The April 8 solar eclipse will attract stars on the ground at Baylor University where a lineup of Broadway actors and creatives will perform numbers from the upcoming musical “American Eclipse” the day before.
That musical, with music and lyrics by noted stage composer Michael John LaChiusa, has been in the works for the last three years, but the opportunity to see the celestial event that drives the musical’s story proved irresistible.
“None of us have experienced a full solar eclipse,” said Janet Brenner, one of the musical’s three producers. “We as New York producers thought, ‘Wouldn’t this be crazy to experience this with our cast as a family?’”
That family — author David Baron, LaChiusa, Brenner, fellow producers Laura Ivey and Andrew Koenigsberg, director Bill Rauch and music directors Deborah Abramson and Caleb Hoyer — plus a lineup of Broadway actors including Rachel Bay Jones, Mary Testa, Kenita Miller, Marc Kudisch, Tally Sessions and Sydney James Harcourt — will come to Waco late next week.
People are also reading…
They’ll practice with Baylor musical theater students, perform twice for Waco audiences on April 7 at Baylor’s Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center, then observe the April 8 solar eclipse.
“American Eclipse” is adapted from Baron’s 2017 book about the 1878 solar eclipse and the effect it had on some of the scientists who observed it, including inventor Thomas Edison and astronomers James Craig Watson and Maria Mitchell.
The musical is equally sprawling, encompassing not only the stories of Edison, Watson and Mitchell, the latter a rare woman in a male-dominated field, but those they encounter on their trip west to observe the eclipse. That includes a Black family of homesteaders, Chinese immigrants brought in to build the transcontinental railroads and the Ute people, still on tribal lands they would eventually lose.
Coming only two years after the United States marked its centennial and almost two decades after the bloody Civil War, the 1878 eclipse found America looking for an identity that would propel it into the future. That future, it turns out, would mean different things for those who lived into it. “It (the musical) asks the question, ‘Who is America?’” Brenner said.
The solar eclipse not only changed the lives of those in Baron’s book, but the author as well, turning him into an eclipse chaser. He informed the musical’s producers he was coming to Waco to watch it and invited them and other company members along, Brenner said. After considering other locations to watch, including Rochester, New York, and Bloomington, Indiana, Brenner said the chance to join Baron helped tip the scales to Waco.
Waco audiences won’t see a full-blown stage production on April 7, but selections and commentary casting light on the creative process driving it. The cast members participating represent several of the leading roles and only about a quarter of the full cast when finally staged.
Baron, whose experience of the 2017 solar eclipse turned him into an eclipse traveler, will read passages from his book. LaChiusa will then talk about how he translated those passages into song, music and characters. Cast members, amplified by Baylor musical theater students taught by Lauren Weber and Guilherme Almeida, will then perform.
“It’s a stellar cast, an embarrassment of riches,” said the stage producer. Not only will it feature LaChiusa, a five-time Tony Award-nominated composer best known for his musicals “The Wild Party” and “Marie Christine” as well as several operas, but an award-winning cast that includes:
Rachel Bay Jones (a Tony, Emmy and Grammy Award winner for “Dear Evan Hansen,” plus television roles in “Young Sheldon” and “The Good Doctor”)
Mary Testa (Tony nominee for revivals of “On the Town,” “42nd Street” and “Oklahoma,” plus multiple TV and film appearances)
Kenita Miller (Drama Desk and Tony nominee for “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf,” Drama Desk winner in ensemble of “Working”)
Tally Sessions (roles in “School of Rock,” “War Paint” and “Company,” among others)
Sydney James Harcourt (original Broadway cast of “Hamilton”)
Marc Kudisch (Tony nominee for “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and “9 to 5” plus “Girl From the North Country,” “The Great Society” and “Hand to God,” among others)
Brenner said the full production is still some time ahead — the musical’s size and Black, Asian and Native American characters will take time to cast — but what’s in place should impress audiences. “We love sharing our show,” she said.