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[0:00] Nella Vera: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the fabulous Feinstein's/54 Below. Before we get started this evening, just a polite reminder. Please take this moment to silence your cell phones. Also, there is no flash photography, please. Thank you. And enjoy the show.

[0:13] Nella Vera: Friday catch our life. Beyond boy line. And when I see the skies, then my Bisex mean a person, stopping son. The searching for identity. So help me. Please embrace me. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Feinstein's/54 Below podcast. We are bringing you behind the scenes at Broadway Supper Club, and I'm Nella Vera, the director of marketing. Joining us today, we have Matt Dahan and Kelly Lynne D'Angelo, writers of the emotional and explosive pop-rock musical Starry about brothers Vincent and Theo van Gogh. Following a sold-out engagement with us in 2019 and coming off their Edinburgh Fringe Festival concert series, Matt and Kelly returned to Feinstein's/54 Below with a song cycle presentation of Starry. Matt and Kelly, welcome.

[1:11] Matt Dahan: I'm Matt Dahan.

[1:12] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: I'm Kelly Lynne D'Angelo.

[1:14] Matt Dahan: And you are listening to the Feinstein's/54 Below Podcast.

[1:19] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Thank you so much for having us.

[1:20] Matt Dahan: Hi.

[1:27] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Oh boy. So it's a good story, actually. The story of how we met is yeah, very well traveled at this point. It's um I was helping a friend of mine move into her new house in Los Angeles in 2014, so it's been quite some time. And I was moving some pictures out of the moving van. And one of them was a framed print of a Vincent van Gogh piece called Almond Blossom. And I went to my friend whose name was Mary. I'm like, Mary, like you have great taste in art. I didn't know that you were a fan of Vincent van Gogh. And she's like, oh no, that's my roommate Kelly and I didn't know Kelly at the time so I bring the work into her room and then I go over to him and I'm like looking at the painting and I'm like oh you like Almond Blossom and he's like yeah I love Vincent van Gogh and I was like how funny is this I wrote my thesis on him in college and I'm obsessed with his story.

I'm writing a musical about him right now and then he turns to me and he goes I'm doing it too yeah and then we looked at one another over this painting and I was like do you want to write it together? And he just looks at me and goes yeah. I'm like why not let's go that's so crazy but what if they had been radically different it was the wildest thing we compared outlines because I it's an idea that I came I started to bring into fruition when I was about 18 years old because I had a different book and we worked on another musical together which is an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. So that was like our first project together so at that point I had already written the book when I was 18 and I was like okay next project for myself oh sorry and so I started to write the outline and then we compared them and they were the same story the same five years the same focus on Vincent and Theo in Paris and Montmartre. It was wild.

[3:14] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Yeah wow just exactly the same beats the same everything in the outlines and I was already starting to brainstorm ideas for music. Once we started combining our two outlines it was like well there's a show here.

[3:26] Nella Vera: Amazing do you write the music and you write the book and lyrics, or how does it work?

[3:32] Matt Dahan: I uh I write the music and Cal writes the book, and together we combine on the lyrics.

[3:37] Nella Vera: I love it. I love I'm fascinated by how people get inspiration for shows. And this is probably the most unique way that people have been inspired. What is it? Why a musical about Van Gogh, post-impressionist artist?

[3:53] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: I I feel, and I think we both do, that so many people know the name. When you when you say, I love I love going up to people and saying, 'Have you heard of Vincent van Gogh?' And they say, 'Yeah.' And I say, 'What do you know about him?' And they'll say, 'I you know, he cut off his own ear and he painted that thing, the Starry Night.' Um, sometimes they'll know he was in a yellow house. Sometimes they'll know a couple other details. But generally speaking, I'm like, do you know that he never sold a painting in his life? At least that's what people say. And they go, Yeah, yeah, I guess he, you know, I knew he wasn't really big when he was around. And I said, Well, how do you think he became who he was?

And that's really where like the discussion begins, is of really about the story behind the man and the reason why his work is so transcendental and it still sparks conversations today. I like to think he's kind of somebody sits and sat at the precipice of the material world into the emotional world. He was the access point for artists. He defined modern day artistry. So it's a really interesting story to tell.

