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[0:07] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with the stars and creators of the hottest shows on Broadway, off Broadway, and beyond.

[0:17] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox. On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to the creators of the new Broadway musical, The Lightning Thief'. The show, based on the popular Percy Jackson series of YA novels written by Rick Riordan, took an unusual route to Broadway, starting life as a one-hour musical for Theatre Works USA, before it proved so popular that producers and creators expanded it into a full length for an extended off Broadway run. And now a run on Broadway, where the show plays at the Long Anchor Theater through January 5th. Today I'm talking to three creatives who've been with the show from the beginning. Stephen Brackett, the director of Be More Chill, and the recent off Broadway Buzz Magnet, A Strange Loop, Joe Trace, the book writer of Be More Chill, who also wrote for Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Rob Rokicki, the composer lyricist making his Broadway debut with The Lightning Thief'. All three of them are here with me to talk demi gods, monsters, and clearing away Broadway's barriers to entry. Hi gentlemen. Thanks for being here.

[1:16] Stephen Brackett: Of course.

[1:18] Joe Trace: Thanks for having me.

[1:19] Rob Rokicki: Hi.

[1:19] Gordon Cox: Hi. Um, I feel like first of all, before we even start, uh, there are some listeners who might not know uh all about Theatre Works and quite what it does. So I wonder if we could start by talking about kind of how this project originated and what your sort of mandate was and when you first got involved. Um, and so which of you was involved first?

[1:39] Joe Trace: Do you know?

[1:39] Rob Rokicki: That would be Joe.

[1:40] Joe Trace: Joe Patient Zero.

[1:42] Gordon Cox: Joe, yes. So tell me uh how what what was the project when it came to you and why were you interested in it?

[1:47] Joe Trace: Yeah, you know, I had always been a fan of the Percy Jackson series.

[1:50] Rob Rokicki: Okay.

[1:51] Joe Trace: And when I discovered that uh Theatre Works had uh gotten the rights to adapt the first book into a show for Theatre Works, how was that a thing that you discovered? Was that a thing you were exploring?

[1:59] Joe Trace: I was visiting my agent and saw a copy of the book on his desk and was like, please tell me who's adapting the show.

[2:05] Joe Trace: Because I'll do anything to get this job. And so I sort of cajoled myself to sit down with Barbara Pasternak at Theatre Works.

[2:11] Gordon Cox: Right.

[2:11] Joe Trace: And you know, Theatre Works has such a history of adapting books faithfully and respectfully and a mission statement that you know of putting theater in front of people who wouldn't ordinarily get a chance to experience that quality of show. Um and so because of that, they'd managed to get the very tricky rights to adapt The Lightning Thief'. Um, you know, uh the movie adaptations had not been well received by fans, nor by the author, for being unfaithful to the tone, the story, the characters, the humor, etc. Um, but uh because of Theatre Works uh sort of commitment to respectfully adapting, um, they'd managed to sort of get the uh rights to do this as an hour-long touring show.

[2:52] Gordon Cox: Right.

[2:52] Joe Trace: So an hour-long touring show.

[2:54] Rob Rokicki: Yeah, yeah.

[2:56] Joe Trace: Um and then uh we know I brought on Rob, you know, realizing it was uh, you know, a 400-page fantasy novel.

[3:04] Rob Rokicki: Right, yeah.

[3:07] Joe Trace: So, you know, I brought on Rob, who uh, you know, I had known through um his work with Joe Iconis, uh who had recommended who said this I got the perfect guy for the job. Rob came in, wrote amazing songs, and and really uh helped make this crazy, weird, difficult show uh come to life.

[3:27] Rob Rokicki: Yeah.

[3:28] Rob Rokicki: It was a lot of fun.

[3:29] Gordon Cox: And what was your did you know the books?

[3:32] Rob Rokicki: I didn't know the books. Um I had just you know, Joe Iconis was like, You've gotta meet this guy, Joe Trace, this.

[3:38] Gordon Cox: This and how would you work with Joe Iconis for listeners who don't know?

[3:38] Rob Rokicki: Years? I music directed a show for him a million years ago, and then we just became close friends. I mean, he sang at my wedding, I sang in his. We've just been collaborators for a long time.

[3:48] Gordon Cox: Right.

