.

[7:06] Chad Begulin: Um, uh, yeah, I went to the prom and I wore a silver tux with turquoise matching contacts that made my eyes turn blue to match my tie. Like that whole thing is ripped from my hideous prom outfit. I've had fashion choices. From day one, everybody was sort of telling funny stories about their own proms or dances or homecoming or whatever it is, and they're all so ripe because everything seems so desperately important, and it's so not. And it was great to sort of hear everybody else's tales of woe from whatever dance it was. And everybody had them.

[7:39] Bob Martin: Yeah, nobody was like, oh, it was everything went great.

[7:43] David Armstrong: And Bob, is this a Canadian experience as well? Is the American prom replicated in Canada?

[7:48] Bob Martin: To be perfectly honest, no, it isn't. At least when I was in school, prom wasn't a thing. And then again, maybe it was, I wasn't told about it. That's entirely possible. But I do remember seniors dance, but we didn't have the same prom kind of the importance, the heavy weight of that sort of coming out life or death events.

[8:07] Chad Begulin: Yeah, yeah, we didn't have that. We certainly didn't have people spending thousands of dollars on their prom night, anything like that. It was a bit different.

[8:13] David Armstrong: So it was in it as slightly cultural education for me when we were dealing with the show. One of the things that's so interesting, I think about the show is you have these two worlds, as you just alluded to, Chad, coming together. You have this Broadway world and then this contemporary high school. I was very interested in what you just said that you had to go back and relook at the high school after the out of town to try to create that more specifically. Talk about how that's reflected in the score. How are these two worlds dramatized in the score for the show?

[8:40] Chad Begulin: Well, for the kids or the students, we were listening to a lot of contemporary pop music and saying, okay, that is a good feel for this song. And then with the Broadway people, some of it was so obvious. Angie's character has been in Chicago all that time. We're gonna do a tribute to Candor Nab, of course. It was also funny because we're obviously much older. I would frequently text my nieces and say, Is this something you say now? And they were just like, No, Uncle Chad. That's that. So it was really funny to sort of get their take. A lot of the people in the ensemble, there were definitely times I'd say, Do you say this still? And they would be like, Yes or no, nobody says that. It was great to have those kind of people around to make sure the voices or even the lyrics sounded contemporary.

[9:20] David Armstrong: I think you did a great job of defining those two worlds and making them very different, and yet still have them come together within the world of a Broadway musical. You mentioned Angie, and I want to talk about each of those characters and your inspiration behind them. We'll talk about Angie first. Describe Angie to us. And the reason I'm interested is because I went to dancing school with Angie Schwar in outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, when we were both kids many, many years ago.

[9:44] Chad Begulin: Well, the character of Angie was inspired by Angie. Like literally, she's playing herself.

[9:49] David Armstrong: And who is that?

[9:51] Chad Begulin: Well, she's a Broadway ensemble member that's just reliable and just paying her dues and paying her dues and paying her dues. And we made it that her big desire was finally to play Roxy Hart. But originally the character was supposed to be totally different. It was supposed to be an alphabet understudy. And we were gonna have a running joke that she could never get the makeup completely off, so she was always slightly green. But it sort of turned into like a one-joke character. So then I don't know who had the idea. Well, maybe it's like a Fosse girl, maybe it's somebody like Angie. And we were like, let's just get Angie. And so it's basically from that day on, we didn't even bother changing the name. So we were just like, Yeah, it's her. She's the workhorse in the ensemble and bitter about it, but also knows how to sort of pull a performance or a reaction out of Emma when she needs it.

[10:36] Chad Begulin: When a challenge lies ahead and you are filled with dread and worry, give it some Zaz. If your courage disappears, what'll get your fears to scurry? Give it some Zaz. Zaz style plus confidence. It may seem corny or kids. But when scared are on the fence, you'll find that Zaz will soon make fear become your bitch. Angie Schwar, the wonderfully talented woman who originally played Angie and who the character is based on, has appeared in 11 Broadway musicals, including The Will Rogers Follies, Crazy for You, Sunset Boulevard, The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Catch Me If You Can, Something Rotten, and The Prom.

[11:26] Chad Begulin: And strip my stuff, bam! Like no chicken this higher town has instead of giving up. Give it some Zaz. Now that you found your Zaz, it's time to show it to the world. You think you know how?

[11:45] Bob Martin: Yeah.

[11:47] Chad Begulin: She we did change her last name. Her name is Dickinson.

[11:50] Bob Martin: You fictionalized her a little bit.

[11:52] Chad Begulin: Yeah.

[11:54] Bob Martin: I hope the real Angie drinks less, but you know.

[12:02] Chad Begulin: Who was—oh, we're not gonna do that.

[12:08] Bob Martin: We value our lives.

[12:11] Chad Begulin: Well, give us the kind of person that it might be without naming names.

