Interview: THE LION's Benjamin Scheuer Takes His Pride on the Road

We all have stories; they are the stuff of which our lives are made. The Lion's Benjamin Scheuer, has stories, beautiful stories; but he also has unique gifts of music, poetry and art with which to tell them. When Benjamin set out to tell this particular story, about a dad, sons and brothers, mothers and family, music, loss, love, illness, mortality and what it means to continue growing up throughout a life, it was his guitar and his music that led the way.

Benjamin and I talked over smoothies at a Logan Circle coffee shop, an appropriate venue to discuss a show and music that Benjamin originally thought was just a "coffee shop gig with slightly better talking." Now, that coffee shop gig has gone from a little cub to The Lion, Benjamin's award winning solo show, currently touring the US after a sold out NYC run in 2015. DC audiences are meeting Benjamin and his music at Arena Stage through April 10 '16. If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, availability is limited, but Arena has added extra seats to the Kogod Cradle to accommodate slightly larger audiences.

Getting to the life of The Lion beyond the coffee shop gig vision, really began in January '13 at the venerable Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, CT, at which a residential community exists that is associated with the theater, where artists can go to work, create, develop. It was there that Benjamin met Sean Daniels, an established director who would end up helping Benjamin take his seedling of a show and grow it into a metaphorical tree of a production. It started with a few songs, and a Saturday evening salon at Goodspeed, at which Benjamin met Steve Stetler, Producing Artistic Director of Vermont's Weston Playhouse, who invited him to come to Weston in April of that year, bring a director and create a full show. Sean Daniels became that director and his style was just what Benjamin needed, offering to be Benjamin's "guide, dramaturg, cheerleader, psychologist, breakfast maker, hiking partner and best friend," and according to Benjamin "he became all of those things."

The first version of the show, called The Bridge (the songs on that recording were done with his band Escapist Papers; you can download the songs from The Bridge for free here), was performed at the 2013 Edinburgh Film Festival, with one chair, one vocal mic and one guitar (now there are several more chairs, vocal and guitar mics and six guitars for a more seamless performance), and it was there that a critical part of what became The Lion was added. "Dad has to sing before he dies," Sean told Benjamin after the final dress rehearsal in Edinburgh. Benjamin agreed. By the next morning, after writing all night, "Weather the Storm" was born (and was followed thereafter by another "Dad" song, "Three Little Cubs," now also a part of The Lion).

And of the six guitars that now costar with Benjamin (plus one "understudy" guitar, on stage for broken string emergencies), one was custom made for him for the show by Froggy Bottom, a Vermont company that makes only 65 guitars a year. "It's extraordinary; an Adirondack Spruce top with walnut back and sides. There are two Froggy Bottom guitars on stage, and each has a little lion painted on the neck heel. Best new guitars I've ever played." says Benjamin.

So that may be how the show started, but the story started long before, when Benjamin was a young boy enamored of his father's guitar playing, and asked his dad to teach him how to play. HIs father created a makeshift banjo out of a cookie tin and rubber bands, and so a young boy discovered his music, and ultimately, his soul. The pain of losing his dad at fourteen, and searching for a way to integrate the loss, while caring for his brothers, took Benjamin down a rocky path. His brothers were also musical, and for a time, they played music together, but in the end, Benjamin separated himself from his mother and brothers, stopped playing music, met a girl who found the music in him again, fell in love, lost his love, got cancer, returned to his family and, the music has kept him whole. And as Benjamin stresses, the show The Lion is just one way of telling this story, and one musical journey, out of many.

To illustrate the point, Benjamin takes a book out of his bag and shows me another version of the story, Between Two Spaces, a collection of photographs of him taken during chemotherapy and after, accompanied by text from the journal Benjamin kept during his illness. The photographs are by acclaimed photographer Riya Lerner of the International Center of Photography in NYC, and came about because the oncologist had told him that "when you go through the chemo, you're going to look worse on the outside as you get better on the inside." A light bulb went off for Benjamin: "What a fascinating visual contradiction, I thought, what a paradox ripe for the mining," he says. So he called Riya and they made the book, with 50% of the proceeds going to the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society (it is available in the Arena Stage lobby).

