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[0:00] Kevin Ferguson: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the fabulous Feinstein 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. Please welcome Adam Gwon.

[0:19] Kevin Ferguson: Welcome to the Feinstein’s/54 Below Podcast, where we bring you behind the scenes at Broadway Supper Club. I'm Kevin Ferguson, an assistant programming director at the club. And today I'm sitting down with a musical theater writer named one of 50 to watch by Dramatist Magazine and hailed as a promising newcomer to our talent-hungry musical theater, whose songs are funny, urbane, with a sweetness that doesn't cloy by The New York Times. His musicals have been produced on six continents in more than half a dozen languages, and he has been a fellow at McDowell, at the Artist Retreat, the O'Neill Musical Theater Conference, and the Dramatist Guild. He is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and is a member of ASCAP and the Dramatist Guild.

He served on the Tony Awards nominating committee for three years and currently sits on the board at the Roundabout Theater Company and Primary Stages. His songs have been heard at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and more, performed by luminaries like Audra McDonald, Kelly O'Hara, and Brian d'Arcy James. Our guest today is the Fred Ebb, Richard Rodgers Award, Frederick Loewe Award, and ASCAP Harold Adamson Award winning musical theater writer, Adam Gwon.

[1:46] Adam Gwon: Thank you, Kevin. What an introduction. It is my pleasure to be here.

[1:50] Kevin Ferguson: We had to give you that introduction with all of those accolades. How are we gonna skip that? You must always be introduced this way.

[1:59] Adam Gwon: You deserve it.

[1:59] Kevin Ferguson: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you. It's such a pleasure to meet you. You're such a talent, and I'm just so excited to get a chit chat with you today. Today we're just gonna talk about you and let the people get to know you better and get some people excited about your show.

[2:16] Adam Gwon: Fantastic.

[2:17] Kevin Ferguson: Just jumping right into it. The question for everybody. Last year was a little bit stressful for everyone.

[2:23] Adam Gwon: Just a little bit.

[2:24] Kevin Ferguson: Just a little. How does it feel finally getting back on a stage?

[2:28] Adam Gwon: It feels incredible, I have to say. There's a nervousness that comes from like relearning how to walk, basically. I've been joking with all of the singers as I've been rehearsing with them. We all feel like we are finding our footing as we get back to this performing thing. But there's something really thrilling about that. And the first time that I got to rehearse with one of the singers and just hear them singing over my shoulder in a room with the piano, I think I didn't realize just how much I missed it these past 18 months. It was wonderful to sort of learn all kinds of new ways to collaborate and make music, you know, in the digital space, but nothing really prepared me for that moment of being back in a room with a singer and like feeling them sing to me.

There's something really magical about that. So I'm super excited to hopefully share that feeling and that experience with the audience at Feinstein’s/54 Below. I think it's the perfect kind of venue to get back to that feeling. Just like really intimate, really up close and personal, stripped down. That's sort of the mood that I'm in. And I'm really excited to vibe that way with the audience.

[3:48] Kevin Ferguson: Yes, we love a good vibe. That is so exciting. We love that. You know, and what you said was so profound about just having that time to figure out a way to make our art go through a digital platform, you know what I mean? And that being the only way to express it and how we still were able to overcome that and everybody was still able to do their art. It's just really beautiful. But now that the stages are back open, let's get off the internet, back on the stages, you know, that's awesome.

[4:15] Adam Gwon: Exactly.

[4:16] Kevin Ferguson: When did you start writing? These accolades are so strong. Like, did you start writing the second day you were on Earth? Like, how did you what got you into writing?

[4:26] Adam Gwon: It was not my very first. The thing that I did when I was very, very young was play piano. That was sort of my entryway into all of this. I can't explain why or how, but just as a very young kid, I was drawn to a piano every time I came across one, and I would go up to the keyboard and sound out songs that I had heard on the radio and just plunk out the melodies on those keyboards. And no one else in my family has this sort of artistic bent to them. I'm sort of the black sheep of the family in that way. So it was something that my parents didn't understand at all, but saw that I just had this love for playing pianos and decided to give me piano lessons when I was a young kid. So I grew up playing classical piano, and when I was in middle school, I joined the drama club in middle school because it seemed like what all the cool kids were doing.

