[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. Next Thursday, two major events are happening. One, it's opening day for Major League Baseball, and two, it will be the chance for another fun pastime discussing our March Get Lit with All of It book club pick. We'll talk about opening day during the show. Later that evening, join us in person to discuss the novel Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xóchitl González. There is still time to get your free tickets to the event, but they are going fast, so head to wnyc.org/getlit to reserve them.

Then join us Thursday, March 28th, at 6:00 PM at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library on 40th Street and 5th Avenue to hear Xóchitl in conversation about the book. Again, that's next Thursday, March 28th, at 6:00 PM. For more information, including how to reserve a free eBook copy, you can go to wnyc.org/getlit. That's in the future. Let's get this hour started with Illinois.

[Music-Sufjan Stevens: Illinois]

Oh, great intentions

I've got the best of interventions

But when the ads come

I think about it now

In my infliction

Entrepreneurial conditions

Take us to glory

I think about it now

Kousha Navidar: As of today, a new dance musical based on the songs of Sufjan Stevens is headed for Broadway, with performances starting next month. It's written by my next guests, Tony-winning choreographer, Justin Peck and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury. The show reframes Sufjan Stevens' landmark concept album Illinois and makes it a celebration of storytelling. That story is told entirely through dance as a live band plays overhead. The show is called Illinoise after the album's full name.

It follows in the footsteps of several collabs between Sufjan Stevens and Justin Peck, beginning with the 2012 Ballet Year of the Rabbit. On Illinoise, Justin Peck was responsible for the direction and choreography, in addition to the story, which centers on the character, Henry. Henry finds himself among a group of storytellers around a campfire as he works up the courage to share his personal narrative of tragedy and lost love. It's currently playing in a sold-out run at the Park Avenue Armory with Broadway Performances beginning April 24th.

Justin, Jackie, welcome to All Of It, and congratulations on the Broadway transfer.

Jackie Sibblies Drury: Thank you so much.

Justin Peck: Thank you so much. Thanks for having us too.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Justin, you were a teenager when the album came out. It was before your dance career started. What do you remember about how the album hit you?

Justin Peck: Oh, man. I was probably around 17 years old, and I heard this album. I was just blown away by so many things about it. I guess the first thing is just the scale of it, that it had such range. It could be an intimate whisper of a folk song and then this massive scale orchestral, almost abstract dance music all incorporated into the same song cycle. I think it's really the poetry of the lyrics that hit close to my heart. It's one of those albums that really made me feel seen, made me see the world in different ways, and made me be able to relate better to the community around me.

It made waves with me, and I think that quality it has is something that's reached a whole generation of people who have been able to engage with it for the last almost 20 years now.

Kousha Navidar: You talk about the lyrics, which really do make a difference in your experience of the album. Jackie, Illinois is a concept album. It's about people and places related to the state. What stands out to you about the way Sufjan Stevens is as a storyteller?

Jackie Sibblies Drury: I think that he's just the consummate storyteller among musicians of his generation. I knew the album really well, I thought before going into this process, but then really looking at the lyrics, and the density and poetry of them is something that I hadn't fully realized before really drilling down into it. There are just so many references and so many sly winks at so many different kinds of imagery. I think it's a really beautiful piece.

Kousha Navidar: Taking that piece and then making it a staged interpretation, my understanding is that it took a little while for that to happen. The New York Times reports that it took almost five years for Sufjan Stevens to agree to stage production of Illinois. What was his original reaction, Justin?

Justin Peck: Sufjan and I have had a long collaboration over the years. It's now been over a decade of the two of us working together, and I really consider him to be one of my most important collaborators and also a friend now at this point. We spent a lot of time working together over these years. Somewhere along the way, I started to just plant the seed of, "What about your album, Illinois? Is there something there? Is there a musical in it? Is there some staged production to be found inside of all that?"

He just deflected again and again and again, and I persisted again and again and again until, eventually, I think he picked up on the fact that I was really serious about it and very much inspired by this album. It was a pretty extensive process to get the go-ahead from Sufjan, and he's been incredibly generous about just giving the project its space to develop, allowing us to honor this music, and trusting us with what is such a beloved album.

