Randye Kaye: If you know Broadway, you know Susan Stroman. She is a legendary, five-time Tony, award-winning director, choreographer, Susan Stroman, The Producers, Crazy for You, More More More More. Known to Broadway insiders as just Stro, and she's just given me permission to call her that. I'm very excited. She's bringing Broadway to Long Island at the Cinema Arts Center in Huntington on Friday, January 23. And if you go that night, you're going to see clips from her shows and her amazing career, with commentary on her life and process with Jud Newborn, who's a two-time Emmy Award winner, as the host. Welcome Stro. So nice to meet you.
Susan Stroman: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you for having me
RK: My pleasure. I'm going to ask you about your childhood first, because I know from my research that you were exposed to show tunes by your salesman father, who played piano. Can you say more about that and how that inspired you?
SS: Yes, I was very lucky that I was born into a household filled with music. My father was a wonderful piano player. He would play the piano all day, you know, around the house. And I was that little girl who would dance around the living room to her father, playing the piano and creating to the music as he played. He also told big fish stories. To this day, I don't know if they're true or not, you know? So it was that combination of storytelling and music that I think opened up all these ideas to being a storyteller through dance and music for the theater.
RK: Are you an only child? Or do you have siblings?
SS: Oh, sadly, I lost my brother during the pandemic, but I had an older brother, and I have a younger sister. My older brother was also quite an accomplished piano player. So, you know, music was always there and it was always a big deal if a movie musical came on television, everything would stop and tdinner trays would come out and everyone would watch whatever it was Bandwagon, or what, whatever great movie it was. And I think they instilled the importance of musical theater in me through though the movie musicals, because that's what we watched on TV.
RK: We waited for Peter Pan with Mary Martin to come on TV like, yes, that was important. Every year it was I couldn't wait. So you've shared where your interest began. But what were the next steps to turning this interest in the arts and storytelling into something that you could actually make a living at?
SS: Well, in Delaware, I would do the community theaters there, and I was, I've been in a dancing school since I was about five years old, but also took piano lessons, guitar lessons, and music lessons, and anything I could get my hands on that had anything to do with the theater. And I graduated from the University of Delaware, but I graduated with an English major and for literature,
RK: Okay, very useful.
SS: Very useful. I came to New York one day to see what an audition was like. It was right out of college. And I came up with a few friends, and I didn't even know what I was doing, but I went into an audition for the Goodspeed Opera House. They were doing a show called Hit the Deck, and they chose two girls, and I was one of those girls that they chose to go. So I had, I went back home and told my mom and dad that I got something called an Equity card, and I'm going to go to Goodspeed in Connecticut and then New York, and that was it. And, you know, so I was very, very, very lucky.
RK: Well, you must have been very, very good, also, to be fair.
SS: Well, what I wanted to create for the theater, even in Delaware and in small venues, I would be the choreographer. I'd be creating the shows. But I came to New York as a song and dance gal because I could sing and dance. I could make a living, but it was always to try to get on the other side of the table. So I do know how lucky I am and how grateful I am that my I have become a director and choreographer, because that was indeed what I always intended to do.
RK: Really!
SS: Oh yes. There's nothing greater for me than to be in the back of the theater and see something I've created that moves an audience. Whether it makes them laugh, or whether it makes them put their arms around each other, and whether it makes them cry. There's something so fulfilling to me to see something I've done, to connect emotionally with an audience that I could never get for as a performer.
RK: Wow. So I didn't realize that, because I know, like many performers, you kind of go to dance captain and you kind of move your way. But I never realized that was your goal beforehand. So I think you first came to the average theater goers onto their radar through The Producers, I would say. And at that time, was it unusual for a woman to step into the role that you were doing, and what kind of atmosphere did you and Mel Brooks work together to create in that whole rehearsal process, which had to be insane.
SS: Well,to go back a little bit, I created an Off Broadway show with my friend Scott Ellis and David Thompson called And the World Goes ‘Round. And it was Kander and Ebb , and we got very close with Kander and Ebb and ended up doing Steel Pier and Scottsboro Boys, and they're just becoming very good friends with them. So that was sort of the first thing, but it was really a producer named Michael David asked me to direct and choreograph a big revival of The Music Man. And that was sort of the first thing that that was out there in a big way, but going back once, a little bit further back, Crazy for You. It's hard for a choreographer, too to know if that choreographer is going to be good for you to hire if you don't have a show up. And I was very, again, very lucky that I had And The World Goes ‘Round up, and I had Liza Radio, City Music Hall, and the director and the producer thought that the combination of the comedy of the World Goes ‘Round and the extravaganza of Liza would be a great thing for Crazy for You. And so I got that job, and that was my very first Tony Award. But then it was the moving into the directing and choreographing, was The Music Man, which was the first Broadway show I did, but Mel Brooks, you know, who was meant to write a musical. If you think of all his movies, he takes a nod to music in every movie, whether it's, you know, writing a song called I'm tired or Springtime for Hitler or dancing with Ann Bancroft, in To Be, Or Not To Be. He loved it so much. And I think people for years had tried to get him to do a musical, and he wasn't ready. And finally, it was really Ann that said to him, why don't you do this? So then it was to find someone that could help him make this or turn this into a musical. Because a musical is very much a different animal than a screenplay.
RK: Yes.
SS: And so we started with just the screenplay, but he was amazing to work with. Mel. He was unbelievably respectful, for one thing. And I'm respectful of the art form of a musical, because it is, again, very different from making a movie. And he would, as we would work on it, become these different characters. We'd be in my living room, and he would become Max Bialystock. Or he would become Leo Bloom, or he'd even become Ula. And everybody would be writing down everything that he said. You know, but also his music talent, you know, he has perfect pitch. These songs would just sort of pour out of him as he would be in these characters, which I thought was amazing, because that's how he would come to write the music. He would become these people. And so it'll always remain as one of the most amazing processes of creating a musical for me.
RK: So interesting. I've read his memoir, and I know it's a legal pad and writing lyrics. And Ann was like, the music will come. You could do this. You can do this. So my final question is not because I don't want to talk to you for an hour, because I do. But my final question would be, for all the wannabe Broadway stars in our listening area, what advice would you give them for future success in theater?
RK: Well, you know, it's depending if you want to be a performer. Of course, you have to keep studying and studying and studying. Moving more intoward towards directing and choreography. I think, as our dear friend Lin-Manuel says, get in the room where it happens. If you can get in that room and observe a choreographer, observe a director, and understand what it does to take on a giant musical and to mount it. I tell you, it's a miracle a musical gets on. So if you are a young person who's wanting to be on that side of the table, it's getting in the room where it happens.
RK: Stroh, thank you so much for joining us.
SS: Thank you for having me, Randy. It was wonderful. Thank you so much.
