BWW Interviews: KINKY BOOTS' Jerry Mitchell

Kinky Boots, the Tony Award-winning musical that brings together four-time Tony Award-winner Harvey Fierstein, two-time Tony Award-winning director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell and Grammy Award-winning rock icon Cyndi Lauper, makes its way to Nashville's Tennessee Perfomring Arts Center next week for a limited, one week engagement February 3-8.

Kinky Boots opened on Broadway on April 4, 2013, and it continues to play to standing room only crowds nightly at the Hirschfeld Theatre, having recouped its costs in October 2013, after just 30 weeks on Broadway.

Kinky Boots took home six 2013 Tony Awards, the most of any show in its season, including Best Musical, Best Score (Cyndi Lauper), Best Choreography (Jerry Mitchell), Best Orchestrations (Stephen Oremus) and Best Sound Design (John Shivers). The show also received the Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, and Broadway.com Awards for Best Musical and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Album.

"Kinky Boots deserved every Tony Award it won. It is a fun, fabulous show with a strong message. This musical shares strong values of friendship, love, and self-identity," says Kathleen O'Brien, TPAC president and chief executive officer. "I absolutely love this show and am proud that TPAC is an investor in the Broadway show as well as the tour."

In Kinky Boots, Charlie Price has reluctantly inherited his father's shoe factory, which is on the verge of bankruptcy. Trying to live up to his father's legacy and save his family business, Charlie finds inspiration in the form of Lola. A fabulous entertainer in need of some sturdy stilettos, Lola turns out to be the one person who can help Charlie become the man he's meant to be. As they work to turn the factory around, this unlikely pair finds that they have more in common than they ever dreamed possible and discovers that when you change your mind about someone, you can change your whole world.

Two-time Tony Award winning choreographer Jerry Mitchell, who also directed Kinky Boots the Musical to its Tony win for best musical, is one of Broadway's brightest lights, bringing to the stage some of the most successful musicals of recent vintage, including his Tony-winning turn as choreographer for La Cage Aux Folles and Kinky Boots. His first professional credit as a choreographer was for the 1990 Alley Theatre world premiere of the musical Jekyll & Hyde, which was followed by his first Broadway show as choreographer 1999's revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which he followed with The Full Monty. In addition, Mitchell created Broadway Bares, a benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and he has choreographed the films Camp, In & Out and Drop Dead Gorgeous. He even garnered an Emmy Award nomination for his work on The Drew Carey Show.

One of Broadway's quintessential renaissance men, Jerry Mitchell talked about the genesis of Kinky Boots the Musical and his unique collaboration with Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein...

How did Kinky Boots the Musical come about? Whose idea was it? [Co-producers] Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig. Daryl had acquired the rights and she and Hal were producing it together. Daryl sent me the material and asked me if I'd be interested in it. She didn't tell me what it was. I got the material, I opened it up and it was Kinky Boots. I watched the film and I got very emotionally caught up in the story of the fathers and the sons. And, particularly, that scene in the bathroom, where Charlie and Lola finally come together and realize they're on common ground. And I thought, "well that to me is the nucleus of something really strong," because it's a universal idea for us: how do we measure up in our fathers' eyes? I don't think there's anyone who doesn't go through some sort of realization, in their life, as becoming an adult, how you measured up in your father's eyes, for better or for worse. And that has real resonance. And I wanted to tell that story. And Harvey [Fierstein] wanted to tell that story.

I immediately said to Daryl, "yes, I'll do it. Can we get Harvey?" And she had the same idea, so we talked to Harvey. He watched the film, he came back with some ideas. He said yes and then we were on the search for a composer and we landed on Cyndi - from Harvey's brother, actually! It was his suggestion. And I had worked with Cyn in the past, Harvey had worked with Cyn and we gave her a couple of scenes and she wrote "Not My Father's Son" and "The Most Beautiful Thing in the World." Those were the first two songs she gave us. And I said, "this is exactly what I was hoping someone would write." So that was it.