[12:16] Chad Begulin: You know, um, the kind of person that, you know, is very open with their feelings. Uh, great to say something—uh, helping out your Bob.

[12:29] Bob Martin: I want to tell the people of whatever this town's called.

[12:37] Chad Begulin: I know what's going on here, and frankly, I'm appalled.

[12:44] Bob Martin: I read three quarters of a news story and knew I had to come. And unless I am doing the medical worker. I won't play blind today. Listen, you bigoted monsters, just to do you think you are. Your prejudice and your oppression won't get past this Broadway star, stealing the rights of a girl who is an LGBTQ teen. I've been far too angry to Google what those letters mean. But it's not about me, it's about poor Emma. You see the raw deal she's been dealt. So here, or here's your next dilemma. How do you silence a woman who's known for her belt? Sing it, Eleanor. Her belt, but it's not about me.

[14:02] Chad Begulin: A woman of a certain age.

[14:03] Bob Martin: Yes.

[14:04] Chad Begulin: A woman of a certain age who's has a great career, very well respected.

[14:08] Bob Martin: Yes, I we can't say.

[14:10] Chad Begulin: We cannot say.

[14:12] David Armstrong: Well, let me ask, let me ask this way. Was there one specific person who is the prime well, you know, originally, yes. There were two people who inspired Barry and Dee Dee. In fact, we used their real names in early draft script. And then the characters grew into something quite different. They began as many characters do in sort of as imitations, parodies, and then I think they grew to have a little bit of depth. I mean, Barry in particular grew in a way the story became it's the relationship between him and Emma and him playing out his own tragedy throughout the course of the story. So he really changed. But yes, I think educated Broadway goers will recognize two people at the root of those two characters.

[14:54] Chad Begulin: And this is the character Barry Glickman.

[14:56] ♪ Musical number ♪

[15:51] David Armstrong: And then there's Trent Oliver. So again, I'll ask it this way was there one specific person who inspired the character of Trent Oliver?

[15:59] Bob Martin: Yes.

[16:00] Chad Begulin: Yes.

[16:01] Bob Martin: I feel like I'm on one of those black and white game shows. Um there is but uh also right out of college, I did an apprenticeship at Juilliard. So that also helped with all the Juilliard references because a lot of that goes on in those hallways. So it was pretty funny.

[16:19] David Armstrong: Well, it'd be fun to have my audience sort of guess who these people were. I'll probably put that as a question to them for them to send in their submissions about who were these characters based on.

[16:29] Chad Begulin: They can win a prom water bottle.

[16:32] David Armstrong: All right, I'll I'll hold you to that. Okay, listeners, this is my challenge to you. If you think you know which real life theatrical personalities the characters of Dee Dee Allen or Barry Glickman might be based on, please message me on Instagram, Twitter, or best of all, join our Broadway Nation Facebook group where you'll find more than 2,000 other fans of this podcast. I can't promise that I'll be able to verify the correct guesses, but it will certainly be fun to see who you think might have inspired these outrageous characters in the prom.

[17:07] Bob Martin: So again, we have old school Broadway and this contemporary world that you're writing for. When you're writing, for example, the show that Didi's in at the top of the show, what inspired that musical? What were you thinking of? Again, I'm asking you the hard questions, you can't name names, but what kind of show is that supposed to be?

[17:25] Chad Begulin: I mean, just horrible. Really, really awful. Just the kind of thing that you would definitely not want to see her in, but definitely would not want to see Barry in. We implied there's hip hop dancing at some point. So it had to be something that just completely blew up in a horrific way. And Bob is responsible for writing the bulk of the bad reviews, which I think are hilarious, and uh just destroy them on the spot. So that was the main goal.

[17:53] Bob Martin: Yeah, we just have to come up with something that's very exploitative, and that's something where Didi would play a character who was someone who did great things in the world, whereas she's really not doing great things in the world and simply making money off that person's biography. She doesn't even know. She says, I think it was really important to play Eleanor Roosevelt, someone no one's ever even heard of.

[18:15] Chad Begulin: Indicating that she's never heard of her.

[18:17] Bob Martin: Right, right. But we have an entirely different beginning to the show in which each of the characters was in.

[18:22] Chad Begulin: Three?

[18:22] Bob Martin: Yeah, three.

[18:23] Chad Begulin: Yeah.

[18:23] Bob Martin: So our old opening number, which never actually saw the light of day, it was in one of the workshops. It started out with Barry was in Forrest Gump the musical, and you saw a snippet of that, and then Dee Dee was in Goonies the Musical, and you saw a snippet of that. And Trent was in a musical version of Long Day's Journey into Night. You saw a bit of that.

[18:42] Chad Begulin: Called Journey.

[18:45] Bob Martin: It didn't really set up the show. We thought it was hilarious, but it didn't really serve the show.

[18:49] Chad Begulin: But it was fun to do. I loved it. It was hard to cut that, but it was made sense.