[4:53] Matt Dahan: Yeah, and the story just sings. Well, you know how people say that about certain stories, that you pick something up, if you if you're gonna turn into a musical, it needs to sing to you. And the story of Vincent and Theo and the whole gang there in Montmartre, it just sang to both of us. And deep down, be even beyond the core of it being about an artist and creating art, some of the most famous art in the world. It's a story about family, it's a story about friends. And once you break it down to that level, it became so relatable and so moving. Yeah, just the story of how these two brothers, even though they both died very young, how did their story persevere? That introduced us to an incredible woman named Joanna, who was the wife of Theo. And it was uh she kind of carried on this story and this legacy. And this remarkable woman, she sang, you know, she needed to have a story, her story be told. Because no one really knows about her at all.

[5:50] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: No, and it's it's it's all the letters, the compilation, the person who created modern day artistry wasn't just Vincent, it was really it's really Theo's wife, Joanna, who again she alone defined that, let love define that. Her passion for the story defined that. As an art history major, as somebody who loves the history part of art and not something I I don't like looking at it and only objective like there's an objectiveness that's required, not a subjectiveness. And I think that we get to bring a conversation and make things emotional again. Kids walk through museums and they pass by and they just don't look twice, and people don't understand the stories. But now we're getting these beautiful, beautiful essays from kids who are so excited to learn and study. And it's because we're making it alive again. We're making these are real people. So it's it's exciting.

[6:47] Matt Dahan: We didn't just want it to be a story about some crusty old painters that you read about in a history book. It's uh when you look at it objectively, this was such an explosive and imaginative time in human history. Everything was being questioned from you know, science to faith to art, and this was the hub of that universe, and that's where we find our characters, and that is just so much fun to write about and sing about. And it was kind of I like to think of it as a like a rebirth in some ways, or more like a instead of renaissance. Sometimes I say naissance is just a birth. Because it was 20 years of lack of war. There were people who were able to generate ideas, there were philosophers coming out.

It was this really formative time where people were starting to think. You know, we were all moving forward and progressing, but suddenly people could breathe because they weren't consistently serving in different sort of wars, and suddenly the head started to grow, and people started to try to think about what was next and what else could we do. And a lot of people were grasping and grabbing in different corners. And Vincent found this little nook, and it's really fascinating how he became kind of the pinnacle of artistry. It's an exciting story. I love the story so much. I love the idea of the letters and bringing Joanna to life. And and the letters just, you know, that you pour your soul out.

I guess because proximity, you're far away from your loved ones, so you don't have any other way of communicating. But when you read some of the letters, they're so moving and so detailed. Um, you know, just a biography in itself.

[8:23] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Yeah. And she translated it four different languages over the course of her life. That book took her years to compile. Um, she was so brilliant, she was so smart.

[8:32] Matt Dahan: Yeah, we can't gush over Joe. She was enough. She is she is the best. I get chills. I just got a big chill thinking about how magnificent she was. And to think about how she adapted them and how she compiled it and put it together and started to create the gallery on her own as a widow with a newborn. It's it's such a uh we have taken so many steps. It's been such a delicate process because we care so deeply about staying true to the like fundamental emotion of these brothers, and those letters are so rich and they're so raw and they're so animated and detailed that I think we've tried in every corner of this musical to really pay homage to the legacy.

[9:16] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Yeah, and we're so fortunate to have these letters. I mean, without them we wouldn't have this kind of window into because he was not uh huge critically acclaimed artist at the time. So the only way you could get this window into their lives, their relationships, their everything were these letters.

[9:31] Matt Dahan: Yeah. And Joe was the big reason why we have this, and without that, we wouldn't be here having this conversation.

[9:37] Nella Vera: For people who maybe are not as familiar with Van Gogh's life, this idea of focusing the show on the brothers. Can you talk a little bit about why a story about Vincent van Gogh can't be told without Theo?

[9:54] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Oh man. Yeah, this is uh it should never be. I I think that on every placard, I think everybody should know who like it's well, we've seen projects where they they tell Gauguin and Van Gogh, and you're like, but you know, it seems like something's missing here.

[10:11] Matt Dahan: Oh, it is so I wonder, you know, if you can tell our listeners what what was going on in that relationship and why it was, you know, they're so intertwined, these brothers.