[5:38] Adam Gwon: And I didn't realize until much later that like those probably weren't actually the cool kids in the school, but they were who I thought were the cool kids in the school. So I started doing like the drama club in middle school, and it just so happened in Baltimore where I grew up when I was about to go into high school, the public schools in Baltimore were launching a magnet school program. So they opened up all of these new high schools that each focused on a different area of study. And one of the high schools was for the arts, and so just sort of on a whim as an eighth grader, I decided to audition for the theater program at this new arts magnet school that was opening up. I spent my high school years falling in love with theater and was doing the piano playing thing on a separate parallel track outside of school.

It really wasn't until I got to college that I decided to go to college to study theater and when I got there realized that this music making thing had an overlap with theater. I started writing incidental music for student play productions and that kind of thing, and then started writing songs. By the time I graduated from college, that interest in writing had completely eclipsed everything else, and I had just fallen in love with it.

[7:16] Kevin Ferguson: Wow. So okay, and in this college that you casually refer to being NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, when you went in, you came out with an even bigger appreciation. What was it during NYU that really solidified musical theater writing for you?

[7:33] Adam Gwon: I would say it was a combination of a bunch of things. I was in a lot of classes. They have at NYU, the undergrad theater program is broken up. You sort of go to different studios and they each kind of have a different philosophy or focus on theater making. The studio that I started in was the Playwright's Horizon studio, which really focused on you kind of learn everything so that you can make your own work and kind of know a little bit about design and know a little bit about directing and know a little bit about acting. So I immediately was immersed in this kind of create your own work, put on your own productions kind of mentality in that studio. And so that coupled with quickly becoming the guy in the department to like music direct your musical or write incidental music for your play production, this idea of music writing and making your own work became intertwined for me.

A couple years in, I got involved a little bit in NYU famously has a graduate program in musical theater writing, which is one of the few programs like it in the country. While I didn't actually graduate from the graduate program in musical theater writing, when I was an undergrad, I had gotten interested in musical theater writing and so would sort of audit their classes as a singer. I would go in and learn these new songs that the composers were writing and presenting in their class. So I would learn these songs, perform them for the class, and then just sit and listen to all the feedback and the wisdom that they were getting from the teachers and their fellow students. I think that had a huge part in falling in love with this musical writing thing.

Because I saw that there was this world out there where people were doing it. To be honest, I hadn't really put two and two together in terms of understanding that writing musicals was something that people did, that musicals wouldn't exist unless people wrote them. That realization and seeing people who were doing it and pursuing it, I think is what set me on the path and showed me that it was a viable pursuit.

[10:13] Kevin Ferguson: Yes, a very viable pursuit.

[10:18] Adam Gwon: The writers are the most important part. That is so awesome that you were able to think of that early on, because I chased an actor dream when I should have been writing some ideas down, you know. Was there a show at an early age or a writer at an early age that you really idolized or like were inspired by?

[10:40] Adam Gwon: Yeah, there were two things that I think of when I think of like early inspirations about musical theater writing. One is a show that I saw in high school. Like I said, I went to this arts magnet school in Baltimore. As part of that, we would go on field trips to see all the shows at Baltimore Center Stage, which is the big regional theater in Baltimore. This must have been early, like my freshman year of high school or something, but they were doing a new musical called Das Barbecue, which is like the country western retelling of Wagner's ring cycle. It's very weird. Okay, but it takes the story of the ring cycle but tells it with country music, and we were just obsessed with it. As part of going to see these shows through these field trips through school, the theater would send us the scripts of the show so that we could read them and talk about them in class and kind of have that investigation be part of the process of seeing the show.

One of these early revelations that people write musicals was having seen this musical Das Barbecue at Baltimore Center Stage, getting the script in class, and on the front cover of the script was the contact information for the writers. I thought, oh my gosh, like these people write musicals. How fascinating and how amazing. I actually wrote a letter to the composer because his address was on the cover sheet of the script.

