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BARE Scoop! An Interview with Damon Intrabartolo
By: Robert Diamond Oct. 20, 2004
While the show's first delay was being discussed, Damon was holed up in Los Angeles, working with the BARE Band on recording tracks for the cast album. Casting for the show had already taken place earlier in the summer, and the necessary tweaks for the show's next run were all in place. "The opening was new, and some of the lyrics internally were changed, but the biggest changes were in the orchestrations. Jesse (Vargas) had completely reworked the vocal arrangements and I spent the time in Los Angeles orchestrating it to be exactly what it should have sounded like." Then came the next delay.
"We were completely ready to go, and then it got pushed back again. It was then I think that things started to get unstable, and it was then I first started to get calls about financing, or lack of financing I should say - all of which was news to me."
Later, a group effort then took place in which "everybody tried to pull together their resources. My company had produced BARE's Los Angeles run so we tried to pull together financing again, but producing in New York is a lot more financially complicated than elsewhere in the US. The elements of touring companies, second class productions, union regulations and worldwide territory rights make things very complicated, and expensive, so it's not like you're just producing it as a sit down production in New York City."
With regards to producer Michael David, and their quest still to raise the necessary funds, Damon has nothing but praise. "Michael David is one of the most passionate people I've ever met when it comes to theater in this country. He just loves it so much, he lives and breathes it and he really does understand the art of producing very well. For that reason I've always believed he was a great partner and he has been a great friend to the show."
So now, with the money not there, everyone appears to be poised to move forward with other things, even if they're not yet giving up hope. "The actors obviously couldn't wait indefinitely because they have bills to pay, so they've had to go get other jobs which some of them already have and I'm so happy for them. I certainly have had to go back to work myself, on some movie scores that are coming up, and on the shows that (BARE director) Kristin Hanggi and I are working on."
Dealing with all of this hasn't been easy, and as the news first start to hit – Damon left town. "By the time that the news about the 'indefinite delay' hit, I was up in Mt. Saint Helens watching it explode. She kind of farted actually, and didn't do anything great. Nature has these very potent landscapes and I wanted to get immersed in them, if for no other reason than to see perspective and to see multiple perspectives. But I knew that news was coming down about a week before it did, just because I had been so intimately involved trying to really put it together, and to help find financing. "
"Like the cast when they found out, I just had to find a place to leave that disappointment, so I decided to do it geographically, and I think I left mine somewhere in Park City, Utah. I talked to Andrew Lippa a lot – he had been through a similar experience and he was really, really helpful and supportive. I love BARE like she's my daughter and I was honoring a pact I had with made with her a long time ago."
Dodgers is still attempting to find financing for the show says Damon, but it's an uphill battle. "It's hard to get people involved in a show after it's already taken off. People like to be in on the ground level, and participating at a larger scale as opposed to just coming in and joining up. The show inherited a small liability from the ATA production, so those kind of factors really make it much more difficult."
Damon describes himself as somewhat pessimistic, not wanting fans of the show to have false hope, and noting that's one of the messages that BARE tries to convey, but he doesn't look at the show's status in negative terms. "Music can never really die. It's folklore. Long before CDs and iPods, the Native Americans sat around and told stories in song form. Those stories never went away, they lived for thousands of years. I'm not equating BARE with any great parable or anything – just to say if you've heard the songs and you know them, they're not going to be destroyed."
"We have printed and recorded medium that ensures any show – whether it plays a metropolis like New York or not – never experiences death. BARE will likely enter the canon that way; it doesn't die, it just might not get performed regularly in one particular city, but that's one particular city in a very big world."
On a more positive note, Damon notes that there will definitely be an album of the show sometime in the near future, though that's a project where there's still many details to work out. Asked for a final thought on BARE's chances in New York, Damon says "I imagine that one day it'll come back to the New York area, I just couldn't say when at the moment."
Aside from BARE, there's lots more on Damon's plate at the moment. Ann. E. Wrecksick & the Odyssey of the Bulimic Orphans (co-written with Scott Allgauer) will open in LA again in the late Spring of 2005, and Plop will premiere in LA in Fall 2005; Kristin Hanggi will direct both. In addition to the world of theater, Damon will be working on the scores to several movies between now and March including Hide & Seek, House of Wax, and Fantastic Four.
Of course he'll be working on Michael Arden's album this winter as well. On that he says "Michael's album will push our own preconceptions, and it'll be an album that centers around his voice, and all of its various incarnations. We are definitely approaching it as storytellers. " Sounds good to us!
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