13 the Musical to make its post-Broadway debut at TUTS

April 24, 2:49 PMHouston Theater ExaminerJulia Temlyn

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13 the Musical

Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown’s latest musical, 13, will debut a slightly revised version at Houston's Theatre Under the Stars in September. This will be the musical’s first post-Broadway production since its closure in January. The show premiered on Broadway Sept. 16, 2008, and closed on Jan. 4, 2009.

The TUTS production will premiere September 10-12, 2009 as part of its Apprentice Conservatory Training at the Humphreys School of Musical Theatre, and will feature local teens in both its cast and band. Auditions will be held here in Houston (April 25-26 for actors, and April 26 and May 3 for musicians).

(More information about auditions to follow in another update.)

Press notes for the Broadway run of 13 describe the show: "Evan Goldman has it all — he's popular, has the perfect family and lives in the greatest city in the world — New York. That is until his parents get divorced and he's forced to move with his Mom… to Indiana. Uprooted from his old life, he has to make new friends and somehow maneuver his way through the minefield of High School to become part of the 'in-crowd.' A grown-up story about growing up, featuring the only all-teenage cast ever to hit Broadway!"

The show features a cast of thirteen 13-year-olds and a six-piece band, also comprised of teenagers.

Composer Jason Robert Brown wrote the following background of how he came up with the story on his blog:

In 2002, I came up with an idea for a musical that would be combined with a book series, aimed at and featuring teenagers. (Note, please, that this was several years before High School Musical was part the cultural Zeitgeist; at the time, nobody was thinking about teenagers and musical theater.) The idea was about a kid turning 13 and trying to make sense of an utterly chaotic life. I thought of six characters, all of them fairly archetypal but with some quirky twist, and put them in an anonymous Midwestern suburb, and started to determine the ways they’d interact. When I was 13, I felt utterly alone, and I was totally convinced that adults didn’t understand a single thing about the tortures I was going through; I thought the best way to reflect that feeling in a theatrical setting was to keep the adults offstage entirely: have the whole show be performed only by 13-year-olds, thirteen of them, and let them define the world they live in and the rules used to tell the story.

Brown told Playbill.com that he and his collaborators, librettists Dan Elish and Robert Horn, "loved the show we put on Broadway, but felt that 13's future life would be well served by taking one more shot at certain sections of the piece, particularly those sections that might not make as much sense to an audience outside of New York City."

This summer, prior to the regional premiere in Houston, the revised version will be tested at a New York performing arts camp. After the test performance and the subsequent Houston regional premiere, the finalized version of 13 will be made available to the public for licensing from Musical Theatre International.

 For more info: Call TUTS at (713) 558-8887 or (888) 558-3882, or visit their website at www.TUTS.org.