This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Nella Vera: 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. Thank you. And enjoy the show. Ladies and gentlemen, HELEN PARK.

[0:19] HELEN PARK: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Feinstein 54 Below podcast, where we bring you behind the scenes at Broadway Supper Club. I'm Nella Vera, the club's director of marketing. This week, we continue to shine the spotlight on new musical composers and lyricists with a series called New Writers at 54. So far, we've had the pleasure of interviewing four of the five wonderful artists participating in this series, and I'm thrilled to have our fifth writer with us today. Our guest today is HELEN PARK, theatrical and film composer. Helen's recent work includes KPOP, her Off-Broadway musical debut, for which she co-wrote music and lyrics. Produced by Ars Nova, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, and Woodshed Collective, the critically acclaimed show received a sold-out extended run in New York City and was awarded the 2018 Richard Rodgers Award and the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical.

Helen also composed music for Baked Goods, for which she won the 2018 Samuel French Short Playwriting Contest. She is currently writing songs for a new animated feature musical film called Over the Moon, directed by the legendary Academy Award winner Glen Keane and produced by Pearl Studios and Netflix. The film is slated for a 2020 global release. She is the first Asian composer or lyricist to win a Lucille Lortel Award and is a three-time Drama Desk Award nominee. Helen, welcome to the Feinstein 54 Below podcast.

[1:43] HELEN PARK: Hello, thanks for having me.

[1:45] Nella Vera: Can you start out by telling us a little bit about your journey to become a composer? How does a young person start composing?

[1:53] HELEN PARK: I was born in Korea, and I started playing the piano at around age five. And I started playing, and my mom had this dream for me to become a concert pianist. So she had me practice for hours a day. And at first I thought I enjoyed it. I love the expression of emotions through music. But I think at some point I enjoyed more discovering new music. For instance, if I'm working on a Beethoven sonata music, I would play this one number, and then I would just go on to the next number to see what that music is like, and I started sight-reading that. And I would go on to the next one and the next one, and I would just kind of explore new music like that. And I enjoyed that more than, you know, perfecting a detail in one number for hours and hours.

And so my mom quickly realized that—I mean, not really quickly, because up until like sixth grade, she had that hope for me to become a pianist. She realized that I don't have the persistence and what it takes to become a concert pianist. And so in sixth grade, I was actually preparing for auditioning for this professional, like music-focused, specialized school in Korea. So it was a middle school, and I was practicing to audition for that, but there also came an opportunity for me to participate in this summer camp that was held in Virginia, and they were focusing on musical theater. I was in Korea at that time, but I had lived in the States before in Missouri for two years prior to that, and so I asked my mom if I could go to that summer camp instead of practicing in Korea to go to that middle school.

So my mom reluctantly said yes because she knew that I just did not want to become a concert pianist. And so I went to the U.S. I went to Virginia, and I went to the musical theater program, and we did a production of Once Upon a Mattress. Oh wow, and I was the minstrel because there was no other role for me to do. But I enjoyed it so much. It was such a life-changing experience. I loved how these melodies that are sung are just so expressive and so freeing compared to classical music, and they had stories to tell. Every character had a story to tell, and it wasn't just stories, but it was emotions, and I just loved that. And so I fell in love with musical theater then. After that, I started listening to so many other types of music other than classical music.

I was exposed to K-pop music for the first time, and you know, that was another life-changing moment. I listened to a lot of pop, R&B. I think that really broadened my view of music, and I was able to take in all of these different kinds of music after giving up that dream of being a classical pianist.

[5:06] Nella Vera: Wow. Were you exposed to musical theater in Korea as well, or was that camp the first time?

[5:12] HELEN PARK: I think the camp was the first time I was actually exposed to like actual Broadway music. Before then, I was familiar with, you know, Disney movies, and of course I related to Ariel so much because I always felt like I'm the most, you know, I always thought I was like a little bit different than other fellow Koreans but also other Americans when I lived in the States. I always felt like I was a little odd because I'm like way too expressive, and but I was familiar with Disney music, but I wasn't really familiar with musicals. And I sang in church musicals, yeah, and those were like Korean made, those very small church musicals, and I loved that.

