Douglas Sills Makes 'MUSIC'

After a lengthy hiatus, Douglas Sills is jumping back into New York’s theatre scene in perhaps the most challenging way imaginable: appearing in a leading role in an Encores production. On Thursday, Sills will take to the stage at City Center in Music in the Air, a rare 1932 backstage musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II.

“It’s a really interesting show,” Sills says enthusiastically, explaining that the rarely-revived piece fits in between operetta and Golden Age musicals. “We have a musicality, a tone, in the nature of the songs that sounds kind of like operetta—like Student Prince or Show Boat—from the ‘20s. And then some of the lyrics and the book have a certain sarcasm and irony--they depict the real sassy, dark, backstage way that artists get along…Some of the ways the people talk, you don’t expect it to come out of an operetta.”

The dichotomy fits the show, which focuses on the ambitions of aspiring rural German operetta composers. When they arrive in Munich to make their fortune, their rural innocence is put to the test in the face of jaded show biz professionals. “That juncture between innocence and experience within the play comes across as between pastoral and urban,” Sills says, “and therein lies the conflict.”

Walking that narrow line between innocence and experience, rural and urban is a challenge for any actor, especially when performing classic songs that have been reinterpreted by contemporary singers. Some performers might be tempted to sing in a more modern style, further blurring that line. “You can’t get carried away by their casual, modern pop rhythm,” Sills says emphatically. “You have to stay square. That has to do more with tradition and innocence—that square, on-the-beat, 2/4 count.” He praises David Ives’ work on adapting the libretto for Encores, and laughingly says that his character “is sort of a cross between John Patrick Shanley and Bill Clinton on his worst egotistical day.”

Sills’ last outing at Encores was also a backstage romance, albeit one from a different era. He earned strong reviews when he appeared in 2002’s Carnival alongside Debbie Gravitte, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and a then-relatively unknown named Anne Hathaway. “I love Encores,” Sills says. “They get great players, great artists, and you’re always playing with la crème de la crème.”

“Ultimately, this kind of show is exactly what Encores was meant to be,” he continues. “It’s taking obscure shows that will never see the light of day [and giving them] a full-scale revival. You get to see a full orchestra play this score by a very accomplished composer and lyricist [and] to hear Kern and Hammerstein played by a full orchestra, something that was written in the ’30s, it’s just a great opportunity! That’s just what Encores had set out to do originally. So it’s great to be part of it. And there’s such an incredible array of talent! I mean, there’s more years in Juilliard in this cast than you can shake a stick at!” he laughs.

An Encores production has plenty in common with a standard full production—only boiled down to its purest elements and concentrated into a weekend-long run. “You just have to be prepared to hit the ground running,” Sills says about doing the shows. “You have to be in shape vocally when you arrive, and physically, and you have to be getting your sleep and having your regimen ready, ’cause you can’t afford to get sick. Every hour of Encores is like a day of a regular show, and every day of Encores is like a week of a regular show. You have to be taking it in, making changes, absorbing it and ready to apply it when needed. So time is everything, and not letting the highly abridged schedule stress you out. You just can’t do your work when you’re stressed.”  On the other hand, he laughs, “the timeframe stresses you out.”

For the past two years, Sills has been working in his family’s business, helping to manage his late father’s real estate portfolio. Now that the business is stable, he is ready to make his theatrical return. “When we have these journeys as artists that take us away from our art, you come back a different person,” he says, and calls the temporary career shift humbling.  “You come back changed,” he says. “I know I changed, so I’m curious to see how that plays out. So far, it’s been great, ‘cause it makes me grateful to be an actor and grateful for the opportunity to work.”

"I think more than anything, I took [this job] because it was a little scary to me," he says thoughtfully. "It's always scary 'cause you're doing it so fast." He compares the accelerated pace of an Encores production to walking on a balance beam, but says that he gets through it by not looking down. "As you get older as an artist, you worry less, and you just try and let it be about the work and recognize that everybody's pointed toward the same goal, generally speaking-and in this case, certainly," he says. "And most of the stuff you worry about, you can't control, anyway, so once you come to terms with that, then you can have more success in letting the things go that you can't control and just do your best."