AP Risks of Broadway, 3 part series 1st Part BKLYN

[BKLYN_FAN]

Posted: 10/10/04 at 9:01am

'Brooklyn' Illustrates Risks of Broadway

By MICHAEL KUCHWARA
The Associated Press
Saturday, October 9, 2004; 6:23 PM

NEW YORK - Despite the allure of those five little words - "let's put on a show" - there's nothing harder, particularly on Broadway, where even if you get there, the chances of financial success are less than 20 percent.

It's late in the afternoon on a hot, humid Thursday in mid-August. Jeff Calhoun is center stage in a bright, airy rehearsal room overlooking that fabled avenue of tapping feet, 42nd Street.



The director-choreographer stands in the middle of a large group of people, a collection of folks linked by one thing. From actor to press agent, from marketing director to set designer, from advertising executive to songwriters, they are all involved in the creation of the only new Broadway musical to arrive this fall: a $6.75 million production with the self-proclaiming title of "Brooklyn The Musical."

The blond, tousle-haired Calhoun, wearing blue jeans, an untucked shirt and cowboy boots, glances through moist eyes at the crowd. "I am such a wussy," he says, his voice faltering. "I hate this part of me."

"We love that part of you," says a reassuring voice from the mass of people, as the rest of the group cheers and murmurs its approval.

"I have been in this business for 28 years, and this is my first time doing anything like this," Calhoun continues. "It (`Brooklyn') doesn't feel like any other show. ... It feels like family. All the cliches that people say (about) other shows ... you say them because you are supposed to. But this is the real deal."

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The "real deal" started in front of the monkey house at the Central Park Zoo.

It was another summer day - July 7, 2001 - that Calhoun, now best known for an acclaimed revival of "Big River" with hearing impaired actors, first met Mark Schoenfeld, a gnomelike free spirit with a fondness for wearing berets and a talent for composing music direct descended from the best of Motown and "Soul Train." ("Mark looks like Woody Allen, but he writes like Quincy Jones," says John McDaniel, a "Brooklyn" producer and the show's music supervisor, arranger and orchestrator.)

Schoenfeld wanted to talk face to face with Calhoun about a musical he had written with his partner, Barri McPherson, a club singer who lived with her husband and children in Massachusetts. He didn't want to just deliver a CD of the songs or a script of the project to him. "You have to meet me and let me do my thing," Schoenfeld told Calhoun.

And so he did.

Schoenfeld stood in front of the monkeys with his boom box. Slowly, he unspooled the saga of a young French woman, a singer named Brooklyn, who travels to America to find fame and the father she never knew. He interrupted the tale with tapes of the songs, sung by himself and McPherson.

"We were in the park for a long time together, and I'm thinking there's no way that this play can be as good as the story he is describing," the director recalled. "I said, `Let me go home and read the script and listen to the music and I will get back to you. I can't promise you when ... but I will get back to you in a few weeks.'"

It only took a couple of hours. Calhoun called Schoenfeld, wanting a second meeting. When they met again, Calhoun said, "I've been waiting my entire life for something like this to pass my way. I hope I have the sensibilities to do it, should you want me."




"I knew right there - Jeff was the guy," Schoenfeld said. "I told him - and I'm a man of my word - `I give you my hand. You're the director of this piece.'"
Schoenfeld is a quirky, compelling fellow with a personal story that is as strange and wonderful as the tale he and McPherson wanted to tell on stage.



Born in Brooklyn, he lived in housing projects in the Bronx in the 1950s and early 1960s. While others his age were listening to the Beatles, Schoenfeld grew up with rhythm 'n' blues, sounds that infuse his music today. McPherson, a performer-songwriter and daughter of a jazz singer, is from Massachusetts and met Schoenfeld briefly in the 1980s when she did a one-day gig recording demos for some songs he had written.

At that session, a musical connection was made between the two, according to McPherson, a blonde with long, straight Joni Mitchell hair, a sweet, shy smile and an accent that could only have been born in New England. But Schoenfeld never pursued the professional partnership, and she didn't see him again for nearly a decade.

Flash forward to the early 1990s, when the two met again in Brooklyn - where else?