[13:02] Adam Gwon: Um and I wrote him this letter, and I was and it literally was like, wait a second. You wrote you wrote a musical. You write musicals, like tell me what is that about. Explain this to me. How do you how did you write a musical? What is this? Um sadly the letter got returned because I guess he had moved and that wasn't his address anymore. So I never got my answer. Um but it definitely it definitely set me on the path of like of like, oh, people write musicals. And then the other thing that was a big like eye-opening moment when I got to college when I was at NYU, Audra McDonald's first album came out. And again, I think that must have been like my freshman year of college or something. And that album, as you know, at the time, she was it was like entirely all of these new composers, and so hearing all of those songs and all of those songs were kind of doing things in musical theater that were different than the musical theater that I knew from high school, and so that album kind of unlocked for me all of the possibilities of what musical theater can be, that it's not just Rogers and Hammerstein and Sondheim, which is like, you know, the what stake we grew up with.

[14:26] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah, yeah.

[14:27] Adam Gwon: Um, and I got super excited about that. Um, and just the kinds of stories that that people could tell and the different kinds of emotions that music could create for a character. Um, I found that to be really, really fascinating and exciting.

[14:46] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah.

[14:47] Adam Gwon: So that I would say was a huge moment, that album for me.

[14:51] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah, it is so amazing what writers can create, what they what ability they have to create. You know, take a story and even shift it a little bit with a different filter or with a different sound in the music gives it such a different personality and it will reach different people, and it's just so beautiful what writers' pitals can be. Speaking of writers with amazing powers, let's talk about Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who you were able to work with and basically mentored you. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

[15:29] Adam Gwon: Yeah, I had this kind of magical moment with Lynn Ahrens where I was um this was probably a couple years after I had graduated from NYU and was interested in being a writer and kind of taking any kind of like workshop or master class that I could could find just to get better at this musical theater writing thing. And one of the classes I took, there used to be a really fantastic organization called Musical Theater Works that was like across the street from the public. And they they no longer exist, but they were kind of a development organization for musical theater writers. Kind of like maybe like the same space that Musical Theater Factory takes now in terms of like finding new voices and one of the things that they did was offer these like master classes with all of these fancy Broadway writers.

Um so I took one of these master classes and it was like a different they brought in a different guest person every week that you would play your songs for. Um and one of the weeks was Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty.

[16:45] Adam Gwon: So I I played a couple songs for the class and got some feedback and then was leaving the class. The class was in this sort of like black box theater, so there's like an audience setup with an aisle down the middle, and I was leaving the theater, like walking through the aisle through the audience, when I feel someone like grab my arm like really sort of like abruptly. And I turned around and it was Lynn Ahrens. Um, hey, give me your phone number. Um and I was like, Oh, oh, okay. Um so I gave her, I gave Ahrens my phone number. Um, and then a couple weeks later, had got a voicemail from her that just said, hey, I think your stuff is really fantastic and I want to help. We should talk. That sort of started this relationship.

I uh I eventually they also at the time ran this really fantastic program called the Dramatist Guild Fellows Program, which is still around. And it's basically like a year-long writer's group that's hosted by the Dramatist Guild. It's it's half playwrights and half musical theater writers. So you're like sharing work and getting feedback, but not just from songwriters, also from like playwrights, which is super fascinating and amazing because they have this whole other take on storytelling and sort of like theatrical possibilities that's really great to bounce ideas off of.

[18:36] Adam Gwon: So yeah, they've been huge champions and just amazing people in my life for many years now.

[18:45] Kevin Ferguson: That is an amazing connection. I the shows that they have written and the words they've wrote, and just uh, I am moved by I am such a big fan of the pair of them and the fact that you have been able to work so close to them. I bet that was feeling so amazing in that moment.

