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[0:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: As actors, we often focus on our own performances and how we can bring our characters to life. But without a skilled director at the helm, a musical can easily fall apart. A director is not just someone who tells you where to stand and what to say. They are often the visionary who shapes the overall concept of a production and brings a creative team together to tell a cohesive story. A director's job is to find the heart of the show and bring it to the forefront. They must balance the needs of the script, the music, and the choreography, while also taking into account the technical elements and the audience experience as well. I mean, great direction can certainly uplift even the most mediocre of shows, but on the other hand, poor direction can sink even the greatest production.

That's because directing is a delicate balancing act that requires both artistic vision and a practical know-how. And in this episode, I'm talking with two Tony-nominated director choreographers about finding that balance in the shows that earn them their nominations.

[1:06] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: I'm Marcia Milgrom Dodge.

[1:28] Dan Knetgches: Hi everyone, my name is Dan Knetgches. It's like Connect Us, and I am originally from right outside Cleveland, Ohio. For those who know Ohio, it's right near Oberlin. And I live in Houston, Texas, and I am the artistic director at Theater Under the Stars in Houston, Texas. Now, Dan and I have worked together on a couple of shows. The first was Seussical at The Muny in St. Louis, and the other was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at Theater Under the Stars in Houston. He and I discuss his 2008 Broadway production of Xanadu, which earned him a Tony nomination for Best Choreography. But my first conversation in this episode is with Marcia, who I am so grateful to have met for the first time in this interview.

We had a wonderful discussion about her 2009 production of RAGTIME that started at the Kennedy Center in D.C. and then transferred to Broadway later that year. Though that revival had a short run, she did receive a Tony nomination for Best Direction. It is directors like Dan and Marcia who put in countless hours of work to bring a show to life, and they deserve our recognition and gratitude, which is what this special episode is all about. Because without them, musical theater wouldn't be the magical experience that we all know and love. You know, I have friends who are disappointed when they don't get Tony nominations, and you know what? I trade the Tony nomination for a long run any day. You can have my Tony nomination. I would have rather had that.

[3:30] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now every week I talk with fellow creatives who bring us stories from their own life of personal struggles and professional hardships with lessons we can all learn from. I also share your comments and questions at the end of the episode. The website is why I'll never make it dot com, where you can subscribe, donate, and learn more about others overcoming the challenges in this industry. Again, that's why I'll never make it dot com. Well, welcome, Marcia. This is so nice to meet you. So glad to have you on the podcast today.

[4:10] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

[4:13] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, one of my favorite shows, and this was before I even moved to the city. I remember buying the RAGTIME soundtrack and listening to it ad nauseum. I loved that show. Is it a show that you had a connection with as well, that original production?

[4:28] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: I saw the original production, and it was at a time in my life when I was trying to get pregnant. So I was in that I need a baby. So the thing that got me about that show more than anything in the original production was little Coalhouse running out at the very, very end. I mean, I was like, you know, I'm a huge fan of Lynn and Steven. We've gotten to work together closely, and I never imagined I'd be doing that show as my Broadway debut as a director. So I just, it's the great American musical of the 20th century. So I'm glad Marin and I had just worked together, so I got to go support her and her beautiful depiction of Mother, and I knew a lot of people in the company, but it was an extraordinary moment in time. It was nineteen ninety-eight, I think it was. My daughter and I went to Russia and came back with our beautiful daughter in the fall of '98, so it was a very synchronicity moment in theater magic.

[5:28] Patrick Oliver Jones: And when the revival came about, how did you become involved with it?

[5:28] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: Well, I had met Lynn Ahrens years before. I had done a production of On the Town at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. in 1989, and I met Lynn at a cocktail party or something a year later or so, and she talked about that production. So I had that nice little introduction to her, and then cut to I did a bunch of shows at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, Long Island, and Steve Flaherty has a house out there, and so does Terrence McNally. And Terrence McNally inadvertently got me my first job at Bay Street because of circumstances. Anyway, so I started working at Bay Street, and they did Once on This Island, and I said we should invite Lynn and Steve to be part of it. So I actually got to work with them casting that production, and they were very much around and supportive of that.

