Pop star 'Awakening'
Featured Player: Duncan Sheik
It is now.
Sheik -- the rock tunesmith who broke through with the single "Barely Breathing" in 1996 and just released his fifth solo album, "White Limousine" -- has three theatrical projects in the works. All are collaborations with Sater.
"Nero (Another Golden Rome)," an experimental retelling of the life of the fiddling emperor, is in the midst of a run at the Magic Theater in San Francisco. "The Nightingale," based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen, recently finished a Gotham workshop and is a candidate for presentation next season at the La Jolla Playhouse.
And the long-gestating "Spring Awakening," based on the 1891 Frank Wedekind play about tortured teens, will finally see a full production this spring at the Atlantic Theater Off Broadway.
"I always wanted to combine a really good straight play with the event of rock 'n' roll," says Atlantic a.d. Neil Pepe, who chose "Spring Awakening" as the theater's first musical after plans for a Roundabout production were scrapped in the wake of 9/11.
Tom Hulce has acted as a shepherd-producer for the project, and Michael Mayer has long been attached as helmer. (Mayer directed "A Home at the End of the World," the Hulce-produced pic for which Sheik and Sater contributed songs to the soundtrack.)
Wedekind's original play is a frank and challenging take on adolescents grappling with sex and death. Sater's adaptation maintains the late-19th-century time period, but Sheik's music is decidedly contemporary.
"The show cries out for pop-rock," Sater says. "It's the place where kids today have found release from the kind of anguished longing that haunts the kids in this play."
As further evidence of Sheik having one foot in music and another in theater, the musician performed last week in Lincoln Center's American Songbook concert series, mixing tracks from his solo albums with his stage work.
Sheik had done a little theater while growing up -- he played the Artful Dodger in a production of "Oliver!" at school in South Carolina -- but putting on the legit hat still required a few adjustments.
The whole process, starting with Sater handing over lyrics for Sheik to set to music, is far more collaborative than his solo songwriting.
"In my own band, I was used to being the music director," he says.
Sheik also doesn't write or read sheet music, so he works with arrangers and music directors to get his tunes down on paper.
Then, of course, there's always an opinionated director adding his two cents.
"There were moments when Michael and I would really tangle at first," he says. "But by now, I'm starting to welcome the more collaborative nature of the process."
Sater and Sheik met through Sokka Gakkai, the lay Buddhist organization in which both are members. They clicked immediately.
"The simple thing would be to say we're both Buddhists," Sater says. "But I think we both have a certain melancholy romanticism in our hearts."
Born in New Jersey and raised mostly in South Carolina, Sheik attended Andover and Brown. He played for a while with Lisa Loeb, whom he met in the orchestra pit at a Brown production of a William Blake tuner called "Tiger," and released his self-titled debut in 1996.
In an early interview, he said none of the songs he wrote was fiction.
"Since then, I've really started to enjoy writing things that are fiction, with a character or a persona in mind," he says, citing the devilish, cynical persona he adopts for "Shopping," one of the songs on his new album. "Perhaps that's the effect of having worked on these theater pieces."
Sheik also says he'd consider writing lyrics for theater if it were a new idea that he'd built from the ground up.
Any ideas occur to him?
"They've started to," he says. "But they're definitely in their infancy, so don't hold your breath."