[18:56] David Armstrong: Will we see that anywhere, anytime? It seems like those would be hysterical parodies to see realized at some point.

[19:02] Bob Martin: It's quite hard to think those up because those types of shows get made. In fact, there was a Goonies the musical, I believe, in development.

[19:09] Chad Begulin: We found out later.

[19:10] Bob Martin: They get made, they're not entirely ridiculous ideas.

[19:13] Chad Begulin: Yeah, we actually had the cast perform it for Tony Voters when they had a party, you know, each show does a post a party. That was the entertainment. So I don't know, somebody might have an iPhone recording of it somewhere.

[19:23] David Armstrong: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was there for that. I saw that.

[19:25] Chad Begulin: So that's oh, you saw that.

[19:27] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah. Yes, I remember that now. So let's talk about shows as you're illustrating here, shows aren't written, they're rewritten. You premiered in Atlanta in 2016. What was that experience like? What did you learn? And then what changed between there and Broadway?

[19:41] Bob Martin: It was a great experience, actually. We had wonderful reactions from the audience. We knew we were going to make the show more about the collision of two worlds. So, yes, as we talked about, we had to make the small town a little bit more believable. But really, one of the keys was the character of Mrs. Green that her particular perspective on the events, you could empathize with her position to a certain extent. And she wasn't just a villain. She wasn't just a two-dimensional villain, but she was a caring mother who just made bad choice after bad choice and ends up harming her daughter instead of helping her.

[20:13] Chad Begulin: She's the mother of one of the other students.

[20:15] Bob Martin: Of Alyssa Green, yes.

[20:16] Chad Begulin: The closeted girl. And she won't allow her daughter to come out, even though her daughter attempts to repeatedly. And there was a line that one of our producers, Lisa Morris, said that when she came out to her mother, her mother said to her, I just don't want you to have a hard life. For us, that really focused the tragedy at the center of the story. And we actually gave that line of dialogue to Mrs. Green at the very end when Alyssa finally does successfully come up. And she says it's already hard. And it's kind of heartbreaking. We did have members of the audience come up in Atlanta, you know, in tears and saying that they recognize themselves in the story. And then a lot of people who said thank you because you allowed us to have this discussion. Now we're going to talk about it for the first time. I didn't have the courage until I saw this show. I mean, it ended up being this really wonderful thing.

[21:04] David Armstrong: I want to pick up on that in just a couple of minutes because you really have had an incredible impact through this show. Chad, how did the score change? What got left in Atlanta?

[21:14] Chad Begulin: We really changed the character of the school principal. So we had a song in Atlanta that we just threw out the whole idea. Originally it was going to be this character that everybody thought was gay, but he was really straight. So there was a song called Gay For You that he sang to Didi. But we decided it was rubbing up against Brooks's character. It was just too much. So we unfortunately for that actor switched to a different actor, changed his character completely, and then wrote We Look to You for his character. Instead of making the sort of running gag, he really did love theater. It really was important to him.

[21:48] David Armstrong: Now, Chad, was Gay For You the very first song that was written for the prom.

[21:53] Chad Begulin: Uh no, you happened was the very first one.

[21:55] David Armstrong: Oh, okay.

[21:56] Chad Begulin: But it was very, very early, though, right?

[21:58] David Armstrong: Yeah, it was early.

[21:59] Chad Begulin: Yeah. It's just funny because that's usually how it works, right? You have to sort of let the show show itself to you and see.

[22:04] Bob Martin: Exactly. Early materials often abandoned anyway. Sorry, go ahead.

[22:08] Chad Begulin: Oh no, I was just gonna say you happened also changed a lot. Our producers kept talking about prom posals, and you happened was just the two girls in Atlanta, and they kept talking about promposals. But I don't know what that is. And I talked to young people, like, oh yeah, it's the new thing. And so we realized, oh, this is a great opportunity to show all these people being celebrated for asking out a member of the opposite sex, and then the two girls have to hide their promposal. So that was another big change that I think really enhanced the show. As Bob said, you don't know until it gets up there, and then suddenly you go, Oh, oh, that's not working the way we wanted it to.

[22:43] David Armstrong: Talk a little bit about that because I think it's one of the things audiences certainly don't understand, but even a lot of writers don't understand, is the way that you experience the show differently the minute there's an audience there.

[22:53] Bob Martin: Yeah.

[22:54] Chad Begulin: Even though you are certain something will work, or it's been entirely successful to that point. Why is that? What happens when you sit there with the audience?

[23:03] Bob Martin: It's terror, it's just terror, pure terror. No. Um we got the great honor to work with Tom Meehan on Elf, and I remember him saying, You won't know what you have until people are paying for tickets, until they're paying their hard-earned money. So they're not gonna laugh to make you feel better, they're not gonna applaud and cheer if they're not blown away. It really is. It's always the thing you think is gonna just kill, and everybody's gonna think it's hysterical, is just like dies, and then the thing you think is just awful, turns out to be this big moment that everybody loves. So it's just constantly listening so hard to see how people are reacting, and then going home or to your hotel or wherever to rewrite it or change it or try and fix it and make it better.

