As the lights dim and the curtains open, people are transported to a new place, a new vision. This is the effect plays and musicals have on the audience. A stir of emotions within the watcher that has them leave with a vividness and dreamlike quality of what they witnessed.
"There is something you see in people walking out of the theater," said Lisa Kron, writer of Fun Home. "There is a look in their eyes that show they have been someplace. They have been someplace that is still moving inside of them in a way that has felt quite meaningful to them."
Kron is a Lansing native, and won Tony Awards for , and Best Original Score with composer Jeanine Tesori for Fun Home. The Broadway musical has a spot in the Wharton Center's 2016-2017 line-up.
Fun Home received five Tony Awards last year, had 17 U.N delegates come for a performance and has since received praise from critics. Kron said that this is something that all writers and performers hope for, but after 30 years of being in the business it's a dream that rarely takes fruition.
"At some point you realize that it is not going to happen," Kron said about having a piece get picked up and be celebrated for. "You can do pretty well and there are always going to be people that are not going to like it. But the experience with Fun Home, this is the dream. It did happen with Fun Home, and it was quite surprising."
Playwriting is nothing new for Kron, who has received numerous awards for her work. Fun Home, however, is her first musical.
She explained it took nearly seven years of working alongside artist and collaborator Jeanine Tesori, and going back and forth and down many dead ends to get to their destination.
"Musicals take a long time," Kron said with a laugh. "Both of us [Tesori and Kron] brought different strengths to the project. There was something about the nature of the book that I felt I understood...and I had a sense of how to make it into a drama, dramatize it."
Fun Home is based off the graphic memoir by Alison Brechdel, focusing on moments throughout her life that created who she is. The storyline and music will bring the audience in to places they can relate to, as well as show a unique perspective as they follow Alison's path to self-acceptance.
"It is probably going to be much funnier than they will expect it to be," Kron said. "It picks you up and carries you to a lot of places that are funny, quite moving and never quite where you expect – but, always a place you are interested in being engaged in that place. At the end, it will take you apart a little, but then it will put you back together."
Kron and Tesori worked tirelessly on ensuring that the lyrics, music and plot not only followed Brechdel's memoir, but also was engaging. Kron, who spent most of her career writing plays, learned a lot of the dynamics of music, and lyrics.
"What I quickly realized is that musicals – the musical – is a much less forgiving form than the play," Kron said. "It can look quite unusual, like Fun Home does, but every musical needs to be pulled along by this primal emotional connection. Jeanine always says that it is this, 'Tension and release. Tension and release.' The tension of the scene has to build, and then the only way forward is to sing it.
"But, with that being said, I am still marveling at how strange musicals are. They don't feel strange, they feel so natural, they feel like breathing. But, musicals are strange. People sing as if they were a train in the music. The more non-naturalistic they are, the more we get lifted and carried along by them. That was really the biggest thing I had to start to learn. And I am going to be learning it for the rest of my life.
To read my full interview with Lisa Kron, click here.
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