Marc Kudisch on Bway by the Year:1959 & Witches of Eastwick

With Broadway by the Year: The Broadway Musicals of 1959 headed to Town Hall on Monday, April 30^th, I checked in with the night's director Marc Kudisch to get the scoop on how he's approaching presenting this banner year for Broadway, which happens to include such little known tuners as Gypsy, The Sound of Music, Fiorello! and Once Upon a Mattress.  

Before we got to 1959, we went back to the beginning to talk about how Marc first became involved with the always successful Broadway by the Year series. "I first caught wind of Broadway by the Year, when Wayman Wong actually came to me a few years back, and said "I hear that you're doing Broadway by the Year…" and I said "I am? I haven't heard about it…" So, I called Scott (Siegel, creator and host) and said "I hear that I'm doing Broadway By The Year, am I?" and he said "not that I know of, but would you like to? That's where it all began."

Now several installments (years) in, this unique series presents a musical history of Broadway by showcasing a different year each evening. Kudisch has a unique take on what makes this experience such an audience favorite. "The great thing about the series is that you get the full experience of the year that's being presented, and that includes all of the songs that you know from the shows that you know as well as material from other shows that people might not be familiar with, but are often jus t as good, if not better. You also get a flavor for the year as a whole historically – the mood, the language, and that sort of thing. One of my favorites was 1930, which was a fascinating year, because it was the year that the depression really began and there's such a difference between the music of the first 6 months of the year and the last 6 months of the year. When you observe the year as a whole and everything that's put on, then you get a sense of not just music from the year, but also a view of society and the larger impact of the world on musical theatre, which is really cool. Every year has those unique things."

So, how is he approaching the challenge of presenting one of theatre's biggest banner years? "It's a challenge to come up with ways to offer them up to the audience, and to do so in a new fresh away. In 1959, you have a combination of shows like Gypsy, The Sound of Music, Fiorello! and Once Upon a Mattress, but you also have Take Me Along, The Nervous Set, and other gems. In addition to hearing great music from a year, audiences also get to hear performers that they like and admire come back again and again and to perform material that they might not normally do. For example on Monday night, Emily Skinner is going to sing Mama Rose for us on Monday night, and I think that's just awesome."

Has this taste of directing for the Broadway by the Year series ignited a deeper interest in more direction work? Absolutely. " I have a lot of ideas for different things, and it's a form of expression. When you have as good an opportunity to work with the amazing people that I've been able to work with, it makes you want to try to do our own ideas as well. I often think that I have ideas that are way different from everyone else, so figure that I'm either way out of the ballpark, or that I should find some way of expressing those ideas. I love the creative aspects of theatre, the creation of a character, the first run through. I love previews, and I can't stand openings, but I love a show for the first few months after opening when it's still fresh and still a creative process. "

Speaking of fresh ideas, next up after Broadway by the Year, Marc will be bringing his performing chops to a very iconic role, that of Darryl Van Horne in the American premiere of The Witches of Eastwick, which comes to Virginia's Signature Theatre this June. How will he be attempting to make this role his own? "The book is different than the movie, and the movie is different than the show was in London. What we're trying to do is to find out what the stage show is and how it exists on the stage. We've had some talks, and had a sit-down reading in February to get a grasp on what story that we're telling, and how we're going to present it on stage. We wanted the opportunity to do it in this theatre, out of the big eye in a place that we could be a little bit more artistically free and to be able to risk a little bit more. We want to try different things and to have the flexibility and the openness to be able to trip a couple of times, instead of coming straight into town. The story isn't exactly what was in the film, or in the book, it's its own thing, and we need the time to find exactly what the story is."

Will we see the show next in New York? "There's all kind of hopes and things, but my current focus and why I want to do it, is because I think it's a cool story, and that the character is cool and that we can tell the story in a way that we didn't see in the film, and that the novel wasn't initially about either. I think that we might have our own idea which is the reason to do it."

A cast of Broadway stars will "do it" themselves in Broadway by the Year: The Broadway Musicals of 1959, presented by The Town Hall on Monday April 30 at 8 PM.  Mary Bond Davis, Josh Prince, Manoel Felciano, Marc Kudisch, Emily Skinner, Bruce Vilanch, Mark Jacoby, Sarah Jane McMahon, and Nancy Lemenager are expected to perform.
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Tickets for the event are $40 and $45 from TicketMaster, (212) 307-4100, or www.ticketmaster.com, in person at the Town Hall box office, 123 West 43rd Street, New York, NY. For more information, call (212) 840-2824, or  visit www.the-townhall-nyc.org.