MEET JEREMY ROBIN LYONS

Jeremy Robin Lyons, the musical director of "A Doll's Life", is making his Beautiful Soup creative debut this winter. You can hear him in the pit of "Little Women" at The Secret Theatre for one more week and read more about him here! Check him out!

With hundreds of casting calls a week in this city, what attracted you to this project? The chance to work on something that most people aren’t familiar with.  When you’re working on well-known material, people often come into the theater with pre-conceived notions of how the production should look, feel, and sound (and then evaluate whether or not the company “did it right” or not)… and then you have to make a conscious decision to do things “the way everyone does it” (with its pros and cons) or to try to reinvent the material (which also has its pros and cons).  But with unknown material, you don’t need to worry about any of that.  You can make bold choices because they seem true, not because it’s what has or hasn’t been done before.  You can enjoy the fact that the audience will legitimately be surprised by the material.   (I often joke – rather tastelessly – that you should never tell someone who hasn’t seen Star Wars that Darth Vader is Luke’s father because you will spoil the story for them, much like you should never tell someone who hasn’t read the New Testament that Jesus comes back to life at the end.  Crap.  I hope you’ve all read your Bibles.  Should’ve put a SPOILER alert at the beginning of this.)

What do you hope audience members come away with after seeing the show? I hope people are able to come away from the show thinking about the costs of liberation, and how the harshest of judgments are still passed on women today.  We are often told that we are living in a modern world in which we appreciate strong women figures… but when a male politician takes a strong stand he is “sticking to his guns” and yet when Hillary Clinton takes a strong stand she is “a bitch.”  Some of the most popular television sitcoms these days are grossly misogynistic.  Women’s liberation aside, I think the show also says a lot about self-discovery.

And by Jove I hope they laugh a lot.  Salmon.

Who or what inspired you to go into theatre? I have always loved good stories.  And stories told with music.  I would memorize whatever cast albums happened to be in the house (I vividly remember constantly singing along to Fiddler on the Roof).  When I was 10 my mom finally forced me to go to a theater class.  The only reason I agreed was because she said if I went just one time and truly didn’t like it, I didn’t have to go back.  It might have taken 5 full minutes (but I’m not even sure it was that much) for me to know I wanted to stay.

What's your dream role? I don’t have too many “onstage” ambitions.  I would love to play Mother’s Younger Brother in Ragtime.  I’d love to have a role in a production like John Doyle’s Company, which I consider to be essentially flawless.  I’d love to be in Merrily We Roll Along someday.  Things I would love to MD: Parade, The Last Five Years, A Little Night Music, Smokey Joe’s Café, 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Who is your hero and why? Stephen Sondheim.  The art that he has created is a source of constant inspiration to me.

What's the greatest experience you've had on stage? I played Jack in Into the Woods when I was 14, and then got to MD the show when I was 19.  I wrote my own orchestral reduction for this production, and the band was onstage, right in the midst of everything.  It was really, really cool to revisit this piece in a different capacity just 5 years later, experience it in such a different way and discover a much deeper understanding of the material.  I also can’t help but mention when I played Tiny Tom in Urinetown… from beginning to end, it was the most absurd, laughter-filled process I’ve ever experienced.

Who is the one person you haven't worked with that you would like to?  Steven Carl McCasland. Dreams do come true.

What's your favorite musical/play and why? No question, Sunday in the Park with George.  Every moment of it is utterly breathtaking.

What's your favorite ice cream? Mint chocolate chip :)

Nora or a Torvald? Nora.