And then when it was time for their Seussical to debut with Theaterworks USA, they called Barbara Pasternak and said get Marcia. So I actually got to do Seussical before I did RAGTIME. And Seussical was one of their, you know, they loved it. It failed on Broadway. I'm sure they're laughing all the way to the bank now. It's one of the biggest titles in licensing there is. And we gave it a new life in this sort of smaller, it was about 70 minutes, and geared for TYA, for theater for young audiences. And we launched it at Theaterworks in 2006 for the tour. So it went out on tour in their fall tour, and Lynn and Steve watched a run-through, and they were involved in some of the casting, but they were more peripherally involved.

And then they saw a run-through, and Barbara Pasternak went to them and said could we do this at the Lucille Lortel in New York as part of Free Summer Theater. And they said yes. So we got to do it at the Lortel, and then we got a cast recording, and that was 2007. In 2008, I get a phone call from Steve. My husband and I and our daughter are driving from Detroit to New York. The phone rings; we're in the middle of Pennsylvania, and it's Steve and Lynn saying we want you to do RAGTIME at the Kennedy Center. And I was like I might lose you because the reception's really bad. So I'll call you back if I lose you. And so that's how I got RAGTIME. It was like, you know, it was a series of fortunate events, you know, meeting Lynn, getting on her radar, meeting Terrence, and doing theater in his backyard, and then subsequently Steven's backyard, and it turns out E.L. Doctorow's backyard.

And you know, just kind of, I really believe you have to have the craft, you have to have the ability, the talent, the calling, but it really is luck that builds careers. I really believe that. You know, connect those little dots, you know, when they are presented to you. And, you know, I'm a salesman's daughter, so I tend to sort of toot my own horn. And it was cute when you're in your 20s and your 30s. I don't know how cute it is now, but we'll see. I'm still kicking; I'm the Energizer Bunny. I just keep on going until, you know, until I won't. So that's how I got RAGTIME. It was a phone call, and you know, they actually said to me, do with RAGTIME what you did with Seussical. And I was like, loofah sponges for clovers and, you know, oven mitts for jungle fauna and flora.

So, you know, we kibbitzed about it, but it was they really wanted me to find the non-literal way to tell the story so that it was leaning more into the human emotion of the piece. And that's what I did. And it was an incredible, daunting, thrilling, heartbreaking. You know, I went through all of the emotions.

[10:14] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I was just about to ask about the pressure that you felt, you know, coming from the original production, which was so well received and critics loved it. And stars, right? So what kind of pressure was on you with this revival? Obviously, they gave you freedom, but they did.

[10:27] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: You know, we didn't have our eyes; we weren't doing it for Broadway. We were doing it in a supported non-profit environment where the work was everything. And Michael Kaiser, who was my rabbi on the show, I mean, he was the president of the Kennedy Center, and he gave me his blessing to do it. He didn't know who I was. Who is that? Marcia who? Like he didn't know who I was, and they said we want her. So that was amazing. And then it was, you know, would you work with Don Holder and Derek McLean? And you know, so they gave me the A-plus support that I needed, and they gave me the authority to take a deep dive and figure out how to do it without, you know, all the literalness that surrounded the original production.

So my entryway was really the car and the piano. It was like if I can figure out what to do with the car and the piano in a stylistic way, then I think I'll be fine. So I always, everything I do comes from a passion and a plan. I, you know, give me a ruler and let's make a show. So I don't really, you know what I mean? I don't usually get much. I found out after we opened how much they spent on the show in Washington. I didn't know.

[12:02] Patrick Oliver Jones: Right, right. You just kept asking for things.

[12:03] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: How about we do this? And they said, okay. So, you know, it was and it wasn't extravagant. It really wasn't. It was intended to make it an actor-driven storytelling event. And Derek and I spent months and months and months. He indulged me in some ideas of surrealistic approaches to visual depictions of things, and he was very patient with me, and he was also such a great guide because he allowed me to just make some really bad choices, but that led to some really exciting choices. And we did a ton of research. I remember having a meeting with Lynn and Steve and Terrence and coming in with a big manila envelope full of imagery that I had cut out of magazines and Xeroxed, and I just poured them on the table and I made this giant collage and said show me what the images mean.