Kousha Navidar: It sounds like that space has allowed you to really envision what you love about it, but also what more you could add onto it. The narrative element I think of this piece is really important. Illinois, the original concept album isn't strictly narrative. It's more of a collage of stories, but the stage show does have an overarching narrative. Jackie, when you entered the project, did that overarching narrative exist, or did you and Justin work together to figure that out?

Jackie Sibblies Drury: Both, in a way. When I entered the project, Justin had already done a workshop, a first draft to put a lot of his choreography out into the world so that he could have a sense of what it was he was working on. He and I talked about his initial conceit of having a group of storytellers hike out to the middle of the woods and share stories around a campfire, and knew that one of those storytellers would be having a larger narrative, more of an autobiographical story to tell.

We worked together to try to figure out how to shape that story in a way that allows an audience to really connect emotionally with that character and have almost a deeper resonance with the songs of the album.

Kousha Navidar: Was there a moment where you both felt like, "Oh, this narrative is working? We've found the keystone that holds that whole bridge together"?

Justin Peck: I don't know if there was ever that big of an aha moment. I feel like it's a miracle that we were able to excavate a narrative in this album without losing any of the music. That feels really important to us. The number one priority was to honor the experience of this album to provide the audience with the full experience of this music in its entirety. Then, the second goal for us was really like-- and we didn't know if it was possible, is there a satisfying theatrical and dramatic arc that we can shape in relation to the album, with the album as our blueprint to do that?

I do think that this idea of the campfires being an entry point was huge for being able to, I think aesthetically aligned with the music. The music has this very DIY, grab an instrument, sit around the campfire, and play some music together in a communal way. It also I guess just allows the audience to find a way to connect with what they're seeing because the experience of gathering around a campfire and sharing food, conversation and stories, song and music, and dance ultimately is something that almost everyone can relate to.

Everyone's had that sort of experience. It's not something that's hard to afford. It's something that you can do in the woods, you can do it on the beach, you can do it in someone's backyard. It was one of those aha moments of like, "Oh, this is something that an audience can latch onto and connect with." Then for us, I think it was just a lot of really detailed work in terms of how to create the puzzle of the show and how to tell the story of this central protagonist. We did a lot of restructuring. It's like how you would storyboard a film and need to move scenes around.

We tried a lot of things over the various iterations of this show, from Bard to Chicago Shakespeare Theater to the Armory, and now moving on to Broadway.

Kousha Navidar: Jackie, talk to us about that puzzle a little bit. What did that look like moving the pieces around? What were things that you tried that didn't work? What were things that you were really proud of?

Jackie Sibblies Drury: The craziest thing to me is that even though there have been a lot of iterations of the show in different orders, it's never been like, "Oh no, that's bad, that's wrong, that's terrible." It's just been really, I think we both have spent a lot of time sitting with it and just trying to figure out how to guide an audience through the show emotionally. It's been like I really want to-- I'm like, "What didn't work?" I think the music is so good and I think that Justin's choreography is so beautiful. I don't know that there's a wrong version of the show, honestly.

It's just one that hopefully allows for the most people to have the deepest catharsis. I think that we've arrived almost at that version of the show.

Kousha Navidar: You bring up the dancing and Justin's choreography. Important point for listeners, Illinoise is a dance musical. There is no dialogue there. There's lyrics that you hear performed by a band, but the players on stage communicate through dance. The songs are sung by the band above the main stage. We can't play the dance over the radio, but here's a clip of the performances you did at Bard last year. Here's the Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts.

[Music-Sufjan Stevens: Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts]

Only a steel man can be a lover

If he had hands to tremble all over

We celebrate our sense of each other

We have a lot to give one another

Kousha Navidar: Jackie, I saw the performance last week, and it was so striking how emotionally invested the audience became in these characters who weren't speaking. My producer asked me after the show how the show was, and I said that watching everything unfold made me fall in love with my fiance all over again. That wasn't just me. That was among the audience, one of the many feelings that I think were felt. How do you elicit that level of emotional reaction without having the characters themselves say a word?