[23:46] Chad Begulin: Yeah, and you know, the the crazy thing about theater is or musical theater especially is that it's an enormous enterprise with sets and costumes and orchestration and everything. So it's not just the audience's reaction, it's also the fact that you're developing a show for years, and it's almost like you're writing it for each stage of development. You're writing a show that can be successfully read at music stands, and you're writing a show that can be successfully performed with very few sets and costumes as the workshops get more complicated, and then when you have it up there on stage and you have to allow for the time for set changes and you know, costume changes and movement and everything, you're adjusting constantly just to allow the show to function properly. So when you're just constantly developing, and those physical limitations restrict the changes you can make sometimes, even if you want to.

[24:33] Bob Martin: Yes, exactly.

[24:35] Chad Begulin: And oh, and also factor into that the timeline. So eight years, if you're writing comedy, especially, the world changes. As we've said before, when we first started writing the show was during the Obama administration, and things looked like they were getting much, much better. The speeches that we wrote at that time reflected the sort of positive outlook that everybody had, and then politics changed quite dramatically, and then the show had to change quite dramatically with politics.

[24:59] David Armstrong: I mean, what would the prom be now? If you were just starting to write it now.

[25:03] Bob Martin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be very dark, I would think.

[25:07] ♪ Musical number ♪

[25:24] Chad Begulin: But in Indiana without a doubt, if you're not straight, then guess what's bound to hit the fan?

[25:32] David Armstrong: Speaking of politics, I understood that you set the show in Indiana for a very specific reason.

[25:39] Chad Begulin: Yeah.

[25:40] Bob Martin: Yeah, that was sort of the whole Mike Pence thing, and we were just like, okay, here we go.

[25:45] Chad Begulin: And also it was something I definitely could relate to because I'm an hour away, or maybe two hours from Bloomington, Indiana. So it felt like at least if I was gonna be the one that was from the Midwest, I'd wanted to make sure that it was something that I really grew up with. And also, just to screw you to Mike Pence.

[26:04] ♪ Musical number ♪

[26:30] David Armstrong: And you invited him to the show at one point. I assume nothing ever came of that.

[26:34] Chad Begulin: No, no. If he came, he never told us.

[26:38] Bob Martin: Yeah. Let's put it that way. He doesn't seem to be a big fan of Broadway.

[27:01] ♪ Musical number ♪

[27:13] David Armstrong: Don't go away. Broadway Nation will be back right after this quick break.

[27:23] Unknown speaker: It's Olivia Keating of Broadway Mania, and we're here for the opening night of Eleanor, the Eleanor Roosevelt musical, starring the incomparable Dee Dee Allen and Barry Glickman.

[27:33] David Armstrong: So you open on Broadway in 2018 to rave, rave reviews. I went back and read them, and it was just amazing. Not that the show didn't deserve it, but looking at the current Broadway season, almost no show this year received the kind of acclaim that you all received when you opened on Broadway. Then the next year, so it's like every year there's a prom event that happens. There's your opening up Broadway, the young adult novel comes out the following year. Tell us about that. What was your involvement in that? And did you learn anything from that process along the way? Was it illuminating in any way?

[28:05] Chad Begulin: Yeah, I mean, they basically came to us and said, Here are some authors we're thinking about. And we we stayed out, really. I mean, she we let her go. She's a great writer, and we got to approve everything, but we thought she did a great job. And yeah, we didn't have that much involvement because she was so brave.

[28:21] Bob Martin: Yeah, we all thought she took this brilliant take on it by making it sort of a running diary of the two girls at the center of the story. And she also adjusted the Broadway story so it was much less significant, and which obviously wouldn't appeal to young readers as much. So she emphasized the kids' part of the story, the young people's part of the story, and minimize the case. Brought us really into the minds of the two girls and beautifully gave Emma her prom at the end. And we actually lived her prom a bit in the novel, which was something we really couldn't do very well on stage. You know, her getting picked up in limo and picking up. It was all it was all really, really quite moving. I thought it was absolutely beautiful job.

[28:58] David Armstrong: Fantastic.

[28:59] Chad Begulin: Yeah.

[28:59] David Armstrong: I actually didn't know it had happened until I was preparing for this interview. Then you do the film adaptation in 2020, which is phenomenal and certainly star-studded and unexpected in a way, especially in the middle of a pandemic. How did that all come about?

[29:13] Bob Martin: Well, Ryan Murphy came to see the show, and we had no idea, and we had no idea he was thinking about making it into a film for Netflix, and all of these big stars started showing up in the audience. And we were like, what is Nicole Kidman doing here? What is Meryl Streep doing here? Finally, he said, Look, I want to make this into a movie, and I want to use these people. And we were sort of completely blown away. It was definitely an insane thing to have anybody say to you. And then we started working, everything was so fast. He would email Bob and me and say, Write me a scene with them on the bus going to Indiana, give Nicole a joke and see if you can get it to me as soon as possible. Felt like you were always on deck, but it was definitely exhilarating and thrilling to go and be on set and meet all the people and it was surreal.

