In the Era of 'Fake News,' Jason Robert Brown's The Connector Is a Cautionary Tale

When songwriter Jason Robert Brown, book writer Jonathan Marc Sherman, and conceiver and director Daisy Prince started working on The Connector in the early 2010s, it felt like they were processing and covering events from the past. The musical was about a wunderkind writer at a New Yorker-like publication in the '90s who, it turns out, fabricates his stories and sells them as real. The creators had taken inspiration from a number of high-profile stories of published fabrications, from Janet Cooke to Stephen Glass.

And then Donald Trump was elected President in 2016, and a global pandemic befell us in 2020. "Fake news" and "alternative facts" horrifyingly entered the national lexicon, while journalists became, in Trump's words, "the enemy of the people."

"The entire energy of the show changed," says Brown. "And it became clear to us that what we were writing about was urgently, frighteningly current."

The show ultimately made its world premiere Off-Broadway via MCC Theater last year in a multi-extended run starring Scott Bakula, Ben Levi Ross, Hannah Cruz, and Jessica Molaskey. .

Over a year later, the show sadly no less relevant than it was last season. That is why the entire original cast (which also includes Joanna Carpenter, Max Mendoza Crumm, George Dvorsky, Mylinda Hull, Daniel Jenkins, Marissa Medina, Fergie Philippe, Eliseo Román, Ann Sanders, and Michael Winther) is preparing to reunite for a one-night-only concert of the musical at Webster Hall June 16, an evening that will support the Committee to Protect Journalists.

READ: Scott Bakula Is Back Singing On Stage in The Connector

Also back will be the original orchestra, led by songwriter Brown at the piano, and also including Randy Landau, Todd Reynolds, Hidayat Honari, Adam Kaufman, and Jamie Eblen.

�뵺�� caught up with Brown and Sherman to learn how The Connector came to be, how a rapidly changing world affected its long development, and why it became clear the show needed to come back.

Jonathan Marc Sherman, Daisy Prince, and Jason Robert Brown Tricia Baron

Tell us where the idea for the show came from.
Jason Robert Brown: The origin of this show was definitely Daisy [Prince], who had been struck by a number of high-profile cases of journalism-gone-awry, places where the reporter had invented “facts�� and made them essential parts of their storytelling. Janet Cooke’s “Jimmy’s World�� Pulitzer scandal; Jayson Blair and his fictionalizations at the New York Times; Sabrina Erdely’s non-existent sources in Rolling Stone; and of course, more than anything else, Stephen Glass’s articles for many of the most prestigious publications in the country, particularly The New Republic.

Jonathan Marc Sherman: If Daisy Prince ever invites you to work with her and Jason Robert Brown on an idea, it’s probably a good idea to say yes.

Were there any specific real-life stories that informed the specific plot?
Brown: While the events of the story were certainly inspired by the scandals noted above, we invented Ethan and The Connector entirely out of whole-cloth. And the three stories that Ethan tells in the show—which take place during the songs “Success,�� “Wind In My Sails,�� and “The Western Wall”—are all totally made up, although “Wind In My Sails�� does obviously owe a little bit to Sharpe James and Marion Barry, with a little Rob Ford thrown in for extra spice.

Sherman: Van Cliburn was a patron of the Ol�� South Pancake House in Fort Worth, Texas, and was in fact known to be a great tipper there. Also, when looking for a big, international subject for Ethan’s third story song, the answer to the question, “What happens to the wishes people put into the Western Wall?�� was researched, then turned into a monologue about somebody who buys wishes during the biannual cleaning out of the wall and attempts to fulfill those wishes. That held its place patiently for over a year until Jason worked his magic and turned up with a little ditty called “The Western Wall.��

Did anything happen in the world during the development of the show that changed the plot?
Brown: We did the first reading of the show a mere week after Kellyanne Conway first used the term “alternative facts�� in an interview on Meet The Press. When we started writing the show, Obama was in office and we were talking about an era in the past. Once Trump took office, the entire energy of the show changed, and it became clear to us that what we were writing about was urgently, frighteningly current.

Sherman: The election of 2016 took place a few months before our first reading of the full show, which we’d been actively writing for over five years at that point. Somebody asked afterwards if we thought of our show as the “Fake News�� musical. I remember thinking, “Well, I suppose we’ll have to get used to that particular phrase now.�� Also, between our first outline and the first draft of the show, Jonah Lehrer joined the list of high-profile journalists who had engaged in fabrication, and a biography of the late non-fiction legend Joseph Mitchell was published which revealed he’d been fabricating and blurring lines in supposedly factual pieces for The New Yorker.

One quote from a letter of Mitchell’s stays with me: “I wanted these stories to be truthful rather than factual, but they are solidly based on facts.�� It helped us to think that these are not isolated instances, but perhaps connected instances, which began well before we were born, and will likely not cease anytime soon.

