Interview: Lee Cusenbary

Having served the SA theatre community in a number of capacities - as an actor, singer, director, producer and a board member of local theatres - Lee Cusenbary is one of the most respected people in San Antonio theatrical circles. In this interview he discusses the year ahead.

QUESTION: Every year you come up with a new show designed to illustrate legal ethics in an entertaining way. Last year you adapted "Spamalot" and hired original backdrops for the show. This year I understand you are adapting "Chicago". How do you go about this - getting rights, sets etc?

LEE CUSENBARY: I often select the show based on the availability of good quality backing tracks for the shows. The publishers of the instrumentals pay for rights to record and sell the music and we pay the publishers. The muslin backdrops are from all over the country. I usually rent backdrops for the Empire since it is such a narrow space with literally no back stage. I usually buy the libretto for a show and spend almost a year rewriting it to make it a parody to avoid any copyright concerns. The challenge is to make it new, reference the original in a parody fashion, include the ethics issues that need to be covered for State Bar Associations to give educational credit, and make it entertaining. I've gotten a lot of help lately from some very creative writers such as Mary Belan Doggett, John Heller and Roland Edmiston. They are very funny writers and attorneys.

QUESTION: You demonstrate extraordinary inventiveness in the way you inject your legal ethics theme into these shows. Have you thought about creating an original show on a different theme?

LEE CUSENBARY: Yes, I have. A few years ago, I wrote a three hour musical based on a short time period in England when King Charles II was losing control of the Kingdom and was then beheaded. It is very dramatic and dark and based on books about the exciting time period that led to many English escaping to America. The musical is called Lament -The Musical. I wrote it with New York musician and arranger, Philip Close. He's an amazing talent. He composed almost all the music and I wrote the book and lyrics. It took us three years to complete and was a really great experience. What made it sort of unbelievable, it was all done on line. We've never actually met in person. We met in a songwriting guild online while writing and recording songs with a group of about 30 other musicians all around the world.

QUESTION: It seems to be that your take on ethics could easily be adapted to the world of politics, without taking a partisan position. Good faith and ethical conduct transcend party politics, and there seems to be a crying need for better ethical conduct in politics. What are your views on this?

LEE CUSENBARY: I agree that ethics in politics is an area that is a vacuum to be filled with good solid codes of conduct. In our last show, Scamalot (based on Spamalot), we did a scene on the Judges Who Say NO!, which was my commentary on judges having to run for office. In Texas, judges have to select a political party before they put up any yard sign to campaign. The system is broken since people vote for judges based on their last name or their photo. They have no idea if they are a crook or a saint.

QUESTION: What are your hopes and plans for the future?

LEE CUSENBARY: I've had the good fortune to write and direct shows that I care about for theatres like the Playhouse, The Empire, The Majestic and The Tobin Center over the past ten years. I feel very fortunate for my family and our extended theatre family here and around the country. I plan on continuing to write shows and donating the money we raise to charities to help people less fortunate that I've been. The 2015 show I wrote, produced and directed at The Tobin Center raised $111,000 for The Bexar County Family Justice Program. And my original script was produced with an amazing cast and crew which was personally very satisfying. It was also the first original musical script to be performed at The Tobin, which also made me feel great. If I can keep putting together shows that people want to see, I'll be really happy.

QUESTION: Can you see any possibility of a musical producing theatre in San Antonio dedicated to the production of original works, which can then go on tour and to Broadway? San Antonio is now the seventh largest city in the USA and is considerably larger than a number of cities that have such theatres. What are your views?

LEE CUSENBARY: The Playhouse San Antonio is doing original works in the smaller Cellar Theatre and would like to produce original musicals at some point in the near future, according to Playhouse interim CEO Mia Migliaccio. San Antonio has a large population, but not a large theatre-going population. To produce a musical that no one has heard of takes a lot of support from donors since the theatre will not sell out like it does with known works. However, San Antonio is changing in this regard because The Playhouse has very good houses for an original play on the main stage which was an adaptation of A Christmas Carol by locals Tony Ciaravino and Tim Hedgepeth. I was pleased to see a good turnout for the shows. San Antonio is on a path for having better and more original theatre like our fellow Texas cities of Dallas, Houston and Austin. It will just take some patience as theatre finds its way into the new generation of theatregoers that are discovering the joys and importance of live theatre.

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