[30:02] Chad Begulin: It's amazing that he was doing all this without contacting you, that he's already contacting stars, obviously, to see whether they want to do this or not, and just off on his own track. That's fascinating.

[30:12] Bob Martin: Ryan was really obviously very affected by the prom. I think he had some things in his own life that were similar to events that were depicted in our show. He really took it and ran with it. He made it quite a beautiful movie, and he literally has all of those names, like Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman on his phone, sent them all to our show, and he said to us early on that he wants some kid in Russia to see this movie and their life be saved. That was his goal. So he made, I think, a very accessible version of our story that was seen all over the world. And at one point, early in release, it was the number one Netflix film in Russia. I remember seeing that in the god, wow, that's amazing. He really pulled it off.

So we're super grateful for it. You know, he certainly changed the story in some ways. He went much deeper into Barry's story with his mother. Mother character was never in musical. Their relationship is resolved at the end where it's unresolved in the musical. There's a certain number of key story changes that were Ryan's invention. But he was really great to us, very respectful, moved very quickly, as we say. The film was made a year, was it a year after we opened? Like it was insane.

[31:19] David Armstrong: Well, let's talk about that. The subtitle for my podcast is How Immigrants, Jews, Queers, and African Americans Invented the Broadway Musical and How They Changed America in the process. And this is one of the shows that I actually can just honestly say without it being how it happened subversively or overtime, you have written a show that did change people, that does change people, that has a tangible effect. What has it been like to hear from the people who've come to see the show on Broadway or have seen it on Netflix? Somebody could probably document that effect just by tracking down the comments that have come to you and the people that have stopped you on the streets. Give us just a little taste of that.

[31:56] Chad Begulin: Well, I think the most powerful thing I heard. I mean, I definitely would, you know, at the stage door hear people saying, like, I'm coming out to my mother, she's over there, we just watched the show and now we're gonna be able to talk about this. But I think when we were in Atlanta, Matt Scar was at a talk back, and this old white man said, you know, if I knew what this musical was gonna be about, I never would have come. But you know, I'm glad I did, and I'm glad those two girls got together at the end. That was just shocking to me because I know so many people like that who would be like, I would never go to a gay show. And then at the end to have such a reversal and be like, I'm glad those two girls got together. That was kind of mind-blowing to think that a fun musical with dancing and singing could change somebody's complete outlook on an issue is sort of just staggering.

[32:41] Bob Martin: Yeah, there was another incident that I've talked about before where this older woman came to me at the end of a talk back and she had her head down and she was really sort of, she had sort of a lot of shame. And she said, you know, I am Mrs. Green. That's the way I was to my daughter. And I so regret it. And she said, This is such an important show. You have to do it. And then I actually walked with her into the lobby, and in the lobby, she introduced me to her daughter, adult daughter, and her daughter's wife. And it was like this amazing, very moving moment where I just saw all the drama that she had been through and that she ended up in a very positive place, but still carried all that shame of the way she behaved.

We knew that it was a story worth writing, but the show really is a train that is just going, you know. We can't take responsibility for everything that the show says to people. It's a collective thing, and it just sort of happens, and everybody realized fairly early on that it was an important show to make.

[33:42] ♪ Musical number ♪

[34:09] David Armstrong: You can trace that through the history of Broadway, that often silly musical comedies have a great deal to say and a tremendous amount of impact, but few of them as directly as your show does, which is really just fantastic. I want to hear a little bit about this German production that happened. Did you get to see it? It was done in 2021, and they rewrote it a bit. Do you know about this? Am I it's on Wikipedia, and somewhere else I saw something mentioned it.

[34:35] Bob Martin: So there's a production done in Hamburg in Germany, and they made the Broadway characters be from the German theater world. Because you know, there's a big Broadway scene in Hamburg. There's all the musicals are playing there, and somehow they've written it, and the girls from a German town. So they were really afraid of what you were gonna say. So this we made them straight. No, no, I think they've just done a translation of it to the world of Germany, but I'm surprised that this is a news to you. But that happens quite a bit when our shows end up in different countries and the cultural references just are different. And I like it when it's adapted in that way. I think it's really great. Uh there's a production that started in Mexico City and it's touring Mexico, and they changed the names of the characters and the regions so they make it more relatable.

[35:19] Chad Begulin: Well, of course, Mexico City has a big musical theater scene. It has its own sort of Broadway there.

[35:24] Bob Martin: Yeah.

[35:24] Chad Begulin: So they could make that transition probably very readily.

[35:28] Bob Martin: Yes.

[35:28] Chad Begulin: Fascinating.