What did working on and writing the show teach you about storytelling, journalism, truth, that you did not expect when you began?
Brown: I was expecting that we’d have to do a lot more plotting and strategizing to justify how far Ethan gets. What we discovered is how easy it was for Glass and Blair and Cooke to blow past the guardrails—and what was easy in 1994 is even easier now when the zone is flooded with bullshit.

Sherman: I was surprised to learn that, when Stephen Glass was working for the Heritage Foundation’s journal Policy Review, back in 1994, one of his fellow office-mates (also in his early 20s) was a fact-checker named Tucker Carlson. Carlson was quoted on the subject of Stephen Glass in the Washington Post in 1998 saying, “The pressure I see is to turn out only hit pieces and take down someone big. I've certainly felt it. They make a louder bang when they go off." And “Glass is a very talented person and a very hard worker. I don't understand it. It's heartbreaking to me."

I’d often think about somebody learning a wildly different lesson from such close proximity to the Stephen Glass scandal. Instead of getting the facts straight, alas, by 2020, a judge ruling in Mr. Carlson’s favor would write about his show on Fox News: “This 'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' �� Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statements he makes.��

If you were premiering The Connector in 2025 in the world we're in now, is there anything you might do differently?
Brown: Alas, no; if anything, we might have been too optimistic that things would continue on what felt last year like an upward curve. I think it’s imperative that art speak to the current moment; it feels all too clear that The Connector speaks to this one.

Sherman: Yeah, nope.

Fergie Philippe, Hannah Cruz, and Ben Levi Ross Joan Marcus

What do you think the show has to say to us today?
Brown: Oh man, just be careful what you read and what you believe. There are people who are willing to exploit your fears, your beliefs, your trust so that they can tell the story they want to tell. I hardly hide my politics, but it’s worth saying that while I’m obviously talking about the fusillade of manure coming from Fox News and the like, the news sources of the left are equally susceptible and far from blameless.

Sherman: I hope it makes people think about how we get our news, what we decide to believe in, and reminds us that a good yarn shouldn’t beat a factual story, unless you find yourself in a section clearly labeled “Fiction.��

Tell us about the inspiration behind mounting this reunion concert.
Brown: Firstly, we wanted to reunite this cast and orchestra because we love this show so much and we had such an extraordinarily joyous time building it. But journalists in this country and abroad are on the front lines of protecting democracy and keeping the authoritarians in check, and those journalists have never been more endangered than they are now. The Committee to Protect Journalists is a vital shield and support system for the news gatherers who are doing some of the world’s most important work. This show seemed like an incredible opportunity to help out CPJ and bring some more attention (and funds!) to their mission.

Sherman: Jason thought of a great way to reunite in support of a great cause. I’m only interested in the fabulists and fabricators because I revere the vital and necessary hard work that excellent journalists do every day, and how important that work is in keeping a society informed and functional. The honest investigators and the tellers of hard truths need our support now more than ever.

How has the show changed since it originally premiered?
Sherman: Since it premiered, it’s changed relatively little. The more drastic changes came during the more-than two decades between Daisy’s initial idea for a show about a fabulist and our original premiere. Jason came aboard in 2010. When I joined the team in 2011, the idea for the show was a four-character chamber musical in three scenes. The only character name that would remain the same was Ethan’s (just his first name, though). Nine characters ended up joining those first four. It isn’t a chamber musical, and has more than three scenes.

To get to a rough and ragged first draft without any songs took a mere three years. In May of 2015, Jason played us the first song (which is no longer the first song. There are only three songs which got replaced: two opening numbers, and a different story song—“Success”—replaced a song called “The Next Big Leap.��)

We did a workshop with the first half of the score in July of 2016, and then a workshop with a full score in January of 2017 (that was the one a week after Conway's “alternative facts.") We went up to Poughkeepsie and did a workshop presentation for a paying audience at New York Stage & Film in July of 2018. We did another workshop at Princeton (where Jason was teaching) in December of 2018, and then a concert reading at the late, great venue SubCulture in NYC in January of 2019. Our show was about to be announced as part of a season in early 2020, when—you know. The whole world changed, to quote one of J’s lyrics.

When theatres started turning their lights back on, we turned our attention back to putting our show on. The Newman Mills Theater at MCC was our dream space for the debut of The Connector, and in 2024, after over two decades of thought, and over a decade of writing and composing and workshopping, that’s where we put on the show we wanted to make, with the people we wanted to make it with.

For those of us worried about legit "fake news," attacks on news media, and all of this mess, what should we be doing to help?Sherman: Reading and researching and using primary sources to strengthen our ideas. Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny is, in my opinion, essential reading—and in terms of this specific question, particularly lessons nine to 11, and lesson 15: “Be kind to our language,�� “Believe in the truth,�� “Investigate,�� and “Contribute to good causes.�� Supporting a good cause like the Committee to Protect Journalists seems like a great place to start—as does going to the theatre.

Tickets for the June 16 concert are at . To make a donation to CPJ, visit .