Over the years, there have been some pop song writers who have come to Broadway, who have lost what it is that makes them great pop song writers. But this score feels like a Cyndi Lauper score: it's infectious. It's pop-infused, and yet it's very theatrical and tells great stories. Cyndi was eager to learn the craft. She didn't come into the process thinking she was just gonna write what she wrote. She wanted to write for the theater. And she wanted to bring her knowledge of pop music, but yet she also wanted to learn to tell stories. And she was led by Harvey and myself - hopefully, we were there to help guide her. I think she would say that. And, you know, we had an amazing collaboration, all three of us. This was a very, very, very comfortable collaboration.

How long did it take? Well, Harvey says it's been about four and a half years. And I said, "really has it been that long?" Because, I don't keep track. Time to me is not the point. Getting it right is the point. And we all had other things, commitments, that we had to complete; certainly, Cyn on tour with her music. But, we would have readings, like you do. We would go away, we would think, we would come back with ideas, they would write, we would read it again. And we just continued like that until we were ready.

So, here you are, a bunch of New Yorkers doing a story set in... Northampton and London.

...both a working-class Midlands British world and a fabulous one. Well that's me! I'm from the Midwest - I come from Paw Paw, Michigan. It's complete working-class and there's a lot of my roots in those people. I went to Northampton myself and hung out. And I toured the shoe factories and I learned to make a brogue, both on a machine and by hand, bespoke. I wanted to have the knowledge, to pass on to the actors. I took thousands of pictures, little videos on my camera. I spent time up there. I wanted to know what it was like. Yes, it's a true story. I knew the fabulous part of it; I knew I could do that part of it. I wanted to know what the real part of it was.

What's fun about it is you have the fabulous invade the factory, in a larger way, obviously, than happens in the movie. But there is this kind of verisimilitude. Well, the cast is quite spectacular. It doesn't look like a chorus of a musical. Every single person on that stage is invested. I'm very proud of this cast and their individual quality, what each of them brings to the story. And that was important, because you don't have 40 people in the factory; you've got 13 to represent the whole factory. But, the whole Trickers Factory, where I went to visit, it's a very small operation; there are only two guys making bespoke shoes in the whole factory.

Did you meet the actual person who Charlie was based on? No, no, no. He's long gone. He sold that factory and got out of the business after the boots saved the factory for a few seasons. But I went to the factory where the film was shot and met all the people who were there; some of them were in the film. And actually, they took me through the process.

And the set kind of beautifully replicates it, to a great degree. If you go to Tricker's, it's very close. I wanted that theatrical realism. I thought it was important, that contrast, very important.

But you get to have a lot of fun in that setting. I mean, at the end of the first act, with "Everybody Say Yeah." I'd love for you to talk about that moment. They've created their first pair of kinky boots and you've got those conveyor belts. Well, in Harvey's first draft, there were several scenes where it mentioned a conveyor belt, with shoes coming down it. The funny thing is, when I actually went to the factory, there are no conveyor belts! That's just not the way it works, actually. It was purely a movie thing. But, there it was; it was in the script. And I thought, "well, what can I do with a conveyor belt?" So, I called David Rockwell and I asked, "What would it take to build a conveyor belt that's about six feet long, which I could actually jump on, dance on, roll around on and it wouldn't break eight times a week?" So he called Show Motion - the guys who built the show - and they started to work on a three and a half foot off-the-table treadmill for me to get around and jump on. And they made it and they sent it to the rehearsal studio and I got on it and I wiped out, probably four or five times, bit the dust, fell three feet. And I thought, "uh oh, this isn't gonna work! I gotta send this right back to the shop and put on bars."

So, I got bars on it. And the bars actually became choreographic elements, that I could swing on, jump on, use to move about, push it, pull it. And, once I had one, then I had to decide what speed it would be at, 'cause I didn't wanted it dialed onstage. So, I picked a slow for the shoes and a fast for the number. Sent it back, they sort of solidified that one, brought it back to me. Got on it, liked it, sent it back, they made three more, brought it, got six dancers in the room and started to create the number. And we had so much fun! It was so much fun creating that number, because it is a celebration of making the first pair of kinky boots and everyone in the factory gets involved.

