Nashville Notes: Interview with Randi Michaels Block

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                                We invite you to take a journey with Nashville playwright, composer and lyricist, Randi Michaels Block and her awesome new musical Guess Who's Coming to Seder? I was honored to run the auditions for the first reading that took place last fall at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater (www.darkhorsetheater.com). In 32 years of working on script showcases, I have never seen anything like the turnout for that, the 130 seat house so full for both performances, that people were sitting on the steps,  and the brilliant work by our home team actors brought audiences to their feet two nights in a row. It really doesn't surprise me that the show is set to open in Tulsa in May, with Ted Swindley continuing on board as director.

Nor does it surprise me that The York Theatre in NYC has invited her to do a reading on March 21. And in the spirit of   cyberspace, Randi has started a kickstarter campaign which I hope you will all check out at the end of her interview.  If you like what she says, kick in a few bucks and become part of the New-Age way to make the arts happen.

Interview with Randi Michaels  Block 

What role did theatre and the arts play in yourchildhood and upbringing?

I was very fortunate to grow up in a home filled with music and fine art. My mother, a talented sculptor and painter, played opera and classical music on our stereo and would quickly hush me if I’d attempt to talk to her while she was lying on the couch, soaking up the sounds of “The Roberts” (Merrill or Goulet), or Pavarotti. My father was a huge big band enthusiast, sharing his stereo time with Duke Ellington and Count Basie. He disliked opera; she disliked big bands. I can’t say that I enjoyed or understood their music then, but I know now that I was lucky to have been raised with both. Also, living on Long Island made it convenient to drive me and my brother into Manhattan to see Broadway shows and movies   several times each year. I can remember singing so many of those great songs in the car on the way home from shows like Oklahoma, Annie Get Your Gun, Funny Girl, Hello, Dolly! The King & I, Gypsy and Fiddler on the Roof. Their amazing, indelible melodies were easy for me to remember and imitate, even at five years old; and I did so incessantly… much to the dismay of my older brother. 

Tell us about your own evolution as an artist.

I have to honestly say that I’ve probably taken the most circuitous route possible to finally be writing for theatre at this point in my life. And I think it’s interesting that this New Yorker living in Nashville, has written a musical that’s now   bringing her back home. Way back, when I was six years old (I know, you’reprobably saying “Oy Vey!” How long is this going to take?...but keep reading,it gets better…), I played the lead role of the princess in my summer camp’s musical production of The Frog Prince. I still remember the standing ovation from the campers, counselors and my proud(and surprised) parents. But, despite my young and enthusiastic proclivity for acting and singing, I don’t think they truly realized how important and relevant it made me feel. My brother was trained to be an operatic soprano as a child, paid to sing at weddings and bar mitzvahs by the time he was eleven. He was three years older and considered “the talented one” in our family. I had no idea I had any talent whatsoever, and neither did anyone else.  When I was eight, I began piano lessons, but the cheap cologne emanating from my teacher’s crusty old leisure suit would regularly make me gasp for air every time his bright red toupee eagerly flipped forward off of his head when he bent over to pull a different piece of sheet music from his briefcase. I can only suppose that’s why I never took my lessons very seriously. I then began playing cello in 4th grade and progressedquickly. I adored my teacher Mr.Vance, who taught me to appreciate the warm sounds of that instrument, but at thirteen, I fell madly in love with my brother’s acoustic guitar and dropped the cello like a bad habit. The guitar was so much “cooler.”  Fortunately, that was the key that would finally unlock my hidden artist’s voice. I taught myself how to play and devoted that year to rewriting the lyrics to every song on Carole King’s Tapestry. I then started composing my own songs, pouring my heart out in teenage angst-ridden ballads and dedicating them  to the soldiers of the Vietnam War, or the cruel and immature boys of the 7th grade. Then came my second brush with theatre. At fourteen, I was cast as “The Acid   Queen” in Tommy in my last year at sleep-away camp and realized I could belt Rock. By the time I was 16, I was playing my original songs as a solo artist in various bars and cafes all over Long Island. My parents had just gotten divorced when I formed my first original rock band “Taffeta Rainbow.” I knew then that singing and songwriting would be my life’s passion. In my early 20’s, I moved into Manhattan and supported myself singing on demos, records, jingles and gigs with various bands. I spent two years recording my original solo project at the Record Plant Recording Studio and came very close to signing a deal with Atlantic Records. At 25, another brush with theatre had me cast as a schizophrenic, Gospel-singing bag lady in Hayden Wayne’s  staged reading of Neon ~ A Rock Opera at Nola Studios in NYC. Again, I absolutely loved it, so I spent the next six months studying acting with William Hickey at HB Studios. But alas, my career in theatre was not yet meant to be. Two days before my 28th birthday, I was called to sub as a backup vocalist with Buster Poindexter (“Hot, Hot, Hot”) at his concert in Baltimore, and 48 hours later I joined hisworld tour, performing on "The Johnny Carson Show," "Late Night with David Letterman," "The World Music Video Awards" and more. I also arranged a choir to sing with Gloria Estefan at Madison Square Garden that year.  They were all great experiences and Europe was a blast, but after two years on the road, I realized the life of a gypsy wasn’t for me and I desperately missed writing songs. In the late eighties and early nineties, NYC was saturated with punk and rap and I was still madly in love with meaningful lyrics and beautiful melodies. I had a hard time finding a publishing company or label that had any interest in signing me, or the songs I was writing. In 1992, a good friend had just moved to Nashville and convinced me that it was songwriting heaven. I honestly knew very   little about country music but I packed  my guitar, my cat, a couple of suitcases and a futon into a red Ford rental car and took off for Music City, and amazingly signed my first publishing deal within nine months. I became friends with several women who were all songwriters and one day, I got the idea to write a musical about our lives. I wrote   down my notes and character descriptions on file cards but had no idea what to do next. I was still very wrapped up in the music business. So, I tucked them away in an old, dusty journal and promised myself I’d revisit them someday.  In 1998, after losing my mother, my grandmother and my dog, in addition to going through a bitter divorce all in one year, I moved (i.e. ran away) to Boulder, Colorado, where I opened an art center called “The Center For Creative Expression” and hired 30 teachers to teach every art form imaginable including Acting Improvisation. That’s where I hosted a Boulder Vagina Monologues writing symposium for women to write and perform their own personal vagina monologues. It was a fantastic experience and I was touched by the magic and magnificence of theatre once again. In 2004, I returned to Nashville and got back to writingfull-time. I also took a job booking and producing a songwriting festival called Tin Pan South and then "Legends & Lyrics" for PBS. Never having had a desk job before made me feel like a fish in a barn, but the steady paycheck and health insurance were a welcome change. In 2006, my father, with whom I was very close,  passed away. Three weeks later, I reluctantly attended a dinner party in Nashville and met a New York playwright who was visiting a mutual friend. After ingesting just enough alcohol to silence my inner editor, I entrusted him with my idea for the show I had begun writing on those index cards thirteen years earlier. He loved my idea and said he wanted to write it with me. I was thrilled and for the next three years, we co-wrote   Secrets of Songwriting over the phone, twice a week. The show was featured at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center Festival in 2008 and 2009, and AMAS Theater produced three staged readings at Ripley Grier Studios in NYC in 2009. I wish I could say that show was still alive and well, but for reasons I’d rather not discuss, let’s just say…it’s sleeping. Believing in silver linings has gotten me through several tough challenges in my life, so I have to say I’m truly grateful for that particularly difficult education as I gained the tools I needed to write the book, music and lyrics for my current show, Guess Who’s Coming to Seder? which garnered a nomination for the 2010 Fred Ebb Award. Soon   after that, I was blessed to meet Ted Swindley (creator and director of Always…Patsy Cline), who is now my fabulous director. We had two staged readings at The Darkhorse Theater in Nashville; both shows were   standing room only with standing O’s. Now we’re preparing for a staged reading in NYC at The York Theater on March 21st, and a fully produced two-week run inOklahoma at The Tulsa Project Theater, which opens on May 4,2012.

