If your love life was a musical, what would it sound like? Slow and steady? Hot and heavy?
Two Chicagoans are putting the struggles of dating in Chicago to music with new romantic comedy "The Guide to Being Single" at Underscore Theatre.
Northwestern University grads Kaitlin Gilgenbach (who wrote the script) and Alexi Kovin (music and lyrics) created the musical, which is directed by Underscore executive director Laura Stratford, with and musical direction by producing artistic director David Kornfield.
"The Guide to Being Single" follows six friends as they try to balance love, sex and professional success guided by a dating how-to book of the same name. We called Gilgenbach and Kovin to hear about how they teamed up to bring this project to the stage.
'The Guide To Being Single'
Go: 8 p.m. Nov. 8-Nov. 9 (previews) and 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays, Nov. 11-Dec.7 at Collaboraction, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave., Room 300
Tickets: $10 for previews; $20 for regular run. underscoretheatre.org
On how they teamed up:
Kaitlin Gilgenbach: I originally wanted to be an actor, but halfway through [college I] realized I was much more comfortable writing. So my last two years, I did playwriting courses every single quarter, and then Alexi and I were in the same acting class, so like, I think we all went to a bar after our final exam for acting and we were just drinking a little bit [laughs] and she knew I was a playwright and she had written a song cycle [a group of individually complete songs] so she asked me, "Do you want to write a book? Let's do a musical together, I don't want to write the book, but you can write a book. Right? " And I was like. "Yeah! I don't know how to write music or lyrics, so you can do that." Then the next day, we sobered up and I was like, "Hey! Do you still want to write that musical?" And that's how it all began.
Alexi Kovin: I also went to Northwestern to be an actor and wanted to do musical theater, but about halfway through my senior year of college, I realized that I was a better writer than I was a performer . It happened exactly like Kaitlin said in terms of how this show happened. I needed someone to write my book; I have never been much of a playwright [and] I have always been married to songs and lyrics . I'm a big fan of living in your strengths, so I wanted to be in a place where I could use my strengths and do music stuff and not have to worry about anything else, so I went to Kaitlin and said, "I trust you, let's write a musical," and I was dead serious.
On developing the play:
KG: We wrote the story together, and we outlined all of the plot points to collaborate. "The Guide to Being Single," originally, it was not a book, the play literally went through six drafts [laughs]. Initially, the play was just these rules that everyone lived by and we had this informal first reading with Alexi's mentor and some close friends and we read and sang everything, and they said, "It's really unclear where these points come from, how does everyone know them?" So we tossed around ideas like, is it a blog? And we eventually settled on it being this "anti-dating dating book" that's sort of a play on both the art of pick-up strategies and the cosmos of the world.
On the styles of music:
AK: The show basically lives in two different sort of musical worlds, [a] very jazzy, big-band-y sort of feel for all of the nightlife that happens and for everything surrounding the book, and then the other world is contemporary musical theater, where people are feeling things and things are breaking down and they are figuring out how to be and how to live their lives. Like, depending on if something happens and they feel the need to sing about it because words just wont do any good, that's where contemporary musical theater lives, so its got a really great kind of poppy, rocky vibe to it and then it's also got this really jazzy stuff as well. It's been fun to play with those two different styles and we have six actors to work with and a 7-piece band as well.
What the story will drive home:
AK: Well, please don't take anything from that book, because it's terrible [laughs]. And that's the point that the show drives home, which is what I absolutely love about the show, [we have] this guide that tells you basically how to alienate everybody and then at the end of the show, we turn it around and the characters have learned something. They learned that's not really the way to live your life and we drive home the point that, "If you love, you will be loved," you know? Inviting people in, and loving and caring for people and doing what's right by you and what's right by others and then eventually everything will kind of come together the way it's suppose to. And it may not be exactly how you want it, but it comes together the way it was meant to.
Why the musical is set in Chicago:
AK: We talk a lot about the Cubs! Honestly, the whole idea [is] Derrick, who is our playboy character, he is moving from New York to Chicago. He was a [baseball] player for the Mets and he was doing all these great things, and then all of a sudden he basically gets demoted to Chicago and he has to go to a smaller city. In his eyes, he's downgrading everything and he's playing for a losing team, so there's that aspect of it, of how that really affects Derrick and his character and where he starts the show and it kind of leads into where his vulnerability comes from. And it's also the fact that Wrigleyville is basically party central, I always think of it as the place where if you graduate college and don't really feel like leaving college, you move to Wrigleyville and all of these characters are still very much in this Wrigleyville mindset. The characters are living this college-y life, even though they have a ton of success in their jobs, they are still living this immature lifestyle within this place that is allowing that to happen.
KG: Totally kicking back off of that, it's our love letter to Chicago and I think the neighborhoods have a huge thing to do with it, when you are in Wrigleyville it's a very specific scene and then you can walk to Boystown and it's totally different, so it's about people caught up in this one neighborhood in Chicago finding themselves in a different place and being able to grow up in the city and what that looks like and what that means.
Jordan Porter-Woodruff is a RedEye special contributor. redeye@redeyechicago.com | @redeyechicago