[10:22] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Okay, well, the word that I like to use, the phrase I like to use to describe those two is a binary system. One literally could not live without the other. Uh Vincent was not super duper close with a lot of his family. Theo was the one who really gave him the support, gave him the love financially, and he just gave him the opportunity to be the person that he became. Didn't always understand him a hundred billion percent, but just like any siblings, you know, they love each other and they support each other. And uh it's a vi it's a binary system because they just could not have been much more different.

[10:59] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: And Theo was such an interesting person, like he was an artist too.

[11:03] Matt Dahan: Well, and he did do artistry when he was younger, but from the age of like fourteen and fifteen, they had an uncle, uncle sent, who um oversaw this art gallery in Paris.

[11:12] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: So from a young age, the boys would go to Paris and they would tour the galleries and see all this beautiful art, and they were so focused on their family.

[11:19] Matt Dahan: Their father was a pastor and so um, uh, or a priest, and they would spend all this time together, um, and the family would do painting and they would talk and listen to music, and they spent quality family time together every Sunday.

[11:31] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: So family was so important.

[11:32] Matt Dahan: But from a young age, Vincent was consistently in the shadow of other family members.

[11:38] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: For better lack of terms, there was a pretty dark moment in his past when there was another child born stillbirth named Vincent.

[11:45] Matt Dahan: And so he always felt like he's in the shadow of this firstborn.

[11:48] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: And it's really beautiful and tragic upbringing. Uh, but Theo always saw beyond that, he always looked up to his older brother as eccentric as he was, as wild as he was. His philosophy was explosive. He wanted to be a priest like his father. And so he would go around town and shout all these ideas and come up with all of these different ways to look at life. And again, that kind of put him as an outcast, but Theo just loved him so deeply. So when by the time Theo was seventeen, he had already moved to Paris. He had been resolved by the time he was 14 to become an art dealer, just like his uncle. He was the youngest person ever in the history of Google and C Art Gallery, which was around for about 50 years, the youngest one to join.

They said yes, this kid really wants it. So by the age of 17, he has started working and selling art. And then within 10 years, right around the time that Vincent finally resolved himself after going through so many different career paths, decided, you know, when he was like in his 30s, I think I, you know, formally want to create. And I tried like 14 other things and now I want to be a painter. Theo was so supportive of that, but also very hesitant in certain ways, where he wanted to make sure that Vincent had all of the tools and assets needed. But financially, it's really where he supported him the most because he was so successful by the time he was 27. I could talk all day about this. I have like a autobiography in my brain.

I love it. I love that story. I love just everything about his life. I also love reading about he almost especially I'm talking about Vincent here, there's like an innocence to him. And I guess it has to do with the way he looks at life and also physically looks at things. You know, you always wonder Picasso that's what he sees. You know he sees women in these outline forms and when you look at Van Gogh, you know, you see this is you know he's looking at these explosions of colors and the beauty that lies, you know, he's not looking at it with an eye like we are looking at it. And I've always been fascinated by that, you know, by artists and when you read about him and some of the letters there's such an innocence and optimism which you don't expect from somebody who was so chronically depressed and obviously suffering from some mental health issues, but there's still an innocence where he describes things that are beautiful.

And I find that so beautiful and heartbreaking, but beautiful. And you understand why his paintings make people so happy. Well, the ones that are not, you know, self-portraits, but I love that. That's his power of expression. I mean, he did the he always tried to paint what he felt, you know, not just a true image of something. He saw it with his emotions, and he translated that onto the canvas. And that's why everyone has such visceral reactions to his work, because it provokes our feelings too. And that was one of his gifts was the ability to make us feel through his work. And I just, yeah, that's I feel very deeply every time I see something of his. And that was his power to take, you know, often such immense pain and turn it into this beauty that we can all understand and enjoy even today. That like requires that childlike innocence.

[15:05] Matt Dahan: It does. That sort of rawness and willingness, I think that people nowadays get so caught up in pleasing other people. He wanted to make other he wanted success, but he looked inward oftentimes and then gave what was inside of himself outwardly. Instead of back in the day, all of that artwork was done and it was very regimented. It was like you painted a handful of certain topics, and that was it. And for him to start to explore and ask questions, that was a child, that's like a child saying why, where, what, how, and he didn't shy away from it. He only leaned into it further. And I really think that the reason, and I think we tackled this in the story a little bit. I always feel like when people look at Vincent, they always say he's the crazy one, he's the mad one.

