“I’m as gay as they come, but I’m not interested in camp,” said Michael Mayer, the director who has been making waves with the sexy, hard rocking tsunami of Spring Awakening (2007) and American Idiot – the musical adaptation of the Green Day album currently showing on Broadway. Mayer was in Israel to conduct master classes at the Stage-Center International Theatre Workshop in Tel Aviv from December 22 – 25, 2010. The classes were open to the press and public for observation – Midnight East was thrilled to be there as Mayer shared his work methods and perspective on musicals with Israeli actors, directors and other theatre professionals.
Mayer began the day by discussing his recent experience bringing the Green Day album American Idiot to Broadway (Mayer is the musical’s director and co-book writer with Billie Joe Armstrong), as part of his “attempt to bring contemporary music into an old fashioned form…to invest in the kinds of songs that real people listen to in their cars, on their iPODs and computers, not just theatre geeks who love show tunes.” Mayer said he wanted to take “contemporary music and infuse those songs with a narrative impulse” – later in the workshop, as he worked one on one with each participant, one could see this idea put into practice, as he searched for, and analyzed the threads of narrative within the songs.
“American Idiot was based on a 2004 album by Green Day, t” said Mayer, “the album was inspired by 9/11 and the dark, dark days of the G.W. Bush presidency. Green Day as a band was very much rooted in punk sensibilities, songs about masturbation, smoking pot and looking for pleasure in an unpleasant world – which all of us could relate to. [after 9/11] They grew some kind of political balls and wrote some kind of response album, a battle cry and anthem to inspire a generation that had been completely neglected by the rest of the culture. I found it very moving.”
Mayer, who was working on a film at the time, said that he would listen to the album while driving to the set each day, “excited by the concept – I could basically stage an opera. There is one very thin story, it’s easy to miss, but I spent a lot of time on it. It had a tensile strength that could incorporate other stories that related to it. I spoke to Billie Joe Armstrong, he was very taken with the fact that Spring Awakening did not look anything like Fiddler on the Roof or South Pacific. He was encouraged by the fact that I was doing something different and allowed me to start imagining.”
Billie Joe will join the cast of American Idiot for 50 performances as St. Jimmy, from January 1 to February 27, 2011 (details on the show’s site), as Mayer says, “to have a rock star of his caliber on the stage is unprecedented.” The libretto of the musical, co-written by Billie Joe and Mayer, is essentially composed of the song lyrics. Mayer says that he went over the songs, “separating lyrics and giving them to different characters. Jesus [the song Jesus of Suburbia] became a dialogue as opposed to a monologue…Billie Joe and I texted each other and collaborated on very little spoken dialogue, about two minutes in the whole show.”
Initially, says Mayer, “Big Green Day fans were very skeptical. Green Day had been accused of selling out for going to a big label with Dookie. The band has a history of doing what they feel is the right thing for them artistically. They keep following their artistic impulses and sure enough fans keep coming along.” When American Idiot came out as a musical on Broadway, Mayer says, “Like or not, the fans knew they had to be there,” adding that the success of the venture was that “the fans got it!” and realized that the musical was not violating the integrity of Green Day’s songs. Mayer was also happy to share the news that “Green Day started performing our version of their songs,” performing in concert the arrangements that Tom Kitt created for the musical. Kitt worked as arranger on Green Day’s most recent album, 21st Century Breakdown, won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album in 2010.
When Mayer opened the discussion to the audience, he was asked by actor Natan Datner – Why haven’t Broadway songs become hits in recent years? “This is my big mission,” replied Mayer, “Rock made Broadway feel old hat from the 60s on…Broadway is getting older and older, the old white people are starting to die. Today there is more of the population that grew up with rock music than any other point in time. The mission Mayer has already very successfully begun is to “Start to tell our stories in the music we grew up on.”
Mayer mentioned other similar ventures, like Bono and the Edge teaming up to work on Spiderman, something that would have been “unheard of ten years ago” and said that Billie Joe has expressed interest in writing a musical. While it could signal a change in direction for Broadway, Mayer is not starry-eyed, saying, “or, it could be just another blip on the screen.”
The workshop participants were asked to prepare one song of their own choosing, and one from the Eagles’ album Hotel California. Asked to explain the choice and whether this indicated a direction for a future project, Mayer replied, “I wanted to work with material that is a little bit familiar and not completely contemporary. I found some stories, it felt more narrative…[with] potential for different points of view…It’s high school for me, takes me back. I can imagine stories coming from the songs rather than fitting a story to the song.” As for a potential future musical, he says, “After Spring Awakening – you can imagine the crazy phone calls I’ve gotten over the last few years, anybody jerking off, they come to me for that…I could imagine Hotel California as an environment [for a musical].” Mayer added that Glenn Fry came to see American Idiot and the two have had some discussions, saying, “so that was a little seed planted in my brain.”
Mayer’s aim to make musicals that “speak to a new audience” so that when they line up outside the theatre, they don’t look like people who come to see a musical, “they just look like people – these are people going to have an experience that might challenge them, like the amazing dance piece called Bill that I saw last night. Art that challenges you and doesn’t just make you feel good about the status quo.”
The Stage-Center International Theatre Workshop was founded and is run by Rivi Feldmesser-Yaron, Mayer’s visit was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Sport.