[19:05] Adam Gwon: It really was. And the thing that I love about all of their stuff is they the material that they connect to that they as artists find and say, Oh, this is I can turn this into a musical. Um is always like amazing and a little bit off the beaten path. And I I love that, and I feel like it it's given me a certain amount of confidence to s to also discover things that are sort of off the beaten path, but go, no, like this thing grabs grabs me in my gut, and like I feel like I it's a little weird, but I think I I think I know how to musicalize this. I think it sings. Um so yeah, I I just adore them.

[19:51] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah. Is there anyone dream wise outside of them that you would also love to either collaborate with or be mentored by, or is there anyone you would like to uh help out, maybe uh be a mentor to someone?

[20:07] Adam Gwon: Oh my gosh. All of the above, I think.

[20:10] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah.

[20:10] Adam Gwon: Right. That was a loaded one. You can take a test. Um, I think this idea of mentorship is and has been a huge part of the musical theater world. I I remember Lynn and Steve telling me, um, you know, that moment where we were in the master class and they like pulled me aside at the end and and and were like, we we want to mentor you. The same thing happened with them and Stephen Sondheim. Like they, when they were young, they were doing one of these master classes, and Stephen Sondheim was one of the guests, and he took a shine to their work and became their mentor. And in the same way that famously Oscar Hammerstein was like a mentor figure for Stephen Sondheim. Um, I think this this tradition of mentorship is so so important.

Um and I have loved I do a lot of teaching and like and mentorship in that way, and I just I think it's so important to like to help nurture the next generation of folks, um, no matter where you are in your in your career. Like it's just that like passing down and and uh there's something it's just part of the fabric of the theater thing and something that makes it so wonderfully human.

[21:40] Adam Gwon: There's something about the the theater community that really does feel rooted in this idea of nurturing the next generations, and something that I've been thinking a lot about, you know, over the the like the shutdown when we've had time to be introspective. I was thinking about the the sort of difference between like the the theater industry and the theater community. I think there's a lot of of talk and work being done and work to be done in the theater industry in terms of like how do we how are we nurturing future generations in the theater industry? Um and it's something that I've always felt in the theater community has been like part of the fabric of the thing. And and I'm just really like invigorated and hopeful that some of the the values and the this idea of of mentorship and thinking about the future that I think has been present in the theater community is able to like extend out into the theater industry in a way, if that makes any kind of sense.

[22:43] Kevin Ferguson: Absolutely.

[22:44] Adam Gwon: Absolutely. It is a sense of community uh once you're in it. Um and there's the industry side that comes in, and it's not so much rooted in community, it's more rooted in uh business, and that is a very important part of the whole picture. You know, someone's gotta keep it churning and keep it moving. But the community part is what I think really inspires a lot of the art and uh really reflects in the art and on the stage when you go see it, the community coming through. So I think if we still have if we have writers like you in charge, the community is never gonna fade, okay. You understand, you get it. I think that's so awesome.

[23:29] Adam Gwon: Are there um some the mat like this certain elements that you always like to use in your writing? Is uh community something that comes through, or is there something that you always want to make sure is in your writing?

[23:43] Adam Gwon: That's a really good question. Um, I always I the thing that moves me about theater as an art form is I I feel like it really does have the power to reach people and touch people in a very kind of intimate and personal way. There's just something about it that when when a when a song or a musical like reaches you and speaks to you, it really does it on the sort of like gut visceral level where you feel like, oh my gosh, this musical was written for me. Like this this was written for me. Um and so I always I I think I'm I tend to be drawn to things that that feel really personal in that way.

[24:43] Adam Gwon: Um which I think it is is why I'm often drawn to like the Ahrens and Flaherty thing of like stuff that's a little bit off the beaten path that feels really personal to me, but I always have this question of like is this gonna like feel personal and grab someone in the same way that it it it grabs me and part of part of the like passion and the joy of writing something is figuring out how to channel this this passion I feel for this story in a really personal way personal way and let someone else be able to feel it in that way. Um so I think that that's something that I'm I'm I feel like I'm really invested in as a writer.

