A.R.T. Director of Artistic Programs & Dramaturg Ryan McKittrick reflects on the legacy, and the power, of musical theater
Over the past ten seasons, the American Repertory Theater has produced more than thirty musicals and music theater pieces. ExtraOrdinary marks not only the range of this work, but also the A.R.T.’s ongoing commitment to staging boundary-breaking, total theater experiences that combine story, song, spectacle, and dance. A.R.T. musicals have pushed the form in new directions, from fostering collaborations with leading artists in the pop and rock music worlds to creating immersive experiences in our club-theater environment at OBERON and at the Loeb Drama Center, which underwent a radical transformation into a Russian supper club for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.
Music has played an integral role in Western theater for millennia. From the choruses of ancient Greek amphitheaters, to religious drama in medieval churches and town squares, to Italian Renaissance opera, to Broadway in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, music has enhanced audiences’ experiences of stories, settings, characters, and conflicts. Song can take us places where words alone cannot. When Jessie Mueller sang Sara Bareilles’ “She Used to Be Mine” in Waitressand when Lauren Patten performed Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” in Jagged Little Pill, the soaring emotion of the songs gave audiences access to the thoughts and complex inner lives of the characters. Patten’s expression of her character’s feelings was so intense that—from the first preview through the entire rest of the run—it literally stopped the show. Performance after performance, the audience’s applause at the end of this scene grew into a standing ovation—a communal act of appreciation, validation, and compassion.
When musicals explore challenging subjects, they have the potential to reach and move audiences in profound ways. Productions at the A.R.T. have grappled with some of the most pressing questions of our times, inviting audiences and the theater’s community of scholars at Harvard University to participate in discussions on topics ranging from dictatorship and the brute forces of tyranny, to the history of race and Major League Baseball, to the complexities of volunteer aid work in Africa, to the opioid epidemic in our country today. During the run of Prometheus Bound, an alternative rock musical that imagined Prometheus as one of the Western world’s first prisoners of conscience, the A.R.T. partnered with Amnesty International to dedicate every performance to a person who had been unjustly imprisoned. Inviting the audience to write letters that urged governments around the world to free these prisoners, Prometheus Bound launched the A.R.T.’s “Act II” series—an initiative that extends the theatrical experience to include dialogue with the audience as an integral part of the show.
Directed by Diane Paulus and Music Directed by Lance Horne (Prometheus Bound, Cabaret), ExtraOrdinary brings together an outstanding company that includes Melody Betts (Witness Uganda/Invisible Thread), Kathryn Gallagher (Jagged Little Pill), Terrence Mann (Pippin), Brandon Michael Nase (The Black Clown), Bryonha Marie Parham (The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess), Mj Rodriguez (Burn All Night and Trans Scripts, Part I: The Women) and Matthew James Thomas (Pippin), who will be joined by special guests from past A.R.T. musicals and a five-person onstage band.
As the company members reflect on their own experiences and on the transcendent and transformative power of music in the theater, ExtraOrdinary will take audiences on a sweeping journey from classics including The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess and Pippin to new musicals that premiered at the A.R.T. including The Blue Flower, Witness Uganda, Waitress, and Jagged Little Pill.
Ryan McKittrick is A.R.T. Director of Artistic Programs & Dramaturg.
In celebration of the past ten years of musical theater at the A.R.T., join returning artists for songs and stories from the past decade of boundary-breaking musicals.
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