[3:49] Rob Rokicki: We both write kind of rock music for theater, but we try to, you know, have as much well craftedness of kind of our schooling and education within that genre of rock music. So um I Joe had written Joe Trace had written this wonderful play. That's what it was originally had been. And then I um took it from there and and uh you know, rock music is a really kind of elegant way of because of the structure, the kind of verse chorus structure of it is really helpful to um get a lot of information out quickly for like montages and things like that. It's a very helpful thing. So it it was the right style for the right kind of material, right?

[4:30] Gordon Cox: And then Stephen, you came aboard so thereafter when it uh and so you directed it, it existed as a one-hour thing.

[4:38] Stephen Brackett: Yeah, there was very popular there was a draft that I think had maybe not all of the music composed yet, but um I got a certainly got a draft and got a couple of demos. Um uh and um was asked to kind of come in and pitch for the show and um the adventure genre, yeah.

[4:58] Stephen Brackett: The it was my first exposure to Percy. I hadn't really known the books before, and so in preparation for the meetings, um uh I read the first novel, which I was completely delighted by. Um uh and found to be like really funny and really amazing. Um and so kind of came in to pitch for this show of how to do Percy Jackson that could kind of tour the country in a tiny van with actors and scenarios.

[5:22] Gordon Cox: Right. And how did you think when you're right, because it's touring the country and it's largely younger audiences, right? Do you think about did you think about it as gearing it towards younger audiences or how did you think about the people who were coming to see it and writing for them?

[5:35] Stephen Brackett: I mean we want we wanted to make sure that we were talking to a broader audience than a younger audience in the even then but what while understanding that as part of our demographic right.

[5:47] Stephen Brackett: And I would say I think that even probably the one-hour version feels a little bit more aimed towards a younger audience. And when we um were given the opportunity to change it into a two-act version is where we really got to kind of finesse and make sure that the tone was hitting from younger to older audiences. That's not to say that the one act was a kid show right but I think we got to be a little bit savvier in terms of tone with the two-act.

[6:14] Gordon Cox: Right. Yeah. One thing I love about Theatre Works is they you know they never try to pander or talk down uh to their audiences and you know we were just kind of writing the show that we wanted to see. So that was helpful.

[6:26] Stephen Brackett: Right. Yeah I mean definitely you know the books are middle grade books and yet, you know, when they came out I was not middle grade age. You know I think the great thing about and and you you know I think there's been a huge resurgence in the past ten years of like people saying you know books that are you know written with a younger audience in mind actually speak to universal themes and and can you know you know Percy's a fantasy novel and yet you know through the use of metaphor the idea of what it would be like if you were if you grew up in a world ruled by like fickle gods right who you know it sort of like created the world and then sort of abandon it and abandon you and you know what what would it be like emotionally be trying to find your way uh in you know in the shadow of these gods and monsters?

[7:05] Joe Trace: And and that's a you know, it's a great idea for a fantasy novel, but it's also uh a metaphor for an emotional state that I think people of any age can relate to.

[7:13] Rob Rokicki: And so when I read the books in my twenties, I loved that idea. And so when you know, when we sat down to adapt, it was always like that emotional core in mind.

[7:21] Stephen Brackett: Right. And I think that emotional core can speak to anyone of any age.

[7:24] Gordon Cox: Right. And then at what point and in what ways did it become clear that this was uh that this one that this hour-long adaptation was a thing that uh was exciting enough and that enough people were interested in that it sort of demanded to be expanded and then you know, taken somewhere else. What do you do you remember a moment when it sort of dawned on you or your producer Barbara or um

[7:44] Joe Trace: Well I think it had always been a dream to get to expand it and I remember some of our first creative conversations, you know, we'd we'd we would have that if only, you know, because the hour long sure was really the hour long version was really built like a roller coaster ride, you know, Percy's dropped in this crazy world of gods and monsters and never gets a chance to breathe.

[8:07] Joe Trace: And and you know, one of the things we'd really wanted to do but couldn't is let the story have some emotional moments where it could slow down, you know, have you know, be less like a roller coaster ride and more like the entire theme park.

[8:20] Joe Trace: Um, you know, with uh the whole spectrum of of emotions, you know, from every character in the journey. And there was always a glimmer, I think from the get-go that we knew that this was an amazing property to be working on.

