Five years into living out their dream as theatrical producers, Blackbird Theater founders Wes Driver and Greg Greene refuse to make things easy on themselves. Mounting serious-minded, thought-provoking fare is one thing — enough for any ambitious startup company — but scaling lofty dramatic mountaintops seems to provide Driver and Greene with the kind of challenge required to keep their nimble minds motivated and their artistic sensibilities charged up.
They started "simply" in 2010 with Twilight of the Gods, an original comedic thriller peopled by characters like H.G. Wells, Friedrich Nietzsche and Mary Baker Eddy. (That script has gone on to have mountings in New York and elsewhere.) Other intellectually driven productions that have since helped cement the Blackbird reputation include Shaw's Man and Superman, Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, David Mamet's Oleanna and yet another original, Driver's 2014 adaptation of the John Updike novel Roger's Version.
The company's one musical offering has also been a piece not for the fainthearted, Stephen Sondheim's Far East-oriented Pacific Overtures, presented to acclaim in 2013. This weekend, Driver and Greene will debut their own first original musical, Myth, in which the material dares to climb the heights of Mt. Olympus and challenge the Greek gods themselves.
"We once plotted out a lame superhero musical in college," says a smiling Greene, who has been Driver's artistic partner since their days as students at Lipscomb University in the 1990s. "And we wrote songs in college. In fact, Myth is a longstanding idea since that time as well. It's a piece that has epic scope, not unlike Les Misérables, with the size and scale and heightened emotion of Into the Woods."
"We're big Sondheim fans," says Driver, "and we're interested in working through musical theater as dramatists, with a narrative concept at the forefront." As far as the authors know, there's nothing in existence like their sweeping musical dealing with Greek mythology.
"In 25 words or less," says Driver, "Myth is Into the Woods with Greek gods. Structurally it is similar in that the first act finds the gods interacting with mortals, while the second act deconstructs the tales and helps explain why the gods were cast down from Mt. Olympus."
"The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid — we've lived with these epics our entire adult lives," says Greene, who admits to the influence of noted Pacific Northwest classics scholar Elizabeth Vandiver and her lectures on Greek mythology. "Myth encompasses a rich story, with recognizable gods and goddesses — the philandering Zeus, the jealous Hera — and audiences will equally recognize the human archetypes."
Driver, generally the writing team's main craftsman, claims that the musical's language is heightened, much closer to Shakespeare than kitchen-sink drama, with bold, passionate figures.
"The language is a bit elevated," counters Greene, "but very accessible. You honestly don't need to know a lot about Greek mythology to get it. There are humans and there are gods — and things start to spiral out of control."
"It's a complex story," adds Driver, "but it has a recognizable through-line."
Every musical has a composer, of course, and Driver and Greene have called upon another Lipscomb compatriot, Michael Slayton, who is not only an associate professor of composition and theory at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music, but has also performed in prior Blackbird productions. He's been on board with Myth since the early discussions.
"Michael's really the only person who came to mind for this collaboration," says Driver, who wrote the lyrics with Greene. "His compositions may reflect the expressive spirit of modern young Turks like Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins, The Light in the Piazza) or Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years), but what surprised me working with Michael is how cinematic his music is. It has a hummable quality, but it is certainly not Andrew Lloyd Webber pop. This is narrative-driven music, which puts you in a place and pushes the story forward."
"Michael interprets the drama so well in his music," says Greene, "in part because he's a very talented actor and singer, besides being an internationally commissioned composer."
A nine-member orchestra, under the musical direction of Jason Tucker, will accompany the large cast of 32.
"We're very pleased with our ensemble," says Greene. That includes Corinne Bupp, who portrays Acacia, the mortal princess and leading young lady.
"Corinne has been a gift," says Driver. "Not only is she not overwhelmed by the vocal material, she can act the role, and she looks the part."
Others in the cast include the talented and versatile stage, TV and film actress J.J. Rodgers as Hera, community theater veteran David Arnold as Zeus and familiar Music City performers Mallory Mundy, Kris Wente, Brad Brown, Darci Wantiez, Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva and Patrick Kramer.
Long before all these many pieces of the Myth puzzle began to fit together, Greene and Driver were beset with the problem of where to best present their show.
"What we needed was a stage that was big enough to accommodate us — a space that we could basically have for the entirety of the rehearsal period," Driver says. "Creating the show's illusion is so dependent on how we are using the space, moving from Olympus to earth to the underworld. So we required a venue where we could work on the skeleton of the set from the very beginning."
The creative team found what they wanted in the Hillsboro High School theater, used not long ago by Circle Players for their production of Picnic.
"The people who run the theater, Will Butler and Kristin Moon, are making Hillsboro a theater hot spot," says Greene. "Their hospitality has been so nice, and being at Hillsboro provides better exposure for us. We're doing professional theater in Green Hills, but still not too far from our home base at Lipscomb."
"Producing this show has required a strong sense of community," says Driver. "We couldn't have attacked this beast without everyone buying into the vision."
Expect a PG-13-level content — Myth features dark situations and ribaldry.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com