And he has this beautiful letter that really is a big focus of us about being feeling like a caged bird. And it's the most beautiful letter that he wrote to Theo. And how he used to pass this cage bird all the time, and you could hear it singing, and it should be happy because it has everything it needs, but you can just hear it in its song, I want to be free. And nowadays, people do that to him still. They look at him as a caged bird, and we want to reverse that. We're trying to set him free through this, because he is so much more than the guy all of his own injured. And who even knows how that all happened? There's a lot of subtext, and we want to leave that up to discussion and people's own personal interpretation.

But his freedom, that's all he ever wanted. And I think that we really tried to emotionally capture that through song. We've been working on this for about a little over three years now, right around that. And it's really accelerating because the story again, we're work driving all the time, it's really come to a beautiful place now. And we found something that I think was always there that was it was so hard to articulate. Someone would ask, Well, what's it about? And I'm like, Well, it's really about two brothers finding the power of expression. And it's like, well, what does that mean? Like, what do they want? So is do they want to sell a painting? And it's like, no, it's not a material thing.

It's about two people finding the power of expression, and really what that story is really what we're trying to tell is the story of unconditional love. How do you express, how do you find unconditional love in somebody else enough that it transcends time? Look at where we are, even though they died young and they never got to see and reap what was sown, it was sown. Yeah, so we're still feeling that love today. And love brought us all together. You mentioned that it's you you're in a good spot now. So, where is the project right in now in terms of its development?

[17:46] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Oh man, so this is probably what, the sixth version of the show? It's a lot of versions.

[17:50] Matt Dahan: Yeah, yeah. But it's uh we just recently released a concept recording of the big songs from the show.

[18:00] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: And it's going viral, right?

[18:02] Matt Dahan: Oh my god, yeah. Apparently, it's been out for about three weeks, three and a half weeks now. We have over half a million views.

[18:09] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Five hundred thousand listens on Spotify.

[18:12] Matt Dahan: That's it. 500,000 listens on Spotify. It's crazy and insane. And we hit we hit number 14 on the iTunes charts. That was cool. And then Billboard contacted me on Facebook.

[18:22] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: What?

[18:22] Matt Dahan: Because I again we're just two kids trying to tell a story. So like they reached out to me on Facebook and they're like, you might top on Billboard, you might hit the charts on Billboard. We didn't, but that was pretty cool. Most of this record was recorded in a room about, you know, like a in this tiny, tiny room with one microphone surrounded by blankets. Like an eight by two.

[18:38] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Oh my god.

[18:39] Matt Dahan: Yeah. The fact that it's reaching so many people is so it's incredible.

[18:45] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Well, for the score is fantastic.

[18:48] Matt Dahan: Oh, yeah. I loved it.

[18:49] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Thank you. It's really good. Every time I have to listen to a new musical, I pause for a minute and pray that it's good because you want all your friends and acquaintances to you know to do well. But this was actually fantastic. It's it's boppy, but it's also just there's so much about it to love. And the score is fairly contemporary. So how did you decide what the sound would be? You talked about it singing, the characters and the storylines singing to you. So how did you decide on the sound?

[19:20] Matt Dahan: Well, it just felt like it felt like modern music to me. I mean, Cal will tell you that early on in my original outline of this show. Yeah. I originally thought, like, hey, how can I make this, you know, even cooler? How can I make it translate even more? I thought about setting it in present-day Los Angeles and making all the characters like these, you know, like silver leg hipsters. Yeah, like hipstery, and like they have the I was very inspired. I was very inspired by the downtown LA art scene. And I'm like, this is such a cool community, and every everything was everywhere, it was exploding everywhere, and the people were incredible. And I'm like, how cool would it be to set it there? That kind of got my brain working on contemporary things.

