SPIDER-MAN's Philip William McKinley, Michael Cohl to Take On 'THE BIBLE'

The national buzz surrounding SPIDER-MAN, TURN OFF THE DARK may have died down, but that doesn't mean that the audience is any less wild about the show - or the stops, according to director Philip William McKinley.

"Maybe it’s the reality TV factor, but when we stop, the audience goes nuts," he tells Deadline.com. "They love it because it is reality. If the show isn't perfect, what's wrong that that? The same thing could happen with The Bible."

Yes - The Bible. McKinley and producer Michael Cohl have set their sights on a new project now that SPIDER-MAN is running smoothly: a musical that uses aerialists and jugglers to take its audience through biblical times.

THE BIBLE: THE BEGINNING has the aid of composers Michael Levine, Matt Rawlings and Ryan Bevridge, along with lyricist Maribeth Derry and a book by Shaun McKenna. It's not headed for Broadway, but rather on an arena tour following an initial semi-permanent launch in an as of yet undetermined arena. 

The idea, says McKinley, stemmed from a conversation with Judy Kaye, who among a myriad of Broadway roles won the 1988 Tony Award for playing Carlotta in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. "I told her I’d done The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, and she said, well, there’s nothing left then but The Bible," McKinley said. "The more I thought about it, I realized that we could take these stories that have big morality themes and put them in a style of contemporary performance."

Audiences should expect the same level of aerial stunts as SPIDER-MAN, TURN OFF THE DARK, but McKinley will help design them - something he had to restructure when he took the helm for SPIDER-MAN.

"Because I’d been around the circus for 20 years, I knew exactly how and why those accidents were happening. If there are five steps involved in an aerial segment, you must never go out of order," he said. Drawing on his experiences with the circus, McKinley redesigned many of the stunts. "In the circus, I would create a model of the show, and every time we had a wire attached to a person, each department head watched what I was planning and told me if it was possible. Once, I had a flying act with 32 tie-down lines and it took 8-minutes to get it ready. You can’t rush that, so I found an 8-minute production number to fill the time. The first thing we did when we restructured Spider-Man was sit down with every person in every department. On every flight, we said, what this does to your world? Is it possible?"

That's not to say that the risk is eliminated entirely; the Department of Labor still visits the show nightly, according to McKinley. But, he stresses, that comes with the territory: "These kind of shows will always carry risk. It's not Peter Pan; we’ve got guys going 40-45 mph, circling the theater in 5 seconds in stunt and thrill flying sequences. If one of  your main guys goes out over the audience after eating a steak dinner and a milkshake, that extra weight on him is going to throw off the flying. You have to be aware of everything."

With SPIDER-MAN's relative success - selling just behind consistent top sellers WICKED and THE LION KING on a weekly basis - McKinley looks to eventually push for the show's future beyond Broadway. In the mean time, however, he's happy with where the show is. "We are in a golden age of theater in New York and I wish more journalists and critics would realize it," he says. "Spider-Man doesn't have to be The Normal Heart or The Book of Mormon, there's room for all of it. And spectaculars like Spider-Man are necessary if we are to expand this art form. My favorite moment with Spider-Man was being in the lobby and watching two 8-year olds pretending to web each other. One stopped and said, ‘Isn't this the best Broadway show ever?' The other kid agreed and said, ‘I can't wait to see the next one.' There's your future audience."