What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1477312
inspired us as the perfect property to adapt." Like the film, the play opening this weekend at TheatreSquared "follows an alien invasion in the Area 51-ish desert town of Sand Rock. It falls to outsider John Putnam (Christopher Kale Jones) and local schoolteacher Ellen Fields [to be played at T2 by Gabriella Perez] to save the townsfolk from their own ignorance and the predators from afar." It debuted at Chicago Shakespeare Theater with the intention that it would move on to Fayetteville. "Chicago Shakespeare Theater reached out to us last fall with the idea of collaborating on the rollout of a new musical they were developing with the creators of 'Murder for Two,'" Amy Herzberg, one of the founders of TheatreSquared, picks up the story. "We were hooked immediately. "Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair are comic geniuses with huge hearts," she goes on. "And we simply could not pass up the chance to work with Chicago Shakespeare, one of the premiere theaters in the country — and, interestingly enough given their name, super-successful generators of new work — on a new piece that's almost certain to go everywhere. "But more than anything, this is just the right piece for the moment — theatrically inventive, funny, funny, funny, celebrating a great moment in American cinema and sci-fi, and touching us ever-so-lightly with a message we can never be reminded of enough." Herzberg spent the summer at Chicago Shakespeare, working as associate director on the play with director Laura Braza. Braza and four of the six Chicago actors came to T2 with the show. " New work is an absolute blast to create, and I won the lottery with my collaborators on this one," Braza says. "We have a room full of smart, strange, talented people, so my job from early on really became sculpting. I would ask everyone to bring their best and worst ideas in, and then we'd throw it all up and see what worked and what didn't. "I knew early on that we wanted to triangulate three different worlds: the rough-and-ready '50s cult sci-fi — where seeing the fishing line holding up a flying meteor is part of the fun; the Golden Age musical — our creators often call this 'The Pajama Game with aliens'; and the unique wit of Kellen Blair and Joe Kinosian, who are the brilliant combination of silly and profound," Braza muses. "I watched the movie and others like it, listened to classic musical soundtracks and spent a lot of time seriously considering questions like, 'how many tentacles are too many tentacles?' "This is by far the most ridiculous directing job I've ever had! I regularly gave notes like, 'Great! This time, more like an octopus and less like a robot!' " We have two new cast members joining in on the fun, so a lot of my job has been helping them find their place in and take on this world," Braza says of the transition to T2. "And of course, a new space comes with new challenges and opportunities. Mostly, though, my job is the same: try out a silly idea, then keep refining it until it works." Christopher Kale Jones reprises the leading role he created in Chicago — "a fun mess of a guy" named John Putnam. "He is smart, has studied science, is an astronomer and an amateur astrologer," Jones says of his character. "But he often comes off as condescending and a know-it-all. He is obsessed with saving the world 4 WHAT'S UP! AUGUST 28-SEPTEMBER 3, 2022 COVER STORY T2 Continued From Page 3 See T2 Page 42