Dir. Nicole McDonald; choreog. Tim Frost; produced by Adirondack Institute with grant from LARAC. Zigzag invites the audience to “connect the dots” between scenes, songs and dances to construe the story of Cowboy, Butterfly, Tender, Bruce and their younger selves as time is expanded, compressed and zigzagged in this up-and-down-and-back-around musical love story. In Act I, veteran country bar sing
er Cowboy falls for Butterfly, a more sophisticated cabaret chanteuse, while being advised and rescued by boss and old friend Tender from the dangers of Butterfly’s flightiness and her bad boyfriend Bruce. While the “old farts” advise and reminisce, their younger Boy and Girl selves dance out their inner love story. By Act II, suffering from being bumped off the love merry-go-round, both couples change partners, complain and yearn as Tender rescues Cowboy, and Butterfly and her manager Bruce pursue her career. By the surprising conclusion, we’ve witnessed a generation of flirting, cheating, healing and family, illustrating the theme, “Love’s a Zigzag.”
It’s about love and time, what all musical drama is about. It’s a small-cast, backstage rom-com which asks the musical question, “What would you tell your younger self – about love?” Composed of 10 of my best, award-winning songs, written over 50 years, some of which I didn’t understand until later, when I’d lived them. And it’s about 100 minutes, 80 of them sung. As I’ve tried to teach college students for 14 years, storytelling is about time manipulation, so, practicing what I’ve preached, giving my characters and the audience a chance to move around in time, to stretch and compress it, even stopping it occasionally. As Michael Spitzer says in The Musical Human, music is “our art of time.” Feeling, manipulating, understanding and expressing time is what it is to be a person. Zigzag’s music is mostly acoustic-guitar-based, whether pop, country, jazz, Broadway or rock, while its theatrical influences are Cabaret, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Porgy & Bess and all those backstage Hollywood musical – while putting a modern spin on all those romantic tropes. I’ve assembled a dream team cast & crew – it takes a village to put on a musical. I’ve spent two months writing it, two years rewriting it, and now it’s time to play, to let it find its wings on the stage. However it’s received, it’s been a labor of love by a community of 20 talented professionals using song, drama, dance, lights, set, costumes and spectacle to communicate multi-generationally about love. That’s why we’re all here, isn’t it?