You know, if there are any images in this collection that have impact for you that feel like they're of this story. And they pulled things out, and then I pulled them together, and you know, so it was very collaborative and it was very exciting. And you know, I called my folks in Detroit and said this is as close to Broadway as you're gonna get with me, so better book your tickets for Washington, D.C.

[13:32] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: Yeah. So my whole family came; it was on the weekend of my birthday. It was like one of those, you know, just sort of amazing, and my daughter was able to see a story that showed how a family became a family not biologically with, you know, I got my Tata and my mother and my little Coalhouse. I mean, that's a blended family, and that's what we did. And so, you know, I had a lot of connections; my family came from Eastern Europe, and my parents are first-generation Jewish.

[14:06] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: Uh and so it, you know, lots of lots of moments of discovery and relationship with the um Harlem ensemble and those characters living and struggling and the so we had a lot of you know it was really meaningful rehearsals and it was before the time we're living in now, right? It was 2009 is when we did it. And oh, and Christiane Knoll was eight months pregnant when I cast her. Oh wow. So when she picked up the doll baby, she knew exactly she had given birth a month before we started rehearsal. So that relationship was true. Like there were a lot of little just tendrils of truth that kind of took us along and with everybody in the cast. And Bobby Staggard as younger brother, it was just a ferocious performance, and you know, everything was working on firing on all cylinders, I would say.

[15:07] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I happened to see the revival production. I I didn't see the original, but I did see the revival production. And so New York or it was at in New York, yeah.

[15:16] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: Yeah, I got to see it in New York. And so what would you say you're you're talking about some of the the ways that you approach this one? What would you say is probably the biggest difference between that original production and what you wanted to do with it?

[15:28] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: Well, the piano had no keys, and the car was an outline, and it was meant to allow the audience to fill in the blanks. And so uh the overall production was very spare. And it wasn't that it was shrunk down for financial reasons. It was absolutely the way I wanted to do it. It was uh structure that was evocative of all of the uh the the building of our country in the early part of the 20th century. Lots of horseshoe-shaped buildings, including the Morgan Library, which was shaped like a horseshoe. Um every location came out of that structure. I had a moving staircase, which is, you know, one of my favorite scenic elements to play with because we re-endow it all night long. Sometimes it's a uh a stairway to the Ford factory, sometimes it's the stairway to the third floor in the house in New Rochelle.

[16:29] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: So I love actors to take, you know, a prop and re-endow it and give it new life and new meaning in any uh location. There's like 50 locations in ragtime, you know, it's huge. So there would be no way that I would want to do it literally. I would want a gesture, like for the fireman for the fire station. I had this beautiful red ladder just come down and that was it. And the guys had a relationship to the ladder and then to the car. So, you know, it was I always look for an essential gesture. Anything that is that is necessary to tell the story. If you don't need it, then you don't need it. But if the act actors can convey the emotion of the scene and the objectives of the of their desires, and you need a chair and a record play, you know, you need a record player because younger brother has to hear the record of Evelyn Nesbitt singing.

[17:28] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: So we need there's certain things that you need, but you don't need walls. You know, you can have a screen door, and you know that the garden's on the other side of it. And, you know, so there's simplicity of of storytelling, almost like going back to this is where maybe Susa Cole comes into play, is that it's done in a kind of evocative way of actors using the essential props and costumes and scenic elements in order to convey location, environment, relationship. It's all about relationships to me, you know, all the work. It's relationship to each other, it's relationship to this bottle of water, or this pen, or this postcard when you get a postcard from somebody that you've been dying to see, you know, so it's all relationships.

[18:20] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: So I think I gave the the show an opportunity to zoom into the human struggle a little bit more. It's not that Galotti didn't, it's just that there was a lot of other stuff around it to maybe take your attention away. And I wrote to Galati and to Graziella Danielle after we opened and said, Thank you for your contributions, because you know, musicals are not simply written or composed. Um they're collaborated with um some pretty smart people. Um and they continue to grow and evolve as as you did with the revival.