Jackie Sibblies Drury: I think a lot of the show really rests on how talented the performers are both in terms of being able to do this virtuosity choreography, but also in terms of their ability to convey love and emotion and grief and empathy. They're all phenomenal actors in their own right. There was something that we came upon organically, which is that the emotions of the show are so primal that it felt like trying to use words to describe them even more than the movement was already describing those emotions.

The music was already describing those emotions. It felt redundant. I do think that without a layer of language separating you from that emotion, would allow you to intellectualize it, which is what I do a lot. [laughter] I'm working on it in therapy. Just being able to engage directly with those emotions and being able to put yourself into the arc of the show allows a real special moment of connection for people.

Kousha Navidar: When you think about everything Jackie's saying, Justin, how does that come through in the choreography? What were some of the bold choices that you made to make that emotion come through?

Justin Peck: Hey, look, my work as a choreographer has been a craft that I've been chipping away at for a long time now. I think about it constantly. I'm always working on something. There's never a moment where I take a break. I feel like I've been able to create a range in terms of what's in my toolbox and also with this project specifically. Part of my goal was to pull from so many influences and present this amalgamation of different styles of dance that becomes its own definitive language. That all is at our fingertips and we can apply that to the narrative.

For a project like this, at least the priority is always story. What is the story? How are we telling this story? I think there's something about this show and this experience of this musical where it feels almost like you're watching a silent film. I think when you talk to filmmakers, a lot of them will say the goal is to have as little dialogue as possible. That the goal is to tell the story through images, moving pictures. I think in an odd way, this musical, even though it's a different medium, it's after a similar kind of goal.

It's really trying to tell a full story without any dialogue and through energy movement, images, gesture.

Kousha Navidar: We're going to talk more about it after a quick break. We're talking about Illinoise. We're joined by Justin Peck, the director, choreographer, and story, and Jackie Sibblies Drury who's writing the story as well. More right after this.

[music]

This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart, and we are talking about Illinoise, which is at the Park Ave Armory through March 26th. Sold out, but hey, there's a Broadway transfer that was announced today, which begins performances April 24th. We are joined by Justin Peck, who is the director/choreographer, and Jackie Sibblies Drury who worked on the story. Both of you, I would love to get into the story itself. Illinoise centers on a character named Henry, whom the playbill describes as a memoirist in denial who eventually shares a tragic and true tale about first love.

For much of the show, he's reluctant to share his story. Jackie, how did the Henry character and his story come together for you?

Jackie Sibblies Drury: I guess Justin really had this vision of some of the specific elements of Henry's story of his Midwestern childhood, of his unrequited love friendship with another boy, and also of some tragedy that befalls that best friend. I think the biggest key that we had to figure out was how to get into and out of Henry's story and also the psychology of that character of why he needed this community to be able to deal with the trauma of his adolescence.

Kousha Navidar: You mentioned how to get in and out of the story. One way that that happens is by sharing stories of multiple characters. Before Henry builds up the courage to share his song, we hear stories from four other characters. There's Morgan with the song Jacksonville. There's Joe Davies with the song They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!. There's Wayne with John Wayne Gacy, Jr. I'm just going through the whole concept album here, and Clark with the song of the Man of Metropolis that we heard before.

Justin, how did you think about who these people are and what stories they wanted to tell each other?

Justin Peck: Part of the vision I guess, for this show involves like, okay, it's going to be told through dance. There's going to be this framing device at the campfire. We're going to have to guide the viewers into how this world works. Rather than just diving right into Henry's story right away at the campfire, it's like there's this practice of campfire storytelling and there's certain rules with how to do that. Things like you want to set a mood, you want to tell a story with as few props or things around you as possible.

