Princesses
World Premiere Direct-to-Broadway
New Dates: August 9 - 28, 2005
Book by Cheri Steinkellner and Bill Steinkellner
Music by Matthew Wilder
Lyrics by David Zippel
Conceived and Directed by David Zippel
Excerpts from KUOW Interview with The Beat's Dave Beck
June 7, 2005
* For the complete audio interview, follow this link to the KUOW website.
DB: I'm Dave Beck. You're listening to The Beat. Since the success of Hairspray, winner of eight Tony Awards in 2002, Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre has emerged as a national leader in the development of new musicals.
The Broadway-bound Princesses is the 5th Avenue's next production, heading to New York in September. Some of Hollywood and Broadway's best writing and musical talents are part of the Princesses team.
The lyricist for the show is Tony Award winner David Zippel. Cheri Steinkellner, a contributor to the TV series "Cheers," wrote the book for Princesses. And the songwriter is Matthew Wilder. He's penned tunes and produced recordings for Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, and P. Diddy.
[Musical excerpt from Princesses: "Saved by the Bell"]
DZ: The opening number starts with lights up, and you see these girls looking angelic in their private-school uniforms and the teacher is in front of them conducting. She thinks she's Leonard Bernstein. And then the school bell rings, in the middle of their madrigal the girls mow her down, and morph into the modern teenage girls that they are.
DB: Princesses has its roots in a Victorian novel called A Little Princess. Tell me a little bit about that original novel. What was it that kind of contained the seed for this brand-new musical?
DZ: Well, I had been talking to a producer who had said, "Let's do a musical version of A Little Princess." And my first thought was, "Why?" It's been done. That style of musical has been done so many times before. My first impulse was to re-look at that story by telling it through the eyes of a bunch of contemporary girls who are forced to put on a musical version of that book, and they would rather die. [laughter] It's the last thing on earth they want to do.
By doing this production, they each become closer to one another. [Truthfully] the only reason that they do it in the first place is because the movie-star dad of one of the girls comes to visit and gets roped into starring and directing the school show.
We take the audience on a journey - the same journey these girls take. They re-look at something they thought they knew and discover how they feel about it themselves. But, one of the things that is important to us is that the show is funny: these girls are enormously amusing, and their interactions are extremely contemporary and funny.
So there are two father-daughter stories. There is the contemporary father-daughter story of the movie star, who has dumped his kid in the school because he just can't handle her. They are both in pain because he lost his wife, she lost her mom, and he is trying to reconnect. Then we also see Sara Crewe and her dad, who have had a forced separation˛and so the two stories mirror each other, yet they both handle emotion in a very different way.
DB: Cheri, tell me a little bit more about the clique of girls that this centers around.
CS: Well, it's not a clique. It's a cross-section of any school that you go to, where you've got friends and enemies and jocks and stoners [laughter]; all kinds of kids who have no reason to come together, except that they all happen to be in this music class, against their will with a teacher who thinks she can inspire them the same way she got inspired˛a billion years ago by putting on this "old-school show," A Little Princess. They'd much rather do Grease!, RENT, Chicago. [laughter] That just sounds much cooler to them. But here they are. They're stuck.
DB: The sort of energy and the charm and the neuroses of girls at that age must have been a big attraction for [laughs] working on the show.
CS: Well, I have two daughters and a son, two of whom are teenagers and one is eleven. And so I am immersed in high school culture. I cannot escape it. And there is a charm to it. The high drama of everything is irresistible. It pushes my buttons and takes me, as a mom, well past high school. I thought I was well past high school, but when your kids go through it, you go through it all over again. [laughter]
DZ: One of the pleasures for us in writing the show, and for the audience in seeing the show, is the idea of the "contrast." These girls live in pop culture. Consequently, the songs they sing are very much pop songs. Then [with] the show-within-a-show [you hear] a more traditional musical theater score [You experience both] worlds and how they rub up against each other.
DB: Matthew, you were talking about this being your maiden voyage on Broadway. Tell me what that experience has been like, or how has it provided you with opportunities or ways to express yourself that you've been very excited about?
MW: Oh gosh, I don't know if we have enough time to cover all that territory. [laughter] It's truly a collaborative effort, [so much] factors into the making of a Broadway show.
When I'm left to my own devices working in Los Angeles as a record producer and a writer, it's a far more intimate relationship with my artist. We are there to pull things out of thin air and create something from nothing. But when you're in the Broadway context, there are so many disparate departments. There's the choreography that needs to be factored into the equation, and the book, lyrics and music. They all, mysteriously and miraculously, seem to come together and work as a whole.
It's such a broad palette. Much broader than anything I've ever had the experience of working on. This is a living, breathing organism that changes from day to day. We are constantly learning what works, what doesn't work. We have some really beautiful, tender moments in the score. "By Heart" is a duet between father and daughter. It's the first time that [the]father and daughter really come together and sing to one another; and it's all under the guise of a dry run for A Little Princess.
CS: They can only talk to each other through their characters at first.
MW: That's quite a tender moment called "By Heart," and I think that was one of the first tunes that David and I wrote for the show. It has lived and survived over the course of these many years. It has stood the test of time. It's one of my favorite moments from the score.
[Music excerpt from Princesses: "By Heart"]
CS: Well, the other song that really˛[speaks to the audience and the story] is called "I Donπt Need You." It comes at a climactic moment when Miranda has been disappointed by her father and is going to stand up and prove to him that she can do it on her own. It's a big, strong, teen-angst outcry of independence. I think that speaks to a lot of kids who need to find that way of letting their parents know, "I can do this myself."
"I Don't Need You" is followed up and answered by a song that all of the girls do called "The Best Revenge." Now [Miranda] is going to take this power that she has discovered within herself, this independence, and instead of rebelling with it [Miranda and the girls] get busy, get productive and make this show [happen] even though dad has ditched. They're going to make this show successful, and that's the revenge.
[Musical excerpt from Princesses: "I Don't Need You"]
DB: Music from Princesses, the Broadway-bound show opens at The 5th Avenue Theatre in August. We spoke with lyricist David Zippel, songwriter Matthew Wilder, and Cheri Steinkellner, who co-authored the show's book with her husband, Bill Steinkellner.