Note: The transcript has been edited for clarity.
Sieber: What are viewers going to see when they attend this musical?
Rhodes: Well, the musical is based on A Death in the Family, written by James Agee, and this musical is about a man later in life needing to go back and investigate the time of his life, when as a child, he lost his father, and that grief has sort of pulled into the future, and he needs to go back and unpack it. And so the story unfolds where this author is, going back and going through meeting his family again, going through that time and going through that period. And you meet a lot of characters along the way, and there's beautiful music. But really, in the end of this whole investigation, is a beautiful sort of reckoning with who his family was and who he is, and a great respect for the people who raised him. And it's very uplifting. It's a really beautiful, beautiful piece.
Sieber: How long have you been a choreographer and director? I understand choreography came first.
Rhodes: Yes, yeah, I was a choreographer for many years. I started, actually, as an assistant and associate choreographer to Broadway director choreographers. I was with Casey Nicholaw for a while, and we worked on The Drowsy Chaperone. And then I started to get work on my own as a choreographer, and I started working in the regions. And then I started to do new musicals. And then I choreographed four Broadway musicals. And I guess it was my last Broadway musical that I did as a choreographer, Bright Star. For some reason, that particular piece, written by Steve Martin and Edie Brikell, directed by Walter Bobby, was a piece that, for some reason, with the movement and the staging made people notice me more as a director. And instantly after that production, I started getting jobs as a director. So I don't know. It's just one of those pieces that, for some reason, that made people sort of take notice and I started to work as a director from then on out.
Sieber: And did you want to be a director? Was that on your radar?
Rhodes: Oh sure, yeah, it was on my radar. But I'm also okay with sort of circling something for a while. I certainly love being a choreographer, and I love the collaboration of working with other people. I think great work happens when you collaborate. So in no way do I want my ego to hold me back from being in a room with multiple people and everyone's sort of opinion mattering, having an opinion that matters that doesn't scare me. But there was something about, you know, sometimes needing to helm my own piece with my own vision and point of view that was sort of tempting. And then once I had a little bit of success with it, I thought, “Okay, well, I guess this is where I'm supposed to be”. And interesting, I sort of had been directing, and Frank Galati asked me to choreograph Knoxville, and said “Would you be interested in just being the choreographer?” and I said, “Yes,” because it's Frank Gulati. For those of you don't know, Frank Galati is one of the greats of American theater. Came from Steppenwolf Theater. He directed and wrote Grapes of Wrath, which won a Tony Award for writing it and directing it. [He] was also just a real man of words and letters and incredibly intelligent human. Talk about someone to learn from by being in the room with them. I was so thrilled to work with Frank, and we did the first production of Knoxville together as a collaboration with him as the director and me as the choreographer. And then our dear, dear Frank Galati passed, and he asked me to take over after his sad death. But here I am trying to keep Frank's legacy going with joy and happiness, that I get to be a part of it.
Sieber: I'm glad you touched on Mr. Galati, I understand that we was a very important asset to the show.
Rhodes: We are here because of Frank. Frank loved James Agee's novel. He he was, he sort of had an obsession with this book. He did an adaptation of his own as a play, and thought, “Well, maybe I'll do my own adaptation of it.”But then he thought something was missing, and so he went to Lynn Ahrens and Steven Flaherty, who they, after their brilliant collaboration on Ragtime, went to them and said, “I believe there's music in this.” And they took the material, and I guess the story goes that he sent this to them, and they didn't respond, necessarily. They didn't really say anything. And then all of a sudden, after I don't know, maybe, maybe three, four months, all of a sudden, a package came to his door with recordings of the music. And it was he said, it was like a gift from heaven that his… lovely collaborators actually said “yes”, one and then went to work and probably three, that it worked, and that the play needed music. Because that's always the hard thing with adapting something, where is the music going to be? Does it need music? And they showed and they displayed through their first drafts of everything that the play does need music and it actually is worth adapting.
Sieber: How is this show different from other shows that you've directed?