We get the chance to do that with four characters prior to Henry so that by the time we get to Henry, the audience has adjusted to how this world works, and again, the theatrical rules of this world. That was really important. All the while through these other short stories that are being shared, we're tracking Henry and how he's responding to these other stories, how he's working up the courage to eventually come forward and share his own story. That's some of the thinking behind it. One of the big influences on this narrative structure is really another dance musical called The Chorus Line, which I'm sure a lot of people know. That's similar because the structure of that is really like, okay, you always return to the line. There's literally a line drawn on the floor and the characters always come back to it. We begin that show with getting these short stories of each character on the line, and we feel something looming in the background. There's a deeper story that we eventually delve into once we get a little bit further along in that show. I think the difference here is instead of a line, we're at a campfire, so it's a bit more circular.

Kousha Navidar: Circular.

Justin Peck: That was one of those guiding North Stars for this project as well, and also a nice way to tie one dance musical to another dance musical.

Kousha Navidar: A great euphemism there, North Star for campfire, very on-brand. The first storyteller Morgan in the play shares a story about lineage and lessons from our ancestors. The song is Jacksonville. Let's hear a little bit of the original song.

[Music-Sufjan Stevens: Jacksonville]

I'm not afraid of the black man running

He's got it right, he's got a better life coming

Kousha Navidar: That was the original song. Morgan's story and dance performance features a tap dancer. It adds this new sonic element to the song too. Justin, how did you think about adapting these songs? How much you could change them, and how to change them, and how much you wanted to leave just as written?

Justin Peck: Yes, that's a good question. It was a big conversation with Timo Andres, who's our arranger and orchestrator, as well as Nathan Koci, our music director. All that was done the music and the story in collaboration with myself and Jackie. A lot of those short stories, they hold a lot, I'll say. They definitely hold a lot. It was a question of how do we focus this into something that is digestible. Something that makes sense to us, and something that works in the world of this show. That song, Jacksonville, is one of my favorite songs on the whole album.

It just has so much swagger to it as well, and just has actually influenced a very unique style of movement that I don't usually-- when I watch it, I'm like, "Oh, did I choreograph this?" It feels like a standout number in the show. It's a little bit complicated because it's about this town in Illinois called Jacksonville, and there's this debate over if it's named after Andrew Jackson or A.W. Jackson, who was a Black preacher at the time and was really instrumental in the Underground Railroad and bringing slaves from the South to the North for freedom.

Those are two very polarizing figures. The story in the song is really about this character trying to sift through all that and find the truth of this, and trying to reach back into her past and connect with some ancestor who was around during that time to give her the answers, and how it's sometimes very difficult to hear those voices from the past and receive the definitive answer of what that is. It's about that kind of struggle. I just had this idea of including tap dance in the piece and giving it to the character of the cast member who represents that ancestor.

He comes out in this beautiful period suit and performs this tap dance sequence that feels very rooted and also honors tap dance is a predominantly African-American art form. It was a way to give that character a voice. For me, it's personal in a way because there's a show that really inspired my whole trajectory as a dancemaker and as a performer, and that's George C. Wolfe and Savion Glover's Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk. I always try and credit that whenever I can because it really did change the course of my entire life.

I was so influenced by seeing that as a young person, and it's a major tap dance musical about the Black experience in this country. When I saw it as a kid, some of it went over my head and some of it was just so intriguing to me, but I knew that there was a special thing about that show. I began my career as an artist and a performer through tap dance. Really I studied it pretty extensively as a young person who was very devoted to it. I had great mentors growing up, and learned so much about that form, and eventually transitioned into other forms of dance, and made my way over to New York City Ballet.

It's a way to connect back to my origins and my earliest influences in theater and storytelling.

Kousha Navidar: You're talking about peeling back layers and finding truth, which seems to be so perfect for the campfire as well, that kind of metaphor. You also talk about your influences. If you're just joining us, we're talking to Justin Peck and Jackie Sibblies Drury, who helped put together Illinois, which is at Park Avenue Armory through March 26th and just announced a Broadway transfer starting on April 24th. Skipped around there to the question, but you're talking about all of these elements that land at the core of something and the influences.

Obviously, Sufjan Stevens laid the groundwork, but Jackie, there's an element when I watched this that I thought was interesting about the staging outside of the dance and influence maybe Midsummer Night's Dream. I don't know if I'm reading too much into this, but I wanted to point this out. We talked about the cornfield and you called it woods and finding truth in the woods and there are literally fairies butterfly winged singers up on stage commenting on what the players down there are doing. Am I just a Shakespeare nerd? Did you think about that? Talk about that element.

