Interview: Laurence O'Keefe Talks the Future of Harvard's Revised BAT BOY; Will It Fly Back to NYC?

The Office for the Arts at Harvard recently announced that its upcoming undergraduate production of the cult hit BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL will debut new scenes and songs by the show's original writers. Composer/lyricist (and Harvard alum) Laurence O'Keefe and bookwriters Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming have been holding writing sessions and workshops at Harvard, working directly with the undergraduate cast and crew to develop the new material.

BAT BOY is the story of a feral half-bat/half-boy, originally invented by the Weekly World News supermarket tabloid. The musical comedy's premiere Off-Broadway in 2001 garnered rave reviews and the show has received hundreds of productions worldwide, but the three writers have nonetheless continued to work on the show.

O'Keefe recently took the time to chat with BroadwayWorld about revisiting the project and his intentions for the show at Harvard and beyond. Check out the full interview below!

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It's been years since the show was off Broadway and even longer since the west End run- so why did you decide that this was the time to rework it?

It was an offer! Not a production offer, but actually Harvard gave us the opportunity. Keythe, and Brian and I had been thinking about trying to finish the show, because we never really considered it finished. It's perfectly good, and we've seen many wonderful productions, and we are very grateful for them. Hundreds of very talented people have worked on various productions of the show and they've done great job. In many cases they have papered over our flaws. And I mean that quite seriously- every show is flawed, some more than others. I think that Keythe, and Brian and I always knew that there were things we wanted to do to make the first 30 minutes of the show shorter, faster, and more to the point. There was always the question of "Who does Bat Boy want to be in his life?" rather than letting him be a football to be fought over.

We've always known that we wanted to get together to do that, and if we had all been in the same city, we would have done it years ago. We've been talking about getting together for a writers retreat maybe for five years now. Periodically we'll get interest from movie people and Broadway people wanting to bring it in or make it a film. We always knew that we wanted the show in its very best version of what we thought it should be before we would start getting back on the conveyer belt. Every show is perfect when you don't have a deadline. [Laughs] We've always felt that we had extra growing and learning to do about how to tell the story the fastest and most efficient way.

Even great shows have a couple of moments when you think, "Ok, I've just gotta get through this." We've always been aware that we wanted to reduce that as much as we could and make it all count more.

So that's where Harvard came in?

Yes, when Harvard came back with the second production in five years on campus, it was actually at the theatre where I learned to write shows. It's at Farkas Hall, which is the renovated Hasty Puddings Theatre where I did shows as an undergrad. I got a call from the lovely director and music director from this production saying, "Would you like to come visit? I know you teach master classes at the college a lot, so would you like to teach a class or meet the cast and give them suggestions?" I said, "Yes! And it's funny you should say that, because we've been trying to get our act together to work on this very thing." Considering how wonderful the people are at the Office for the Arts, run by the brilliant Jack Megan, and Farkas Hall is run by the brilliant Dana Knox- they are great guys and I've worked with them before. They brought me to Harvard before for special events and classes and things.

So I said, "Could we prevail on you for an experiment?" And actually the idea was completely unoriginal. I borrowed this idea because when I was an undergrad I was in a production of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG and the director reached out to connect George Furth, who was the book writer, to ask if he'd like to come see it. And George said, "Funny you should say that! I have been working on another revision of it, which we are hoping to put on stage in London soon. Would you like to be our guinea pigs?" So they tried some new stuff. There were new scenes and maybe a new song or two. That experience was always so wonderful for me. I got to meet George and had such a great time. I learned a lot about the evolution of a published show and a new show. I never forgot it... so I decided to inflict the same thing on the undergrads this time.

We gathered at Harvard in late September and we had a week. And we said "Hey Undergrads, we're gonna leave you alone for a while. Read through the show and remind us of what it is and what we like about it, then we'll go off for a week and see what we can come up with. Our goal is to do no harm, so we promise you that if you hate our suggestions, you don't have to do them. And at the end of the week if we have nothing for you, hen no harm, no foul. You've been wonderful to us and if we are unable to come up with anything that we prefer over the original, then great! We're done for now."

And what kind of stuff did you guys come back with at the end of the week?