[19:01] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: Yeah, and having Santo come in and and join us for the New York transfer and re-design some stuff because I had asked to do something a little differently uh with uh crime of the century, and then get his stamp of approval. I mean, come on, that was like, you know, Santos calling Frank Alotti and go, you know what Marsha did with Crime of the Century? It's like, no my gosh. So, you know, it was just uh I had to keep my eye on the ball. I think you asked, you know, how do you do that? It's like, I had to keep my eye on the ball. I had to get a big show up, a massive show up with a lot of people, but I had a lot of love in the room.

[19:44] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: I had Jim Weaver who came and and worked as in one of the Harlem Ensemble roles. He and I uh roles, he and I had done a bunch of Ain't misbehavens together years before, and I remember walking on the set. We were supposed to get on the set on a Sunday morning, and they were running behind. This is in Washington, and we got on it right before dinner. Like at the end of the day, we got a call. You can walk around the set and then go home. So that was my spacing rehearsal. It was like so Jim Weaver and I caught each other's eye at one point, and we both burst into tears. We were like, look where we are. We're like we were in the Berkshire Theater Festival doing Amis Behaving, you know, back in the day. And here we are, it's at the Kennedy Center with JFK vibes all over the place, and just you know, magnificence around us and this beautiful set and these amazing artists, Quentin Darrington and Christian Knoll and Ron Bomer.

[20:47] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: I mean, everybody. And uh I had Yeah, there's one previous guest on the show. I had Eric Jordan Young. And Eric, who you know, I didn't have anybody from the original production. I was very I said to Steve, I really want I I want everyone to take the journey with me and and not tell me what it was. I you know, I re respect it, but I but I but Eric, we had a hard time finding Booker T, and Eric came in, he was so lovely. And I said to him just very openly, I said, Are you game to take this journey and you know be open to some new ideas and approaches and things?

[21:28] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: And I remember him coming up to me, I think it was like day three, and he just gave me, he gave me the kind of support and uh trust gesture. He just came over and goes, This is this is good, you know, this is good. And I was like, they're gonna be fine, we're gonna be fine, they'll trust me. They know they're not doing their show, they're doing a new show. And I think I think actors love the opportunity, so especially to revisit something they've done before, but do it in a completely different way.

[22:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I think any actor would love to get their hands on the same role again and do it a different way. I I would think so. I I would hope so. I mean, that's what makes our world go round, right?

[22:10] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: Exactly. Is to get those opportunities. And when it comes to this revival, I remember, at least this is my own stance, that the marketing was a little sparse. I I remember I had to tell friends of mine that ragtime's here. They're like, What? There's a revival. I mean, it was so like, why don't people know about this? And so I for me, I felt like the marketing kind of let the show down. Once I saw it, I was like, Why aren't people going to this?

[22:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then what what is your, you know, obviously marketing's a different side, it's you're not really in charge of that, but but what what do you think the show was lacking that people weren't coming? Was it marketing? Was it something else?

[22:47] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: I don't know. Uh uh to this day, and I know it's 12 years ago, and I should just get over it, but it's I don't know. You know, we did our we we did beautiful work, and you know, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus. I don't know. I really honestly, honest to goodness, don't know why we didn't have more. We we had an 11-week run in New York. That was it.

[23:12] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, which is crazy to think about, you know, what that show was originally, how much people love that show, and then for it to have such a short revival. It it yeah, it was a disappointment. I imagine that it came as a blow to you and the cast when it was announced.

[23:26] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: Yeah, it was heartbreaking. And uh, you know, we just carried on and did our best work and and hoped people will come. I mean, I have I have a memory of being, you know, I went to the theater a lot. I saw the writing on the wall sort of early on, you know, thanks to the lovely Michael Riedel, started, you know, posting things that ragtime wasn't gonna make it and blah, blah, blah. But people came, you know, as Manny Aisenberg would describe them. They were the low-hanging fruit, the people that sort of know that want, you know, that know about it and want to be there.

