Latest / EST's "Truth Be Told" / "Beaver Creek" by Andrew Gerle

Transcript

"Beaver Creek" by Andrew Gerle · EST's "Truth Be Told"

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to season two of EST's Truth Be Told.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Love and Theater.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're so happy to be back with 14 new stories, each performed at Ensemble Studio Theater as part of the live event Truth Be Told, a story night created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick, featuring amazing, profound, and hilarious true stories.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Love and Theater draws from two more sold-out nights, The Moment I Knew and The Theatre.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: This story about the theater is from composer-lyricist Andrew Gerla, who describes his brush with the theater legend and a trip to Canadian jail.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Once upon a time, in a kingdom called Livant, there lived an all-powerful producer named Garth Drobinsky.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Drobinsky was originally from the land of Canadia, where he had amassed untold riches by starting a chain of movie theaters, the magical Cineplex Odeon.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: From there, success followed him into the perilous jungle of the Broadway musical, where he produced a string of shows, culminating with the now revered ragtime.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: But soon, tales began to spread throughout the kingdom.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: The royal treasury was not as stuffed as it should be.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Financial sorcerers were wizarding gold from one production's debt sheet to the next, while grainy photographs surfaced of a new Ontario lake house.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then, in a devastating plot twist that could only happen in wondrous Canadia, this powerful, celebrated, middle-aged white man was convicted of a crime and sent to prison, the Millhaven Maximum Security Facility, where he stayed for three months.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then he was transferred to a less maximum facility.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hello?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm calling for Andrew.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is Andrew.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is the Beaver Creek Institution in Gravenhurst, Ontario.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have a call from an inmate.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you accept?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I accept.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: A couple years before, I had worked with a young singer who had won the first season of Canada's musical theater reality show, Triple Sensation.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Created and judged by Drabinsky.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this singer had ended up talking up a show of mine to Drabinsky who said he was interested in my work.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: I knew about Drabinsky.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone knew about Drabinsky.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: He made honestly a lot of great theater in a time when the Broadway musical was still running on fumes from London.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: He got things done, but was universally known to be, shall we say, Cineplex odious.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was also pretty sure that he was no longer allowed to handle money or run a production company.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or in fact enter the United States.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't really expect anything to come of it.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And yet.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Andrew?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is Garth Trubinsky.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's nice to hear from you.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I can't talk long.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a new show I'm starting to work on, and this is in complete confidence, all right?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know the Shirley McLean movie Madame Suzatska?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: My heart's topped.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Madam Suzatska?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: The story of the tyrannical, but in the end, golden-hearted piano teacher who encourages slash emotionally abuses a gifted young boy until he hates her, but still sort of loves her, but really hates her but is still grateful.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Which was also the relationship that my mother, a concert pianist, and I, also a classical pianist, had with the movie itself.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Loving the over-the-top McLean as a vaguely Russian aging martinette, rolling our eyes at the inaccuracies of piano pedagogy, but unable to resist the high-stakes portrayal of the rarefied world of top-level piano training.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Did I know Madame Suzatska?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I know that movie very well.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: That would make it great.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm gonna make it better.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are you able to come and visit me?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a couple hours north of Toronto.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: My assistant will pick you up at the airport.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and bring change for the vending machines.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: They don't let me have any money.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, I was musical directing the Off-Broadway revival of Closer Than Ever by Richard Malpey and David Shire, two writers whose shows I grew up listening to and was very honored to now count as friends and mentors.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they said I could take a day or two off.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: I still never thought anything was gonna come of this.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just great, great dinner conversations.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: But still, Madame Suzatska, I mean, it's perfect.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was that kid, minus the abusive teacher.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I heard about that kind of thing from my mother, whose abusive Russian teacher's name was Ethel Leginska, and who would sit just offstage during children's recitals and when they made any mistake, hiss, don't stop, don't stop, go on, go on.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: This was a story I was born to tell.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: A musical world, a larger-than-life leading lady.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking Patty, maybe Betty.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Was this the beginning of my fairy tale?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I could absolutely spin this into gold, preferably medallion-shaped.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So he was in jail.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: He must have some reason to think he could pull this off.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: One step at a time.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: After a surprising number of emails with his assistant Rob about Garth's schedule, how busy could he be?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: We settle on a date and I buy my plane tickets.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I had to pay for them myself.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: As the day approaches, I obsessively rehearse my talking points, my classical upbringing, my vision for combining classical piano repertoire with musical theater vocabulary, my insights into the psychology of the boy.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: The show was really taking shape.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: At the Toronto Airport, Rob and I find each other and I get in his car and begin the two-hour drive to Beaver Creek.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we stop at a Tim Horton's first.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: The Beaver Creek Institution is in the middle of a forest.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: The signs are in English and French, so it's classy.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I had to leave all my belongings at the front desk except for the$10 worth of loonies and tunies Rob had given me to buy Garth snacks.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Rob's last words to me.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Don't say anything about how he walks.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, what?