ANDY DRACHENBERG: What attracts you to directing a show? What makes a show “great?”
BARTLETT SHER: If it’s a new show that’s never been done before and it’s made it from scratch, it’s really important that your collaborators are good. Often I’ll make a decision about a story based on finding the right kind of collaborators so that down the road I feel like we have the chops of delivering something that’s not only good, but that actually gets into the deeper recesses of the story itself. I’m lucky to work on something that has the potential based on the collaborators as well as the source material for being really special.
AD: Can you tell me a bit what drew you to becoming a part of The Bridges of Madison County team?
BS: I could tell that the core story of ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ was really strong, so when I read Marsha Norman’s book for the musical and I heard some of the music, I thought that Marsha and Jason [Robert Brown] had picked something special. They understand something very deep in the story, so that’s when I joined the team and we began to develop the material. I think it’s fair to say there are very few people who can write a book for a musical or understand writing a book for a musical as well as Marsha Norman. There are certainly very few people who can write for the musical form as well as Jason Robert Brown does, so that was always a very attractive part of the collaboration. The material has transformed because, in the beginning, I doubted what I envisioned for the material. Now I know that I was deeply wrong and I just didn’t really understand it. I think it is extremely well suited to the musical form.
AD: As a director, what was the experience of bringing Bridges from page to life on stage?
BS: I think ‘Bridges’ offers particular challenges from a staging point of view. It’s the kind of material which had what most new musicals, plays and operas have: many locations. So you have to build a mise en scène which has the suppleness and the ability to transform quickly and lightly. It very much had to capture the core experience of Iowa. It had to expand and contract in the plasticity of the space with the kind of opening and closing of the heart of the piece. Making a world which could be operational came about through long hours with my designers in a room, playing with the simplicity of the design and the ability to move props and objects quickly, and the ability to create a community to tell and operate a story. So that’s where we started: the community of ‘Bridges’ and the world of Winterset and the kind of judgment and intensity of what it must be like to be two outsiders inside of Winterset, Iowa. The outsiders are Robert, the romantic photographer for National Geographic and Francesca, the Italian transplant from post-war Italy. How they’re flung together and surrounded by the values, judgments, hopes, and landscape of Iowa was the mix that lead to the design.
AD: What is at the core of the story of Bridges? What makes this story relevant to audiences?
BS: I think it’s about how a person is in time with the choices they make in their life. In other words, in every person’s life they may feel like they make all the right choices, but in the back of everyone’s mind, deep in their consciousness are questions: Did I do all the right things? Am I living as fully and completely as I could? Have I gone to the edge of my being? Am I being the person I would want to be? The circumstances that surround the world of Francesca Johnson are that she is from Italy and from these complex circumstances. After having escaped them and moved to a place to make her life, to feel herself relatively happy with her husband, she then has this stranger walk into her life and completely turn everything upside down. No matter how settled or happy a person is in their marriage or in their life it is possible, especially in the world of love, that you can be turned upside down in an afternoon. So when people come and see the show and see Francesca make this very dangerous choice and take this risk, they ask themselves: Have I taken the risks I would take? It might remind them of choices they have made or have to make. In life when a door is beginning to close, you have to ask should I push that door open or should I let it start closing?
AD: At the center of this story is a fragile romance between almost strangers. What is it about their encounter with each other that means so much to them?
BS: I think a lot of factors affect it. The fact is that she’s never had time to herself for 10-15 years, and suddenly Francesca is alone when her family leaves for the fair. A person walks in who talks to her in a way that no one’s talked to her in a long time and that starts to open her up. One of the most difficult things in telling the story well is how to tell it in such a way that you experience the deeper connection. You experience that thing emerging what the other person represents or what they bring out of each other and discover in each other. That’s the fun of romance- you can walk around the corner and meet somebody and suddenly everything changes. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it can happen.
AD: What qualities do Kelli / Steven have as actors that you utilized for these roles?
BS: We’re lucky to have Steven Pasquale and Kelli O’Hara, because in them we have two of the best actors and singers in our generation. Vocally and acting-wise, Kelli is one of the most talented and gifted women in this generation. If you spent as many hours in an audition room as I have you would realize how rare these qualities are. She’s at a perfect place to do a part like this, because she has deep resources as an actor and capacities for comedy that are very special. If you mix that with Steven Pasquale, who’s an incredibly gifted, handsome, wonderful actor and is a naturally talented tenor, the two of them are really the reason to do the show. Not only do you need the great material and you need the great collaborators, but you need really special individuals to express the material at the highest level it can be expressed.
AD: What are you hoping audiences walk away with?
BS: I’ve been going to theatre all my life, and every time I go see something, I always have that little twinkle of hope to not just to be entertained, but to experience something bigger, something transformative. We need relief and we need experiences in the work which measure and make sense of our lives and at the same time are expressed and performed at a level better than we could ever see it anywhere. I think that when you see something like ‘Bridges,’ you experience that kind of transformation, that kind of lift that touches the place that only these great poetic expressive forms can touch. There is this high level of singing, this great sense of time, this expression of romance, and of longing. And I go to the theatre because I want to be not just transformed and not just elevated, but I want to be transfixed. I want to leave my time and go somewhere. And I think that when you travel across that bridge in Madison county, you get the chance to go somewhere inside that’s special, not just outside. I myself have been shocked and gratified by how much this has moved people when they see it. It’s the kind of thing that only Broadway can do and only singing art forms can do. It can take you somewhere deeply special. And even though it’s a complicated romance, people leave unbelievably elevated and unbelievably happy that they were there. That’s the kind of experience that I want people to enjoy.
BARTLETT SHER (Director) LCT: Blood and Gifts, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Tony nom.), South Pacific (Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards/also directed London and current Australian productions), Awake and Sing!(Tony nom.), The Light in the Piazza (Tony nom.). New York: Prayer for My Enemy(Playwrights Horizons); Cymbeline (Callaway Award for best Director, first American Shakespeare at the Royal Shakespeare Company); Waste(Best Play Obie Award); Don Juan, Pericles (TFANA). Artistic Director of Seattle’s Initiman Theatre (2000 –2009) and formerly Resident Director of the Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater, Opera: Two Boys, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Le Comte Ory, L’Elisir d’Amore (Metropolitan Opera); Romeo et Juliette(Salzburg Festival and La Scala); Mourning Becomes Electra(Seattle Opera and New York City Opera); Two Boys (ENO).