[24:03] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: But John Cander came one night and um I caught his eye at intermission and I went over and I introduced myself, and he threw his arms around me and had tears in his eyes and said, rarely do you get everything right. You got everything right. So I mean What more do you need? I mean, what more do you need? You know, like, and then he went and spoke to the company after the show. But, you know, I have friends who are disappointed when they don't get Tony nominations. And you know what? I trade the Tony nomination for a long run any day. My friend Patty Wilcox, who I'm working with on Beautiful, she co-corrified Motown.

[24:51] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: And I know she was really disappointed not to get a Tony nomination, but she had a several year run with that show and a London production and a national tour. And I said to her, You can have my Tony nomination. I would have rather had that.

[25:06] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah.

[25:07] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: I mean, I'm glad I have it. I'll make it to the broadcast eventually in the uh memorial section. I can count on it. Um for my daughter's sake. But you know what? I would trade it in a heartbeat for a long run. Peter Lawrence was my stage manager. Brilliant. It's Peter Lawrence. And Mark Minard was my sound designer for Broadway. And we went to lunch one day and they were speaking in code. They were going, like, I don't know, five, four. And Peter would go, No, I think it's gonna be more like four, three or maybe five, three. And so I go, Would you guys tell me what you're talking about? Because I don't know what you're talking about.

[25:46] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: Oh, you were gonna run for five years, and there's gonna be a tour that'll go out and it'll be for at least three or four years. Like that's how they felt about the show. Yeah. Before we started rehearsal, just in that little span of time between the announcement closing in DC and the announcement about coming to New York and putting all the team together, and and that was their conversation. So I was like, okay, that would have been really nice.

[26:16] Marcia Milgrom Dodge: You know, I I did say to Michael Kaiser, we should just keep the show running in Washington, D.C. and make it part of the um national monument uh culture. You know, you go to the Smithsonian and you see go through the immigration wing and then you go see a production of RAGTIME, or you go to a Martin Luther King monument and you go to production of RAGTIME. Like, I think it should just be playing all the time, all the time.

[26:52] Patrick Oliver Jones: You can hear my full conversation with Marcia Milgrom Dodge as we discuss her other shows, including the famed Beauty in the Beast production at Olney Theater Center in 2021, as well as her work as a playwright. By becoming a why I'll never make it subscriber, you get early access to full episodes like these, and hear discussions you won't get anywhere else.

[27:15] Patrick Oliver Jones: So go to the website and join today. That's why I'll never make it.com. Stick around because we'll be right back with Dan Connectus after this.

[27:36] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now we're on to my conversation with Dan Connectus about the highs and lows of his production of Xanadu, which opened on Broadway in July of 2007 and was directed by Christopher Ashley. This was Dan's third Broadway show, and we begin our discussion with how he landed the role of choreographer for this roller skate musical.

[27:58] Dan Knetgches: Well, that's interesting. I was working with a director regionally, uh, great director, kooky kooky, kooky as hell, David Schweitzer, who is uh uh was like a Joe Pap acolyte, but he's kooky kooky kooky, and his one of his proteges was Chris Ashley.

[28:17] Dan Knetgches: And while I was doing this show, it was Boys from Syracuse at Baltimore Center Stage. David had been on top of Chris saying, you need better choreographers, you need better choreographers. And he said, you should work with Dan. And he goes, oh, well, I have this campy show coming up, but it's a workshop of Xanadu. Would he be interested? And I was like, yes, I roller skated around my basement to that song. I wanted to be like Olivia Newton-John, like so bad. And so I interviewed, and it was just an interview, and I read the script, I thought it was hilarious. And Chris, to his credit, he said, okay, you got the job. Next week we have an audition. Can you give a roller skating audition? And I paused and I was like, yeah, I can.

