Broadway Vet Lends Her Voice To the Songs of Up-and-Comers

By Jane Horwitz
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Rebecca Luker will set aside for a couple of days the Edwardian ensembles she wears as Mrs. Banks in the Broadway production of "Mary Poppins" so she can come to Washington to perform new songs by her favorite up-and-coming theater composers.

Saturday evening at the Kennedy Center, the singer-actress, who co-starred in "Passion" during the center's 2002 Sondheim Celebration, will perform an hour of those new "Songs for the Theater: The Next Generation." It is the second installment this season of the "Barbara Cook's Spotlight" series, featuring stage performers selected by the veteran singer.

"I'm taking a chance with doing this new music, but I really believe in it," Luker says. "The songs run the gamut, from art songs to pop songs, to almost aria. . . . It's a whole spectrum of styles, but it is what is going on today."

A Tony nominee for "Mary Poppins" and Broadway revivals of "Show Boat" and "The Music Man," Luker says some of the songs she's chosen were cut from shows or are from shows still being written.

This passion for new works crystallized five years ago, she says, with a concert series in New York called the New Voices Collective, where younger theater composers and lyricists could showcase their work. "I was just overwhelmed by the wealth of material that I was hearing. . . . It was as good as anything you've heard in the theater over the decades. These are our Sondheims and Gershwins and Porters. These guys and these women are the best writers that there are today," says Luker, who took part in the series.

The concerts were emceed by Luker's husband, actor Danny Burstein (a Tony nominee for "The Drowsy Chaperone" and his current role as Luther Billis in "South Pacific"). Burstein wrote the script and directed Luker for the Kennedy Center concert.

The 15 songs on her program run from melancholy to silly. "Ohio: 1904," music by Paul Loesel, lyrics by Scott Burkell, is based on the diary of a little girl who watched the Wright brothers fly. "What the Living Do," by Ricky Ian Gordon, is set to a poem by Marie Howe, written to the poet's brother, who had died of AIDS. "He Never Did That Before," music by Debra Barsha, lyrics by Mark Campbell, is about a woman who's delighted with her lover's new bedroom technique until she starts to wonder where he learned it. Several songs take their lyrics from poems by the likes of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson and Dorothy Parker. Parker's "Convalescent," with music by Joseph Thalken, is satirical, but "she's covering up a broken heart," Luker says.

Thalken, whom Luker describes as "our George Gershwin of today," will play the piano for her on Saturday. Three songs with his music are on the program. Thalken wrote the score for a musical based on the film "Harold & Maude" and contributed to the song cycle "Songs From an Unmade Bed." He's also conducting the current Broadway revival of "Gypsy."

"It would be a lot easier to do a Rodgers and Hammerstein show," Luker says of the program, but quickly adds, "I want to get into this new territory. . . . They're amazing songs. And I hope the audience will sit up and listen, because they're worth it."

Ford's Theatre Hires

As the massive renovation of Ford's Theatre nears completion -- it is on track to reopen in February with the world premiere of James Still's "The Heavens Are Hung in Black," about President Lincoln in the difficult year of 1862 -- Producing Director Paul R. Tetreault has been adding to his staff.

Jennifer L. Nelson came on board in September as artistic programming associate. For a decade, she was artistic director of African Continuum Theatre Company. She also teaches theater at Georgetown University and at Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Last year she staged a well-reviewed production of August Wilson's "Jitney" at Ford's.

Tetreault hired his new director of marketing and communications, Liza Lorenz, away from the Shakespeare Theatre Company, where she was associate director of communications. She replaces Hannah Olanoff, who has moved to Florida.

What attracted her to the job, Lorenz says, was that "it's not just about the theater that the company produces, but also about the education and the museum. I had a great experience with the opening of [Shakespeare Theatre's] Harman Hall, so I'm hoping I can take what I learned from that experience and apply it at Ford's."

Calling Nelson "one of the most knowledgeable people about the D.C. theater arts community," Tetreault says she will advise him and his staff on programming and educational outreach. "There's nothing I don't see tapping into Jennifer's expertise for," he adds.

Nelson will work part time at Ford's and continue her teaching and writing, including a 90-minute monologue for the theater's "History on Foot" walking tours, to premiere in May.

The piece, "A Free Black Woman: Elizabeth Keckley," is based on the life of Mary Todd Lincoln's seamstress and confidante. An ex-slave, Keckley "had worked her way up and eventually bought her own freedom," Nelson says, "and because she was such a splendid seamstress, started sewing for rich ladies" and was introduced to Mary Lincoln.

Her new job gives Nelson "a chance to be part of the artistic staff of a theater without having to be boss, which I love," she says with a chuckle. She also brings to Ford's her knowledge of the national African American theater community and of new plays in development by African American writers.

Nelson's new connection to Ford's is serendipitous, as she's recently become fascinated by the Civil War and is studying 1865 Washington, and learning how much of it remains. "I'm endlessly thrilled by it," she says.

Follow Spots

· "33 Variations," a play by Moisés Kaufman that premiered last year at Arena Stage (produced with Kaufman's New York-based Tectonic Theater Project), is to open on Broadway early next year with Jane Fonda as a Beethoven-obsessed musicologist, publicists for producer David Binder announced.

· Theater of the First Amendment at George Mason University will present a performance of "The Warrior," by Jack Gilhooley, at 8 p.m. Saturday in the TheaterSpace. Kevin Murray will direct the play about an Iraq veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who risks losing her family.

· The bare-bones, innovative Aquila Theatre Company will bring Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors" to George Mason's Center for the Arts Friday at 8 and Homer's "Iliad" to the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, Nov. 11 and 12.