JASON ROBERT BROWN (music and lyrics) Dan Elish had seen me do an interview where I said I really wanted to do a show with a bunch of dancing teenagers. The collaboration eventually fell through, but not before Brown thought up a pitch: a story about young teenagers that would become the framework for “13.” Here are edited excerpts from our discussions.Ī book editor at Scholastic reached out to Jason Robert Brown to see if he would be interested in brainstorming a new project: an original musical that would also tie into a new book series. Jacobs Theater to see “13,” her first Broadway musical. Some are still acting or directing or choreographing, on TV and Broadway and elsewhere others have left the business entirely.Īnd one actress - Ariana Grande, making her Broadway debut as the gossip-prone, flip-phone-wielding Charlotte - has become a bona fide pop supernova.Īhead of the film’s release, members of that cast, band, creative team and production crew looked back on their memories of the show - in conversation with a reporter who, years earlier, at age 11, happened to be sitting in the audience of the Bernard B. They’ve graduated from having adolescent showmances to planning their weddings. Most of the original cast members are now in their late 20s. The show, about a 13-year-old named Evan juggling his parents’ divorce, his upcoming bar mitzvah and a seemingly life-shattering move from New York to the middle of Indiana, was not just a test in managing this particular company - an all-teen cast and band - but in finding exactly what the audience appetite was for a work that sat squarely in the limbo between Disney and “Spring Awakening.”Īdult reviewers were lukewarm - though, to be fair, the 14-year-old companion of the New York Times critic Ben Brantley found it to be “ pretty good” - and “13” closed three months after opening night, one of numerous Broadway casualties during the recession. This was the great experiment of “13,” the 2008 coming-of-age musical both about and performed by a group of kids going through one of the more chaotically vulnerable stages of life. A Gavroche or two.īut a baker’s dozen of newly minted teenagers, raging hormones and all, packed into a handful of dressing rooms backstage in a Broadway theater? And aside from the crew, the musical director - and, yes, three child wranglers - no adults in sight?
It’s one thing to wrangle a few von Trapp kids.
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