You know, these are not crusty old painters. Back in the day when the story origin was taking place in the 1800s, they were like, you know, 20 somethings, 30 somethings, and during this revolutionary time, it felt like I needed like a rock drum set. I needed electric guitars. I needed this was the kind of emotion I was feeling. The brothers were all in their late 20s, like the late 20s, early 30s. All these painters were in their late 20s and early 30s, except for Pizarro. We can talk about him another day. But but it was there's such a there was such a zeitgeist. And I think people often put them in the past and make them bolder than they actually were. These were young people.

[20:39] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Exactly.

[20:39] Matt Dahan: Just because they're a museum doesn't mean they're these crusty old people. I think it's the beards.

[20:44] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Yeah, the beards does have something to do with it.

[20:47] Matt Dahan: And also, you know, there was some things going around. It's funny because I went over the summer, I went to Monet's house.

[20:53] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Oh, uh in the you know, we were right up on his life, and I've always thought of him as this old dude with a long beard with one of those funny hats sitting outside. Of course, he had a totally full crazy life before that, full of love affairs and whatever else, you know, was in his life, but you always just picture this guy with a straw hat sitting outside with his long white beard.

[21:18] Matt Dahan: And that's uh that's so true that in and in that time, and amazing that they were all contemporaries, but also makes sense that Mark was exploding at that time.

[21:26] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Yeah, and they're in the hub of the art world, Paris, and they're in like the party section of Paris.

[21:30] Matt Dahan: Yeah. And that's where like the Moulin Rouge was, and uh that's where all the big bars were, and that's where everyone went to get inspired. And all these like we're not making this up. All these artists are hanging out at these bars together. Literally, where Theo's apartment was on the Rue Le Pic, you can walk out, and Segatory's was Segatory's Cafe was right across the room. She's one of the characters of our show, yeah. And that's where all the painters would hang out.

[21:52] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Yeah.

[21:52] Matt Dahan: So Theo lived across the street. And when you're crazy, tiny little street. It's crazy. Just all these famous artists that we look back on, we're like, it's so wild. But they were like all under the same roof a lot.

[22:03] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Yeah.

[22:03] Matt Dahan: And they were all wild and crazy in this crazy part of Paris. And then actually translates a little bit back to your uh when you said sound. Like when we've been trying to find singers, it again we've been workshopping for three years. It was so funny because like a traditional sound just wasn't a hundred percent right, but a too modern sound wasn't right either. So we had to find so many different people that work together with different cadences and vibratos and different sort of like mixed belts and rock belts. It's like it's like a combination of rawness, meets refinement. We didn't want something too clean. We wanted something that felt authentic. Yeah, it's a story that deserved to be lush, but it also deserved to have that like dirt under your fingernails kind of rock edge to it. Because I felt that's that was really true to them at the time. So I just kind of threw it all together in the music.

[22:55] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: So you're basically translating for the audience what it would feel like.

[23:01] Matt Dahan: Yeah. At the time, which is I love that. I saw Oklahoma on Broadway.

[23:06] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Yes, I did too.

[23:08] Matt Dahan: And it's interesting because the dream ballet, which a lot of people had opinions about.

[23:12] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Oh I loved it.

[23:14] Matt Dahan: Well, you know what? I loved, and especially in talking to Daniel about it, when he said that he was trying to recreate what that moment felt like for that audience at the time, but now.

[23:50] Matt Dahan: And I think what you're describing is kind of what that feels like to me. You're sort of incorporating the emotional sort of feeling of these artists and the time and translating it to what you know what it is now. Because at the end of the day, I mean there are artists and they did these crazy amazing things, but at the end of the day, they were a lot more like us than I think a lot of people think. And a lot and part of my score was to kind of draw people into that world and invite them in to a world that they might feel a little excluded from if they just look at like a painting by Vincent or a painting by Gauguin. You know, this makes I want my goal in a lot of ways is to make them feel like this is one of us.

And you're like stepping into the painting and it's inescapable kind of vibe. Like we we workshopped at Rockwell Table and Stage in late 2018. So we had eight shows, we sold them all out, which was really exciting. There's not a lot of goods selling out, so let's keep that good. Um but we we stepped into this world and it was an immersive environment and it felt like you were in sectorious cafe because it was kind of like a cafe vibe with table service. Kind of like fine scenes. Um but it's something that I think like at Oklahoma, they did such a great job of really making you feel like you were there and everything was everywhere. And I think that's something that this show you can like when you listen to it, when you listen to Matt's brilliant music, you step into it and you can just imagine it all around you. It's it's not something that's just viewed like a painting, it's something that's like experienced.