[25:30] Adam Gwon: Um a lot of my a lot of my shows tend to be on the more like intimate scale because of that. And I'm always super curious to figure out like how that really intimate connection you feel with a piece could scale up how you how you manage to forge those connections with with people um uh on a bigger scale as well. But the the thing that makes me the most satisfied as uh as a human as a and as an artist is feeling like I've forged this really intimate connection with someone through something that I've that I've written.

[26:08] Adam Gwon: So I try to I feel like that's sort of like a guiding principle is the wrong word, but something that fuels me as an artist. And when I'm looking at the projects that sort of light my fire, all I think tend to have something along those lines about them.

[26:27] Kevin Ferguson: Is there a specific format or a strategy you use when a new idea comes to you? Does it all come out so quickly? Do you have to do it in small bits? How what's your writing process?

[26:45] Adam Gwon: When I first kind of stumble on an idea that I feel like could be a musical, the thing that always makes me confident that it can sing and can live on stage is if I sort of instinctually know the ending or the climax. Like I feel like I write songs backwards. I know where I want a song to end and then I have to figure out how to get there. And the same I think is true with show ideas. I think it's a thing that helps me understand how a show sings because I think there's something a little bit different between the way that a movie reaches its climax versus a musical. Sometimes I find it difficult to figure out how to translate like a cool plot climax in a book or a movie into an interesting internal character emotional climax in a musical.

But I feel like if I understand what that big emotional moment you're ultimately shooting for is, then it gives me sort of the confidence to say, okay, well you'll figure out how to get there. So I think that's sort of it's almost like working backwards in a way, which like I said is how I think about songs as well.

[28:33] Kevin Ferguson: Wow, that is really cool.

[28:36] Adam Gwon: I can't even like I don't know, walk backwards, and you're sitting here making full thorough lines.

[28:43] Kevin Ferguson: So that's it.

[28:49] Adam Gwon: I love that process for you. So, okay, so out of all of the projects you've written and all of the awards you've received for these projects, which one is your favorite? Which one's your favorite little project baby?

[29:03] Adam Gwon: Oh my god. I feel like that's like asking a parent which child is their favorite, but you know, there's always a favorite. My diplomatic answer would be it's whatever one I'm working on at the moment. I feel like that is sort of the nature of the beast. Musicals take so long and so much work to make happen. I feel like you do have to feel really passionate about each project you're working on. And so whichever one I'm working on at the moment tends to be the one that I'm fired up about. But I will say, my favorite career moment, the thing that has just been like I can't believe this thing happened, was seeing Audra McDonald sing a song of mine at Carnegie Hall. Especially because of what I was talking about how her album was like one of the big things that lit the spark of musical theater writing for me.

She sang a song from Ordinary Days called "Ollie." I saw her do it for the first time, like from a box at Carnegie Hall, and she sang the song and then afterwards was like, the composer's here and pointed up to the box, and I had this kind of Evita moment where I stood up and was like waving to the people below at Carnegie Hall.

[30:45] Kevin Ferguson: Yes.

[30:46] Adam Gwon: That's probably, if I had to pick a favorite thing, it might be that which is connected to Ordinary Days. So that was a pretty cool moment.

[31:03] Kevin Ferguson: Wow. If I was you I'd have been crying in that booth, okay. They would everybody would have seen me ugly crying.

[31:10] Adam Gwon: Yeah, I got Audra to sing it. The weird thing was I was so I really felt like I was in shock. Like the whole time she was singing it, my inner monologue was like, pay attention, stop, what are you doing? Focus. She's singing your song. What do you, your mind is wandering? Pay attention. I was just sort of in, I didn't know what to do.

[31:33] Kevin Ferguson: Yep.

[31:34] Adam Gwon: Yeah, it's a lot of energy coming at you.

[31:38] Kevin Ferguson: Okay. That would definitely be a memorable moment for me too. And you know, in those moments it is hard to stay in the moment because you're just so excited about so many factors. You're at Carnegie Hall, it's yours, it's Audra, she's acknowledging you. Now everyone's looking at you, you know, that is such a special moment. That is wow. That's such an awesome story.

