[title of show] Wills Itself to Broadway

It’s like a gift within a gift that just keeps on giving, the matryoshka doll of the theater if you will.

[title of show], or [tos] for short, is a musical about two average Joes writing a musical. Vacillating between the forces of artistic merit, commercial success, and self-fulfillment, composer and lyricist Jeff Bowen and book writer Hunter Bell star as themselves. Along the way they employ the talents of their close friends, Heidi Blickenstaff and Susan Blackwell, in addition to the smooth orchestrative stylings of musical director Larry Pressgrove on keyboard. Together they perform a 90-minute musical theater romp where anything goes—even references to drag queens as “Lady Footlocker” are fair game.

The unique aspect of this show is that not only have its creators reworked and rewritten material, but they’ve actually added more story and songs to chronicle each step on their yellow brick road to Broadway.

Bowen and Bell’s underdog of a show started at New York Musical Theater Festival (NYMF) in 2004. After being optioned by mega-producer, Kevin McCollum (Rent, In The Heights), it was workshopped at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and Ars Nova, eventually moving to sold-out performances at the Vineyard Theater Off-Broadway in 2006. Now, two years later, it’s finally made it to the Great White Way.

“There are times … where I’m like, ‘Am I really on a Broadway stage performing this show?’” said Blackwell. “It’s like the best dream you’ve ever had, and you’re awake so you get to live it.”

Kris Stewart, founder and former executive director of NYMF who is now one of the producers of [tos] on Broadway, took a gamble on the little show that could. While Stewart dealt with the challenges of establishing NYMF as a reputable artistic organization during its inaugural year, Bowen and Bell were writing about writing a show for a festival they had never heard of before. Drawing from everyday conversations (think ordering take out) and pop culture fanaticisms (read: Wonder Woman), Bell’s book began to take shape. Using a single keyboard and four voices, Bowen’s score sprung to life. Three weeks later Bowen and Bell packed their hopes and dreams into a nine-by-12 manila envelope—signed, sealed, delivered to NYMF.

“Listening to it, I only heard a song or two, and thought, that’s kind of bizarre,” said Stewart. “But then looking at the blurb, I thought, this is so fantastic. We don’t really deserve to have anyone say this about us—‘Oh there’s a festival in New York for musicals, we’ve got to write a show for it!’ Like why? We hadn’t even existed before, why do you even care?” said the Australian native. “But these were real folks putting on a show, and that was kind of the charm of it. It really boosted the credibility of us both.”

The obscure show references in “Monkeys and Playbills,” and the voicemails from assorted Broadway personalities such as Kerry Butler (Xanadu), Christine Ebersole (Grey Gardens), Sutton Foster (Young Frankenstein) and even Patti LuPone (Gypsy) are a real treat for anyone in the theatrical know. But Stewart feels like the unlikely pairing of a perpetual dreamer with an anxious pragmatist offers the perfect recipe for universal appeal.

“It’s kind of about theater like Rocky is about boxing,” said Stewart. “In this day and age, having that kind of creative life and having a dream has never seemed more possible and more impossible at the same time.”

For a group who’s often preoccupied with trying to find its place in the sun, [tos] quickly became popular with a younger crowd. “We didn’t write the show for a particular demographic; we were writing it to entertain ourselves,” said Bowen. “And I think in doing that, it was talking to a particular demographic that likes to entertain themselves.”

After their NYMF debut, the foursome started an auxiliary [tos] blog in order to maintain open communication. “We talk about our husbands and boyfriends and our families,” said Bowen. “It’s more about us as people.” But this backstage account soon garnered a substantial outside readership giving viewers yet “another level of honesty that they can tap into.”

“If you’re going to sort of belong in someone’s heart, it’s not just a one-way thing now,” said Stewart. “People want to comment, respond and interact,” and [tos] creators allow for this. They’re very committed to replying to letters or e-mails, and will often post others’ work or snippets of fandom on their blog.

Much to the delight of their avid fans, or [tos]sers, as they like to be called, Bowen and Bell harnessed the power of the internet. During the two-year gap between Off-Broadway and Broadway, they began installments of the [title of show] show on YouTube.

“It’s not that young people have a short attention span, but they think quicker. They can get any information they want much faster, it’s at their fingertips, especially factual things thanks to Wikipedia and Google,” said Bowen. “With [tos] show we thought, let’s continue to talk to these people in a short, entertaining and fun way.”

Living by the credo, fake it until you make it, they announced to the world that [tos] was going to Broadway despite the fact that they were without a theater or an established course of action. “The story couldn’t finish unless it got to Broadway,” said Stewart. “Even if it only played for a month, a week, a night, even if it was just Glory Days, it needed to have that.”

During the next two years the quartet worked hard to transform themselves from nobodies into somebodies. Perhaps more than any other current Broadway production, [tos] shows the value of opportunity and the trajectory of an idea from inspiration straight onto fruition.

“I feel like we’re all sort of in the same boat. It’s just at this moment we’re the ones that have our forum, our soap box to share our work,” said Blackwell. “It’s a fun extension of the conversation that we had had with our friends, and it opens up the community a bit more, which is nice.”

In a way, [title of show] is not unlike watching an American dream unfold in real time.

“Four years ago we were all camping and carving pumpkins, and now we’re on Broadway,” said Bowen. “How did that happen?”

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[title of show] is playing at the Lyceum Theatre and is directed by Michael Berresse. The Lyceum Theatre is located at 149 W. 45th Street, between Broadway and 6th Avenue. Tickets range from $26.50 - $110 and can be purchased online, by phone, or at the Lyceum box office. Go to www.titleofshow.com to learn more.