[25:16] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: You mentioned the cast, and we noticed that some of your cast members are Star Kid members. Oh, what made that connection? How how did you end up with that?

[25:25] Matt Dahan: Long journey. It's a long interesting road with that. Started very early on with uh before we even had finished act one, really. I mean, we wanted to do some concerts to just dip the toe in the water with the songs, make sure they were good, make sure an audience responded. And uh Cal was showing me a bunch of people, and uh Jamie Lynn Beattie was a Star Kid member is a Star Kid member, and I didn't know anything about Team Star Kid at the time. I might maybe I knew a little bit. I only just found out about them and realized oh my god. They are the most incredible community of artists and creators and fans, and it's so crazy that I didn't know anything about them because now I'm their music director, which is I've out in LA, they're based in LA now and music direct their shows.

But at the time, you know, we booked them at 54 below, and they said, Oh, could we do a week? And we were like, a week is for like, you know, yeah Kelly O'Hara who can we know can sell out and has a fan base, and we put their show on sale, two performances. How quickly do we sell out? Like with I don't even want it. I mean, I think our it crashed our servers. And then we were like, who are these people? And then we realized the power of YouTube. Oh yeah. Oh my god. They own. And now we've added performances. They're still all sold out. We just added one more performance on Friday, and that's been sold out. And uh we are getting sob stories and letters from mothers saying, please, my child, we're flying out, and we didn't get tickets, or my child is their biggest fan, and we got main dining room seats, but we have to have ringside seats.

And I'm like, relax, it's 24 feet from the stage to the back of the venue. Your kid is gonna be fine. You will still be able to see the pores on their faces. Like we are getting it's I mean, I've never seen anything like it. It's a it's another it's like a zeitgeist. It's it's this generation. I'm gonna I'm gonna say it for myself of millennials who were actively searching for musical theater that spoke to them. And when they started making stuff in the early the parodies, right? Yeah, when they started making the parodies, it was it was so brilliantly written and so so raw. It was a perfect storm. Yeah, it was just what people were looking for at the time. I mean, it's it was the dawn of YouTube and their first, you know, big thing was very potter musical.

And they're like, Well, we don't have the rights to this, so why don't we just release it on YouTube and see what happens and now look 11, twelve music musicals later. They're still going stronger than ever. Didn't uh take it down. No, no, well, it's a parody, so it's protected. And just like the Constitution of the United States. But it's it's wild because Jamie, Jamie got involved very early on, and then we needed at some point a Vincent, and she uh I reached out and she was like, Well, I have this, I have these two guys, Jeff and Dylan, and I was like, Oh, y yes. And so they're amazing star kids, yes. And we brought them in, and then we started workshopping with them in late 2017, and really since then they've been involved in different capacities.

It's funny because in early 2017, right around that same time is when we found Mariah as well, um, who was in an interesting place where she was moving to uh do more directing because she's brilliant in so many different ways. Uh, but she started lean again back into our workshop and really started to get involved with Starry, and then Star Kid started working with her, and we started working with more Star Kids, and now it's been like this beautiful intersection and dance. Now we can't get away from each other. It's amazing.

[29:07] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: You know, I've watched the YouTube videos of them performing, and they're really good. You know, good cast. And and I love that they're young because again, I was expecting to see some old bearded, white bearded guy singing your song, and it's you know, a young man in his prime, and you're like, okay, you know, I know where this show's going, and it it's kind of awesome. So you've done in addition to Starry, you've both worked on the count of Monte Cristo, stories based in the 1800s in France. What draws into this time period? Not that it isn't a great period. I love the period. I also I love France and I'm Francophile, but what draws you to this time period?

[29:51] Matt Dahan: Oh, well, Cal, you want to take this one?