[29:06] Dan Knetgches: Yeah, it's so interesting. It really comes down to knowing people, to being recommended by other people. If you establish yourself as being this reliable person, then hopefully the people you work with will start to mention you. Well, and also I always say too, like, I'm talented, but there are tons more talented directors and choreographers out there who now aren't out there. They gave up. And they were really, really talented, unique individuals. And that's the other thing too, is that I'm stubborn as hell. And I, you know, I thought it was such a negative thing, which it is a negative thing, but it's also a positive thing, is that like I just I never give up. And that kind of reliability of showing up on time and the stubbornness of like my ideas about how work, how you work of like I rarely bring what's outside into the workspace.

[30:11] Dan Knetgches: I know that's like a popular thing now. Like, oh, I can't come in because I'm feeling this, this, and this. And I was like, no, I'm really old school, and that I never miss, never. Like it would be it's very rare if I miss something. So yeah, it is. I think knowing people is everything. And then once you know them, then you've got to deliver the goods. And sometimes the goods is just showing up on time, doing a good job and being a positive person, even in the midst of chaos, and like being able to navigate that is something I didn't know I could do.

[30:53] Dan Knetgches: Well, Xanadu had its own chaotic periods, especially during previews. Like you had your lead actor, and then all of a sudden you didn't. That's such that is really the great, the great story. So we did a workshop down at the Maneta Lane, in I want to say February of 2007. And out of that, the producer got the Helen Hayes Theater in a summer production. They're like, we're opening in the summer. And you're like, wait, this that never happened. So, and then in that process, Jane Krakowski had done the workshop, and she did not want to continue. And we thought, oh my God, we're sunk because that's the star. Like she was kind of incredible in that workshop. And Cheyenne did the workshop.

[31:44] Dan Knetgches: But you know, we went through a whole process. Carrie Butler came on board, love Carrie Butler, and James Carpanello, because Cheyenne, for whatever reason, decided not to do the Broadway. And I think if, you know, if they listen or hear this, I think, you know, I hope they correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought, like everybody thought, this is like a campy off-Broadway show. It's not very good. And then when it was announced for Broadway, nobody thought it was gonna last. Nobody thought it was gonna be good. And so we went through a very long rehearsal process because we didn't go out of town. And then we had a long preview period, like four weeks, I think. And it was chaotic. There were so many times where we just kept tweaking and changing and making things better and restaging, and you know, it was 15, 16-hour days for those of us behind the scenes.

[32:52] Dan Knetgches: I was so tired. And but I would go back and do it in a minute because it was so thrilling to like keep changing things and figuring out how to land that laugh, how to make the movement funny. Like that's another thing, too, of like how I could add to like Evil Woman. How can I make Jackie, who literally doesn't dance, and Mary, how can I come up with things that are going to serve up what they were giving, which was I thought an incredible, incredible comedic performance. And so it was so fun to figure that out in that process. I was exhausted, but it was fun.

[33:37] Dan Knetgches: So we get to the end of, I want to say the like third week, and the show had just steadily gotten better and better and better. And we thought we were like at the point of oh my God, we're really gonna pull this off. People are really gonna be shocked at how what a great time they're having. And it was two days before critics were coming. And we got done with the most frustrating thing was I started out with a bunch of people that didn't know how to roller skate, and I choreographed for that skill set. And every day we would roller skate. And then by the time we got to the third week of previews, it needed to be much more advanced because they had gotten really good, really, really good.

[34:28] Dan Knetgches: And we had this trick skater who was doing splits and you know, all of the things. So I had to keep re-choreographing. So we had at the end of rehearsal, we did the Xanadu number, and we had re-choreographed some things, we had just gone over it, and then we had 10 minutes left, and we started doing notes. Chris Ashley was doing notes, all of this, and then wow, and there's James Carpanello on the floor. He had been goofing off, and his ankle was like this. He snapped his ankle, and we had a show at 7:30, and this is like 4:55. None of the understudies were rehearsed. His understudy was Curtis, who was in the show. He did our tap dancing number.

