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Watch Susan Blackwell & Company Preview Michael Friedman's GONE MISSING
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Nov 2, 2022
Encores! Off-Center, New York City Center's popular summer musical theater series, continues next week with Gone Missing. John Behlmann, Susan Blackwell, Aysan Celik, Deborah S. Craig, Taylor Mac, and David Ryan Smith will star in the special two-night-only engagement, presented in honor of composer and 2017 Encores! Artistic Director Michael Friedman.
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Up next for Encore's Off Center is Michael Friedman's Gone Missing, which will run from July 11th through the 12th
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and we drop by the rehearsal room to meet the company. And silly as it seems, I lost all my dreams when we said adieu
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and I think you will find that I lose my mind when I think of you
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And no one has solved the case that involved the revolver from my game of clue
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Well, I've still got the knife, but what good is my life? First of all, welcome to Encores. This is your first, right
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I'm an Encore's Virgin. Yes, it's my first one. It's like being shot out of a cannon, a somersack cannon. It's crazy. It's 10 days
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But it's fun. It's phenomenal. You've obviously had friends who have done Encors before, so have they totally
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told you what it was going to be like. Oh, yes, yes, I've come and I've seen many on-course experiences, and some of them gigantic
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gigantic undertakings. This is a little more manageable, it feels like, just a small ensemble delight
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And even with that I still it just makes me feel like my memory I wish I was faster And with all that I lost no I don mind the cost Think when my nephew Chris just lost at his brist And you have to admit that it true that the only thing missing
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do you miss the kissing? The only thing missing is you. Welcome back to Oncores. How does it feel
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Feels good. It feels good to be back in a different kind of. piece than 1776, which was my first one. So it's a great group. I'm excited. What better way to
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spend the summer? A lot of people, they're all first timers here, mostly everybody in your cast
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Have you given them any advice of what to expect? Because they're all like, we have 10 days. We open
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one night. We closed the next night. Yeah, any advice have given them, they probably haven't listened to
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It's probably not worth much. Really, it's just like it's all, everyone operating on pure instinct
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And the only note I gave was look up because that balcony is pretty tall. That's all
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It's a big house here. Big old house. Maybe the biggest I've ever performed in? Maybe
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I don't know. But I'd have to do the math. But yeah, yeah, pretty good. The musical is such a love fest to New York
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I fell in love with this when it was first done. I mean, Michael Freeman is still such a genius
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He is. He very much feels alive in the room for the music
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It's hard to process that loss. And so working on this show and also in the music and in the words and you know you I very much feel him living on and that such a beautiful thing And also this show is a great way to process loss and how things and people are ephemeral and how but they are infinite
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And that's something that makes this show so special and beautiful. Well, Michael Friedman was a friend, and he always wanted me, I always wanted to do an encore, one of the concerts
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And he was talking when he became the artistic director about doing
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Am I being involved in one of them? And then when he passed, just to be able to do it and do the one that's his is very emotional
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So it's quite nice. Yes. First of all, this is my favorite musical from the civilians
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This is some of my favorite songs he's ever, Michael's ever written, are in this piece. And it's actually really fun
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Like, there's no time for us to kind of stress. We can just sort of have to jump in
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And it's really actually quite fun to work on it so quickly. We're like getting our choreography
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We've got our scripts. We're learning our songs. And everyone is a complete doll in the cast
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So it's just fun. It's a great show Michael Friedman's beautiful score
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What's it like living in his world? And what's it like living in the world of God missing? It's beautiful. It's challenging
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It's a lot of dialects. I think we're like something like probably 40 different characters
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we're all going to portray. So it's a lot of specificities. So we're trying to get in there and get as much nitty-gritty as we can in a short time
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But it's really exciting. It a tribute to New York City I think and the life and the people that live here You know Gone Missing is so special obviously because of Michael left for us And I definitely have a lot of connection to that
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I understand loss. And just seeing what these actors have celebrated through his music is just really poignant
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So I love being a part of something special like that, for sure. And, you know, implementing dance into the piece is just super important because it also provides
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Ken likes to, the director describes that it provides this vertical kind of motion when all of the monologues are kind of horizontal
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And so it's a bit of a celebration or escape from the director dress, which I think is really unique
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This is such a love song to New York. It's a love letter to New York about loss and everything else
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I mean, what attracted you to this piece? What do you love the most about this musical? You know, I love the civilians in general. I love that, you know, everything that Steve and Mike
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ever wrote was about real people, was about real New Yorkers, was about real human beings
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And the fact that it came, I mean, speaking strictly about the score, the fact that it came from
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sort of these interviews with people, and then Michael had these sort of ideas for a series of
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breakup songs in very different ways, was the most appeal, or is the most appealing thing to me
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because they're very beautiful and they feel very human and they feel very individual
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