[5:52] Nella Vera: Was your mom a musician? Is that why she had this dream for you? And is the rest of your family musical?

[5:58] HELEN PARK: Well, my dad is sort of a singer; he loves singing, but it's a hobby for him. And my mom, she's not a musician, but she enjoys music, and I think she dreamed of playing piano herself, and so she wanted me to become a pianist and kind of achieve her dream that she never got to even try. Yeah, but they're both health professionals.

[6:23] Nella Vera: Oh, okay.

[6:24] HELEN PARK: Yeah, okay. Let's talk about K-pop, which by the way, I'm obsessed with. You co-wrote music and lyrics for it. It was the most nominated off-Broadway show of the 2017-2018 season. What first interested you in K-pop as a genre? Were you a big fan of boy bands or of K-pop music?

[6:44] HELEN PARK: You know, I think to me, K-pop was my first exposure to pop music. For a lot of people, like Michael Jackson is their first pop music exposure. But for me, you know, it was this girl and boy combined, a mixed band that was really popular when I was in elementary school, and I remember that first time I bought a cassette tape, and that was of the fourth album of H.O.T., and I just fell in love with how exciting and entertaining this music was, and I started to become more and more interested in that genre. Of course, at that time I was in Korea, so that was pop for me. It wasn't K-pop; it was just pop.

[7:37] Nella Vera: Right.

[7:38] HELEN PARK: And after that, the biggest K-pop moment for me, or the K-pop fangirling moment for me, was for H.O.T., this five-member boy band that was super, super popular when I was in sixth grade. That was a moment when I was just in love with the band members. I remember when they were closing, they were doing the closing performance of their first album. I was watching that performance on TV, and I started crying because I was so sad that I wouldn't be able to see them for, I don't know, like a couple of months. And I just was so sad that I felt such a connection to this boy band that I was sobbing when they finished their first album activities.

[8:31] Nella Vera: So do you think Americans understand that phenomenon? I know we've had in America a few boy bands that people get crazy over, you know, the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, but the K-pop genre in itself in Korea and in Asia and its spreading is so overwhelming.

[8:51] HELEN PARK: Yeah. You know, I don't think Americans quite understand that phenomenon. And also, why do you think there's so much emotion and so much in the culture that you get attached to these bands in such a way?

[9:05] HELEN PARK: Yeah, I think growing up we didn't have internet back then, but I still think there were a lot of opportunities for the bands to actually connect with fans, and there were a lot of, you know, merchandise and in talk shows they would be, you know, talking about themselves as people, and so I think fans love that connection. And I think that's something that's different than American pop because in American pop there's always this mystery. You don't get like such close connections with the bands, and now with the use of social media and the internet, I think people are feeling like they have such strong connections with the artists because there's, you know, Instagram Live, there's a lot of these fan meetings, there are these so many different ways to connect with fans. So I think that is something that's so different than American pop.

[10:05] Nella Vera: Got it. Um, how was the experience of creating that show? Like who thought up that this should be a show and how did you become involved in the process?

[10:15] HELEN PARK: Well, so I think Teddy Bergman, our director, and Jason Kim, our writer, I think they both kind of had the idea to develop a K-pop themed musical sort of at the same time. And then Ars Nova, who knew both of them, they thought that it would be great for them to meet and think of an idea to how to use the K-pop genre into a musical, and so they started with that idea, and I think after that they wanted to see what kind of songwriters are out there to make this into a musical. They started hunting for songwriters, and that's when I became involved, and that was in 2014. Back then, my collaborator Max Vernon, he already knew that I wrote K-pop music before, and he already heard, you know, some of my work from before, and so he recommended me and got me on board.

[11:14] Nella Vera: I want to say that the show reminded me a lot of a show that I saw downtown called Here Lies Love in the structure because I was reading the New York Times review for KPOP, and it said it's a sweaty celebration of perky young talent and a cold-eyed look at an industry that eats the stars for breakfast. It's a feel-good romp and a bad feel psycho-drama, but it also said that it was wildly entertaining, and I found when I saw it that it was super entertaining and fun, but it was also very unnerving at the same time, which is why it reminded me of Here Lies Love, which was kind of the same thing. You went in and you were in this world, and there was with the N Miles, and you were like, she's awesome.