Jackie Sibblies Drury: I wish that I'd been thinking about Shakespeare or that I could take credit for that idea. I think that came from Justin in association with our costume designers, Reid and Harriet, who are incredible. That was more of a nod to the tours that Sufjan Stevens would do in the early aughts, where he would hand-make wings out of kites. There's an amazing image of him in these feathery angel wings. Just because the band that is backing this entire show or is the foundation for the entire show is so incredible and the singers are so otherworldly, it just felt really right to have them in that fairy mystical butterfly plates.

Kousha Navidar: In the woods.

Jackie Sibblies Drury: Yes.

Justin Peck: It was also something that helped us see and expand the world of this show. It's something we talked about also with the singers, almost like the thought that they're five years ahead of everyone at this campfire, and they're looking down on it, and they're singing about it. It's like they're in their own outer crust, almost like Greek chorus style, commenting on this world that's happening below and beneath them. They do feel, they have this godly quality to them when they're on stage and they're lifted above and they have that look with the butterfly wings and all that.

I do think it's a way to layer in more. I thought about it more actually because we presented this at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. I was trying to think about all these. Trying to find sources, like many parallels to Shakespeare in this show as well, but--

Kousha Navidar: You had thought of that as well?

Justin Peck: Yes, but in a roundabout way. It's not something that we were super-

Kousha Navidar: Not the origin, but-

Justin Peck: Yes, then it's like, oh, there's more connectivity to this. There's also a detail of there being these moth images on the notebooks of each character as they're sharing. It's like when they open their notebook, the words that they've written on the page somehow flutter away and become airborne, and they take the form of sung lyrics.

Kousha Navidar: Now that you're thinking about going to Broadway, how are you interacting with that in terms of how you envision? Nothing's going to change? You're thinking about new things or just excited to see bigger audiences enjoy?

Justin Peck: We've been super lucky to have so much interest in the show. It really started as this quiet whisper of an idea that none of us knew how far it could ever go. We were just following and seeing what would happen. We've now had sold-out runs at the Bard Fisher Center at Chicago Shakespeare Theater and now the Park Avenue Armory. Broadway, first of all, it's a dream come true for both Jackie and I to get to create a show that lives in that realm. Also, it's just a way to get to continue to share this show with audiences who seem to really connect to it and be moved by it in ways that I can't even fully comprehend.

It's more about taking the show as it exists, essentially putting down the paintbrush, moving it into Broadway theaters to set up camp and run for the next 16 weeks.

Kousha Navidar: You mentioned that Jacksonville was your standout song. Jackie, what's your standout song?

Jackie Sibblies Drury: Oh, that's basically an impossible question, especially at this point. Also, strangest thing, even just listening to the original version of Jacksonville just now, I haven't listened to the album itself for about a year and a half. The versions of the songs that Timo has created, that Nathan is creating, that the band is creating, those are the ones that live the most in me at the moment. It changes every time I watch the show. When I watched last night, I found The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders to be the most moving, which is a song that happened after Henry shared his story and is being welcomed into a new phase of his life almost with this community behind him.

Kousha Navidar: A lot of great songs to listen to, a lot of great performances to see on that stage. The show is Illinoise. It's currently running at the Park Avenue Armory and will transfer to Broadway starting April 24th. Congratulations again. My guests have been Justin Peck, director, choreography and story co-writer, and playwright, Jackie Sibblies Drury. Thank you both so much for joining us.

Jackie Sibblies Drury: Thank you so much.

Justin Peck: Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: To take us out, since we haven't played it yet, let's go out on the most famous song from Illinois. Here's Chicago by Sufjan Stevens.

[MUSIC - Sufjan Stevens: Chicago]

I fell in love again

All things go, all things go

Drove to Chicago

All things know, all things know

We sold our clothes to the state

I don't mind, I don't mind

I made a lot of mistakes

In my mind, in my mind

You came to take us

All things go, all things go

 

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