#interview: creative

The dad in this story just happened to be one of the brains behind the Village Theatre. Based in Issaquah, Washington, the Village Theatre is one of the leading producers of musical theater in the Pacific Northwest, one of the region’s best-attended professional theater, and the host of such educational programs as Pied Piper and KIDSTAGE; the latter of which Yorkey became an integral part of.

“I started right away at the theater, and worked my way up. And they have this summer program for high school seniors that allows them to direct a show. It was finally my turn, I was about 17 or 18, and we wanted to do ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’ But we couldn’t get the rights to the movie version. So, we decided to write to Roald Dahl [the author of the children’s book] and get his permission. It was a risk. I had no idea if he would say yes. But for some reason, he did. Maybe because we were young, or it was a summer program, but he said yes, and I got to direct my first show.”

Yorkey didn’t always have his mind set on musicals, though. As a child, he had every intention to become a playwright; he even went to Columbia University to pursue that dream. But “musicals were just what I got into,” he says. Columbia has a century-plus-old tradition called the Varsity Show, in which undergraduates write, produce and perform a new musical every year. It’s where Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart first worked together. It was where the only collaboration took place between them and Oscar Hammerstein.

Then, in a real-life “meet cute” – Hollywood’s name for the standard plot device in which two people meet in a way that’s charming, ironic or just generally amusing – the Varsity Show set the scene for Yorkey to meet his creative partner, Tom Kitt. They have since won a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize for “Next to Normal” (staged locally by Uptown Players). Musicals might have been what Yorkey fell into, but they seem to be what he was meant to do all along.

“Music can work on the human heart and soul the way words can’t,” said Yorkey. “It’s rich and it’s deep. It’s thrilling — it gives you a new outlook on life.” Which is an idea that comes forth in his sophomore offering, “If/Then.” Coming off of the incredibly successful run of “Next To Normal,” Yorkey and Kitt had an incredible burden to carry. Would they be able to face the pressure of creating another hit? Would the collaboration between Yorkey and Kitt survive?

“Collaboration is like a marriage,” the writer says. “It’s not always easy, and you don’t always do a good job, but it’s about learning to compromise and to share. It nurtures creativity, and while you’re not always going to agree, you have to trust each other to know that you’re going to be able to come out the other side. I trusted in [Tom].”

“If/Then,” at the outset, was Kitt’s idea, and his story is not unlike Yorkey’s. As an undergraduate at Columbia, Kitt never dreamed of a life in the theater — that is, until one day a young woman showed up at his dorm room and pleaded with him to work on music for the annual campus show. That show was the Varsity Show. And the day Kitt, then an economics major, said “Yes” was the day the course of his life changed.

But Kitt always wondered, “What if?” What if he hadn’t been in his dorm room that day? What if he had said no? What kind of life would he have led? It was those thoughts that inspired “If/Then,” a musical about a supremely cautious woman, Elizabeth, who gets the chance to live out two lives through some theater magic and, of course, some song and dance. It’s a show about the lives we lead, and the lives we might have led. It’s about the possibilities of tomorrow, and while that might sound like metaphysical dribble, “If/Then” manages to tell a story that is urgent and truthful.

“I think this show really captures what it’s like to live in this day and age, and to live in an American city,” said Yorkey. “Not everyone’s path is a straight line, and I think this show really gets at what’s joyful and what’s painful in life.”

Yorkey had his own if/then moment when work first began on the show. He wasn’t sure how it was going to be a musical, until he realized that the question of destiny vs. chance, of romance vs. loss, was at the heart of Elizabeth’s story. Then the musical metaphors came flooding.

“This show is about the lives we live now, and it makes you think, ‘What if I had turned the other way? What if I had said no, or what if I had said yes? Where would I be now? Who would I be now?’ It’s easy to cave into pressure, to just drop the mic and walk away. But there were stories we wanted to tell, ideas we wanted to explore. We both just felt as if there was so much left to do; that we had only skimmed the surface the first time around. And it’s also exciting to take a risk and try something we hadn’t done before — and that led us to ‘If/Then.’”