And then as the show went on, you realized, oh, the K-pop regime was not so great, and you had that moment as an audience member where you were kind of horrified and had a much of a good time you were having, but it was still a great night of theater. And I think that your show I felt the same thing with it, these two parts to it in a way, and how did you guys balance between those two things? And was that intentional or yeah?

[12:25] HELEN PARK: First of all, I would love to see Here Lies Love. I heard so, so many great things about it, and I'm so sad that I missed it. But yeah, I think for us it wasn't a question of how much of the entertaining aspect or how much of the, you know, more serious aspect are we going to portray and how like that was not the real question. I think the question was how do we accurately portray these human beings? I think a lot of the times in media, Asians have been portrayed as very one-dimensional, and I think it's been kind of the tendency in the industry to generalize Asians, and I think that's why there's so many, you know, stereotypes and there's so many wrong impressions of people who are actually more diverse than, you know, Americans.

You know, there's more population in China, for example, than, you know, white Americans. And I think that's something that we wanted to tackle and we wanted to represent right, even in, you know, within this label, within this K-pop label, every human being in this label are different and they're going through different things.

[13:46] HELEN PARK: How do we tell their, you know, each of their story? I think that's what made it, you know, specific and at the same time, it, you know, complex. Oh, like it's universal. It's like, oh, there's, you know, a really fun and funny and entertaining side of this person, but there is also something, you know, they're not entirely happy. There's something that they're going through, and what is that? And like how, what do we see? Do we see ourselves in that person too? And I think the answer is yes. Like I think everybody sees something in at least one of these characters about themselves, and I think that's what we are hoping for in our next iteration as well.

[14:29] Nella Vera: Yeah, no, it was fascinating, and it's also a very young person's genre, right? I think you kind of start to age out in your mid to late 20s out of this genre of being able to be a K-pop star, so it focuses on very young people. It's fascinating to me that young people who are still developing and finding themselves, and these performers are put into, you know, under such a spotlight and have all this pressure on them and need to perform and need to be sort of in touch with their public and have a certain image that they portray, but they're still very young people who are finding themselves. I don't, you know, I don't think that at age 20 I knew anything about the world, and you read all these stories about how many of them are having problems or have breakdowns or other mental health issues, and it's not surprising because of that, because, you know, they start to age out.

I remember when I was very young, we had a boy band in South America, Menudo, and they aged out at 15, 16. So once you turned 16, you couldn't be in the band anymore. And Ricky Martin was in that band, which is why I'm obsessed with Ricky Martin now, because I was a teenager, you know, in the Menudo fan club. But at 16, you're, you know, washed up, that's it, you're done. And I was thinking about that when I was watching this show, it's the same thing, because I remember when Ashley Park came on with her character and how she's trying to hang on to her youth and her youthful fans, and that was her arc was that she was aging out. Yeah, of this. She's only, I mean, her character was only 27 years old, and she was like, I'm done, I'm too old for this.

[16:20] HELEN PARK: Yeah, um, which is mind-boggling.

[16:20] Nella Vera: Yeah, it was really wonderful. How I want to ask about the casting because the cast was so fantastic and spot on, and they were doing everything. They were doing the music and the dancing. How did you find this cast? And did some of them come from the music world, or were they all theater performers who were just really good and could mimic, you know, this genre?

[16:44] HELEN PARK: They were from everywhere. I mean, the casting process was actually pretty difficult because there weren't that many opportunities for Asians up to this point, and so in order for us to find believable K-pop stars, we also needed to search outside of the box. And of course, you know, Ashley Park was already a fabulous actress that's been in other Broadway shows, and Jason Tam, like he was also a Broadway star. Such a great performer.

[17:21] Nella Vera: Yeah.