As it happened, we got a lot of great stuff done. We shortened the first 30 minutes of the show considerably and consolidated some scenes in the first section to make them work better. We pretty much replaced an entire song. Then we realized that we couldn't just show up once to drop a pile of stuff on them and then vanish. We built into the suggestion of our proposal that we'd like three visits- one in September, October, and November. That way we could come back and judge how they were liking the stuff. And again, if they didn't like it, they wouldn't have to use it. As it happens though, they ARE doing the new stuff and they're having a great time with it!

What's it been like working with the students?

They're over-worked undergrads and they have heavily booked schedules. They're full-time students, not conservatory students, so they are doing this for love. The director and music director are all their age, because Harvard has had a great tradition of pretty much all of the theatre done there being done by your peers. It has been very hard to major in Theatre at Harvard until recently. I think they just a few days ago announced that they are going to create their first-ever major in Theatre Dance and Media. In the past if you wanted to major in Theatre, you could certainly construct one by cobbling it together with the English Department and other stuff, but there hasn't been until recently a Theater major.

So your peers always directed you, and that was always a great experience for me because you weren't doing it for a grade. It was a very interesting dynamic and it taught me certain social skills. If I learned any it was from that! [Laughs]

So finally, we got to look at it on its feet. We just came back a couple of days ago from the second trip. We watched these guys implement the new ideas, and they're great! These overbooked, over-worked undergrads, who are doing Pre-Med or Pre-Law or even History majors, are giving their time to a completely speculative venture. I'm very, very grateful to them. They're all great performers and great artists and they're so generous for taking on our strange show and volunteering to take this leap of faith with us into the possibly even stranger.

I'm sure it's a dream for them to get to work directly with you guys!

Yeah, unless it sucks! [Laughs] That's for them to judge. It's been a dream for me. They're wonderful! And again, it's a free workshop, at the end of which we hopefully learn a lot. There's only so much you can learn from a workshop or reading, but this has jumpstarted the process for us to complete this process. Now we have a great incentive to.

Do you have plans for the revised version beyond Harvard?

Of course we have some old and new friends from the world of movies and theatre, who are now perking up their ears and saying, "Ah hah! What's all of this about BAT BOY?!" When we answer those phone calls and emails hopefully within a few weeks we'll be able to say: "And now the show is the one that we always dreamed of. It's now the best BAT BOY it's ever been and it's finally ready for the next step." We'll see!

Are you working on any other projects right now that you can tell us about?

Oh yeah, there's a bunch! Nell [Benjamin] and I are working on a couple of new shows and we are very excited about that. One is a big, new musical adaptation and there is also an original. I've been doing HEATHERS now for the last year or two so Nell is now taking her turn to be overbooked. She's doing GOTTA DANCE and all sorts of cool things with that. And now we are also writing a movie-type thing. The list goes on!

And until then you still have BAT BOY!

I'm just so glad that several dozen awesome people at Harvard, who didn't deserve to have their lives disturbed, were willing to go along with us on this hair brained scheme. People like our director Alexandra Kiley, our music director Cynthia Meng, and our producer Sam Moore are still undergrads but they are very kind, open-minded, and energetic. They've been willing to take an enormous leap of faith. I freely admit that we saw an opening and we invited ourselves there. With luck we will have given them something that is worthwhile. But we are so thankful to Harvard and people like Jack Megan and Dana Knox, who didn't have to add this to their already busy lives.

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Performances will take place at Farkas Hall (10-12 Holyoke Street, Cambridge, MA) on November 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, and 22 at 7:30pm and on November 23 at 2:30pm. Tickets ($8-$12) are currently on sale at the Harvard Box Office (Smith Center Arcade, 1350 Mass Ave, Cambridge; www.bit.ly/batboytickets; 617-496-2222), and may be purchased at the door pending availability.

O'Keefe's other credits include: Legally Blonde (Tony nomination, Best Score; Olivier Award, Best Musical), Heathers (Drama Desk nomination, Best Music), The Explorers' Club, Cam Jansen (Drama Desk nomination, Best Book), Sarah, Plain and Tall. Film/TV: "Defiance," "The Daily Show," "Johnny & The Sprites," Make 'Em Laugh.