[8:32] Joe Trace: And we because it was already so popular, just because it was already going into it. And so I think that there was sort of an unspoken if we do this in the right way, maybe there might be something beyond the Theatre Works tour, although we would have been content if that that's all that there was, right?

[8:50] Joe Trace: Um uh but certainly I think going into the project, we knew that it had a fan base that we wanted to speak to. We also knew that we would be introducing it to other people. And so for me, there was always a little glimmer of a hope that there would be some sort of life for it after it went out on tour.

[9:07] Joe Trace: And so when we got the call to turn it into a two-act, it wasn't like an out of the blue surprise, but it was a really great reward.

[9:14] Gordon Cox: And did you know exactly what you how you would do it? Uh, how hard was it to get to jam everything into one hour?

[9:20] Joe Trace: And I mean, the jamming everything into a one hour was really complicated, and we definitely felt like we had to kind of skim over a couple of things.

[9:28] Joe Trace: It making it into a two-act structure, we actually went down a slightly different path of thinking, oh, we get to cram more adventure into it.

[9:37] Stephen Brackett: Right.

[9:37] Joe Trace: Um, and we actually sort of had to go down that path to actually realize that what we needed to double down on was the heart and the stake and this the kind of circumstances of the show.

[9:49] Joe Trace: And so that was a really amazing opportunity for us to kind of figure out what the sweet spot of what a two-act could actually contain for us.

[9:56] Rob Rokicki: Yeah, I mean, in terms of we really broke it apart. There's only a couple core songs that kept in both versions. They're actually the some of the very first songs I wrote for when I was trying to get the job as a demo.

[10:08] Rob Rokicki: But there I think now we're up to 28 songs that have been cut between the two versions, something like that. It's it was a lot. It was kind of reinventing a lot of moments and and kind of yeah, like Stephen's saying, giving some uh some weight to these these decisions that our characters are going through and let them kind of breathe for a second.

[10:25] Rob Rokicki: It was really amazing. I think with the prompt of the two-act structure, Rob wrote two of the standout songs for the show. His first songs that he came back with were Good Kid for Percy and Um My Grand Plan for Annabeth.

[10:39] Rob Rokicki: And those are two real cornerstones of the show now.

[10:42] Rob Rokicki: And so it's actually funny to kind of go back and be like, oh, right, we did a version of the show without those two fundamental anchors of the show.

[10:51] Gordon Cox: And what is it about those songs? Tell me about those up for people who haven't seen it yet. Tell us about those songs and what they accomplished.

[10:56] Rob Rokicki: Well, uh, good kid, this is Percy. He's been kicked out of school continuously, and no one ever kind of believes in him. And I feel like as an artist, we all feel like we're kind of slamming our head against the wall until something takes. So I really was like, uh, I could relate a lot to it, and this is like a breaking point for his character where he finally kind of just like unleashes all this bottled up emotion of losing his mother, of being thrust into these new environments, of having no father figure, of having no one trusting him or believing in him. And it's this kind of explosion where at the very end he realizes if I believe in myself, that's all that matters. And I think that's a kind of a powerful takeaway for young people or any people to be like, you have the agency within yourself, you don't need approval from anyone else.

[11:45] Rob Rokicki: Um, and then the second song, "My Grand Plan," is Annabeth's song. And Annabeth's my favorite character. She's incredibly smart and very capable, but, you know, she's attractive, and that is something that people put, you know, they perceive her in different ways because of that. So, you know, she's constantly kind of undervalued, especially for her intelligence. Um, and she's brave and she's, you know, incredibly capable. So she has this song where she kind of explains her MO to Percy of the kinds of battles she's had to fight, of being ignored both because of her gender and because of her kind of status within the camp, within the world, even from her own mother. So these are kind of like songs that ground the characters a bit more that give them a little bit more heft. And these were not in the original version.

[12:39] Rob Rokicki: And these were not in the original version.

[12:42] Gordon Cox: Okay, got it.

[12:47] Gordon Cox: Well, that's sort of leads into my next question. As you have alluded to, this is—and you've used words like adventure and fantasy—and there are monsters, and it is theater. So how do you do that? How did you think about, oh gosh, there sure is a harpy, right? It's a harpy, that monster that, oh, it's a theory, there is a difference actually. Um, but anyway, there are monsters, is the point, and that's one of several monsters in the show. What, how, I guess this is a question for Stephen in particular, but how did all of you imagine making all that stuff happen? Like a bus blows up, you know, like stuff happens.