[17:21] HELEN PARK: But then there were also others, um, like J Ho Kang, who basically we found him on YouTube. Oh my god, I mean we had heard about him through somebody who saw him on YouTube, and we watched his video and found out that he was actually a Harvard graduate and he was actually working for the government, but we, you know, reached out to him anyway and asked if, you know, do you want to be in our show? And so he quit his job and he flew here and he crushed it. He was such a great addition to our show.

[17:55] Nella Vera: Yeah, they were all so amazing.

[18:02] HELEN PARK: Yeah, they were. I was impressed with just the dancing that they, you know, they could do these steps and that they could do them as though they had been doing them for a very long time as one band. It was really pretty amazing and wonderful.

[18:20] Nella Vera: Um, so let me ask you, what's next for K-pop?

[18:25] HELEN PARK: So we are redeveloping the show, and now we are trying to bring it to Broadway, and of course that's a totally different structure because it's no longer a three-story, you know, building and an immersive experience. But we are still hoping to retain that immersive feeling to really include the audience in immersing the audience in the music and, you know, the whole experience. So even if you're just sitting and watching, um, you would still feel like this is somewhat an immersive setting and immersive theater.

[19:02] Nella Vera: So yeah.

[19:03] HELEN PARK: I think that's possible. I mean, within the limits of Broadway, you know, some shows are doing it, like Moulin Rouge comes right out. Rocky did it when they sent that big boxing ring into the middle of the orchestra. So you feel like you're part of it.

[19:20] Nella Vera: Yeah.

[19:20] HELEN PARK: For sure. Yeah, I think the heart of the show was what really touched a lot of people, and I think people wanted, you know, more of the characters and just learning about their journey and what's going on in their emotional journeys. And so I think it's actually great for people to just sit and watch.

[19:40] Nella Vera: Yeah, and some people don't want to, you know, be immersed.

[19:42] HELEN PARK: Yeah, necessarily. Or like just walking in, you know, I mean, it was great to have the spectacular elements and looking around and seeing so many cool things, but I think that was not our essence of the show. I don't think that was like the focal point of our show. We were talking about the human stories.

[19:59] Nella Vera: Yeah, and it was nice to have all the great fun stuff, but in the heart it was a human story, like you said.

[20:06] HELEN PARK: Yeah.

[20:07] Nella Vera: Thank you. So you recently, uh, you've been working on Over the Moon, which is a Netflix animated children's musical slated for release later in this year. Can you tell us a little bit about that project and how you became involved with it?

[20:21] HELEN PARK: Um, it's more of a family musical adventure film, I would say, because it's a little bit, you know, deeper than I would say a children's musical. But yeah, I got the opportunity to be one of the songwriters for the film Over the Moon after one of the people at Pearl Studios came to see K-pop and they really loved the music. So yeah, I was very fortunate to hop on that team of wonderful people. And yeah, it's co-written with Chris Curtis and Margie Duffield, and we wrote, we're actually done writing those songs now.

[21:04] Nella Vera: Oh yeah, right.

[21:05] HELEN PARK: And they're just animating, you know, that's how animation works. Apparently, animation songs are written first and then they, you know, perform it and then they animate to, you know, the voices so that it syncs right up.

[21:20] Nella Vera: Wow.

[21:21] HELEN PARK: Yeah.

[21:22] Nella Vera: So that's incredible.

[21:22] HELEN PARK: Yeah. So I'm just waiting for it to be done animating and to see it soon.

[21:27] Nella Vera: Fantastic.

[21:28] HELEN PARK: Yeah. I also love Chris Curtis. Um, I'm obsessed with Chaplin. I loved that show so much. So I was so excited to see his name when I was doing research for this.

[21:40] Nella Vera: Um, yeah, he and I did the music and then Margie Duffield did the lyrics.

[21:43] HELEN PARK: Oh, okay. Um, and so yeah, we worked, Chris and I worked really closely on the music, and it's like a really great fusion of our strengths, and I had such a fun time writing that show.

[21:55] Nella Vera: Yeah.

[21:55] HELEN PARK: And it's, uh, the director is a legend in Hollywood, and you know, just for having done the animation for just about almost every iconic animated character that you can think of.

[22:08] Nella Vera: That's incredible.