"More than just the book," Benjamin says, "Riya taught me about photography and about art, and I realized that what makes a good photo makes a good song; there's harmony and dissonance, and you're doing away with all the extraneous clutter. It may seem as if you're writing about one thing, but you're actually writing about another."

Theater is about story telling, but so is literature, and music and film. And Benjamin is quick to point out how fortunate he's been to work with the incredible talents who have helped him tell this story in several different ways. It's his story, but as he says, "The book is Riya's version of the story; the music videos for the song "The Lion," along with the videos for "Cookie Tin Banjo," "Weather the Storm" (soon to be released) and a fourth video for the song "Cure," are very brilliant director/animator Peter Baynton's version of the story, the stage show is director Sean Daniels' version of the story, and the record is music producer Geoff Kraly's version; and when it comes to making a record, we want to make a record that works well as a record, not just a recording of the show."

Having grown The Lion in a musical theater environment, Benjamin is emphatic about one thing; "I want to be clear, for audiences and young creators alike, musical theater is not a genre-it's a methodolgy. It's a way to tell a story, and it can be any kind of music you want; a musical should sound like anything you want it to sound like. There's no reason a musical shouldn't sound like Nine Inch Nails as much as it sounds like Frank Loesser."

And that's the goal, says Benjamin, "my intention is to build a career and a community that will last fifty or sixty years, and I hope to reach a lot of different people through a lot of different stuff." Compare the reach of online music videos (Cookie Tin Banjo was a finalist for a British Animation Award, and Weather the Storm won the BAA's Public Choice Award last Thursday night) to the intimate aspect of a 250-seat theater, he notes. He has toured the UK with Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Lion will tour until March '17, the record of the songs from the show is in the works, and, Benjamin reveals, there are plans for another "Ben."

That's right, The Lion may continue to roam with another actor telling Benjamin's story, and singing his songs. Benjamin and the producers are, as he puts it, "genuinely open minded. It doesn't have to be a guy in his 20s or 30s...it could be a woman, it could be anyone; we know they're acting, telling a story, lying to us. We give them permission to do that when we go to the theater." And this literal re-casting of Ben does something else to the show, that may be obvious, but may not. If someone other than Benjamin Scheuer is telling us this story about battling cancer, unlike when we hear it from Benjamin, we the audience don't know the outcome of that battle. In other words, there's a drama built in, that for right now, Benjamin himself must create on stage while clearly still alive and well.

Are you thinking "could I be Ben?" Well, I'll let Benjamin give you Director Sean Daniel's character description to consider: "The character of Ben is honest, charming and straightforward. Ben is able to communicate the events of the story like one friend would tell another in a kitchen, not overly performative, but clear in terms of intent without over emphasizing and character without doing voices. The performance is like good hair, it should look perfect and also like you're not trying." Oh, and an important addendum from the show's producer, make sure you're "an acoustic guitar virtuoso."

So, anyone can audition, but here's how the auditions will go: the hopefuls will learn to play and sing "Cookie Tin Banjo". "It is HARD," says Benjamin with feeling, "it's hard. The guitar is tuned to a nontraditional, alternate tuning, turned from the low strings to the high strings...and the opening riff took me two weeks to learn."

Speaking of songs, what's Benjamin's favorite song from The Lion? "I'm really loving "Weather the Storm" right now; and "Golden Castle Town," which is about Tuscany, a place I love." And if Benjamin could be anywhere other than doing this interview? No hesitation: Tuscany, where, he says, "I would be making pasta and looking out over the sea. But for now, it's off to another coffee shop to write new songs." New songs! Aren't we lucky, I think; and then I notice that, as we leave this first coffee shop of Benjamin's day, Katy Perry is singing "you're going to hear me roar," in the background. Coincidence? Maybe, but I think Benjamin would agree with the sentiment.

Find out more about the show at http://thelionmusical.com/#home

Get tickets for Arena Stage performances at http://tickets.arenastage.org/single/PSDetail.aspx?psn=20765

Watch the video for "Cookie Tin Banjo" (and keep your eyes out for "Weather the Storm" being released in the next week or so):

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