[35:29] David Armstrong: Well, that's the news I've been sharing with you today. You should check it out. It sounds like it would be fascinating to see that translation happen, see how they make that because clearly these are characters that are so based on well, literally people we know from Broadway, to then see how that gets interpreted in another culture would be really interesting.

[35:49] Bob Martin: Yeah, it's funny. Every once in a while we'll get invited, and it's just well, Disney. I have to go and be there and deal with the translations because they are very strict. But I remember seeing Elf in Copenhagen. It was just whenever you see it.

[36:03] Chad Begulin: Oh, you saw that one.

[36:03] Bob Martin: Oh, yeah. That's the Tibbley one, right?

[36:05] Chad Begulin: Yes, Matt and I went. And it was just it's just so freaky when you see it in a totally different culture. But yeah, maybe we'll contact the Mexico people and see if we can come see their problem.

[36:15] David Armstrong: So now the show is on tour. It's touring across America. Did you make any changes for this touring production from what you've learned on Broadway?

[36:23] Chad Begulin: We didn't make any huge changes. There were a few things that we had to change. For example, Trent says that Stephen Sondheim is a fan of his Sweeney Todd. So of course we couldn't do that anymore. So we made it. Oh, I'm blanking. Phantom of the Opera. Andrew Lloyd Webber. Yeah. Um that's fine. We uh some of the political references since things changed. But um not anything major, I don't think. And you know, the great thing is Casey was there every step of the way, so he really made sure that everything stayed true to the Broadway production. And I think this cast is amazing.

[36:59] Bob Martin: Yeah, they're great. But we went to see them at the Kennedy Center, and they were great. And then my husband Tom didn't get to go, so I went to see them in Tampa a few months later, and they were just on fire. And it was just so great to see those theaters can be so huge and to see that they're still getting this great reaction from the audience. It's just a testament to how great this cast and crew is.

[37:20] David Armstrong: It's so interesting that shows have to go from intimate Broadway theaters to these giant theaters when they go on tour. I was always happy to say that the Fifth Avenue is one of the smallest houses any show would play, and it has 2,000 seats. But compared to Tampa or some of those other theaters, which are just gigantic.

[37:37] Chad Begulin: It's funny, I wrote the cast because I was so blown away that that far in and you know, in that space, they got a standing ovation. I said, I did not start that. I said, you know, there have been times when I have I remember being actually at the Fifth Avenue with Aladdin, and Tom Schumacher was like, why isn't Aladdin getting entrance applause? And one day I just went, screw it. I ran up to the top of the balcony and just started clapping. Everyone started clapping. But I didn't do that here. It was really surprising that the show was still in such great shape and getting this kind of response.

[38:05] Chad Begulin: As you mentioned, this is not your first show that will be seen at the Fifth Avenue Theater. Talk about what your past Fifth Avenue experience has been, Chad.

[38:13] Chad Begulin: Well, we did Wedding Singer out of town there and left half of the set, I think in your alley behind the theater. Then of course, we did Aladdin as well.

[38:20] Bob Martin: Yeah, the world premiere of Aladdin.

[38:24] Chad Begulin: And I'm happy to say it's not Casey Nicola's first time at the Fifth Avenue Theater because we actually gave him his very first job as a choreographer way back in about 2001. His first professional job as a choreographer was two shows that season, doing a new musical called Prince and the Pauper and My Fair Lady. And the rest literally is history, as they say, in that regard.

[38:44] Bob Martin: So Drowsy Chaperon's never been there.

[38:47] Chad Begulin: The tour played there, the national tour played there.

[38:49] Bob Martin: Absolutely.

[38:50] Chad Begulin: Good. Just checking, just checking that box. Let's go to the subject of what I call these legacy chains. Who are the people that influenced each of you? Both people you never met, but have had an influence on your career. And then especially people in the business that you have known that were maybe more direct mentors, that have passed on their craft, their art, or even just their advice or just their energy to you. Bob, let's start with you. Who would you point to in that regard?

[39:20] Bob Martin: Well, Tom Meehan was a huge deal for me. I worked with him on e.l.f. And just the way he approached material, how organized he was, and how he structured story and created character was a big influence on me. Casey Nicola has been a huge influence on me. I've worked with him several times, and he literally taught me how to bow when I did Drowsy Chaperone with him. Because I came from a different world, not only a different country, but I was sort of into the comedy world and alternative theater and television, and the whole sort of Broadway aesthetic was kind of new to me. My co-writer on Drowsy, Lisa Lambert, has been a huge influence on me over the years, educating me as to the history of musical theater.

And Lisa and I both worked with a woman named Marion Grudeff in Toronto, who was a composer whose big Broadway claim to fame was Baker Street in the 60s. She was great. She taught us a lot about musicals. And I guess those are my major sort of influences, apart from people I just admire.