[22:09] HELEN PARK: Because I told you, like, I have been obsessed with Ariel when I was young. I looked up to Ariel and I thought that she was like she was me. And Glen Keane, um, he created Ariel, so it was surreal to me.

[22:25] Nella Vera: Yeah.

[22:25] HELEN PARK: And then one time he drew me and gifted me a drawing of me. Um, I was just like, you know, I froze.

[22:36] Nella Vera: That's so amazing.

[22:38] HELEN PARK: Yeah.

[22:39] Nella Vera: That sounds great. So we are excited to look for that. You were the first Asian composer or lyricist to win a Lucille Lortel Award. Does being an Asian woman inform your writing in any particular way? Do you feel that it has affected your journey in this industry?

[22:56] HELEN PARK: I think me being an Asian doesn't really affect my music because I don't think about that when I'm writing. But I do think that as an Asian woman, I did feel, I mean, there were definitely obstacles, you know, in that journey of becoming a musical theater writer. I think as a woman, you know, this is a very male-dominant, you know, industry. So I think even just being a woman, I have felt that it's hard to really be taken seriously, especially when you are not experienced. So when I was just starting out, it was really hard for people to take me seriously. But I think what really helped me was just really focusing on the work. Even if nobody's really believing in me, I knew that if I have a convincing enough work that is actually good, then people will hear it and will wonder who wrote it, you know.

And so I kind of focused on doing that. Now I think people have a little bit more respect for my work. Um, but I think it's still on my mind that I need to really put great work out there so that, you know, me being an Asian or me being a woman is not gonna be distracting my journey.

[24:16] Nella Vera: Right, right. Yeah. That makes so much sense.

[24:18] HELEN PARK: So you have a show coming up at Feinstein's/54 Below on January 29th, and we know we have a lot of amazing, crazy special guests joining you. Can you tell us what we can expect from your show and what, or have you thought about what you're performing and kind of what you're presenting that night?

[24:35] HELEN PARK: Uh, it's going to be a mix of a lot of, you know, K-pop songs, some of them that are cut.

[24:43] Nella Vera: Oh wow.

[24:44] HELEN PARK: And some of them that are still there in our show. And there's gonna be some songs from other projects that I've done over the years. It'll be interesting and it'll be really exciting because a lot of, I mean, all of the songs in K-pop except for one is electronic. And this, in this concert, we're gonna have a live band play them, and so some of them are still gonna be electronic tracks, but some of them are gonna be with this live band and with a different arrangement. So it's gonna be a totally different experience and it's gonna be very satisfying, I think, um, to see a different side of these songs.

[25:22] Nella Vera: Yeah.

[25:23] HELEN PARK: Yeah, it'll be wildly entertaining, hopefully.

[25:28] Nella Vera: Right, and you have terrific guests.

[25:30] HELEN PARK: Yeah. Um, the guests are amazing. I have a lot of performers that were with me in the K-pop journey, John Yee, uh, Jason Tam, this amazing singer named Torin Nakamura and Julia Bueva joining us are some of my great friends, Remy Zaikin and Robbie Hager that I've been friends with them for a long time and they're incredibly talented. So I really don't want to miss.

[25:57] Nella Vera: Of course not.

[26:00] HELEN PARK: Yeah, Ashley Park, of course, we like she's just an amazing performer. J Ho, the guy that I was talking about, G. My goodness. Has he gone back to his career or has he decided this is, he's gonna make a go of this?

[26:14] Nella Vera: Yeah, he, he's committed, he's fully committed to this path, and he's doing such a great job. There is this one song that the solo artist sings, and that's the female solo artist sings, and I am gonna lower the keys down a little bit for Jiho Kang to sing it to make it a male version. It's gonna sound so good.

[26:32] HELEN PARK: Yeah, I'm so excited.

[26:34] Nella Vera: Well, K-pop fans, make sure you show up. It's gonna be so much fun. I just want to say thank you so much for coming and joining us today. It's been wonderful having you, and we are so looking forward to your show at Feinstein's/54 Below January 29th. So if you don't have your tickets, make sure you get them at 54below.com. And thank you again for joining us.

[26:40] HELEN PARK: Thank you.