[32:05] Adam Gwon: So now after Carnegie Hall, after all your awards, after hanging out with Audra, you're coming to 54 Below. You haven't been here in a minute. So what kind of really motivated you to come on back and show us some more?

[32:18] Adam Gwon: You know, 54 Below has always been this hub in my mind for new musical theater, particularly I think like of my generation. We all sort of came of age in the concert cabaret scene and 54 Below showed up on the scene as kind of like the pinnacle place. Without forgoing that sense of community, it always felt like a place where all of us writers could come and feel like we were a part of the community. For that reason, it has a very soft spot in my heart and all of the shows that I've done at 54 have just been such memorable wonderful experiences. It was like instantaneous. I didn't have to think twice. I was like, this feels like the perfect thing to get back to it and to commemorate the community coming back.

That's what it feels like to me. And that really was my goal in putting the show together. I just reached out to these singers that I love and that I missed being in a room with and making things with and sort of built a show around being in a room with these people I love.

[33:43] Kevin Ferguson: So yeah.

[33:44] Adam Gwon: Wow. So for the people at home who haven't heard, somehow haven't heard an Adam Gwon song, tell them what kind of vibe at the show they would be able to hear. What kind of sounds and what kind of genre? What do you plan on sharing with us?

[34:05] Adam Gwon: Yeah, well, we're going for sort of an intimate, stripped down, unplugged kind of vibe. It just felt like the place I'm in. Honestly, it feels like a place that a lot of artists, the singers that are part of the concert on Saturday included, acknowledging that it's okay to ease back into things because it's been a really difficult time in so many ways. So just creating this really warm, really stripped down intimate kind of thing. There's just two musicians. It's myself on the piano and this fantastic guitar player, Andy Zinsmeister, who has written all these brand new arrangements for songs. So even if there are songs that you might be familiar with, you might hear them in a new way, which is exciting.

So yeah, it's just the two of us, and then these fantastic singers doing a collection of songs from various different projects. Some brand new, some sort of old favorites, I guess you could say. But like I said, I really built the set list around this particular group of singers. So there's something really wonderful about watching these people inhabit these songs which I think they inhabit.

[35:36] Kevin Ferguson: That is exciting.

[35:38] Adam Gwon: Wow, I am so inspired just sitting here listening to you talk. For my last question, I just want to say you are probably such an inspiration to young writers out there. And I feel like there is an intimidation that comes with writing because it is such a powerful art form and it could probably intimidate people from even writing down an idea they have.

[36:13] Adam Gwon: I think the reason why writing is so scary and is for me too, like this is something that I wrestle with as well, is and especially over this past year. I have not been one of those people. I'm very happy for the people who wrote King Lear. But I was trying to reflect on why it was really hard for me to write a lot during this past year and a half. I think it was because the thing that makes writing really scary and the thing that will make your writing so great is letting yourself be vulnerable when you're writing. I really feel like that stuff that you feel when you are writing something finds its way into the DNA of whatever you're writing. Certainly with my own stuff, I can feel the difference in stuff that I write that when I was writing it, I really feel like I poured myself and my emotions into it, versus sort of staying on the surface or staying a little more distant.

I think that's why it's been so challenging for me to write during this past year and a half because there's been so much going on in the world, stress-wise, that letting yourself be vulnerable and vulnerable enough for that to spill out onto the page has been really hard. In fact, I think your body kind of resists it in a way. Your body's like, nope, too much going on, you're not gonna be vulnerable right now. So for people who are starting out and writing, I think sort of acknowledging that scariness of it, and that in fact letting yourself lean into that scariness is what's going to make your writing really special. And I think that's the thing that people are going to receive and feel from your work.

[38:23] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah. You're saying take that emotion and put it into the art, take that fear and put it into the art. People are gonna feel that, they're gonna receive that in a positive way.

[38:32] Adam Gwon: Yeah.

[38:33] Kevin Ferguson: Wow. That is beautiful. Adam Gwon, this was amazing. Thank you for taking the time out to chat with us today.

[38:44] Announcer: You've been listening to the 54 Below podcast, part of the Broadway Podcast Network. Subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.