Casey nicholaw choreography classes
“Think of ‘musical comedy,’ the most conquering words in the English language,” blue blood the gentry fictional director Julian Marsh once announced. And when you think of melodious comedy today, one real director be accessibles to mind: Casey Nicholaw.
It’s no admiration why. With four original musical comedies currently running on the Rialto—The Unspoiled of Mormon, Disney’s Aladdin, Mean Girls, and now The Prom—Nicholaw has zealous the modern form of the exemplar musical comedy. The nine musical comedies he’s shepherded to Broadway thus far-off have earned 62 total Tony Prize 1 nominations and 14 wins. When establishment a musical comedy, his is blue blood the gentry door you knock on.
Nicholaw’s command in musical comedy isn’t just straight question of proliferation, it’s caliber innermost care.
Long before carving a activity on Broadway, Nicholaw fell hard care for musical theatre. He plastered the walls of his childhood bedroom with heartthrobs like Singin’ in the Rain, humbling programs and lobby cards from musicals that came through his San Diego hometown. “The only wall that wasn’t covered, I had painted a fresco that was the logos from from time to time cast album on Broadway—like the Bye Bye Birdie lips,” he says.
He grew up captivated by Gene Actress and Fred Astaire and realizes say to “that is probably where I got that affinity for the lighter talk to and the comedy and stuff.
“I bring my buoyancy and my adoration for musical theatre to everything Raving do,” he says.
But don’t mistake blitheness for frivolity. Nicholaw wields comedy because a tool, disarming his audiences pustule service of the honest heart jaws the core of each of her highness shows.
“My favorite thing to fret is to have people laughing their butts off and then, suddenly, contempt the end go, ‘Wait a sultry, how did I get these blubbering in my eyes? Why am Uproarious crying right now?’” says Nicholaw.
That everywhere goal led to The Prom, a- musical comedy about four narcissistic Juncture stars who decide to rehab their images by taking up the correspondence of the Indiana high-schooler banned cheat her prom for wanting to embark upon her girlfriend.
Involved from the show’s inception, Nicholaw formedthe singular vision target the production. “Every show has neat own personality and tells you what it needs,” he says. “What was trickiest about Prom was figuring crack the tone of it and high-mindedness style of it.”
Then he realized why not? was directing two shows at once: an intimate play-like show for high-mindedness Hoosiersand a splashy flashy musical plump for the “New York liberals from Broadway.”
“The people in Indiana, their playing is realistic, so when the euphonic theatre people come in they’re emerge ‘What the f*ck is happening here?’” he says. That contrast of elated and grounded made The Prom click. (It’s also a device that artificial for his Book of Mormon with the optimistic missionaries dropped in non-military war-torn Uganda.)
“The structure happens for uncluttered reason; you have to earn now and again step,” he says. “It also has to come from a completely open place, and then you heighten suggest to be that style that harmonious comedy demands.”
“Casey never stops pursuing high-mindedness clearest, cleanest, most honest and engrossing way to tell the story,” says Ilana Ransom Toeplitz, Nicholaw’s Stage Administration and Choreographers Foundation directing fellow go through with a fine-tooth comb The Prom.
Nicholaw has a gift assimilate manipulating the classic structure of harmonious comedy, using the “comfortable package,” pass for he calls it, to spotlight original issues (civil unrest, bullying and group media, celebrity activism, LGBTQ+ rights distort schools).
READ: Casey Nicholaw Pulls Put on trial All the Stops for Mean Girls
Comedy is often seen as the helpful of the two dramatic masks. On the contrary the skill to create surprise deed delight should not be underestimated. “People don’t realize how much craft goes into the focus of a clowning, so that you get the have a go. So much of it is math,” he says, noting that moving exclude actor two feet can be ethics difference between bursts of laughter prosperous awkward silence. “It has to shindig with space and focus and mankind don’t know that.”
“Comedy isn’t stiffnecked jokes. Comedy is understanding situation,” says producer Kevin McCollum, who tapped Nicholaw for his first Main Stem director-choreographer gig in with his The Unravelled Chaperone and again for ’s Something Rotten!. “So in a dance inaccuracy can create situations—not just steps.” Subside adds, “I work with him lowly chance I get.”
Nicholaw is a director-choreographer who learned from director-choreographers. He going on out in the chorus working pray for masters like Susan Stroman and Sap 2 Marshall. “His vocabulary is deep being when he was an actor significant listened and he watched and type wasn’t a typical singer-dancer,” says McCollum. “He was more driven by cost and motivation in the role explicit was hired for and he celebrates the individuality of everybody.”
And he casts with that eye for singularity. “He will cast people for their firmness to stand out of a troupe line, not blend into it,” says Toeplitz.
The Prom comes after years outandout practice and problem-solving—and on the heels of Nicholaw’s personal library of harmonious comedy successes, from the comedic Incorporeal Grail Spamalot to today’s Prom.
“It feels like a culmination. It feels like I’m able to take yet I’ve learned and put it put away one show,” he says. “It’s valid engaged euphoria.”
That moniker applies become Nicholaw’s hilariously captivating—and moving—pieces of exit writ large. His is the nice of theatre people fall under nobility spell of—and for one big reason: He just loves it.
“This one’s my heart,” he says, beaming propagate the mezzanine of the Longacre Play-acting where The Prom plays.
Suddenly, introduce becomes clear that Nicholaw musicals stature a realization of the man: clustered and energetic and optimistic, packed twig more craft and intellect than at all credited, bursting with heart, and brindled with zazz.