McPherson was walking down a street in fashionable Brooklyn Heights and stopped to listen to a homeless panhandler, who was telling stories and singing, accompanied by a boom box. It was Schoenfeld, whose world had unraveled after his marriage fell apart and he began suffering bouts of depression. Because of their earlier musical connection, McPherson vowed she wasn't going to leave him there, and she took this strange man back to New England and folded him into her family.

From that relationship grew a series of songs called "Sidewalk Fairy Tales." Out of those tales came an idea for a character who journeys to America, specifically from France. To the authors, France seemed like such a romantic place, more romantic than anywhere else in the world. What evolved was an eight-minute rock opera. When the pair thought it might become a movie and finally a stage version, they expanded their work.

The two writers, who together do both the music and lyrics, called their show "an urban fairy tale." Brooklyn comes to New York armed only with two things: an unfinished lullaby her mother, now dead, would sing to her, and her name, Brooklyn. The young woman's voyage is played out by a band of homeless people; five actors play all the characters in the show.

"I believe that the inspiration for a whole lot of `Brooklyn' comes from that life that I had to lead," Schoenfeld said. "I didn't ask to be born an artist. ... I just know I can't do anything else."

How Schoenfeld and McPherson found their way to Calhoun wasn't easy, but the two writers remained committed even after rejections from record producers and movie executives piled up during the twilight years of the 1990s.

"I never wanted to walk away from it because I knew Mark would die - I didn't want to let him down," McPherson said. "And I think Mark wanted to do the same because he knew this was my whole life and he didn't want to hurt me."

In show business, connections are often made through the most winding of threads. Scott Prisand, son-in-law of one of those record producers who had rejected the duo, loved the music. Prisand knew someone who knew Calhoun and through that connection, Calhoun and Schoenfeld had their fateful meeting in the zoo.

With Calhoun on board, the songwriters had their director.

But where to go next?

In January 2002, Calhoun and Schoenfeld, with "Brooklyn" in hand, found themselves at the Tribeca loft of John McDaniel, Calhoun's good friend and the affable music director of Rosie O'Donnell's television show. McDaniel and Calhoun had worked together on Broadway revivals of "Grease" and "Annie Get Your Gun."

The visit turned out to be a six-hour meeting. McDaniel loved "Brooklyn." The next day, McDaniel told Calhoun, "Why give this away? Why don't we produce it ourselves?"




At first, Calhoun thought that he could raise the money by having Schoenfeld tell the story of the show, just as the composer did for him in Central Park. It didn't work. So Calhoun and McDaniel planned an ambitious workshop.

Friends tried to talk them out it, but the two men plunged ahead, planning a workshop of "Brooklyn" at the Signature Theatre Company's home on West 42nd Street. Workshops are a step beyond the basic reading of a script by a group of actors sitting in a circle, and Calhoun and McDonald wanted to do it up right.

They hired actors (including several who are still in the show), musicians, sound people and more to do a four-performance showcase Sept. 12-13, 2002, with two performances each day. Their audience: potential co-producers, investors and others in the theater industry.

It was a lavish presentation, with the cast in costumes and on a large off-Broadway stage. And when the final curtain fell after the final workshop, the audience was applauding generously for the young project and crowding around Schoenfeld and McPherson to offer their congratulations.

"It's the most fun I think I've ever had in show business - producing that workshop," Calhoun said. "We did it for two reasons. One was to take a look at the material to see where we were. The second was to find that third producer who really knew the business because John and I are not businessmen."

The workshop cost $250,000, with much of the money coming from Calhoun, who sold everything he had (mostly stocks - but not his apartment), to help pay for it.

The would-be producers got a nibble before they had much time to bite their nails. Within hours, in fact.

Their suitor was Mitchell Maxwell, a producer who has had his share of ups and downs in New York theater - hits such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning off-Broadway "Dinner With Friends," and flops such as the Broadway revival of "Bells Are Ringing" and a musical version of "Summer of '42," off-Broadway.

"The response to that workshop was so overwhelming - the emotion that the audience felt in that 200-seat theater was breathtaking," Maxwell said. "I was swept away."

Within 90 minutes of the show's end, Maxwell met with Calhoun and McDaniel. He told them he wanted to produce "Brooklyn" and bring it to Broadway.

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Next:

The Road to Broadway, Part II: The Tryout.

[musicalsFan]

Posted: 10/10/04 at 10:03am

isn't it illegal to have the entire article cut-and-pasted like this???? or are does BWW not care? this isn't the first time.