With a rapidly growing new audience for musicals – thanks in part to the success of “Glee,” the love/hate relationship we have with FOX’s determination to restage classic musicals live on TV and our obsession with contemporary musicals like “Hamilton” – more millennials are now heading to the theater. A show like “If/Then” speaks to that generation, while also speaking to Gen-Y and Gen-Xers.

“The catwalk has the ability to fly, so for certain scenes it creates a frame at the top of the picture,” notes Wendland. “It disappears when we need it to, but it’s always in view. For park scenes where we want a more open feeling, we fly it all the way up.”

Outside, Inside, Underground

The show opens and closes in Madison Square Park, which is adorned with umbrellas and tables. A bedroom set piece takes center stage for a couple of scenes, while other spaces are more open than implied, as in many musicals. “It’s a fast-paced show with lots of scenes back to back to back to back, so it was helpful to have those rolling wood frames,” says Wendland. “Sometimes they hold props, and sometimes they create doorways. They help it to be as fluid as possible. It was always the hope to use those rolling frame units to play a lot with the perception of space. One of my favorite things was having a big, open park scene as the first scene, then going down to this tight, closed off subway scene — it was a nice contrast.”

Five wood frames were rolled onstage to create subway cars for that pivotal scene after the opening sequence. “They were [outfitted with] individual chairs organized as if they were benches. The poles were just those wooden beams, so it was pretty abstract. It’s funny; it’s one of those things where your mind fills in the picture. I love when that happens so you’re not hitting the audience over the head with the image, but you’re allowing them to be a little more active in the show and fill in what they’re not seeing. When you hear the sound of the subway car, you get immediately where you are, and to me that’s more fun than putting a literal subway car on the stage.”

A key scenic element that helps with transitions and sets different moods through color changes is the back wall, which is surprisingly not a video wall. “It’s the genius of [lighting designer] Ken Posner,” declares Wendland. “It’s a bounce drop, and he only had about two and a half feet upstage and couldn’t backlight it because of the size of the turntable. It’s all front lit, and he was a genius at figuring out how to make it seem as if it is a video wall. We were always looking at Mark Rothko paintings for ideas of how to compose that space, and Ken certainly did an amazing job at getting those looks.”

The two designers worked closely together during the creation of If/Then. Wendland points out that the show is so tightly packed that they could not do anything without talking to each other. With about only 32 feet of stage depth in the Richard Rodgers Theatre, it was a challenge for them to pack everything in, and determining the lighting positions was another big challenge. “I couldn’t finalize anything without first making sure Ken was happy and could do what he needed to do,” affirms Wendland.

The color transitions along the bounce drop helped to signify transitions along with changes in the blocking and the dialogue. “It was just to try to get you to know that you are moving from place to place without literally saying it. You’re getting information from the characters and letting the words do the job. Especially for a musical, where we’re so used to being spoon-fed everything, it’s more interesting to let the audience be a little more active in the process and put two and two together themselves.”

A Magical Mirror Effect

The most prominent set piece is a large reflective surface about 32 feet wide by 24 feet tall that is made up of two-by-four-foot tiles that looks like a giant mirror. Wendland says it is made of a Mylar-like product that was picked because it is lightweight. PRG, who built the set, recommended the material for that reason.

“It’s on a pivoting gantry, so it can play in any number of positions,” explains Wendland. “In the show, we probably use it in four or five different positions.” The mirror is mostly used in various vertical positions to reflect objects on and LEDs in the floor, but at the beginning of the show it is preset in a horizontal position so that its initial appearance surprises the audience. When it is used in a fully vertical position, it is about nine feet off the deck and reflecting back set pieces to add depth or make something like a fire escape appear to be multiplied rather than having extra set pieces.

Wendland says he was never worried about the reflective surface catching the audience at all. “For a show about contemporary New York City, I always thought it would be cool to see the audience,” he says. “I actually advocated trying some things where we played around with that, but in the positions we use it in you don’t really see the audience much. In the scenes where it is vertical, you are aware of the aisle lights and the balcony, but I thought that was cool because it looks like New York City lights. You aren’t quite sure what you are seeing.”

The mirror also reflects LED lights that are placed in the floor that are used both to create a starry sky, such as during romantic scenes with Liz and Josh, and a subway map configuration also fashioned from LEDs.