Dancing Jock to Broadway Visionary: An Interview with Jeff Calhoun

By: Maya Cantu Aug. 17, 2005

A quick multiple choice test: Into which of the following high school stereotypes did Brooklyn director/choreographer Jeff Calhoun fit? Your choices are A) jock B) drama freak C) band geek D) All of the above.

If you went with the last choice, pat yourself on the back. Calhoun is a man who thrives on theatrical multi-tasking. Starting out as a Broadway performer in such shows as My One and Only, he has since become an accomplished director and choreographer, doing both for Brooklyn, Big River and choreographing the revivals of Bells Are Ringing, Annie Get Your Gun and Grease, for which he received a Tony nomination.

In Calhoun's new show Holy Cross Sucks! (which opens at Ars Nova on August 31st) actor Rob Nash becomes a one-man John Hughes movie, tearing through all the awkward and angsty characters of those films. Calhoun loved his own high school days, and jokes that "I had the entire football team dress up in tights as the chorus when I choreographed our spring musical, Once Upon a Mattress!" He relates that he would leave Wednesday football practices an hour early to be on time to tap class.

His last Broadway musical, Brooklyn, was significantly more high-concept than the average high school musical. An edgy but sweet urban fairy tale, the show made use of colorfully inventive sets and costumes with Twister boards and Cheetos wrappers finding their way into the visual scheme. Calhoun worked closely with set/costume designer Tobin Ost, but also envisioned much of Brooklyn before the show went into rehearsals; "I do not agree to direct a show until I see it in my mind's eye." Coining the word "visualist" for himself, Calhoun says that "My metaphor was the phoenix rising from the ashes. I prefer theatre that is poetic, abstract and activates the imagination." He is proud of what he achieved with Brooklyn, and thinks that most critics missed the point of the show. "I would not change any of it if I had to do it again...I'm trying to touch the next generation of theatregoers."

Getting younger audiences into theatres is something that greatly concerns Calhoun, and he feels that Brooklyn was a great success on this count. "Shows like Rent, Avenue Q and Brooklyn speak their language and the music certainly reflects contemporary sounds." Referring to the many devoted fans that Brooklyn has drawn, he says that he had anticipated the same kind of enthusiasm that he felt for the show. At 10 months, "It was the longest-running new musical of that season," he states.

Growing up in Pittsburgh, Calhoun loved the Golden Age Broadway musicals, and was also shaped by the more adventurous shows of the 70s (he cites Pippin, A Chorus Line, Grease and Chicago as favorites). He now questions the youth appeal of some of the more old-fashioned shows, and says that "I wonder if those shows are too naive and innocent to capture the sensibility of the youth living in the 21st century." Yet he remains fond of them and lists performers such as Fred Astaire, Dick Van Dyke and Danny Kaye as influences along with Ben Vereen, Hal Prince, Michael Bennett, Bob Fosse, Tommy Tune and others.

Tune (whose approach to musicals is also highly visual in nature) would become more than just a role model to Calhoun; they would collaborate on musicals for years. In addition to dancing in Tune's Gershwin show My One and Only, Calhoun served as Tune's assistant choreographer on the spectacular The Will Roger Follies, directed Tommy Tune Tonite!, co-choreographed The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public (the short-lived sequel to the one about the brothel in Texas), and directed and choreographed 1995's Busker Alley. Devastatingly for Calhoun, the latter show's Broadway run was cancelled, due to Tune's breaking his foot. Yet while the collaboration had downs as well as ups, Calhouns states that "I don't think a kid wanting a life as a director/choreographer on Broadway could have had a better mentor than Tommy Tune." On the two-tiered process, he believes that doing both "helps with the consistency of a piece to have one hand melding all the music and scenework...the ability to understand the rhythms of a scene and dramatic importance of the music make Champion, Fosse, Bennett, Tune and Stroman theatre legends."

Calhoun reaped quite a few accolades of his own for staging a revival of Big River with Deaf West Theatre. The Twain-based show, which played a limited Broadway run in the summer of 2003 and wrapped a national tour this June, won across-the-board raves for its seamless blending of song, dance and sign language. Calhoun calls the show (which was performed by deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing actors) "the hardest and most fulfilling work of my career." In a previous interview with the Bergen Record, he explained that "Putting this together has been the Rubik's Cube of theater." With the deaf actors having to know every second what was being sung, "There has to be a visual cue - they're hidden from the audience - every eight or 16 counts. But it was worth it. "This show has rejuvenated my soul," he glowed.

Next year, Calhoun will reteam with Deaf West to stage Oliver! at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego after doing the same for the Civil War-set musical Shenandoah at Washington D.C.'s Ford's Theatre in the spring. He's by no means through with Brooklyn either, and will be on hand for an upcoming tour of the show that will also launch in the spring. "We are also about to announce a Las Vegas run, have licensed the show in Korea and are in negotiations for the show to play Japan and London."

It's safe to say that with his shows, Calhoun is making a great impression on all the current jocks/drama freaks/band geeks out there.

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Dancing Jock to Broadway Visionary: An Interview with Jeff Calhoun

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