BWW Interviews: Michael Lluberes, THE BOY IN THE BATHROOM Scribe

Bloomington Playwrights Project presents The Boy In the Bathroom Michael Lluberes is an up-and-coming new playwright whose latest project will debut this February at the Bloomington Playwrights Project.

The Boy in the Bathroom is a quirky new musical about David, a young man with obsessive compulsive disorder who lives in (you guessed it) a bathroom and refuses to come out. The play has won more awards than most people have fingers, including four New York Musical Theatre Festival Excellence awards, The Microsoft/HealthVault Most Promising New Musical Award, and the 2011 American Harmony Prize, but it has yet to be produced until this past year.

We wondered what led Lluberes to explore such unconventional subject matter, especially for a musical.

What was your inspiration for writing a musical about a boy locking himself in a bathroom for a year?

ML: The musical was inspired by a news story I saw around 15 years ago about a kid with obsessive-compulsive disorder who locked himself in his bathroom. This idea stayed with me for years. I was less interested in writing about OCD and more interested in how someone could be so afraid of the outside world.

How could a person overcome that fear and enter the world again? Why a bathroom?

ML: The bathroom has so many more possibilities for humor and specificity. There’s something incredibly fascinating and sad and funny about a guy who lives his life in there. It really is a place you could live in if you had to. If you could get food in there some way, you would have everything you need to survive. I also think it’s quite subversive to set a musical in a bathroom. I’ve never seen it before. I’m tired of plays in living rooms. The “kitchen sink drama” is dead—it’s all about the “bathroom sink musical” now.

What’s been the developmental history of The Boy In The Bathroom?

ML: The show was originally developed at The New York Musical Theatre Festival—a wonderful organization that puts on about 30 new musicals every fall in NYC. That experience helped us a lot. After the festival, the show went on to do several very helpful developmental workshops including the ASCAP/Disney Musical Theatre Workshop with Stephen Schwartz, The Festival of New American Musicals, A New World Stages workshop and a production at The Chance Theater in California. We feel like we’re in a good place with the show now and are hugely excited that all the developmental work has led us to this production at the BPP.

What’s your favorite moment in the play?

ML: There’s a scene late in the musical that is a love scene between the two characters David and Julie. The challenge of the relationship is that these two people develop feelings for each other from opposite sides of the bathroom door. These characters don’t see or touch each other. They fall in love by talking to each other. It’s amazing to see an audience invest in this relationship. Hopefully the smallest of moments—when David and Julie barely touch their fingertips under the door—can be as exciting as a first kiss.

What message do you hope to get across with this play?

ML: It’s a play about three people who are stuck and trying to move forward. David is literally stuck in a bathroom and is too afraid to leave. The other characters are stuck in different ways. I hope that an audience identifies with what makes them afraid and how by connecting to another person we might be able to work through our fears.

What makes this show unique?

ML: I think the subject matter and the intimacy is quite different for a musical. It feels a lot more like a play with music than a traditional musical. It has a quirky title but I hope that people will be surprised by how much heart it has.

 

Performances of The Boy in the Bathroom are scheduled for February 3, 4, 9 – 11, 16 – 18 at 8pm & February 12 at 2pm at the Bloomington Playwrights Project 107 W. 9th St.

Tickets are $18 General Admission; $15 Student/Senior, available at the BCT Box Office at the Buskirk Chumley Theatre (www.bctboxoffice.com).

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Michael Lluberes (Book & Lyrics): Writing/directing credits include: Peter Pan: The Boy Who Hated Mothers (No Rules Theatre Company, Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival), The Boy In The Bathroom (New York Musical Theatre Festival, NYMF Most Promising New Musical Award, Best Book, ASCAP/Disney Musical Theatre Workshop, New World Stages Workshop, Penn State Festival of NewMusicals, The Festival of New American Musicals), The Geranium on the Windowsill Just Died (Urban Stages). Directing credits include: Twelfth Night (Sonnet Repertory Theatre), Nighttime Traffic (NYMF), One Thousand Cats (HBO’s Funny Or Die Presents). As an actor, he has appeared in Dirty Dancing (National Tour), Off-Broadway in American Dreams: Lost and Found, Pudd’nhead Wilson, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It (The Acting Company), Heaven Knows (Ensemble Studio Theatre). Regional theatre credits: The Old Globe, Cincinnati Playhouse, St. Louis Rep, Casa Mañana, Capital Rep, Maltz Jupiter, Pioneer Theatre Company. TV: “Chappelle’s Show”, “Tough Crowd”. He is the recipient of The American Harmony Prize, an NEA New Artist Initiative Award/Hambidge Residency, an Anna Sosenko Trust Award and a Richard Rodgers Award Finalist. Education: North Carolina School of the Arts. Member of The Acting Company, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and The Dramatists Guild. www.MichaelLluberes.com

Photo Credit: Evan Mayer and Maddie Shea Baldwin star as David and Julie in The Boy in the Bathroom at the Bloomington Playwrights Project (Feb. 2012) Photo by Ivona Hedin

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