Rhodes: Well, I think the show is very complex. There are two stories happening on stage. You have the clear, direct narrative of what we call like kitchen chairs and tables, the the getting ready for breakfast, the tea kettle that needs to be filled, the daily life that James Agee captured so clearly, that is, in some ways on the surface, what happens in some of the scenes in this musical where it really flies is the abstraction that happens around it, which is the interior architecture of the characters minds. And you bring that out with music. And so what the challenge and interest that I have as a director for this piece is trying to help the audience along with these abstractions, so you have the one level of just the clear narrative, the simple simple narrative that James ag gave us, but then also allowing an abstraction for these characters to sing and to let us inside their hearts and their minds and their neuroses, their fears and their passions. But you hear that in the music, but it's not necessarily happening in the scene. In some ways, the challenge of this show and the joy of this show and the rehearsal is there's so much unsaid, and it is like a bit of a mystery. We have a lot of discussions with the actors about exactly what they're thinking. A lot of their subtext is thick, but what they might just say to each other is, “Goodbye, you must go.”And all they say is this, but there's a world of pathos underneath these lines, and how do I as a director, to help the audience along with that, so I can show them, I can sort of turn the character upside down and let the audience in. And it's really a fascinating process, and it's really one of those things that we only find out in rehearsal with the actors. And then I go to the lighting designer, and I say, “Okay, at this moment, can we change the lighting so the audience knows that we're abstracting reality, so that we're getting inside their mind.” So it's like, I have to be a bit of a tour guide inside the minds of these characters. And that is a challenge, but it's also delicious. Because it's such rich material, that it's one of those things where you never… this piece, you'll never quite get it as a director and this as the actors like we talk about it, and every night, we discover new things. There's always more to discover, which is why we are all, why we gravitate to great material. And this is great American literature we're translating here. And when you have such lyricism and poetry, it is a meal to take in and you quite -you can't ever really eat it all.
Sieber: What historical research did you have to do for the show?
Rhodes: I think we did a lot of research where it's fun for us to sort of discuss the actual characters. We read about James Agee, we read about the family, we read about Knoxville, and it's so great to be here in Knoxville and actually hear from local people their experience with the legacy of James Agee, and walk the path that these characters walked that plays an important part. And then to a point we have to throw it away, because what we have is what we have on the page, and that's what we have to sort of make work. But I do think something special happens when you dig into the history of a piece, when you understand exactly where they are, why they are who they were, somehow it does paint a deeper texture into the tapestry of the show. So I think that is super important, and we certainly did the most that we could to make sure everybody was knowledgeable about the history of this town, this author and the people in the play.
Sieber: Touching on what you said about hearing from locals. What type of feedback did you receive while directing and choreographing the musical?
Rhodes: We have students, and we have local professionals, and we have an entire creative staff that are local. We have, we have an army of students backstage, running the show, and. So rehearsal was absolutely a collaboration with local people, able to say anything at any time, catch our accents and make sure we're saying things correctly. Because sometimes we were not saying “Chattanooga” quite right. We were like “Chattanooga” and so we were, it was great to have people who were making sure that we were. it's just good to say “In this scene right here, how would he put down this character? How would he say Knoxville? Would he say Knoxville? To taunt her?” And they would say “Yeah, maybe.” The awareness of rural Knoxville versus city Knoxville, like I would never know that if it wasn't for the local talent here helping us through. And it's been fun. And actually, we check in with the locals all the time, and they tell us things and and it's we always know we're on a good path when they're happy
Sieber: When you first choreographed Knoxville. This was when it first debuted in Florida. Now that we are in its second run, what are some changes? Did you have to change the choreography? Were there any lessons that you learned from the first show that you want to implement or improve on in the second show?
Rhodes: Getting a second chance is always great, because what I look at is there were certain things that I choreographed that just worked, that were taught us what the show is, and then you have to be able to look at it with a critical eye and go, “Okay, that worked. So that's your show. Now paint the rest of the piece like that.” And a lot of stuff changed. You know, I realized that the big action through this musical is that we have a character named the author, but it's really James Agee, but we just don't name him. He's in the center of the show. And I realized that the big, singular, simple action, because I think all good pieces sometimes just have one singular action, it's that he can't figure out what to write. He discovers what he could write. At the end, he writes, it's so simple. And of course, it's not that it's a lot deeper than that, but I think you have to be able to figure out what your big action is that pushes the show. So I don't think I staged it very well to express that last time. So this, one of the big changes, is trying to help the audience see the author from the very beginning. I left his table and his typewriter on stage a lot longer than I did before, so that writing was at the center of the piece, and then at the end of the play, the table comes back, and we're back at the typewriter. So the audience goes, “Yeah, that's right. The whole purpose of this was to figure out what to write,” and little things like that were really hard to figure out. So I think this production is much stronger in that I have put the author in the middle of the piece like a detective, and I've staged it clearer for the audience to understand what the real need of this author is, what his need is to hear, to remember. I don't think memory is something that we conjure on our own. I think it's very easy what I did the last time. I'll tell you this, he was a little bit more like the narrator in our time. He just sort of presented everything as if he knew what was next. And then the big shift for me, for this production is the realization that I don't think our memories are necessarily controlled that easily. I think one memory can trigger another, or a smell can trigger something, and as soon as one thing goes, Don't you always, sometimes have that aha moment where you go, “Oh, that's right. I once…” you know, sometimes, if you visit a city, you go, “That's right, I was here,” or “Oh my gosh, I remember. I remember that painful moment in my childhood when I was deeply embarrassed about something,” but you might have forgotten it until something triggers it. So the whole show me allowing it to be staged to where it feels like he's triggered is such a strange word, but being sort of sparked into these memories is just a more active take on the whole show. So I think, as a choreographer, that's one thing. I think I changed from the first production, that I think is probably much, much better.
