Saturday March 13, 2010
Before 2006, Duncan Sheik was best known as the singer/songwriter famous for his 1996 Grammy-nominated hit "Barely Breathing." Then, he met poet and playwright Steven Sater, and they began a collaboration on a rock musical adaptation of the 19th century German play Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind. The show opened on Broadway in late 2006 and went on to win eight 2007 Tony Awards and a Grammy for Best Musical Show Album. Over the next three years, Sheik continued to work on a variety of musical theater projects including the ghostly song cycle Whisper House, which had a limited run at the Old Globe in San Diego, and The Nightingale, an adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.
I spoke to Sheik from his home in New York City.
With Spring Awakening, you're kind of at the forefront of this new era of Broadway musicals being written by pop/rock composers such as Green Day, Tori Amos, U2 & Regina Spektor. Was that transition to musical theater easy for you?
Well, it's kind of a long answer. Steven Sater and I began developing Spring Awakening in 1999, and it took seven years of development before it was ever staged properly. So, I guess the short answer is "No, it was not easy at all." [Laughs] Nobody could look at a 19th century play and contemporary rock music, for lack of a better word. It just didn't compute to them at all. They just weren't used to hearing music like that for the stage. And for me, there was such a huge disconnect between the kind of music that was happening on the Broadway stage, stylistically, and what the rest of the culture was listening to that this was just a no-brainer. It just took a long time for people to come around to the idea. And of course, there are precedents for rock music on the Broadway stage. It's just that, with a lot of those things, it was so extremely ersatz and really inauthentic. That's what drove me crazy.
I can see how it would. I understand you weren't really a big fan of Broadway musicals.
Certain things, absolutely. But as I started to work in theater, I came around to enjoying a lot of things more and more. But that doesn't change the fact that my own aesthetic is what it is, and as an artist, you have to write what moves you and what you're excited about. And that means not necessarily just kowtowing to the existing formulas and rules of a given genre.
Are there any musicals that you appreciate more now?
There were a few things that I was really psyched about even when we were working on Spring Awakening. Things like [the movie musical] Dancer In The Dark or Laurie Anderson's staged version of her interpretation of Moby Dick that was really, really cool. But then more traditional things, like Porgy And Bess, I think is amazing. Obviously, certain things from Sondheim - Sweeney Todd. And there were some good things that happened around the time of Spring Awakening. Passing Strange and Grey Gardens I really liked a lot. But I have to say, without naming names, that there's a lot of it I can't stand. And I don't mean that to be an insult to those people personally. It's just that it's really not my aesthetic cup-of-tea, and of course, I was trying to do something extremely different with Spring Awakening.
What drew you to the play version of Spring Awakening as source material for a musical?
Well, it was really Steven Sater's idea. We're both Buddhists, which is how we met. We started working together. He had a play that had a song lyric. And he asked if I'd set it to music, and I did. Steven's a total workaholic, so he just started faxing me lyrics. Within a certain number of months, we had more than an album's worth of material. That material became Phantom Moon, my third record. As we were writing and recording Phantom Moon, he gave me Spring Awakening and said, "Maybe we could do something for the stage." And initially, I was like, "Oh, this is not my thing, Steven." But I read the play, and I really liked it. And then we talked about what the music might be. He started sending me lyrics, and I started writing music. Then we played some stuff for [director] Michael Mayer, and he was excited about it. And then we started workshopping it... and workshopping it... and workshopping it. [Laughs] Finally in 2006, the Atlantic Theater staged it, and then it really was this amazing couple of years.
What's the trickiest line you've had to put to music?
[Laughs] Oh gosh! There's a lot of it that's really tricky. I tend to try to leave the lyric as it is. But sometimes I'll call Steven, and I'll just be like, "There's just no way. The syllables are too wonky," "This doesn't sing right" or "This word is just bizarre!" We have those little conversations occasionally, but it's pretty rare. I try to respect the text.
Are you more comfortable writing songs for yourself or songs for musicals that will essentially be sung by other people?
I'm happy doing both. I think that they're kind of complementary processes. For example, Steven and I have just finished a set of demos for an Alice In Wonderland musical. So it's fun to write a song for The Mad Hatter, where the tone of the singing is very arched and kind of Morrissey-esque and campy and outrageous and slightly mean. That's not how I would sing something myself. It's not in my character, but it's fun to write that way.