One of the things this show has, that not a whole lot of Broadway musicals have had in many years, is that utter sense of joy. And there are several moments. I mean, "I'm Not My Father's Son," is one of the most beautiful moments seen in a Broadway musical in a good long while, but the joy that comes out of this show at the end of the first act and, especially, at the end of the second act, you can feel the audience... Well, the music is certainly pushing that forward. But I think the investment in the characters is what's bringing it to that height, where you can't deny it, because you have invested in these people. And that's what I love about the show; is you take the journey with them. I really do think you do. I mean, when I think back to Hairspray and working on that show and the collaboration and what we created and how we created it there's a lot of similarities going on with Kinky Boots - not with just the show itself, but with the way the audiences are responding to it. Nobody's running up the aisle to get to their train or get to their car. They don't leave! They're standing up, cheering, dancing and singing with Don and Trish and Charlie and Lola and they don't want to leave the theater until those people leave the stage! That's sort of a magical moment. And then, when they do walk out of the theater, you know, they're all abuzz. That's the kind of joy you're speaking of that is rare in a musical.

You've really invested in this odd couple that over the course of the evening and it's not just fathers and sons; it's about what it is to be a man. That seems to be very much at the core of this. And not just Charlie and Lola. Don, too. I think Don speaks to a lot of men in the audience, on a very visceral level. And women too, actually, who have husbands like Don. One of the things I've been surprised at - certainly in Chicago - was older people coming with younger kids. There were a lot of younger kids, teenage boys/girls. And I was like, "wow, that's kind of surprising." I didn't expect it, I guess. But that whole idea of accepting someone for who they are, what better lesson to teach to a young person today? That. To see that; to see a man make a change in his life. It's a great thing to see in a musical.

We really should talk about the Angels, because what you've done is you've created this six person chorus. And they are treated as individuals...I love that about them. I love that they're each individual - none of them are alike. They all move well and they all dance well, but that wasn't the priority. It was the personality. It was the person behind all that, because I knew with only six, I had no room to have someone who couldn't be a star on their own. And I was careful not to pick two of the same - I really wanted six different guys up there. And they each get a chance in some way to step out in front and say, "Yeah, that's me."

Tickets to Kinky Boots are available online at www.TPAC.org, by phone at (615) 782-4040, and at the TPAC Box Office, 505 Deaderick Street in downtown Nashville. For group tickets, call (615) 682-4060.

J. Harrison Ghee takes over the role of Lola just in time for its Music City debut next week. Steven Booth (Avenue Q, Glory Days, Dogfight) stars as shoe factory owner Charlie Price. Ghee and Booth are joined by Lindsay Nicole Chambers (Hairspray, Legally Blonde, Lysistrata Jones) as Lauren, Joe Coots (TV's Inside Amy Schumer, Full Monty national tour) as Don, Craig Waletzko (Guys & Dolls, Young Frankenstein) as George, and Grace Stockdale in her touring debut as Nicola.

Rounding out the ensemble are Damien Brett, Stephen Carrasco, Lauren Nicole Chapman, Amelia Cormack, Troi Gaines, Blair Goldberg, Darius Harper, Andrew Theo Johnson, Crystal Kellogg, Jeffrey Kishinevskiy, Jeff Kuhr, Ross Lekites, Patty Lohr, Mike Longo, Tommy Martinez, Kenny Morris, Nick McGough, Bonnie Milligan, Anthony Picarello, Horace V. Rogers, Ricky Schroeder, Anne Tolpegin, Juan Torres-Falcon, Hernando Umana and Sam Zeller.

The design team for Kinky Boots includes Tony Award nominee David Rockwell (Scenic Design), Tony Award winner Gregg Barnes(Costume Design), Tony Award winner Kenneth Posner (Lighting Design), Tony Award winner John Shivers (Sound Design), Josh Marquette(Hair Design), Randy Houston Mercer (Make-up Design), Telsey + Company, Justin Huff, CSA (Casting), Adam Souza (Musical Direction), with Musical Supervision and Arrangements and Orchestrations by Tony and Grammy Award winner Stephen Oremus.

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