[13:25] Stephen Brackett: Yeah, I mean, from the get-go, we knew that this would be a show that capitalized on limitations, right? Um, partly by necessity, we built it in first to, as we said, tour in a tiny little dance, right? Um, where the actors had to set it up and strike it at every show, right? And so God bless those beautiful actors. Um, and so we started from that limitation, but actually that limitation was a real blessing in many ways because it put the primary on invention, right? And it put the primary on making spectacular events unfold with the audience's imagination, right? So even though you're showing something that is like a roll of toilet paper, right? The audience can fill in the blanks and see a tidal wave, right? So it became about a different type of theater that's not about feeding the audience spectacle, but about tapping into their creativity and their imagination to ask them to participate in imagining the spectacle around them.

[14:27] Stephen Brackett: Um, and that was so much a part of my relationship with the books, right? Is that the language is so descriptive in such a glorious way that your mind did the best job of making all of these environments. So we tried to um kind of suggest these places with minimal lights and scenery and a couple little puppetry effects and some um costume visuals from the show, um, but they're merely suggesting something for an audience to fully realize.

[15:00] Gordon Cox: Right. And what was it as you approached this? But this is a question for all of you. You started to talk about sort of what you really responded to in the books. What was it in the books in particular that you felt like this theater adaptation really has to capture? What was the heart of it that you really had to grab on?

[15:15] Rob Rokicki: Yeah, I think when you read, so, you know, Percy and all the characters are half-bloods, they're half god, half mortal, they're the abandoned kids of the Greek gods who are still around, still having kids with mortals, right? And you know what they do? They like take, they abandon those mortals as soon as the kids conceived, and these, you know, you have a whole group of kids who grow up not knowing their parents and discovering that the reason they have these strange powers and weird things that happen to them is because they are the neglected children of the Greek gods.

[15:44] Rob Rokicki: So, um, you know, but the heart of the books is this place called Camp Half-Blood where they can go and be with people who have the same issues, the same, you know, challenges, um, and the same joys that they do. And when you read the books, it's like you want to go to that place, you know? And so I always felt like I wanted to create a show that felt like it invited the audience into that community, you know? And you see the movies, and you know, a movie can have, can you know, use special effects to realize a centaur, you know, or a Minotaur. And yet, you know, if it doesn't make you feel like you walk out of the theater feeling like you went to Camp Half-Blood, then it hasn't told the story of Percy Jackson and that idea that we're all looking for that place where um we can be with people who understand us, who um know what we've been, what we've gone through and who can inspire us to try to find our way in the world.

[16:35] Rob Rokicki: You know, I think, you know, if people leave the show feeling like they've visited that place and they're carrying with them, to me that's, you know, that's what you want to take away.

[16:43] Gordon Cox: And what have you all found that, uh, the telling the story in theater maybe adds to the story or brings out on the story that maybe you didn't expect from just reading it as a novel?

[16:56] Stephen Brackett: There's a lot of humor in it. And I think, you know, these are characters I think because the stakes are so high, um, you know, these are kids from broken homes with not a lot of resources, and the kind of punk aesthetic of it all, of how we tell the story and the adventure of it all is so fun and a little subversive in some ways. And I think like that spirit, that energy is electric in the theater. You really feel it from the audience, they just go on board with you.

[17:26] Stephen Brackett: So the humor is really a part of that too. It's really fun.

[17:30] Rob Rokicki: Yeah, I speaking to that, I think about the Muppet Babies a lot when I'm not expecting that. I watch our show.

[17:38] Rob Rokicki: Because, um, at least I have memories of the Muppet Babies of like not of a playing to both two audiences, right? Playing to a younger audience, but having gems in there for an older kind of parent audience. And that is really, I mean, you can really tell um, uh, on the days where we're like flooded with kids, the responses are different, right? But on the nights where we have a larger adult audience, the response is still there, but they're just laughing to different jokes, right?

[18:10] Rob Rokicki: And on the perfect show, you get the balance of both of them, right? And so feeling that vibe is really rewarding, right? In terms of um, uh, feeling the different types of laughs and responses that we get, um, make me understand how the show is working in different ways.