How about for Whisper House, which was recorded as a concept album first?
Well, that's a somewhat unique situation in that I did write for my own voice. But then the person I had sing it, when we staged it in San Diego last month, was David Poe who sings in a similar way to how I sing. So he was cast because of that. I shouldn't say cast. I specifically asked him to do it, and he graciously did it being kind of a non-actor.
I wanted to ask you about your upcoming tour. What can we expect?
Well, basically, the tour is myself and Holly Brook, who sings on the Whisper House record and just did the show, and Gerry Leonard who's my long-time, guitar playing cohort. He's been David Bowie's music director for a long time. So it's just the three of us doing a set from Whisper House, probably a couple songs from Spring Awakening, a set of material from my catalogue of records and then maybe even some brand-spanking new stuff.
Speaking of brand-spanking new stuff, do you have any plans to release another record of straight rock material anytime soon?
Normal pop music? Non-narrative driven pop songs? [Laughs] I think so. I'm definitely in the process. I've written seven or eight things that I'm very happy with, and I need to write another seven or eight more. I've recorded versions of them, but I'm taking it very slow. Everything is an experiment to me right now. And there is a way in which I want to reinvent even my own sound. I'm just in the process of figuring out what that reinvention gets itself. [Laughs]
It seems like part of that reinvention might have inspired your musical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho. How did that come about?
That is very, very nascent. The extent of my work on it has been re-reading the book a couple times, watching the movie a couple times, sitting down with [writer] Roberto Sacasca, doing a little bit of brainstorming and basically having a general concept for how the music is going to sound. Whereas Spring Awakening was kind of like a rock band with a string quartet and indie rock music, I think American Psycho is going to be a band like Kraftwerk or Depeche Mode - five or six guys at laptops and analogue synthesizers and drum machines being very slick, late-80's. That's kind of my concept right now, but it's subject to change. [Laughs]
Kind of continuing with the literary theme, you're known as somewhat of an avid reader. What are you reading right now?
Well, I'm desperately waiting for the new Martin Amos book to hit the stands. I'm a big Anglophile. I'm kind of in the middle of a J.M. Coetzee book. It's like a slightly displaced autobiography. I just got the John Banville book The Infinities which I'm excited to jump into. Those are the things that are beside the bed anyway.
I actually have a stack of books beside my bed that I keep meaning to get to, but for now, they support my water glass very well.
[Laughs] And they look nice.
Exactly! I wanted to ask you about the closing of Spring Awakening on Broadway. I was there for that final performance and was wondering what that experience was like for you.
It was huge because, in a way, it was the culmination of so many years of work and so much drama and the intensity of this dream coming true. And then it was kind of like the end of the thing, and what comes after now is this long epilogue. It was actually a really great feeling, and as much as I wished the show could've gone on longer on Broadway, I just felt so honored that I'd had the experience. It was also time to get some other things on their feet.
It was hard not to get caught up in the emotion of that performance. Every line carried this extra weight and almost had a double meaning of some sort.
It did. It really did.
Well, before I go, I have one final question. There are so many actors and singers and musicians and directors and composers who are inspired by what shows like Spring Awakening have done for musical theater. What advice do you have for these artists who are tired of the status quo?
The advice I always give is that each of us as individuals has this incredibly unique sound and talent and ability that's different from anybody else in the universe. And it's really important that you let that thing come to the forefront and not worry that "this music doesn't sound like anyone else's music" or "no body's going to get this because it's too weird or too eccentric or odd." All of those qualities, as far as I'm concerned, are good qualities. What is soul-deadening is when people just do the same kind of thing over and over again, and that's where you get a culture of musical mediocrity. I think it's really important that people take the example of the Regina Spektors, the Sufjan Stevens and the Animal Collectives, and find that thing that's the equivalent for them. And then I think we're going to have a much more interesting musical world to inhabit.
Duncan Sheik will be on touring Florida this month, stopping in Orlando on March 25 at the Plaza Theatre, March 26 at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Centre and March 29 at the Jupiter Theatre. Spring Awakening will run May 18-23 at the Carr Performing Arts Centre in Orlando.
Photo Credit: Crackerfarm
(And I'd like to give a BIG thank you to Jeremy Seghers for doing everything involved in this interview. -Mark)