Over the course of a career that’s found her striking gold in the worlds of musical theater, opera, ballet and film, choreographer/producer Susan Stroman wide-ranging success is what you’d expect from multiple people. A five-time Tony Award-winner,
Stroman will be sharing stories behind the rollercoaster ride of her life on and Off- Broadway with attendees at Huntington’s Cinema Arts Centre. It’s the kind of behind- the-scenes experience she thinks movie-goers and musical theater lovers alike will find intriguing.
“I think everybody in this area of the East Coast loves the theater and coming to it, whether it’s in New York or their local theater,” Stroman said. “Since they are indeed coming to a cinema. I wanted to show three- or four-minute clips from the shows I’ve worked on. I can talk about each clip of the more famous shows that hopefully someone will have seen and discuss how they came to be. I’ll show a little clip, talk about how that number came to be, how that song came to be and how that set came to be.”
She added, “I’m sure when people go to the theater, they wonder how that all happened. In the end, we have to make it all seem spontaneous and that it all happened magically. But, in fact, it’s quite a feat. I think musical theater is the most collaborative and complicated production to pull off. It’s where all these different art forms come together—sets, lighting, costumes, music and dance. I’ll tell you, it’s a miracle when a musical gets staged. It is thrilling when it’s everybody at the top of their game coming
together to tell the same story. I think people will find that interesting, especially if they love film, and hopefully, if they appreciate theater, they will love the idea of storytelling.”
For producer/curator Jud Newborn, having his friend Stro come out to Huntington for this event was a no-brainer.
“You can pay a fortune to go into the city for a Broadway night out—but here’s a splendid chance to have Broadway come to you by driving over to the Cinema Arts Centre,” he said. “It’s the kind of scintillating and exclusive program you’re not going to be able to experience anywhere else.”
Long before Stroman was racking up awards for the likes of “Crazy For You,” “Show Boat,” “Oklahoma!,” “The Music Man,” and most famously, “The Producers,” the Delaware native grew up in a house were the flame for creative expression was regularly stoked.
“I was very lucky to grow up in a household full of dance,” Stroman shared. “My father was an amazing piano player and I was that little girl who would dance around the living room to her father playing piano. He also told big fish stories and to this day, I don’t know if they were true or not. It was that combination of storytelling and the music that made me want to create musical scenarios and to create for the theater.”
While Stroman made her Broadway debut as an assistant director/choreographer/dance captain for 1980’s “Musical Chairs,” it wasn’t until when she and collaborator Scott Ellis commiserated about wanting to be on the “other side of the table” as musical theater directors when the duo approached songwriting team John Kander and Fred Ebb about staging an Off-Broadway production of one of their shows. To Stroman and Ellis’ surprise, Kander and Ebb agreed. The result was a 1987 Off-Broadway revival of “Flora the Red Menace” at the Vineyard Theatre. While the financial gains for Stroman were paltry (“I made about $400 the whole summer”), it proved to be a springboard to success.
“Everybody saw that show,” Stroman recalled. “Hal Prince saw it. Liza Minnelli saw it. I became good friends with Kander and Ebb. After I did that show, neither Scott Ellis nor myself ever went back onstage again. I think it’s one of those things where you take a chance and it all worked out.”
Over the next few decades, Stroman’s talents expanded beyond Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, leading to work with the New York City Ballet and The Metropolitan Opera. But it was 2001’s “The Producers” that not only earned her a pair of Tonys, but gave her the chance to help Mel Brooks transform a favorite childhood film into a musical theater production.
For Stroman, the transition made sense.
“When you think about it, every film Mel [Brooks] ever made, he gives a nod to the musical,” she said. “Whether he’s written the song ‘Springtime for Hitler’ or ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ with Anne Bancroft in ‘To Be or Not To Be.’ He grew up going to the musical theater—he’s a New Yorker, you know? It’s almost like he was meant to write a musical.”
Susan Stroman will be appearing on January 23 at the Cinema Arts Centre, 423 Park Ave., Huntington. For more information, visit www.cinemaartscentre.org or call 631-423-7610.
