Talking 'Grown-up' Musicals with Mitchell Marcus

Patty Jamieson & Jacquelyn French in The Light In The PiazzaPic: Joanna McDermott

With a five-year history of producing edgy, intimate, out-of-the-ordinary musical fare, The Light in the Piazza – a six-time Tony Award-winner and huge Broadway hit – seems a bit of an unusual choice to open Acting Up Stage’s sixth season.

But Acting Up’s artistic producer Mitchell Marcus saw it differently. He first fell in love with Light in the Piazza when he caught its lavish production at Lincoln Center in New York City. He felt that it was emotionally honest and full of interesting music – but too big. However, when the show was pared down to a smaller orchestra and eight-person cast a couple years ago, Marcus knew it would perfectly fit into his mandate for Acting Up Stage.

“I thought it was an incredibly ‘grown-up’ musical,” he says. “It’s very easy to say that a musical is groundbreaking there are a lot of rock musicals now where people are like ‘oh, it’s groundbreaking because it uses rock music.’ This one is groundbreaking because the music is very different – it’s this weird hybrid of musical-theatre-opera-classical music. It was like a contemporary classic. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard, and the story was just about real people. They were the most real musical theatre characters I had seen.”

The Light in the Piazza tells the story of Margaret, a middle-aged housewife who takes her slightly mentally-challenged 26-year-old daughter Clara to Florence. When Clara falls in love with a young Italian man, who doesn’t notice her childlike manner, Margaret must decide her daughter’s fate, which means coming to terms with her own cynicism and the idea that love can, perhaps, conquer all.

The combination of rich, dramatic material and original music to match is what attracts Marcus to all of his choices for Acting Up Stage material that doesn’t treat the music lightly but provides an intimate, thought-provoking, emotionally intense experience for the audience not unlike that of a play. If it’s a Canadian premiere, all the better. “I think we either have to bring people things they can’t see anywhere else or bring people things they’ve seen, but do them in a completely new way,” he says.

Now going strong in its sixth season, Acting Up Stage started as a university assignment. In his third year at York University, Marcus took an arts administration course that required students to develop a business plan for an organization they wanted to start. As a former actor, Marcus decided that he was tired of “mindless musicals that were only being used for fun.” His mock business plan turned into a real one, and “I started this company the minute I finished university,” he says.

As a CHAT (Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto) grad and a former program director in the Young Judaea camp system, Marcus credits his Jewish background as being one of the primary factors in finding success so young. “Because of going to Associated [Hebrew Schools], because of going to CHAT, there was a real expectation of being able to juggle and work extra hard,” he notes. “I went through a very Jewish system that was also a very difficult, demanding system, where they claimed they were trying to prepare you to be a doctor or lawyer or whatever – well, at the end of the day, what I do is equally as challenging and equally as many hours. That learning how to juggle life but still make time for family, friends, religion – I think that is inherently Jewish and has impacted what I do in the most significant way.”

Besides Light in the Piazza, Marcus is keeping busy with numerous projects for the Luminato festival, where he is associate producer of theatre, dance, film and music. He is also getting ready for Acting Up Stage’s annual one-night cabaret concert fundraiser in April – this year featuring the songs of Michael Jackson – and he’s also hoping to start working with local artists to develop an original musical that will continue to succeed on its own. And after six years of doing one show a year, he’s hoping to up that number to two signature pieces per season.

Now at 28 years old, Marcus sees the value in starting his own company when he did. “It’s one of those things you can only do when you’re 22,” he says. “I couldn’t do it now. It was really this feeling of ‘I can lose a whole lot of money right now but let’s just throw my Bar Mitzvah savings into putting on a show and hope for the best.’ It wasn’t scary, but it absolutely should have been! I don’t know what other industry – well, there probably are a few – where you work so hard, with the best of intention, and then you throw all your work out to the world to tell you how much they like or don’t like it.” Nevertheless, if the last few years have been any indication, Marcus has certainly found his niche.

The Light in the Piazza runs until Feb. 21 at the Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs. For more information visit www.actingupstage.com or www.lightinthepiazza.ca.