BLOODY, BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON, BUKOWSICAL and More Highlight New Line's 2012-13 Season

New Line Theatre, "the bad boy of musical theatre," has secured the rights to three premieres for its 22nd season of alternative, adult musical theatre -- the outrageous emo rock musical BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON, running Sept. 27-Oct. 20, 2012; the powerhouse Pulitzer Prize-winning rock opera NEXT TO NORMAL, running Feb. 28-March 23, 2013; and the hilariously dark, adult musical comedy BUKOWSICAL, running May 30-June 22, 2013.

The season opens in the fall, Sept. 27-Oct. 20, 2012, with the St. Louis premiere of BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON, the audacious, hard-rocking mix of historical fact and fiction, redefining America's controversial seventh president, the man who invented the Democratic Party, drove the Native Americans west (the ones he didn't slaughter), and ultimately doubled the size of our nation. Written by Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman, with a rowdy blend of outrageous comedy, anarchic theatricality and an infectious emo rock score, the show overflows with insightful, comic parallels to our dysfunctional American politics today, right from the aggressive opening number, "Populism, Yea Yea!"

New Line has assembled an all-star cast of veteran New Liners, including John Sparger (Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Johnny Appleweed, Evita) as Jackson, with D. Mike Bauer, Stephanie Brown, Brian Claussen, Mike Dowdy, Zachary Allen Farmer, Amy Kelly, Nicholas Kelly, Todd Micali, Taylor Pietz, Sarah Porter, BC Stands, and Chrissy Young. Almost half this cast also appeared in last season's critically acclaimed monster hits Cry-Baby and High Fidelity. Scott Miller directs Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Justin Smolik leads the New Line Band. Amy Kelly will design costumes, with Kenneth Zinkl designing lighting, Scott L. Schoonover designing the set, and Donald Smith designing sound.

The Public Theatre’s artistic director Oskar Eustis wrote about the show in the cast album liner notes, "I think Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is an experiment appropriate for our times. It may be about our seventh president, but it tackles the core of American populism – that ebullient, sentimental, no-nonsense, self-pitying, anti-intellectual, rowdy energy that is at the core of our national identity – with a precision and wit that speaks totally to our moment. The show invokes reactionary pleasures in order to savagely criticize them. It is a dangerous game, but Friedman and Timbers play it brilliantly. This is who we are, and if it’s horrifying, it can also be a lot of fun. What a contradiction, America. . . Who says political theatre can't rock?"

For more information about the show, visit http://www.newlinetheatre.com/bbajpage.html.

New Line's season continues Feb. 28-March 23, 2013 with the first St. Louis production of the powerful, thrilling rock opera NEXT TO NORMAL, winner of the Tony Award for best score and the Pulitzer Prize for drama. From the composer of High Fidelity comes the most adult, most mature rock musical to hit Broadway in decades, an unrelentingly intense, brutally honest – and often, darkly funny – story about a bipolar woman and the family that grapples with her illness, all set to a hard driving rock and roll score that explodes with raw, searing emotion.

With a searing, ground-breaking rock score, this is an emotional powerhouse of a musical about a family trying to take care of themselves and each other in the midst of one woman's fierce battle with bipolar disorder. It's one of the most emotional, most intense musicals in years.

The show began its life in 1998 as a ten-minute workshop sketch called Feeling Electric. Writer Brian Yorkey brought the idea to composer Tom Kitt (High Fidelity, Bring It On) while both were at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. Both Yorkey and Kitt moved on to other projects, but they kept returning to their ten-minute piece, eventually expanding it to full-length. This version went through several workshops as the team kept working on it. In September 2005, an abbreviated version of the full-length piece was part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, where it attracted some attention. Second Stage Theatre in New York workshopped the piece in 2006 and 2007, with director Michael Greif (Rent, Peter and the Starcatcher, Jane Eyre, Grey Gardens) at the helm. The show opened off Broadway in 2008, now retitled Next to Normal¸ where it ran about a month. Still it won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Score, and it was nominated for two other Outer Critics Circle Awards (including Best New Off Broadway Musical), three Lucille Lortel Awards, two Drama League Awards, and two Drama Desk Awards. The team kept working. Another new version of the show was then given a regional theatre production at the Arena Stage from November 2008 through January 2009. And finally, the show began previews on Broadway in March 2009, running 754 performances. New Line presents the first St. Louis production of the show.

For more information, visit http://www.newlinetheatre.com/n2npage.html.

New Line closes its seasons May 30-June 22, 2013, with the regional premiere of one of the most outrageous shows the company has ever produced, the wild, rude, and gleefully adult musical comedy BUKOWSICAL, exploring the intersection between sex, drugs, and art. Written by Gary Stockdale and Spencer Green, the show tells the hilariously dark life story of the great Beat writer Charles Bukowski, who drank, drugged, and screwed himself to death. The musical started life as a 50-minute one-act in Los Angeles, was revised and expanded, and then went on to the New York Fringe Festival, where it won the award for Outstanding Musical.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was an American Beat poet, novelist and short story writer. His work focused on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, on the act of writing, on work, on alcohol, and on his terrible relationships with women. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books.

Bukowski was known for the vulgarity of his language and the adult content (usually sexual) of his work. So the hilariously funny and gleefully vulgar BUKOWSICAL tells Bukowski's life story on his terms, the way he'd write a musical, if the inclination had ever struck him, using the all-American conventions of old-school musical comedy ironically, to explore his dark, damaged, decadent life. Along the way, the show also takes a look at how the experiences of an artist's life affect his art, and how that art becomes universal through its truth-telling. New Line presents the first production of this show since its triumph at the Fringe Festival in 2007. This is not a show for the easily offended and it contains very adult language and adult content.

For more information, visit http://www.newlinetheatre.com/bukowsicalpage.html.

New Line Theatre is a professional company dedicated to involving the people of the St. Louis region in the exploration and creation of daring, provocative, socially and politically relevant works of musical theatre. New Line was created back in 1991 at the vanguard of a new wave of nonprofit musical theatre just starting to take hold across the country. New Line has given birth to several world premiere musicals over the years and has brought back to life several shows that did not do well in their original New York productions. Altogether, New Line has produced 65 musicals and 5 concerts of theatre songs since 1991. New Line Theatre was recently given its own entry in the latest edition of the Cambridge Guide to American Theatre. New Line receives funding from the Regional Arts Commission, the Fox Performing Arts Charitable Foundation, and the Missouri Arts Council. For more about New Line, go to www.newlinetheatre.com/contact.html.

Tickets for the 2012-2013 season are on sale now. For other information, including audition details, visit New Line Theatre's full-service website at www.newlinetheatre.com. All programs are subject to change.

 

 

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