[18:31] Gordon Cox: What lessons did you learn off-Broadway that, uh, you are using to kind of shape what you're doing on Broadway with the show?

[18:40] Rob Rokicki: Well, just the kind of the spirit of just throwing everything at the wall. I mean, you know, Steven comes from this amazing background of doing these kind of impossible plays, you know, and Joe comes from this world of fantasy and sci-fi, and I think like it's so thrilling and, you know, terrifying to try to achieve that on a stage. So you just try to throw whatever you can and you have freedom off-Broadway to try things and freedom to fail.

[19:05] Rob Rokicki: And so when things work, it's thrilling, and you try to take that same kind of essence of play that Stephen also uses in the rehearsal room with the actors. Uh, you know, there's seven actors playing like something like forty-seven characters.

[19:19] Rob Rokicki: Yeah. And we use that sense of play, that sense of fun with real stakes and try to retain that as much as we can, regardless of the theater size.

[19:28] Gordon Cox: Um, I imagine, uh, if I'm not mistaken, a lot of those actors are making their Broadway debut, uh, with the show at the end.

[19:33] Rob Rokicki: Nine out of ten, uh, as is your composer.

[19:33] Gordon Cox: Uh, there's just right here.

[19:38] Rob Rokicki: Uh, how's our feel, Rob?

[19:38] Rob Rokicki: It's incredible. I mean, I never thought this would be the path. I was an actor, you know, they've heard this story a million times, but I was up for a Broadway, I had booked a Broadway show as an actor, uh, but then, uh, unfortunately, like many things happen, it closed the week before we got our first rehearsal.

[19:59] Rob Rokicki: Um, so that was a bummer.

[20:01] Rob Rokicki: Um, okay, yeah.

[20:06] Rob Rokicki: I learned accordion, so now I know accordion comes in handy sometimes at parties.

[20:10] Gordon Cox: Yeah, uh, where's the accordion track in our show?

[20:12] Rob Rokicki: I know, we have a lot of code.

[20:17] Gordon Cox: Right.

[20:17] Rob Rokicki: Um, but so I was kind of floundering a bit as an artist, and so the show fell in my lap in the perfect time to like, um, to focus all of this kind of energy I had and all the angst fit really well with these, you know, angsty teens over the next couple years.

[20:33] Rob Rokicki: So it's so strange and wonderful that that path has taken me to Broadway in this way.

[20:38] Rob Rokicki: Um, and I love our scrappy wonderful weird little show that we get to tell that story on a Broadway stage. It's amazing.

[20:46] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[20:47] Gordon Cox: Um, and Steven, Joe, you guys recently made your Broadway debuts.

[20:50] Gordon Cox: Um, it, uh, with "Be More Chill." What did the experience of "Be More Chill" uh bring to your understanding of what you wanted to do with "The Lightning Thief"?

[21:04] Stephen Brackett: It's a good question. You know, it's anytime I write something, I'm never thinking about where the destination of it will be.

[21:11] Stephen Brackett: You know, uh, you're sort of focused on making the thing, and for me, it's about you know, is this a story I really want to tell and really want to put out in the world, especially for an adaptation? Is this something that I feel like has something to say when you take it from one medium to another? Um, so I didn't approach I approached Lightning Thief the same way I approach Be More Chill, which is I'm writing something that I feel passionate about that I want to put in front of people, and was very lucky with both of those shows to get to continually expand the audience, you know, as people responded and responded, you know, in such a wave that you know it offered the a door opening for the next stage of his life.

So um, yeah, it's you know, it's it's been a but it's been a wild year. Yeah, I haven't had a chance to process it yet. So yeah, certainly both shows have been like have feel like in an amazing way they've kind of like snuck their way into my own way, right? In a way that makes makes it feel like there's a little bit of like a renegade kind of spirit to both of those that I think is a celebration, right? Um, uh certainly with both shows, it's been amazing to see um those shows fire with that kind of audience, right? Um and um, you know, it's it's it's the dream of the platform for which you build theater, right? And we have built something that has amassed untraditional audiences, right? And audiences who are hungry for this content, and so being able to um uh do that and and I say like open our doors as wide as possible.

