BWW Q&A: Director Katie Spelman on WAITRESS at Paramount Theatre

What is more American than apple pie? A small-town 
waitress with a dream and the ingredients for success! Sugar, butter, flour. These aren’t the only ingredients Jenna, a waitress and expert pie maker, uses to make her famous pies. Stuck in a small town and a loveless 
marriage, Jenna unexpectedly becomes pregnant, and then finds acceptance and love in the most unexpected place.

Hoping to bake her way out of her troubles, she puts her heart and soul into her unique pies, winning over anyone who tastes them. But while battling expectations and self-esteem issues, Jenna’s delicious pies reflect her state of mind with names like I Hate My Husband Pie, and Pregnant, Miserable, Self-Pitying Loser Pie. Each of us will find something relatable in Jenna’s struggles and triumphs.

Full of romance and the joy of an uninhibited fling, Waitress challenges the story of a pregnant woman trapped in a small town between the life she’s living and the life she wants. Her customers, co-workers, and the town’s handsome new doctor may all offer her conflicting recipes for happiness, but only Jenna can do the 
soul-searching to decide for herself what the right ingredients are for her own 
happiness. Want to know her secret recipe?

Based on the 2007 film by the same name, with lyrics and music by Grammy Award winner and Tony Award nominee, Sara Bareilles. Nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Original Score!

Katie Spelman (Director/Choreographer) is a Chicago born, Brooklyn-based director and choreographer. She made her Broadway choreographic debut this past season with The Notebook. Recent credits include Great Comet (Writers Theatre), The Music Man (Marriott Theatre, 8 Jeff Nominations), Cabaret (Barrington Stage Company, Berkie Award for Best Choreography); the world premiere of An American Tail (CTC); Hello Kitty Must Die (Edinburgh Fringe), Day 365 - Live from the Rainbow Room with Dylan Mulvaney, Once (Writers Theatre), Swearing in English (Ars Nova), AD 16 (Olney Theater, Helen Hayes Award for Best Choreography), The Beautiful Game (Tokyo, TOHO Productions), The Who’s Tommy (DCPA), and Oklahoma! (Goodspeed).

Katie was the Associate Choreographer on Moulin Rouge for the Boston, Broadway, and Australian companies, as well as an associate on the Broadway productions of Amelie, American Psycho, and Once; as well as RENT Live! on Fox. Katie has also collaborated with Lookingglass, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Camerata Bern, Court Theatre, The Hypocrites, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Timeline Theatre, and Northwestern University.

As a Chicago native working in NYC, what does it mean to you to come direct a show for your home region again?

I grew up in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, went to high school on the south side, and went to college on the north side – then lived here for almost a decade after college. Chicago is home in more ways than one. It’s quite literally where I grew up; but it’s also where my artistic DNA was forged. My mom took me to a lot of the tours as they came through the city as I was growing up; we also saw productions at the Goodman, Chicago Shakespeare, Drury Lane, and The Marriott. During my time at Northwestern and for years after, I kept up my steady diet of these theaters, but added to that the work at Lookingglass, The Hypocrites, The Inconvenience, Writers, The House, Court, The New Colony, Red Orchid, and Sideshow.

I learned how to direct from watching the slew of phenomenal directors that call Chicago home: David Cromer, Charlie Newell, Rachel Rockwell, Nick Bowling, Jess Fisch, Marti Lyons, Gary Griffin, Geoff Button, Sean Graney, Mary Zimmerman, and Tina Landau….I then was lucky enough to assist or choreograph for a lot of those same directors. So every time I come back to Chicago, it truly feels like coming home; the spaces, the buildings, and the people are familiar, of course – but the creativity and ingenuity that pulses through the artists in this city also feels like home.

What excites you most about putting up this Chicago-area premiere of Waitress?

I love being able to present a new musical to an audience outside of New York City that may not know the piece well, or at all. New musicals are so hard, and so few succeed; getting a chance to bring newer pieces of the musical theater canon to more and more people is thrilling, because you get to pull new folks into the form.

Musicals have evolved a lot over the past few decades; new topics, new characters, and new music pull in new people who may not have known how moving and fulfilling a musical can be. Putting up a piece in Chicago is particularly thrilling – there’s a depth to the acting, a commitment to story, and a pride and passion in ensemble that is specific to this city – even when I tackle something from the golden age that I’ve known my whole life, actors in this city show me new things and new ways to approach these characters. So getting a chance to direct the Chicago-area  premiere of Waitress is an incredible treat.

Is dance a central element in Waitress?

I would say movement is – although we have just started rehearsals, so I am not fully sure of how this show moves on this company just yet. Lorin Latarro did something so unique and thrilling in the original production; our set, our space, and our company are all new to the show, so the vocabulary we find will be new and different as well. I’m excited to get up on our feet and find out what that language is, and to mine and finesse it with these actors.

As a woman director directing a show that addresses many of the issues women face today, what is a message you hope to convey to the audiences who see the show?

Jenna has a line in the show where she’s responding to a friend – “it’s not that simple.” I think a lot of issues this show touches on – pregnancy, friendship, emotional/physical/financial abuse, dating, adultery – none of them are simple. I think we often want things to be black and white, cut and dry; but most of life exists in gray areas and the in betweens.

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