[40:15] David Armstrong: Talk a bit more about Tom and exactly what made Tom so great. And again, Tom's had a great history with the Fifth Avenue Theater. We did the world premiere of Hairspray there. And it was amazing to watch him work.

[40:25] Bob Martin: Yeah, he's very smart, very intelligent man, very witty. I remember the first time we worked together because when they were developing Elf, I came into it late. I came into it simply to read the character of Buddy when you guys were workshopping it early on. And then I was sort of couldn't keep my mouth closed and was offering up some stuff. And then Tom asked me if I would want to write with him. And you know, I was again fairly new to the world, and so to be able to work with one of the most celebrated book writers in Broadway history was great. Wonderful experience. A sweet man, and the first day we started working together, he sat across from me at a table. I mean, I never really thought about oh, we're literally writing this together in real time across the table from each other.

That's not how I would normally work. I would normally outline something, go off and work, and then come in with drafts, but he just opened up his computer, put his fingers on the keyboard and just stared me in the face. And I had to sort of, you know, I'm a fairly shy person. I had to sort of get over that. And then we quickly found that we had a similar language when it came to comedy, and then it was crafting jokes and comic moments and working from character, and he organizes material in the same way that I did instinctively. And yeah, it was just, I don't know, I can't say enough. I wish I had been able to write another show with him. I wish I'd met him earlier in his life.

[41:42] David Armstrong: And if there was one thing that you would pass on to somebody else from Tom Meehan, what's that word of wisdom or way of thinking or way of doing something? Is there anything in particular?

[41:51] Bob Martin: I mean, I think about that. I don't know if I should say this exactly, but it was that Copenhagen production because Elf is a story of a man raised at the North Pole who thinks he's an elf and then goes to New York, and it's just a fish out of water story. In Copenhagen, instead of New York, they wanted to set it in Tivoli. Now, Tivoli is basically Christmas town. Right. So a guy who thinks he's an elf is raised in Christmas, then he goes into Christmas town. And I mean, where's the culture shock? Like I was outraged by it all. I thought I thought that doesn't make any sense. And Tom was what he was sort of reluctant to say what he actually said. But what he was saying is that the beauty of theater is it's reinterpreted.

And as I was saying earlier, it's interpreted culturally as well. That gives people ownership of the story, and so let it happen. And we all sort of relaxed and apparently was good because I I couldn't go, I wanted to go, but it was a good production, right?

[42:48] Chad Begulin: Yeah, yeah, it was just very different.

[42:53] Bob Martin: That's really the wonderful thing about working in the theater that's different from working in television or film. Your work is completely reinterpreted every time. It's done in the round, you know, it's done with all female, like female man in a chair, for instance. Like there are things that happen all the time, and it's the beautiful thing about the theater.

[43:11] Chad Begulin: Bob, who were those influences on you?

[43:14] Chad Begulin: I was obsessed with two shows when I was growing up, and one was Evita and the other was Little Shop of Horrors. I really started to listen to lyrics very intensely. So Howard Ashman, of course, and Tim Rice, Sarah Tim Rice were really big influences in my life. It was getting to work on Aladdin, which both of them had lyrics in, and then create you know more lyrics and to be asked to emulate their voices was really sort of thrilling for me. And to work with Alan and to hear all these stories about Howard to get his original treatment that he had typed up. And I remember Alan said, Oh, it smells like the 80s. He had, you know, this yellow paper. So those were sort of my idols. And of course, everybody says Sondheim, but of course he is.

And then on a personal level, I had originally gone to NYU for acting and I decided to take just an extra course in playwrighting and the TA took me aside and he said you should really be doing this you should be focusing on writing I think you should get a double major in dramatic writing that person turned out to be Pulitzer winner Doug Wright so he went on to write all these massive plays and every time we're at a function I'm always like thanks for steering me in this direction because he was just great and it was like you have something and I think he might have even have written my recommendation letter and it was just really really instrumental in me becoming a writer.

[44:37] David Armstrong: It's phenomenal how people like that can change your life just by seeing something in you.

[44:41] Chad Begulin: Yeah it was sort of out of the blue and I'm so grateful.

[44:45] David Armstrong: And have you had any interaction personally with Tim Rice?

[44:48] Chad Begulin: Yeah when Aladdin went up in London on the West End we had dinner and I was so nervous and then I was like I don't know if I came off quiet or weird or what and so I decided I would email him a picture of my birthday cake from my 14th birthday which was a replica of the Evita poster and uh he thought that was hilarious. And so that sort of broke the ice and then my opening night everything was great and he told me I didn't have to call him sir.

[45:17] Bob Martin: So things warmed up after the old you know Evita birthday cake.

[45:22] Chad Begulin: That's hilarious.

[45:23] David Armstrong: So what's next for the two of you Bob it seems you're in rehearsal for something when I want to hear what you're working on and what's coming up next.