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: He had polio as a kid.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's really sensitive about it.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Should I have known that?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: What else didn't I know?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: The visiting room was fairly small, maybe a half a dozen school cafeteria style tables.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: The fabled vending machines glowed from an alcove on the left.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was sweating.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: After a few minutes, in he comes from a lonely corridor, making his way slowly with the help of crutches.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I remember he had a powerful presence, something dark.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not just his black and gray clothes.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: He was clearly an extremely proud man, and we he discussed his many successes.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I told him how much I admired ragtime, that Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, the writers, were the greatest.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he said, but that's the best thing they ever did.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: What have they done since?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I made them rewrite and rewrite until it was perfect.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: That was me.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, he started talking about Suzatska.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's about South Africa, he said, and apartheid.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's that's so interesting.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the kid's mother is black and she just escaped from South Africa.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about dealing with racism in England.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's gotta be about something, you know, like ragtime or showboat.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: I stared at him.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: There was nothing in my talking points about apartheid.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this was before the full theatrical racial reckoning of the last few years, but even so, a very loud voice in my head said, obviously you can't write this.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: I bought him some more cookies and asked if I could try my hand at a few songs.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Back home, I worked hard, I worked fast, I tried not to think about apartheid.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: I sent him an email saying I'd written two songs, one for the boy and one for Suzatska, and had just gotten the spark for a third, which I could probably finish in a couple weeks.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: He responded, I am fascinated.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Two weeks will be fine.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: This was gonna happen.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Garth Drabinsky was fascinated.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: The mirror had spoken, and I was pretty.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I poured my soul into those songs, and they were good.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: The kid was cocky but broken.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Suzatska was a monster but would do anything for her students.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote the third song and we transferred them all to Rob.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I also got on the phone with Stephen Flarity and Richard Malpey to make sure I really wanted to go down any kind of road with this man.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: They were politic, said he was difficult, but got good work out of people.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I waited.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And waited.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And waited, and I never heard from him again.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Year and a half later, I hear through the grapevine that the show is happening, starring the fantastic Victoria Clark, perfect choice, with a score by Maltby and Shire.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was furious.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had told Richard about this project in confidence, and he had gone and stolen it from under me.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote David Shire, I remember in an outrage.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just read it again, it's actually not so bad.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: I tell them, if it can't be me, I'm glad it's them.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I But I do wonder if Richard had poached the show from me.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, David forwarded the email to Richard.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Did I really think that wasn't gonna happen?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Who responded with huge candor and class.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Garth had told them that they were the only people he would ever think of asking to write it, and far from jumping on the project, they had told him no for months until he finally wore them down.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Richard said he was nothing but a supporter of mine and found it, quote, hilarious that we were squabbling over Garth Trubinsky.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was mortified.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: How had a pie in the sky, never going to happen show with a convicted felon turn into something I so desperately needed that it made me accuse my longtime friends and heroes of professional sabotage?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: The mirror had changed its tune and I had become the evil queen.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Could I learn something from this?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Was there some kind of moral?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Would I ever again create deeply personal material for a paranoid, egumaniacal embezzler?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because even though producers depend on us 100%, we writers have zero power.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: We have our basket of treats, and even when someone's fangs are showing and the nightgown clearly doesn't fit and is actually covered in blood, we will hand over that basket and crawl into bed with them if there's the slightest chance they might be able to bring our treats to the world.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little grim.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: As for the wolf, Suzatska did open in Toronto, but was sadly not well received.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: The audience and critics' reaction to the apartheid storyline, Garth had added, was much like mine.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Drubinsky did manage to bring one more show to Broadway, the short-lived Paradise Square.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: He ended up getting sued by both the actors and the stage hands unions for unpaid wages and hasn't been heard from since.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And me, well, Suzatska remains a kind of benchmark when I'm considering starting on a new project, whether for a wolf, a fairy godmother, or just for myself.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: It helps me remember what a story feels like when the slipper fits and is mine for the telling.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope it will also help me remember what I want to see anytime I look in the mirror.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Musical director and composer Andrew Gerla somehow found himself early in his career working with musical theater legends like Hal Prince, Kitty Carlisle Hart, John Waitt, Leslie Uggams, Betty Buckley, and Shirley Jones.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: He has since written several award-winning shows, three books on musical theater, including the periodic table of Broadway musicals, and currently teaches at conservatories in the U.S.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: and Europe.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Truth Be Told was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick, and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Sveikar.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends and keep listening.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: More stories of the Moment I Knew will be released every Monday, and about the Theatre every Thursday.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And do hit like and subscribe, it really helps.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Till next time, remember, Truth Wants to be known.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yours too.