[35:16] Dan Knetgches: And so if we removed Curtis, and then we had the swing come on who didn't know the tap, we would have to cut that number. It was insanely complicated. And when that happened, literally he went to the hospital. We all sat in the theater like ghosts. We canceled that night because nobody was ready. And we really thought we're sunk. Like, who's gonna do it? Chris Ashley over that weekend called Cheyenne Jackson while we were rehearsing understudies and asked if he would consider coming back. He came and saw the Tuesday performance after that Friday rehearsal, and we had understudy. I think because we hadn't gotten the tap solo into the bodies of the swing, and we eventually had somebody come in just for that number. Andre Ward was playing Sonny, and we had the swing going on for that.

[36:20] Dan Knetgches: So it was cut nuts. But Cheyenne saw it and he was like, yeah, I would do it. The show's really good. How much had the show changed since he had been in it? A lot, actually. A lot. The book had, I mean, Douglas Carter Beane is such a good book writer. I mean, he really rewrites and rewrites and rewrites. So it had that had gotten great. And the other thing, too, in the workshop, it's like the performance aspect of the show, that sort of camp element, the heightened reality that they were all in wasn't there in the workshop. It could only be there in a full production. And so I think that all contributed to that.

[36:59] Dan Knetgches: And so Cheyenne came in, I want to say, started rehearsing that week while the understudy was on. And then the next, I want to say that next Tuesday, he came on and we delayed our opening by three weeks. So he had a week of rehearsal, then he went on, and I think he went on with pages for the first time. Oh, interesting. And by the end of that first week was good. And we and in that all of this, this is also a good lesson. We put in a whole new musical section to Don't Walk Away. It was the a cappella clap section, which wasn't in there. And we staged it and it really lifted the number. It was incredible.

[37:50] Dan Knetgches: I re-choreographed the finale again. It was we did like, I want to say 45 different versions of that finale. And so I kept tweaking that. I had to tweak all of Cheyenne's numbers that he was in. There was a complicated thing with the phone booth and him, and so I had to re-choreograph some of that based on his skills, which were different than James. And so he had a week of rehearsal, week of performance, and then that next week, critics came and we opened, and we were exhausted. I could not tell you, like literally, we were like walking zombies behind the scenes.

[38:34] Dan Knetgches: And that opening night was thrilling because Cheyenne, James was fabulous, but Cheyenne was a star. Like he just lifted everything up. And he also gets that like camp aspect of it of all of that heightened thing. And he plays that Himbo. And he was thrilling. It was it just it literally changed the whole show. And it we kept going and the show got so much better. And so it was like the low of the lows and then the high of the highs. And it was like we got these great reviews. And I think one of the actresses who will remain nameless said at the opening night party, oh my god, we're staying open. I thought this was gonna close.

[39:23] Dan Knetgches: I'll have another snow that I was gonna go to. Right, right. Because yeah, it was perfect for an off-Broadway kind of weird, quirky space. But then to actually make it on Broadway and last 500 performances, it yeah, it's a testament to sometimes we just want frivolous fun entertainment. Yeah. And high quality, like yeah, it's it's not diminishing it. Yeah, it's very I mean, it's stupid sophistication, is what I call it. It's really it was so fun. I just love doing it and being around those actors, all of that, that whole company I adored. And Chris Ashley is so great. Douglas Carter Beane, I love.

[40:05] Dan Knetgches: Um we just had the best time. It really was it was so great. I would go back in a minute and do it all over.

[40:17] Patrick Oliver Jones: Thank you so much for joining Dan, Marcia, and me today. And remember, you can get early access to full episodes by going to why I'll never make it and click subscribe. Or just look for the link in the show notes.

[40:32] Patrick Oliver Jones: All right, now let's get to this week's comment, which comes from Jay Trotter 2 via Apple Podcasts. Jay says, Patrick is one of the best podcast hosts out there. Insightful and empathetic, he always brings the best out of his guests. Having an actor interview other working actors rather than stars interviewing other stars, you get an idea of the struggles of going into this craft. It's the best.

[41:11] Patrick Oliver Jones: And it really comes down to them being so open and vulnerable about their own experiences that make this podcast different from other theater interview podcasts that I've listened to as well. So I'm truly grateful for guests like them and for listeners like you.

[41:43] Patrick Oliver Jones: Background music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions and John Bartmann. Be sure to join me next time as we talk more about why I'll never make it.