Roads to Recognition That Were Really Short
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
BROADWAY debuts ain’t what they used to be. Oh, they’re nice and all, but consider this: On each of the four shows nominated for a Tony Award for best musical, at least one major creative player is doing this whole professional theater thing for the first time. Not just Broadway debuts; theater debuts. We’re talking people who have no experience in their field, no years on the regional circuit, no résumé of Off Broadway shows, no Playbill credits that cause an expectant theatergoer to point and whisper: “Ech. I saw that. I can only assume he’s improved.” Like, none (O.K., with a little fudging in places).

Here are their stories.

‘Cry-Baby’

The grandparents of Adam Schlesinger, who was nominated, with David Javerbaum, for best score for the Tony-nominated show “Cry-Baby,” run a company in Syracuse called Famous Artists Broadway Series, which presents touring theatrical productions. That counts for something. He did go to a few Broadway shows while growing up in Montclair, N.J. And he tried acting when he was really young (“Oliver!” and “Our Town”). But all of that soon gave way to the seductive life of rock ’n’ roll.

Sitting in his studio in Chelsea, a few feet from a foosball table, as various long-haired men came and went carrying variously shaped black cases, one would be hard-pressed to say that Mr. Schlesinger, 40, chose poorly. But after putting together a successful career as a composer of film scores and as the bassist for Fountains of Wayne, Mr. Schlesinger was contacted by a producer of “Cry-Baby.” He’s not even sure how his name got on a list.

Five years later, though, he can talk about how putting on a Broadway show is not like playing in a band. For one thing there are lots of cooks.

“As I got more involved with it, the differences became more apparent,” he said. “Everything I work on is collaborative to a certain degree, but the way in which Broadway is collaborative is much more intense.”

He continued: “There are certain projects where they’re one person’s baby and everyone else is trying to make that person happy, but this wasn’t that. It’s more a true democracy.”

The choreographer gives tips to the composer, who gives some notes to an actor, who has a suggestion for the lyricist, who has an idea for the director. Part of this is because the creative process is so long in theater.

“It’s really never done until opening night,” he said. “There’s always a better idea for something. With a movie it’s ‘this thing’s got to be in the can for next Thursday.’ At a certain point it’s hard to have any perspective when you’ve tried to think about the same thing 18 different ways.”

Mr. Schlesinger’s grandfather, who knows what the end product of all this is supposed to look like, eventually came to town to give “Cry-Baby” a look at the Marquis Theater.

“We brought him for his 97th birthday,” Mr. Schlesinger said proudly. Then he added, “I don’t know how much he could actually hear until we got him the hearing devices halfway through.”

‘Xanadu’

Here’s where the fudging comes in. In fairness, all of the lead producers of “Xanadu,” Douglas Carter Beane’s candy-colored goof on the very bad 1980 Olivia Newton-John movie, have worked in theater in some capacity. But none have been at the helm of a Broadway show before, and two of them have never produced any professional theater at all. Robert Ahrens, 38, has worked in the theater as a general manager but had most of his experience in film and television. Brian Swibel, 27, had been a producer of an Off Broadway show, alongside the much more experienced Harriet Leve, and a couple of shows regionally. Tara Smith, 27, whose production experience is in reality television, has written and is producing a play, though it is still at the development stage.

It did not take long for them to learn their first lesson in major-league producing: lots and lots of bluffing. Jane Krakowski, the big name attached to “Xanadu,” pulled out before rehearsals began, and the three had to give a Knute Rockne speech to the nervous creative team.

“We left the meeting where we had fully pledged that we were capable of moving forward knowing that in 48 hours we wouldn’t have a theater if we didn’t give them a certain amount of money,” Ms. Smith said. “We would go to bed on Tuesday feeling great, then wake up Wednesday and there would be another catastrophe.”

Like, oh, that time in rehearsal, when, as Mr. Ahrens put it, “Our star broke his leg in three places.”

And the very day they learned about that injury to James Carpinello, Mr. Swibel said, “a leak sprung in the theater, spraying water all over the stage.”

Ms. Smith asked, “And the next day, didn’t we have a fire?”

The preopening chatter was so dismissive that Mr. Swibel sent an assistant to the New York Public Library to research shows that were unanimously panned.

It was all for naught. “Xanadu,” improbably enough, got some of the season’s best reviews. The one in The New Yorker was downright hyperbolic. Have the producers made mistakes? Sure. The show has been struggling at the box office at the Helen Hayes Theater for months.