Sieber: You've choreographed a number of musicals on the biggest stages of the world, Broadway, London's West End. How did you prepare yourself to choreograph Knoxville?
Rhodes: I, for some reason, have had a lot of experience doing musicals with choreography that don't involve dancers. Because I think a lot of times when we think of choreography, we think of like pirouettes and kicks and tap shoes. To me, that isn't just choreography. That's not the only type of choreography, and sometimes people would call it musical staging, but I think musicals sometimes need an expansion of an idea. They need to be elevated somehow, what I sometimes call I have to put parentheses around something so that the audience gets drawn into a physical behavior. So this show is one of those shows. This show needs heightened behavior. It needs musical staging that is definitely north of the floor and not reality, but it also doesn't have to be kicks and turns. And so what I found with what that so the challenge and what I found by having experience in musicals like that, I try to just gently figure out what the general behavior of the scene is, and figure out how I can heighten that with choreographed movement. And I know that sounds odd, but you really do discover what it needs to be like there's a the probably the most dancing that we have is in a song called “Lunchroom of the Night,” where the author is trying to decide if… when his father was coming home from visiting his ill Father, did he pull off into the lunchroom and drink, or did he just go home? Because there's a big question in the play about whether the father was drunk when he had his crash, or was he not, and that's part of the pain of going back, is that you'll never know. But we pose the question in musical form, “Did my father drive by or did he go in?” On the moment he sings the lyric “in,” we take off his hat, and he has this sort of, he becomes free, as if he did go in, and he did answer his guttural need for being around, sort of a darker nightlife for the time. Did he get away from home and sort of think like, “Oh, I just want to spend a couple hours here and maybe have a shot of whiskey and talk to some people who I never get to talk to.” Is that a reality? We don't know. So we put it in dance form. So he sort of breaks out of his chair and has this, this sort of expressive dance that pulls himself out, he goes out of himself, but then the author joins him. And so for me, they look each other in the eye, because I think the author is posing the question, “Am I like you, or am I not?” Because I think especially with alcoholism in the family, I think sometimes you have to wonder whether you're destined to be your father or not. You're probably always looking back at your family for good traits and bad traits as who you are. Now, were they that way? It's the question of, if “I am who I am, can I decide who my parents were?” Is it just a foregone conclusion that we are basically the same, because I come from you. So there is an intensity to that dance where they stare each other down and they look at each other's hands. Because I think hands. I mean, don't you ever look at the way you gesture or the way you move your hands and go, “Oh my gosh, that's my mother. Or I just did that exactly like my father.” I have these moments where they look into each other's eyes, and then they check each other's hands and they do a gesture with it, because I feel like that is what you do throughout your life with your parents and the people who raised you, to where you see similarities, both good and bad. The beauty of this universal story is that all of us are always trying to figure out who we are and what we gained and lost from our families. How do I do that in dance? It's a tricky thing, but I think it's like one, it's just sort of trying to figure out what that idea is, and then figuring out how to put that dance form on stage.
Sieber: It sounds like… not only is the script and the songs telling the story, but the choreographed movements are really carrying it. So I appreciate you going into depth of how important it is to really capture his essence through movements. And what is it like to perform Knoxville and the Clarence Brown theater when you're less than a mile away from his his neighborhood that has to have, you have to have chills down your spine, you know, you've been working on this for a long time with a group of talented people, and for it to finally come home? Walk me through that feeling.
Rhodes: I love that you just said home, because that is definitely one of the themes of the show, is that sometimes you have to go home and you have to mentally and physically. You need to go home so you can remember the people who raised you and for better. Or worse, thank them. That's how you move forward through grief. And you know, if that's what the show is about, then coming here to Knoxville, then is the absolute perfect thing for us to do. It just feels remarkable that we're here with an audience from Knoxville listening to us sing to them about Knoxville, there's just a it does feel, I have to say, in the audience, it does feel like there's a little bit of pride. And I will say this also, this is something about really wonderful about this piece and being here that I never thought of until a patron came up to us yesterday, mentioned that he didn't feel like Southern people were necessarily portrayed well in musical theater or in theater in New York theater, I should say which most musicals, because our industry is sort of based there. Most musicals get developed in New York. And it made me think, “Wow, he's not wrong.” And what an amazing experience for people to come here and have southern people, a southern location, and a Southern writer represented with such care. Frank loved this, the lyricism and the intelligence of James Agee and Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty wanted so desperately to represent the music exactly as it feels in the book, because the book sings, and these are very beautiful, deep souls that are in this play… This patron was discussing how nice it is to actually have a musical with complexity. And I'd never thought of that before, because I'm from Central Illinois, but I never, I wouldn't consider myself from from the south, but I think that there's something wonderful in that, that by coming here, we are honoring it at a different level of saying “We want,you to sign off on this.” We need this to be a good representation of southern life, just to add to the beautiful amounts of work from the south. But let's add to that. Let's bring something new and fresh. It feels new and fresh even though this was written so long ago, and I thought that was really interesting. I never really was aware of that before, but it made me really think, and it made me really proud of what we're doing and how we're portraying this. And I told the actors last night, and… some of our local professional actors, they all said, “Yeah, this is rare. This is rare that we get to feel this kind of pride playing these characters.” And I thought it was really great, yeah.