Um, that's been the thing that we've I've thought about with both shows is how do you how do you make this fire um with as many different diverse audience um members as possible do you feel like this is a question for uh any of you do you feel like there are things Broadway could be doing to kind of open its doors a little wider to these audiences who maybe haven't uh like I imagine number of like maybe more chill uh crowd for instance hadn't been to a Broadway show yet and like what what what do you feel like some of the obstacles are and how could we think about removing them.

[23:26] Rob Rokicki: Yeah I mean I I think a lot of the obstacles are about commerce are about um uh how expensive it is to present something on Broadway and what that necessitates for ticket prices. Um I think that that is a challenge that the theater industry has been trying to deal with but is such a difficult um uh challenge and and there isn't a really easy way to start chipping away at that apart from figuring out how to offer cheap seats right um uh, you know I'm proud of our producers that they figured out a way that was viable for them to produce this on a limited run um uh and that feels like some savvy from our producers who say this deserves to be on that stage there's a space for this um uh and we can do it for this amount of time right yeah yeah yeah um uh so it is just it takes some pioneering people behind the scenes to think about it from all ends, um, uh and help kind of diversify what we're putting on the stages.

Luckily, I think there's a lot of people out there doing it, right? Um uh, and that's the only way to do it, right? Is to kind of keep pushing content on Broadway that pushes at those boundaries, that pushes out what we think of as a Broadway player or musical. Um, and then there that's gonna be trial and an error, right? Some of it is gonna really fire and be massively successful, and some of it won't, right? But it takes the people um willing to make that risk.

[25:06] Gordon Cox: Uh speaking of the it's a limited run, where does the show go next? Does it go on tour? What what happens next with it?

[25:12] Stephen Brackett: I think that's a sort of an interesting question. We don't know. With with this piece, we've always been like, what happens next? And then something sort of comes up, right? Um uh I'm sure there are people definitely thinking about that right now and and working on that. Um, but we don't we don't have any information about that at this moment. It's in the God's hands now.

[25:34] Rob Rokicki: It's in the gods. I will say what I'm looking forward to. And listen, I hope that this production of it has a life forever and ever and ever. I'm excited for it to start getting licensed. I'm excited to for high schools to start doing this, for community theaters to start doing this, for colleges to start doing, you know, like I think that there's gonna be a lot of people out there that are gonna be really hungry for this content. And um uh I can't wait to kind of see how other people with even less means than we had solve how a center art stands up from a wheelchair, right? Right? Right. Um uh so I I I'm excited eventually to get to that point. I'm just thrilled there's been this kind of sea change too in terms of genre.

Uh I think that's something that sometimes as we look at the what a Broadway musical has to be and this kind of aesthetic of Broadway, that there's room for for genre like sci-fi and fantasy or other stories of underrepresented you know genres or or people or demographics. And that's that's really exciting to maybe be a little part of that.

[26:38] Rob Rokicki: You said sea change.

[26:39] Stephen Brackett: Oh that's a design.

[26:42] Rob Rokicki: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[26:44] Stephen Brackett: Sorry. I mean, one thing that's been cool, you know, we're coming to Broadway after this national tour. So the show has been in front of broader audiences for you know since January. And and you know, so we've learned about the show, the cast has learned about the show, and also audiences have learned about the show. You know, we have uh um like our we have a fantastic uh uh Twitter account and and someone uh a fan set up something called Half Bloods Helping Help Helping Half Bloods during the tour where um people who didn't live where the show was could still buy tickets for people who were in the cities where the show is playing so they could discover it and sponsor so you had fans buying tickets for other fans, not for themselves, but so other people could experience the show.

[27:28] Rob Rokicki: Come on, that's a good idea.

[27:29] Stephen Brackett: And like there's not many shows that have that level of passion and and people who you know want to like give that much. So uh so it's you know, every every step of the journey, um the the audiences have surprised us and and delighted us and moved us. So uh I'm I I feel very fortunate to be uh sitting down in Broadway for 16 weeks and seeing uh what those audiences do next.

[27:52] Gordon Cox: Uh and what's next for you guys?

[27:55] Joe Trace: Well, Joe and I have Be More Chill in London, which is coming up, which we're excited about it.

[28:01] Gordon Cox: When does that start?

[28:02] Joe Trace: That's so um uh I go over for rehearsals at the start of the new year.

