A-LISTS theatre
Duncan Sheik
A Spirited diScourSe on
Whisper house
by bill biss
After a very successful turn on Broadway creating the music for a frus-
trated and anguished environment in Spring Awakening, Duncan Sheik
now casts his musical spell on the spirit world with his new musical called
Whisper House. The book for the musical was written by Kyle Jarrow and
tells the story of a young boy, Christopher who has lost his father in WWII.
His mother is too mentally unstable to care for him; hence he is sent to live
with a distant aunt who he has never met. His aunt, Lilly, is a lighthouse
keeper and lives with a worker she has employed to help her named
Yasujiro. As Christopher explores this new world, he finds himself visited
by four ghosts. Is this a child’s wild imagination or are these ghosts simply
warning him of dangers that lie ahead. Duncan Sheik is extremely thrilled
about this new production heading to The Old Globe Theatre on January
13 through February 21. Don’t be too frightened though. Read on.
The Rage Monthly: You are using your album Whisper House as a sounding board for this stage cal even happens, as it’s the same music on the album and in the play.
production. Did you go into the songwriting process thinking this will not only be an album DS: Yes. There were a couple things going on. One of the big issues was actually
but will be adapted to the stage from the very beginning? the fact that we’d been commissioned by a theatre in Connecticut that kind of
Duncan Sheik: Yeah. In fact, what happened was it was initially conceived only went out of business. So, we needed to attract attention from some other regional
as a stage musical. I finished writing the songs…most of them, by February of theatres to get the show produced. The record actually became a really great way
2008. So, I started recording them as demos, fancy demos. Then some people at of cementing people’s excitement about the piece.
Sony heard those recordings. They got very excited about it and they were like Rage: One of the songs is called “Better To Be Dead.” Will you tell me about the songwriting
maybe this is the next Duncan Sheik album. The way that the album came out as a process and research for these songs?
proper release was a little bit of a happy accident. DS: Sure. The idea of working on a piece that dealt with ghosts and a ghost story
Rage: Oh good. It’s almost like you’re letting the cat out of the bag before the stage musi- in a lighthouse kind of appealed to me because I grew up in Hilton Head, South
10 RAGE monthly | january 2010
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80