What inspired you to write Guess Who’s Coming to Seder? and what was your journey like as you developed the script &  songs? 

Guess Who’s Coming to Seder” was conceived at an actual Seder I had at my home in 2010. I’m a very liberal Jewish woman and my boyfriend is a very liberal Catholic. Neither of us practices any sort of religious lifestyle, but after losing both of my parents, I felt something was missing in my life…a part of my past. So I decided to have a Passover Seder for a few of our close friends. All of my Jewish friends had their own Seders to go to, so the ones who came, were not. As the evening progressed and the wine flowed, the creative juices of my very talented songwriting brethren began overflowing with hysterically funny and irreverent stories, comments and limericks. I   couldn’t decide if I thought it was disrespectful at the time, simply because I was laughing too hard. They all knew about my frustration and disappointment with what was happening with my first show, and suddenly, one of them pronounced,“OMG!! This should be your next musical!!” At the time, I completely disregarded that idea, mostly because I was overly concerned about disrespecting my family and heritage with all of the craziness at the table. About two months later, after Secrets of Songwriting completely blew up, I decided to give the Passover idea a second thought.  The music and lyrics started pouring out of me like Niagara Falls and I couldn’t have stopped them if I tried. I didn’t leave the piano or the computer for a month and nobody saw me except formy boyfriend and a few generous friends who were kind enough to sing demos in my bathroom or play piano or guitar on a song while I engineered on Garageband. I forgot to eat, I forgot to shower and I didn’t tweeze my eyebrows for a month. I was too   busy channeling my dead relatives. But when those four weeks were over, I had the songs I needed to submit to the Fred Ebb Award, and four months later, I got the call that I was a finalist.  I thought they had  dialed the wrong number. As my writing progressed, the story grew clearer, the characters came alive and their voices kept me awake at night.    It felt like I was going crazy but I’ve never been so focused in my life. As the show developed, I was still afraid of being too irreverent and asked several conservative Jewish and non-Jewish friends to read my various drafts along the way. I was gratefulthat all were complimentary and no one was insulted. Ted would meet with me once or twice a month and keep me on track. One day he said, “Let’s schedule a reading so you’ll have to finish it sooner, rather than   later.” So we booked the Darkhorse Theater in Nashville and there was no turning back. I had one more month to finish the book, music and lyrics. That would make it almost fourteen months from when I began. When we did the readings at The Darkhorse in August 2011, I was totally amazed at the sensationally positive response from   the audience. I had wanted to write a show that might make people laugh, and maybe even make them think. I could never have imagined that theywould also cry and even tell me that it changed their lives.

What are your thoughts on Nashville as a theatre town?

Before I met Ted Swindley, I was completely involved in the songwriting community and didn’t know much about the theatre world here. I had been to a few shows, but I foolishly compared everything to Broadway. I realize now how unfair and ridiculous that was. The cast we found for the readings of Guess Who’s Coming to Seder? was as talented as the cast we found for the readings of Secrets of Songwriting in New York. There’s a lot of theatrical talent in this town, but I never knew it existed. Now I see as much theatre as I can and I’m enjoying it immensely. I just wish more people took advantage of the talent, accessibility and affordability that the Nashville theatre world offers.

For more information about Guess Who's Coming to   Seder? please visit:  

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1018344497/guess-whos-coming-to-seder-a-delicious-new-musical