[28:07] Gordon Cox: Oh, yeah.

[28:07] Joe Trace: And then I think we open mid to late February.

[28:12] Gordon Cox: Okay.

[28:12] Stephen Brackett: Yeah.

[28:13] Joe Trace: Um and you over the summer you worked on a musical, you put up a musical called A Strange Loop. It's a big deal off Broadway. And you're doing a concert version? Did that happen already? Or concert version's coming up in a week to do that.

[28:24] Rob Rokicki: So to celebrate the album release.

[28:26] Joe Trace: And the album is amazing.

[28:29] Rob Rokicki: Yeah, the the album turned out really, really good.

[28:31] Gordon Cox: And what's next for that show?

[28:33] Stephen Brackett: You know, we'll see. TV TV. It's it's again, I mean, speaking of of challenges of producing theater, right? We were lucky and uh and really found an amazing home with Playwrights Horizons and uh page 73. It's a whole different game when you think about moving a show and it's a challenging piece. Um uh so there's a lot for us to figure out uh with the kind of minutia of that. Um uh but we're certainly thinking about it. Um and you're heading off to London and Yeah, yeah, we got New Murcia Lenin coming up. It's yeah.

[29:09] Rob Rokicki: Yeah, yeah.

[29:10] Gordon Cox: And what's next for you, Ron?

[29:11] Rob Rokicki: Uh I'm working on two cool shows. One is uh about a woman trying to escape an oceanic cult called Experience Marianas. We developed that at Captain One. I read a lot about things that scare me. So I'm also working on a I have a graphic novel rock album called Monster Songs. We're doing a big concert of that uh at the end of the month at Borgelo, so that'll be fun.

[29:29] Stephen Brackett: And the cast is amazing.

[29:30] Rob Rokicki: Yeah, it's great. It's some some Bimorchio folks.

[29:34] Stephen Brackett: Yeah, it's nice. It's a good group of good group of actors.

[29:37] Gordon Cox: Uh what is the next YA sci-fi fantasy adventure that the three of you would like to adapt next?

[29:43] Joe Trace: Ooh.

[29:44] Gordon Cox: Joe, tell us.

[29:46] Joe Trace: I do have some ideas.

[29:47] Gordon Cox: Of course you do.

[29:48] Joe Trace: Very good. Yeah. Uh wait, what did I just say to you the other day that I wanted to do a thing? I don't remember.

[29:51] Gordon Cox: Dude, that's terrible.

[29:54] Joe Trace: I I I love, I mean uh, you know, I I continue to make adaptation the thing that really gets me excited because, you know, I when you adapt, you're thinking like a reader, you're thinking like a writer. You know, you're getting to take something in that in like everyone's imagination and and and find a way to stimulate that. So I do I would love to work with these guys again. You know, people keep on asking us about when we're gonna adapt the other books. And it's like it's like it's seven years of working on the first book. If we did that, we wouldn't, it would be 50 years before we do it. And there's three ri Rick is writing his third series set in the world of Camp Half Blood.

[30:29] Rob Rokicki: Oh god.

[30:30] Joe Trace: Um so there's like you know, gonna be like 15 books. Well, he has a whole number of series, but I think he has separate series with like the Greek gods in the North.

[30:38] Rob Rokicki: Egyptian gods, yeah.

[30:39] Joe Trace: Yeah, and Egypt gods. And he's he's doing he um there's a um he has uh uh a imprint called Rick Ryder Presents.

[30:47] Rob Rokicki: Yep, uh, which is uh um uh getting the first voices to tell stories about the um the gods and monsters from their own mythologies. Um that's really incredible. So anyone who likes um Percy Jackson should check those out and write or wait for the musical app.

[31:00] Gordon Cox: Or yeah, exactly. All right. Uh thanks guys, thanks for being here.

[31:03] Stephen Brackett: Thank you so much.

[31:04] Rob Rokicki: Thank you.

[31:11] Gordon Cox: That was Stephen Brackett, Rob Rokicki, and Joe Trace, the co-creators of the Lightning Thief, the new musical now playing at Broadway's Long Acre Theater through January 5th. If you like what you're hearing on this and other episodes of Stagecraft, I'd love it if you could rate or review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. It'd be a big help. Or tell a friend about us. I'll be back next week with another new episode. Until then, see you at the theater.