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Second Stage's TO MY GIRLS Gets Ready for Performances
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Oct 25, 2022
Second Stage Theater just began previews for JC Lee's world premiere comedy, To My Girls, directed by Stephen Brackett. TO MY GIRLS will officially open on Tuesday, April 12, 2022 at Second Stage's Off-Broadway home, The Tony Kiser Theater (305 West 43rd Street).
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Up next for second stage is J.C. Lee's new play to My Girls
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Under the direction of Stephen Brackett, it begins performances on March 15th at the Tony Kaiser Theater
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and we drop by Rise Bar to meet the company. I'm very, very excited
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I'm really excited. The play is so, it's so beautiful, it's so fun
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J.C. Lee is such an amazing playwright. Stephen Brackett, as everyone knows, is an amazing director
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We've got such an incredible, really, really funny and really sweet cast
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We're having a blast. We're having a blast. Hopefully people will come see it. I am so excited
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I haven't been in a play in a long time in New York, and I'm thrilled
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And it's a great play, a great group of people. And the rehearsals are going so well
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It's just a joy fest in the studio. The first thing I thought was, like, this is, like, this generation's answer to boys in the band
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It's, like, telling our... millennial generation's gay story which I feel like hasn't really been told yet on a New York
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stage so what most exciting is being in the room and everyone in the rehearsal room is on the queer spectrum whether they on the stage or whether they behind the table
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So to have a whole room of queer people has been like an exciting and enlightening and a really joyous experience
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This is the first time I've ever been asked to be queer on stage. And as a queer man, there's a level of freedom and joy that I have never had in life
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rehearsal process, my body feels different. I love it. I'm so excited. This group of people
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I haven't worked with any of them before, and they're all fantastic and deep and full. And I feel
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like we've all known each other for such a long time. But whenever we come into the rehearsal
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room, it's like joy, just pure joy, pure gay joy, which is amazing because I've never been in
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a rehearsal space where that many people, We're gay, first of all, and to have that in such a celebratory way
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And they're like, yes, this is why we are together. It's just fantastic
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Stephen Brackett is a gift to directing He makes the rehearsal space so fun I mean one of my favorite things that he does is wig Wednesday where we come in on Wednesdays we wear our wigs and we have a fabulous time
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So, Stephen, when you first got this play, what made you say, I have to direct this? I've loved J.C. for a long time and loved his humor and his intellect for a long, long time
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And so when, like, a gay play by J.C. Lee came across my desk, I knew
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immediately that I would love it. And so I signed on immediately. I open the pages. It's about a group of
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friends getting together after the pandemic and Palm Springs. And it's like fiercely funny, but also
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incredibly heartfelt. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of substance underneath it. And that's
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what I love. I love things that like exist on comedy levels, but that there's a lot of, there's a
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to chew underneath. So I was thrilled. I think in many ways, JC is trying to write the millennial gay play
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and trying to say, trying to honor the fact that this is in line with a huge beautiful history of American gay plays that have come before it And I think one of the questions that JC is writing is that if in theory millennials
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don't have as hard of a history of dealing with shame as older generations do, what is
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underneath this millennial generation and what gives them their push and their poll in terms of their lives and in terms of the kind of dramatic stakes of it
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So it's been really thrilling to have this play, honor what has come before it, and also look
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to the next generation, Gen Z, and try to define what is motivating this generation
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This one's a huge comedy, huge comedy. You know, it is witty, it is relevant, it is something that people, no matter what are going to
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love. I'm a social justice nerd. So when I see art reflect the times and make people think about
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what we need people to think about, it's always a thank you and it's a sanctuary of storytelling
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And second stage just continues to be a church where that happens, man
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