[29:53] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Yeah, I mean, I I love history. I have I've s I have uh cultural anthropology art history to like I was obsessed with like 19th century literature. I found the Con of Monte Cristo when I was like in ninth grade when I was 14, and that's when I started writing the book for my adaptation of the count. Um simply because after I read the novel, I was just so blown away by the fact that something written by Alexander Dumas back then could just resonate with me so much. Think the thing that I love the most about writing stories in the past, not to say that we won't tackle other things, they're so grand. And they allowed you to step and create such a beautiful world. And to make something that once felt dead alive, there's there's such a beauty in that because growing up, I I w really loved school.

I really loved learning, I loved growing my mind, I liked reading. To make history accessible, I mean heck, Hamilton just blew it out of the water with that. When I was seven years old. Yeah, to Broadway. Yeah, six. There's just it's all happening now. And that's great. When I was seven years old, my favorite musical in the world, I I live in LA, I work in TV film, I'm a writer right now at Disney, which is cool. Um, but while I was working, while I was working out there, people, you know, when you had take these big meetings, they're always like, Oh, we're uh, you know, what's your favorite movie? And they expect you to say an art film. And I say this is gonna come up. I have to mention it.

I knew it was gonna come up. It's most it defines me. Um Rogers and Hammerstein's 1997 version of Cinderella featuring Brandy, a Cinderella. Uh, best thing I've that was ever made. Because I was seven years old and I saw it, and then I saw how the cast was just beautifully colorblind to make worlds based in the past where if it's not race related or sex related, you can remove the barriers of uh sex and race and just tell a story with anybody who can tell it. I think it's such a beautiful sort of world that you're able to kind of revitalize and make it less stuffy. But also for people who claim that there were no black nuns in Austria. Yeah or you know, it's like Dumas was black. Yeah, come on.

Yeah, you know, and I think people don't realize that. And you're like, you know, Norm Lewis, when I interviewed him, said that when people were criticizing that you know he was playing uh Javert and he was there would be no black policeman. He was like, there was a general who was black, and he and his name was Dumas. So I think that part of it is interesting.

[32:29] Matt Dahan: Uh last question, since we are at time. Um you're both based in Los Angeles, you work in film and animation. What are your other projects that you're working on outside of theater musicals?

[32:40] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Oh man. Well, uh right now I'm just all about theater and musicals. I mean, I as music director for Team Star Kid, I helped uh get their latest show Black Friday on uh on stage, which it's gonna be on YouTube. We they stay true to their YouTube roots. It's gonna be on YouTube on uh the the leap day, the twenty ninth.

[33:00] Matt Dahan: Oh wow February, yep. Excellent. And I also produced their their record. Yeah, so all of their more recent music. So the music, I'm the music guy. I'm their their toolbox for for music. That's been taking up all that. It's such an empire. It it you know, it it's surprising, but once you get into the Star Kid ecosystem, it's just all over the place. And then before we know it, we're there's gonna be another Star Kid show that they're gonna start uh putting out there very soon. So I'll be jumping into that one and music directing and doing all their sheet music, running rehearsals, all that business. So lots of music directing for me.

[33:36] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: Great. And then I wrote on Cartoon Network's Mau Mau and stayed tuned for some stuff I did on Nickelodeon. You'll see my name there. And then this beautiful kids' show that I've been working on. I don't know if I'm allowed to say the name at, but it has been announced in terms of the actual show. So it's called Chicken Squad Season One. It's fantastic. It's so cute, and I get to write the lyrics to some of the songs, and it's just it's such a dream to be able to write kids' content. Um I also do a lot of podcasting and I do live streaming. I'm a very weird multi-hyphenate, and I'm a professional dungeon master. So you can actually I play D professionally. It's the weirdest world.

[34:14] Matt Dahan: That is the craziest thing I've ever heard.

[34:17] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: I know. Um I love it. Um it is now a genre. Um, but I am the DM for Girls Guts Glory, and I work uh I'm one of the players on Sirens in the Realm, and I do a bunch of other stuff with DD. So you can always find me in that game space.

[34:31] Matt Dahan: Amazing. This is so great. Thank you guys so much for joining me. We look forward to seeing Starry, not just at Fine Science 54 below, but also hopefully somewhere on stage, fully produced very soon. Because it's a great show.

[34:47] Kelly Lynne D'Angelo: So we won't stop until it happens. I promise you. What happened when we are the side of the star, the sight of the staring night.