[45:29] Bob Martin: I am fortunate enough to have two workshops going on at the same time just in New 42nd Street. It's wild. Jerry Mitchell's doing Betty Boo. It's a show I wrote with Susan Bergenhead and David Foster. And we're doing also Smash, the musical. It's something I wrote with Rick Ellis and Mark Shane and Scott Whitman.

[45:48] Chad Begulin: Wow.

[45:48] Bob Martin: And yeah.

[45:49] Chad Begulin: And you're all you're all under one roof at the moment, and they're both things are happening.

[45:52] Bob Martin: Yeah. On different floors. It's bizarre. I yes. It's all I'm not complaining. Especially after two years of nothing happening. It's uh exciting to have new material here and working with actors again. I really, really miss being in a room with actors. So and Jerry's got people tat dancing downstairs. And Brooks is in the Smash reading. It's so wonderful. And Beth as well.

[46:17] Chad Begulin: Um amazing.

[46:18] David Armstrong: And Chad, what are you working on?

[46:19] Chad Begulin: Um, I'm retired. Uh well, the prom team is working on a new original musical, and we've been sort of trying to stay sane during all the COVID-ness of everything. So we've been doing Zoom meetings, and Bob and I have been working on the script, and Matt and I have been working on the score, and yeah, so that's sort of what I'm focused on right now. We're literally writing the we're writing the last scene this week, I think.

[46:42] Chad Begulin: Yeah, so that's so the book will be a version of the book will be completed. The first draft will be done.

[46:46] Bob Martin: First draft, yeah.

[46:47] David Armstrong: And any hint about what it's about.

[46:51] Chad Begulin: I don't know if we are we supposed to, or we're not supposed to do that. I I can't. We can't. It's too, but it was Chad's idea initially. I think that's a very funny comic premise.

[47:03] Bob Martin: You originally had the idea as a novel, right?

[47:05] Chad Begulin: And then yeah, I I had this idea and we were spitballing ideas, and I had this idea for a novel, and then I realized I don't want to write a novel. I've tried to write novels before, it's the most lonely process in the world. And so the idea that we could all be joking and developing it together as opposed to me lonely crying at my computer, seems like a good idea.

[47:25] Bob Martin: So it's a new original story.

[47:26] Chad Begulin: Yes, it's a new original story.

[47:28] Bob Martin: Just to make it even harder to make a musical.

[47:31] Chad Begulin: You're writing a story on top of it, which is the same thing you did with The Prom.

[47:34] Bob Martin: Right, exactly.

[47:35] Chad Begulin: Yeah. It's also you don't want to jinx it. Or even the process of describing what something is when it's in a sort of nascent stage can really erode your confidence and slow the process down. So we're just sort of storming through it and not questioning.

[47:49] Bob Martin: So I get it.

[47:51] Chad Begulin: I think we can safely say it's a farce.

[47:53] Bob Martin: Cool.

[47:54] Chad Begulin: Yes, it is a farce.

[47:55] David Armstrong: Fantastic. Can't wait to see it. Can't wait to hear what the title is and talk about it on a future episode.

[48:02] Chad Begulin: Absolutely.

[48:03] Bob Martin: Actually, we could see the title. Could we not say the title?

[48:05] Chad Begulin: Sure.

[48:06] Bob Martin: It's called Horrible People.

[48:08] Chad Begulin: Horrible people.

[48:09] Bob Martin: Yes.

[48:09] Chad Begulin: At least for now.

[48:10] Bob Martin: Might change.

[48:12] Chad Begulin: Exactly.

[48:18] David Armstrong: Thank you both so much. It's been fantastic to have you as our guest on Broadway Nation today. And so looking forward to seeing The Prom on tour across America and especially in Seattle at the Fifth Avenue Theater.

[48:31] Bob Martin: Thanks for having us.

[48:32] Chad Begulin: Thank you.

[48:33] Bob Martin: It's really fun.

[48:36] Chad Begulin: This is more than I dared wish for.

[48:39] Bob Martin: It's epic and what's more.

[48:43] Chad Begulin: Tonight there's room for anyone.

[48:46] Bob Martin: So everyone on the floor.

[48:49] Chad Begulin: Get on the floor.

[48:51] David Armstrong: If you haven't seen The Prom live on stage and you live in or near Seattle, San Francisco, Dallas, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Bloomington, or Buffalo, I highly recommend that you do. I think it will be especially interesting and engaging now that you've heard Bob and Chad talk about how it all came together.

[49:09] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Powell's Mox for his help in editing this episode. To KVSH 101. And to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.

[49:29] Chad Begulin: It can be done if music flares and no one cares.

[49:34] Bob Martin: Who you're unruly hard love.

[49:54] Chad Begulin: That's what the floor is for.

[49:56] Bob Martin: So turn up the base until the whole place gets into the feet and has to repeat.

[50:02] Chad Begulin: It's time to dance.

[50:04] Bob Martin: I just wanna dance with you.

[50:14] Chad Begulin: It's time to take a look at the case.