#Onstage nyc tv#

But it’s also an admission and celebration of the various thoughts and feelings that arise when things like mortality and disability spring up to stare us in the face.” “In one sense, it’s a factual diary of a personal disaster.

“This is more than a harmonic version of a ‘cancer memoir,’” Ciao! explains. With interlacing themes of pain, love, fear, and hope, Scary Haha recounts some of the artist’s recent battles with severe illness, treatment, recovery, and uncertainty, taking listeners to places that very few musical projects have gone before. While wishing to remain anonymous, Ciao! is eager to share his story with the world. When you’re done, you go, ‘What’s missing?’ And it never felt like anything was missing.Scary Haha is the debut album from NYC-based Ciao! “One is to illustrate the inner life of the character, and the other one is to advance the story. “There are two tasks in writing songs for a film or a stage play or whatever,” he said. Williams just did not see a need for it in “Emmet Otter.” Though the story takes place around Christmas, there’s no song specifically about the holiday.

One thing that did not fit, though, is a conventional, “Jingle Bells”-type number. “My wife and I use the line all the time when the Riverbottom Nightmare Band has just been totally rude to all the guys in the tree house, and Charlie says, ‘They seem nice.’ It’s that human element that speaks to me,” he continued, “and it speaks to me at a level where it’s the easiest writing I ever get to do.” “There are all these little touches in the script, amazing little clues to who the characters are,” he said. “What works so well is that it’s delivered by these characters that are creatures - it’s a living storybook.”įor Williams, those creatures made the assignment feel effortless: He just got the show’s furry (or scaly, as the case may be) subjects. “To me, the music is the heart and the soul of this piece,” Henson said. Sure, you won’t be able to get the song’s riff from your head after hearing the Riverbottom Nightmare Band snarl, “We take what we want/We do anything that we wish/We got no respect/For animal, birdy or fish.”īut it’s Ma Otter’s words you’ll remember: “Some say our world is getting too small,” she sings, “I say, with kindness,/There’s room for us all.” Without getting preachy, it’s an ode to friendship and family bonds, as well as the idea of community. Its fans, however, are dedicated and loyal, often passing on the “Emmet Otter” tradition from one generation to the next, as happened in Gattelli’s family.Ī big reason for the show’s cult following is its rare humor and warmth. You can’t blame him for missing out: “Emmet Otter” stayed under the radar for a long time (it is now available for streaming on Amazon and other platforms) and a proper soundtrack did not come out until 2018, so it does not have the following of more famous Henson properties.

#Onstage nyc tv#

Trudell, who graduated from Texas State University in May, had not seen the TV show when he auditioned for the stage version, and he watched it for the first time before his callback. They also wanted a new Ma, and we built a Pa Otter - there had never been one.” “I had to find furs that mimic more what the Emmet actor is wearing. “But of course they don’t make the same fur anymore,” said Rollie Krewson, who built Wendell Porcupine and Charlie Beaver for the TV show she is now a master puppet designer and builder at the Creature Shop. While Goodspeed used some original figures from the special, they are now in museums and had to be rebuilt for the New Victory. (John Tartaglia, a Tony nominee for “Avenue Q,” is credited for puppet direction.) “There’s more puppet business going on, and that’s music to my ear,” said Cheryl Henson, Jim’s daughter and an investor in the new show. Gattelli and McDonald worked on a first adaptation for Connecticut’s Goodspeed Musicals in 2008, but they went back to the drawing board for this one, which features four puppeteers and eight actors. “At the same time it has that great Muppet madcap wit, those zingers and those really fast takes, and those 30-second acts that are just hilarious. “What I love about the show, and really appreciate more now that I’m older, is that it has so much heart,” said Christopher Gattelli, who is directing and wrote the book with Timothy Allen McDonald.