Sieber: And not only is it a southern area, it's also deeply rooted in Appalachian culture, yeah. So you know, you are getting the South, but you are getting a group of people from Appalachia who you know in the past have been horribly stereotyped. So it's, it's, to me, it seems like a nice, realistic, sobering view of Knoxville during this time. Yeah, my last question, I forgot to ask it earlier. But what type of research did you do to make sure that the dances and movements that we see on stage are similar to what we would have seen in 1915?
Rhodes: I will say when I did Bright Star, which takes place in Appalachia… in North Carolina, not too far from here. It takes place in Asheville. I did a deep dive, because that piece needed movement that felt authentic to the period. And so I did a deep, deep dive in Appalachian dancing, and the choreography was very completely based on anything I could get my hands on and study and that I could pass on to other people, because something that you know, flat foot dancing on your porch is harder than you think. So I had to sort of figure out what it was, then figure out what I could get the actors to actually do for it to look exactly like the period. And I was very, I was very concerned with that show being authentic. Now, Knoxville, the dance in this is an abstraction so it doesn't need, I don't think period perfection. It's expressive movement that sort of belongs in… the interior of their mind. So therefore, you get a pass from only moving in a way that they did in 1915. Now, there are moments where, you know, there's the old fashioned cake walk, or the old fashioned chim sham that is in there so that we're not doing anything contemporary, but I would say the expressive movement is not really based in a period like I did with Bright Star. Bright Star was full of, you know, clogging and hambone and and then even when we went into the 40s, I had to sort of figure out how to take Texas swing and figure and make up what I thought people in Knoxville, how people in Knoxville will be dancing so they didn't look like they were a bunch of New Yorkers in the 40s. Because, you know, we weren't, we weren't all one culture from YouTube and cable television, you know, like that. That was a very different time where different reason regions played their music differently, and even though swing was still there, they still danced it differently, so I had to make up what I thought they did, because there's I could not find any documentation, but I could for Texas swing, so I took that and imagined that it was closely related to that. That's an example of where I think authenticity really needed to be there for the story, because time and place was a big part of that plot. Time and place is not for the choreography, for the choreographed movement in the show. It is not, if that makes any sense, yeah,
Sieber: Yeah, no. And I appreciate, I mean, I feel like it would be kind of fun to, you know, get into the different variations of dances and the music they would play
Rhodes: I love diving into history. I I think you in order to do musical theater, I think you have to be a little bit of a historian, or like it. I love it when I have to dig in, and then you have to take what it was and then figure out how to make the audience feel like they're getting that. But it doesn't necessarily have to copy exactly, but it has to feel like it belongs in that space. Because I think that's part of what you get when you go to the theater is like, what, what takes you to the period? Costumes? Scenery? Not really lighting, because that's all modern. So sometimes movement really helps you go there. So yeah, I don't think this is a shining example of period movement, but I also don't think that it's contemporary in any way.
Sieber: You also kind of have to be an ethnomusicologist too, to make sure you have the correct instruments and the vocals, right? Well,
Rhodes: Stephen Flaherty is a genius at tha. He did a deep dive into Americana bluegrass, and so this score is definitely, definitely vibrating with a lot of the music of this time period. I mean, the first, you know, the very beginning of the show, when he goes back, it's a fiddle that takes him back. Because I think, I think sound and smells are the things that really pull you back to your youth. You'll hear, you know, like you know, you hear a top 40 hit from your childhood, and all of a sudden you feel like you're at your public swimming pool listening to it for the first time. So I think, for this piece, when he goes back from New York in the 50s, and he goes back to… 1915 it's, I think it is a fiddle that pulls him back, because it's so Tennessee. It's so this time. And then next, after the fiddle is a mandolin. He hears the mandolin and the I think all those things, if I think the music does a really good job of being the siren song, of pulling us to Tennessee in this time period and and in this beautiful place
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