But some mistakes, like not spending as much as they wanted on advertising, were forced by economic necessity. And moves that raised industry eyebrows have borne surprising results. If the producers had staged “Xanadu” off Broadway rather than on Broadway, as some have insisted they should have done, they would not have discovered that the show is more popular with tourists than New Yorkers. They would not be making licensing deals with foreign countries. And they certainly would not have had a shot at the Tony.

“I think in this type of an industry,” Mr. Ahrens said, “you can be an expert, but there’s still a whole lot of gray.”

‘In the Heights’

For Lin-Manuel Miranda, 28, the doubly nominated creator and star of “In the Heights,” the biggest discovery was food. As in, you have to eat it.

“I would try to do a matinee on the coffee and a muffin and be like, ‘Hey, why is everything getting so hazy?’ ” he said, sitting in a booth at a diner on West 60th Street. “I was eating whatever would get me through. I didn’t even know the food groups.”

A waiter passed, and Mr. Miranda pounced. “Can I get some matzo ball soup?”

Mr. Miranda came up with “In the Heights,” a portrait of Latino families in way uptown Manhattan, while a sophomore at Wesleyan University. A couple of people who heard it suggested he work with a recent Wesleyan graduate, the director Thomas Kail, whose company was operating out of the basement of the Drama Book Shop on West 40th Street.

They met right after Mr. Miranda graduated and began developing the show in the basement, often with a small band. They would not labor in obscurity for long; some big-name producers saw it early on and began shepherding the project through the development process.

For seven years they worked on the show, writing songs and throwing them out, rearranging scenes, adding and dropping characters.

And then, on March 9, something odd happened. The show opened on Broadway.

Mr. Kail, 31, who was sitting next to Mr. Miranda in the booth, said he still has work to do at the Richard Rodgers Theater: understudy rehearsals, occasional directorial tightening. But much of the creative work, the squeezing and stretching of the show like Play-Doh for seven years, is done.

“It’s like Lin and I helped build this house,” Mr. Kail said. “He lives in that house. I don’t live in the house. I have keys, but there’s nowhere for me to go.”

Now a Tony-nominated director, he doesn’t need to hang out in basements. He’s directing a play at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts this summer. Mr. Miranda, nominated for best original score and best performance by an actor in a musical, is still playing eight shows a week in the house and is mulling over the profound lessons he has learned.

“I’ve been trying to think about it,” he said. “But it just goes back to food.”

‘Passing Strange’

Of all those making their theater debuts, none is debutier than Stew’s. From his comfortable existence in the land of rock ’n’ roll he was dragged kicking and screaming to Broadway.

While you might describe Stew’s show, “Passing Strange,” as a narrative rock concert, a performance piece, a musico-theatra-whatever, it was nominated in the Tony category of best musical, an honor it shares with “Mame” and “Once Upon a Mattress.” Stew, 46, who is quadruply nominated himself (best score and orchestrations — both with Heidi Rodewald — as well as book and performance by a leading actor in a musical), had some ideas about musicals: “people desperately trying to make the audience love them, which is the opposite of the rock ’n’ roll persona,” he said, digging into some escargot at a restaurant near the Belasco Theater, where “Passing Strange” is playing.

Stew was hesitant when the folks at the Public Theater suggested he make what had essentially been a cabaret piece into a work of theater. Meaning something with actors. Stew, who grew up in Los Angeles, had some ideas about actors: “The mortal enemies in my high school were the thespians and the stoner rock kids.”

But even after that happened, when his show opened in 2007 at the Public after five years of workshops and development — hey, at least it was below 14th Street.

Then Gerald Schoenfeld of the Shubert Organization and Elizabeth Ireland McCann — two, ahem, veteran Broadway hands — decided they wanted to take this rock show to the Great White Way. And Stew, well, he had some ideas about theater above 14th Street.

“I’m being completely honest with you right now,” he said. “I thought they were crazy. I never saw the potential for this kind of strange story. I wasn’t sure if everybody uptown would laugh at the Camus joke. I was completely prejudiced.”

But he learned. He learned there are joys in the technical precision that theater demands, just as there are joys in the messy improvisation of rock ’n’ roll. He learned that Broadway types are obsessive about lyrics and rhyme schemes in a way you don’t often come across below 14th Street. He learned that uptown theatergoers are quieter and less responsive but no less attentive.

“I’ve had to learn how to read these audiences because it is not the same,” he said. “They’re getting it. They’re just getting in a way we’re not used to. It’s like suddenly someone telling you you have to walk differently.”

Think Broadway can’t change people? Listen to Stew now:

“I always hated when people said this,” he acknowledged, laughing at what was about to come out of his mouth, “but I swear it’s just great to be nominated.”