Really, great literature and great musical theater are two sides of the same deeply human coin. Maybe it’s my opinion as a person who studied Theatre and Rhetoric, but I am of the stance that, first and foremost, humans are storytellers. From ancient Indonesian cave paintings to the Greek Epics, from the Gospel songs of enslaved African Americans to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats (though we should give T.S. Eliot some credit there as well), we have always been here—loving, hating, grieving, laughing. Living to tell the tale, in any way we can.

My original pitch for directing this concert was to Frankenstein a hero’s journey through our song selections. I felt compelled by the idea that we could take wildly different literary musicals to highlight the universality of the journey. The road may be yellow brick or Kansas Expressway; we are all dreaming of somewhere over the rainbow. Dorothy’s song is just a little higher quality than my own, “Please Stop Driving 10 Under—I Want to Kiss My Little Cat on His Head.” We’re all on a road, gripping—white-knuckled—to life, and hopefully, one day to an end that is happy.

Our incredible cast did an excellent job helping me articulate the more important uniting theme than our shared dream of a happy ending. It is the feelings we have getting there. I’ll admit to being so locked in to highlighting storytellers’ consistency in following the Hero’s Journey formula, I forgot that what artists are drawn to are the heroes (or villains, or antiheroes—pick your poison). Our setlist is almost entirely comprised of the Atonement, Revelation, and Transformation parts of the journey. “I hope that you burn,” “Everything is different now that I see you,” “I won’t let this defeat you, you must fight to keep her there within you.” We’re drawn to the strongest expressions of emotion; that’s what keeps us telling the story. Strong stories are what musicals are made for! Music heightens the emotion of what is already being said; what is “Dear Theodosia” but a lullaby? “Do You Hear the People Sing?” It’s hard to forget a story when its music buries itself deep in your core. If you happen to be at a VIP table, I encourage you to pick up the book at your table—lovingly provided by our friends at Bookmarx—and look at the song we’ve selected from that novel. Can you hear the music when you read its passage? Will that passage stay with you longer?

With every song on the setlist, it’s my hope that our audience can sit down—in our comfortable new chairs, perhaps with a little Gin Eyre or If I Had a Fine White Wine, who knows!—and see a lineage of artists. At our core, we have the prolific writers who gave us the stories that great composers read and saw notes between each line—performed passionately by thousands of actors around the world—and intimately, earnestly brought to you by a cast who knows these stories are important because they are just as important to us. We all know the feelings even more than we know the stories themselves. We invite you to tuck in, get cozy, and enjoy a beautifully performed concert of some of the greatest pieces of literature right here on the High Tide Stage, April 12th at 7:30 p.m.

Hadleigh Callahan

Director, Literature to Life: in Concert