New York Is Alive and Singing

Taking the temperature of a city in the early days of this election year, Paul Scott Goodman is bringing his production, Alive in the World, to the New York stage.

Alive in the World melds rock and roll and musical theater in order to chronicle the lives of six characters living in New York City’s post 9/11 environment. Premiering just three weeks prior to Super Duper Tuesday where voters from 24 states, including New York, will cast their ballots in the presidential primaries, the timing for these types of songs “seems to be pretty spot on for me,” according to Goodman.

“People just definitely want change. They definitely want something else. They want something new, and in a way, that’s what the show’s about,” explained the Scottish native. “Change, and waiting for change—when’s it going to come, and where’s it going to come from? How can we learn from what happened in order to move on with ourselves, with our lives, and our loves?”

These questions will be explored through the voices belonging to an A-list group of performers, including Melissa Errico (My Fair Lady), Toby Lightman (2006’s “Bird On A Wire”), Lea Michele (Spring Awakening), Greg Naughton (Golden Boy), Adam Pascal (Rent), and Daniel Reichard (Jersey Boys).

“There’s now six characters instead of [the original] four,” said Goodman, noting this addition among the many changes that have been made to Alive in the World since it first appeared as a part of New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) in 2006. “It’s been revamped a lot since then. The biggest thing was—the director [Kurt Deutsch] and I—we’ve taken out all the dialogue. The whole thing is all songs. So the character arcs and the stories are conveyed through songs, which to me, seems a much better way to approach this subject because it’s just so enormous.”

Late last year, Van Dean from Van Hill Entertainment, producer of Alive in the World, suggested that the show be put on as a benefit concert for the Twin Towers Orphan Fund. The fund was created on Sept. 12, 2001, and it continues to provide educational and welfare support to children who lost one or both parents in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Alive in the World seeks to confront the city’s clammy composure instead of skirting the issues. “It’s certainly more political than anything I’ve ever written before,” said Goodman. But after cutting songs like “Wake Up George” and “Suicide Bomber,” “it’s not overtly political.”

“I just felt that musical theater, in a way, has an obligation to address,” said Goodman. “There’s been movies made about it, and there’s been TV shows about it. Novels have been written, and I suppose there have been plays, but a musical, a musical about 9/11’s aftermath sounds a bit like, ‘ugh.’ But by doing it the way we’re doing it with a song cycle of 20 songs, it seems like a viable way to approach it without trying to be exploitive in any way.”

Because September 11th exists as a flashbulb memory for American citizens, the songwriter said that he was challenged to express both the “fragility” and “explosiveness” of the material. “You’re walking a fine line,” said Goodman.

From being able to see the lights of the World Trade Center flicker from his bathroom window, to jogging uptown to pick up his three children from school immediately after the attacks, Goodman explained that Alive in the World is a cross between his post 9/ll experiences and those of his fellow New Yorkers. “The city is just not the same as it was pre-2001,” he said.

With its rather eccentric adapted car seats—complete with seat belts—making up the majority of the seating in the house, the Zipper Factory is set to host the Twin Tower benefit concerts of Alive in the World on January 13th and 14th at 7 p.m.

“For students who would normally hear the word ‘musical’ and vomit on the ground, it’s not your ordinary musical,” said Goodman. “The very things that we’re talking about are so prevalent in our culture today. When I started out writing the songs, I wanted to try to evoke a time and a place in the history of America, so that if people want to look back on the show in 20, 30, 50 years, they can say, okay, this is what we were like late in the first decade of the new millennium.”