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Montage Art, books, diverse creations 54 Open Book 55 Exact Changes 56 Chapter & Verse 58 The Man Who Has Been King 59 Off the Shelf 60 The “Little Republics” Miller in his new theater, and (clockwise) scenes from recent productions: Bonnie and Clyde, Hands on a Hardbody, Jerry Springer, and High Fidelity consecutive summers, he guided patrons to Meet Him in St. Louis their seats and listened to family-friendly productions of Oklahoma! and Fiddler on the Scott Miller “saves shows from Broadway” Roof. Itching to tackle “more challenging, adult stuff,” he arrived at Harvard ready by meredith redick to start a concentration in musical theater, only to learn there wasn’t one. “It didn’t cott miller ’86 dreams of produc- pect of a theater devoid of patrons doesn’t dull even occur to me to ask,” he says. He brief- ing an absurdist musical called Prom- Miller’s smile. The self-described “bad boy of ly considered transferring before learn- enade. The author, Maria Irene Fornés, musical theater” has earned a following in his ing that the College would fund student S recorded a series of nouns on index hometown, St. Louis. And New Line Theatre, productions. Then he proceeded to stage cards and then randomly selected from the the nonprofit company he founded, recently what he calls “guerilla theater” in com- stack to write each scene. “It’s so bizarre,” he celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary and mon rooms, libraries, and wherever else says, grinning and leaning back against the moved into its first permanent home. he could find space. “Because there was no show posters that line the walls of his home Miller began his career as a teenage ush- theater department, there was no control,” office. “Honestly, I’m terrified that no one er at what was then the city’s only profes- he says. “It was wild and really cool.” would actually come to the show.” The pros- sional musical-theater company. For eight After graduation, Miller opted against Portrait by Steve Truesdell, production photographs © New Line Theatre Harvard Magazine 53 MONTAGE a move to New York, electing instead to Pellegrino University launch his career away from the entrenched OPEN BOOK Professor emeritus Edward norms of Broadway. Partly because costs O. Wilson has written with were lower, St. Louis was a “safe space” for increasing urgency about the kinds of rule-breaking productions he The Mammalian mankind’s disruption of the wanted to stage. “If it’s bad,” he says, “it’s biosphere, and the heedless bad in St. Louis.” He founded New Line extinction of species. He con- in 1991. The early years were challenging. Life Span tinues the argument in Half- Making money by writing and directing Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life edgy theater in small venues across the city (Live right, $25.95), with this vivid challenge to humans’ self-perception, from the was almost impossible, but Miller became beginning of “History Redefined” (chapter 16): skilled in the financial acrobatics necessary to keep the company afloat: “We figured History is not a prerogative of the out we could do one show that might tank, human species. In the living world like Jerry Springer: The Opera, and then some- there are millions of histories. Each thing that was more secure financially, like species is the inheritor of an ancient Bonnie and Clyde.” lineage. It exists in a point of space Beginning in 2008, the company earned and time after a long journey through national attention for reviving Broadway the labyrinth of evolution. Each twist flops. Miller became infatuated with the and turn has been a gamble with the cast album for a new show called High Fi- species’ continued existence. The delity, adapted from Nick Hornby’s novel. players are the many ensembles of Curious to find out why it tanked on genes in the population. The game Broadway after just 13 performances, Mill- is the navigation of the environment er dug up a bootleg video of the produc- in which the population lives. The tion, concluded that the “original director payout is the share of breeding indi- was just awful,” and reached out to the viduals in the next generation. The composer and lyricist about getting the traits prescribed by the genes that rights. They were surprised but thrilled sufficed in past generations might that he wanted to resuscitate their show. in the future continue to do so, but High Fidelity made its second debut in might not. The environment is also a raucous, pared-down production that OCK OCK changing. In new environments the T sold out almost every night of its three- genes may keep on winning, allowing and-a-half-week run. Following that hit, the species to survive. Or not. Some New Line revamped two more shows with of the variants of the genes, having ©JF TRINGALI/IS short-lived Broadway runs: Cry-Baby, adapt- arisen by mutation or forming new com- Looking up: For all their evolutionary ed from the John Waters film, in 2012, and binations, might even cause the species advantages, mammalian species have Hands on a Hardbody, about a Texas contest shorter life spans than ants and trees. population to grow and spread. But at in which participants vie to win a truck, any time in a changing environment, the fore a champion in a club of champions. in 2014. Each of the re-crafted productions species could lose this game of evolu- We all are best of the best, descendants drew enough attention that directors all tion, and its population would spiral to of species that have never turned wrong over the country began seeking his advice. extinction. in the maze, never lost. Not yet.… “We’ve accidentally become this company The average life span of a species varies The human species, of course, has that saves shows from Broadway,” he says. according to taxonomic group. It is as long an evolutionary history, which reaches In the theater world, Miller’s faithful- as tens of millions of years for ants and very far back in time beyond traditional ness to scripts is uncommon. Many di- trees, and as short as half a million years recorded history. We, too, are the twig- rectors cut chunks from shows—even for mammals. The average span across end of a phylogeny. The multitudinous from hits—to save time and hassle, or to all groups combined appears to be (very stories of human cultures are epics in broaden appeal. New Line’s associate di- roughly) a million years. By that time the the usual sense, but you will understand rector, Mike Dowdy, says he’s never seen species may have changed enough to be that the traits of human nature that have Miller cut a line from a production. When called a different species, or else it may molded these stories are also products something feels wrong, Miller scavenges have split into two or more species—or of evolution.…The two levels, biologi- for past versions of scripts, tracks down vanished entirely to join the more than cal and cultural, flow one into the other. writers and lyricists, and scours the Inter- 99 percent that have come and gone since This is the reason that history makes no net for anything that helps provide useful the origin of life. Keep in mind that every sense without prehistory, and prehistory context. He relied on the memoir of an ad- surviving species (including us) is there- makes no sense without biology. dict in early 1990s New York City to shape his interpretation of Rent. For Hair, which 54 March - April 2016 MONTAGE New Line has produced several times, he lyricists who spurn commer- New Line’s 2014 scrounged up a first-person account of an cial norms and turn instead to production of Rent LSD experience to help his actors bring productions focused on social the psychedelic scenes to life. As Miller and political issues. “People does more research, “he gets more and were writing these shows that more excited, and that fuels us,” Dowdy felt like old-school musicals, says. “He’s really about creating a world but with new dark, ironic for the actors to live in.” content,” he says. “It was hap- Miller’s production choices strategically pening all around the country, highlight each story’s social relevance. His but all the little pieces didn’t version of Rent offers one example. For the know about each other.” set’s focal point, he requested a vast round New Line started as one of platform painted to look like the moon. those pieces, a radical Mid- The platform represented everything from western theater lonely in its a table to a dance floor to a state of limbo mission. But after two-plus for characters forced to navigate lives shat- decades operating out of church base- holds a black-box theater, rehearsal space, tered by addiction and disease. He also ments and college theaters, it finally has studios, and offices. New Line inaugurated cast unusually young actors, judging that a permanent brick-and-mortar home. The the space in November with its sold-out the show’s wrenching narrative was much Marcelle Theater is tucked inside a reno- production of Heathers. Next up is American sadder that way. vated warehouse on a gentrified street in Idiot, opening in March. According to Miller, shows like Rent, the city center. Designed especially for As for his dream production of Prom- which debuted in 1996, are part of a new age New Line thanks to local philanthropists enade? Well, Miller says, “We’ll do that one of musical theater created by writers and Ken and Nancy Kranzberg, the facility when we have $20,000 in the bank.” is also a photographer, as well as a graphic Exact Changes designer and filmmaker.

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