鈥淲hat we responded to so strongly in Merrily We Roll Along was its story of theatre artists who are working together and whose lives are intertwined over a long period of time鈥攖heir creative lives, their professional lives, their personal lives,鈥� director Noah Brody says. 鈥淎t Fiasco Theater, we鈥檙e a group of people who have been working together now for 15 years. We鈥檝e known each other since school. We have three co-artistic directors, Jessie Austrian, Ben Steinfeld, and me. Jesse and I are married and have a son. That story, those challenges, those moments of decision that inevitably lead down paths, that have consequences, intentional and unintentional, the cautionary tale of that, all that spoke very deeply to us. So we thought that with all of its challenges it was a story we could stand behind and want to take on.鈥�
Brody is talking about the Fiasco Theater revival of the 1981 Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical, which he has directed at the Laura Pels Theatre, the Off Broadway playhouse of the Roundabout Theatre Company, where Fiasco is company-in-residence. The musical, based on the eponymous 1934 George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart play, tells of the falling in-falling out relationship over two decades of three show business friends. Told in reverse chronological order, as was the original play, the musical was a Broadway flop, running for only 44 previews and 16 performances, but it has been often revived and revised, in part because of Sondheim鈥檚 renowned and revered score.
Brody, an actor and teacher as well as a director, co-directed and performed in Fiasco鈥檚 successful revival of Sondheim and James Lapine鈥檚 Into the Woods, which Roundabout presented in 2014 and 2015. His other co-directing and acting credits include Fiasco鈥檚 productions of The Imaginary Invalid, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, and Cymbeline. He spoke about his directing career, Merrily, Into the Woods, and his future plans.
Why he became a director:
鈥淚 don鈥檛 know that I ever really articulated for myself the desire to be a director. There have been people in my life who鈥檝e said, 鈥楳aybe you should be a director.鈥� I enjoy the process of communicating with actors and with collaborators and in leading the collaborative room in which a lot of really smart people are trying to work toward a common goal.鈥�
His directing principles:
鈥淥ne strength I may have is to provide an organizing principle and an organizing influence that allows everyone to have a strong voice and agency in the room, but that I can point and say, 鈥榃e go this way now.鈥� My job is to not come up with all the ideas but to create a firm ground in which ideas can sprout up. I like that. I like setting the temperature for that, the real art of the communication of that. That鈥檚 the aspect of directing that I thrive in and find enjoyable.
鈥淲hat I might have thought some years back was that a director鈥檚 job was to have all the ideas or to tell people what to do, or to say this is what the lights should look like. As opposed to what I now think is much more both my style and helps the really smart people around me do their best work, which is to say, 鈥楬ere are the ideas we鈥檙e pursuing, here are the values of this production,鈥� and try to articulate those as clearly as possible and let them have their individualistic and artistic responses to that set of ideas.鈥�
In the rehearsal room with an actor:
鈥淚n Fiasco, we use the word 鈥榚vent鈥� a lot. We try to be very clear about identifying events and themes. It can be the plot, but sometimes an event has to do with speaking the unspeakable and then saying, 鈥業f that is the event, what does it mean to take responsibility in the room for that event? What is the social contract under which that鈥檚 happening? What are the expectations? What鈥檚 the response to that?鈥�
鈥淸Perhaps] they鈥檙e speaking and saying, 鈥榊ou never loved me,鈥� and then [we discuss] how that is meant to land in the room. I try to articulate those things and let them have their responses. And then we can be in conversation about whether that event landed, is it happening, is it not happening, what could help make it happen in a larger, fuller, more released way?
鈥淲hat I don鈥檛 do is say, 鈥楥ross down right.鈥� I think anytime you start telling actors where to go, you鈥檙e not talking about what鈥檚 at the heart of interactions between people. If you鈥檙e trying to solve interactions between humans with blocking, that鈥檚 a bad place to be. In our productions, what鈥檚 happening is the actors do the things they have chosen to do in the way they have chosen to do them. They have agency. My job is to try to get them to pursue [their choices] as fully and specifically as possible.鈥�
A mistake he made that he learned from:
鈥淢errily We Roll Along is an attempt not to make the same mistake twice. In the history of Fiasco, we have almost always鈥攖his is the first time we have not鈥攈ad co-directors on a show. Almost always those co-directors have also been actors inside the show. When we did Into the Woods, I just felt as though I were drowning the whole time. I was an actor, and a co-director, and I was a co-artistic director. And it wasn鈥檛 as if I was doing each of those things a third of the time鈥擨 was doing all of them poorly. I had reached my saturation point and I was just not effective as any one of them. As successful as that production was, and as proud of it as we all are, one lesson we learned was that it wasn鈥檛 an advantage to have co-directors inside the production. So in Merrily, we said let鈥檚 not do that again.
鈥淚nitially, I didn鈥檛 want to direct it. I wanted to act in it and I didn鈥檛 believe I had the skill set to direct it. Partly that was based on the trauma I was still living with coming out of Into the Woods鈥�feeling like I wasn鈥檛 a very good collaborator, I wasn鈥檛 a very good director, I wasn鈥檛 a very good actor. Ultimately, I decided to take on the challenge and I鈥檝e been enormously grateful for the opportunity, because I鈥檝e enjoyed every last moment of it.鈥�
A good decision that paid off:
鈥淓asy. I can鈥檛 claim it as a sole decision, but a really good decision Fiasco made was bringing on Alex Gemignani as music director, bringing in Lorin Latarro as the choreographer, along with the other members of our creative team. Alex and Lorin have been indispensable to the development of this show and to a lot of what is successful about it. Their work is integral to the production.鈥�
About Merrily:
鈥淲hen we were looking for another musical to take on, Sondheim was one of the composers we thought of, because we enjoyed working on his Into the Woods so much, and it鈥檚 always enormously gratifying to work on his lyrics and music. As we are really classical theatre actors, that initial experiment [of Into the Woods] was: Did we have the skill set that applied to musical theatre in any way? He鈥攂eing sort of a Shakespearean composer鈥攚e felt that we had something to offer, and it wasn鈥檛 going to expose our lack of musical theatre chops on a certain level.
鈥淪o we thought about Sondheim, and Roundabout actually brought Merrily to us. Developing the production was a long process 鈥� about three-and-a-half years. One of the first things we did was meet with Steve [Sondheim], after reading the libretto and listening to the music, which we had known beforehand to some degree. Asked him what its origins were for him, what was important, what they tried to do 鈥� starting to have a conversation with him about what our responses were. We felt we needed to do some work on it in order to bring ourselves to it and we wanted to see how open Steve was.
鈥淗e was very open to continue those conversations, to collaboration, to work on the musical. He was open to our process. And he made all of his archives available to us 鈥� the rehearsal drafts from 1981, the production draft, the licensable version, the musical archives, the things that hadn鈥檛 been put on stage or hadn鈥檛 been put onstage since 1981, and he said, go forth, and work and play. Those drafts were very instrumental to us in tracking through what they were initially attempting, and their responses as they went through a rehearsal process, and after the Broadway production, how they were then responding again to what they felt was working and what they felt wasn鈥檛.
READ: What to Expect From the Overhauled, One-Act Merrily We Roll Along Off-Broadway
