A Little Chat with Cole and Krane

A short interview that turned into a conversation with Stephen Cole and David Krane about their upcoming York Theatre production of The Road to Qatar! Performances begin on Jan. 25th, 2011
Go to www.yorktheatre.org to get tix.
S=Cole
D=Krane
Question:
The Road to Qatar! is based on the true experience you both had writing a new Broadway-style musical for the Emir of Qatar. How exactly did this all start?

S: One day, five years ago, I got an email that said "We want you write musical...HOW MUCH?"
D: I got the same email. We didn't even know each other yet.
S: They told me to call a number in Dubai and at the time I had never even heard of Dubai, but once I looked it up I realized they were really rich there...
D: Oil, you know!
S:...So I wrote back and told them to call me. The called immediately and repeated the phrase in a broken English...
Both: ""We want you write musical...HOW MUCH?"
S: I passed them on to my agent and told him to ask for a lot of money! I also asked about the composer and...
D: I asked about who was going to write the book and lyrics...
S: They said they had composers in Rome and Lithuania. That was scary. I wanted someone I could work with here. One day an email came and said I would be writing the show with David Krane. I was thrilled. A New Yorker. With Broadway and Hollywood credits.
D: We met and it was like looking into a short Jewish mirror. We wondered how they put us together
S: Later I asked how they found us. They said, "your website" Good lesson for us all, always keep your website looking spiffy!

Question:
And what was the original musical you were asked to write about?

S: At first the show was to be about a little boy whose father wouldn't let him go to a sports academy. I remember sarcastically thinking..."wonderful...sounds like a hit to me!" Then they changed the premise to "a sultan's son is locked in a palace and is very spoiled and only wants a star in the sky." I thought, "okay. Better, but how do I fill a whole evening with this?"
D: The answer was 20 camels, 5 Arabian stallions and a dozen falcons.
S: Not to mention 500 LED screens, lots of flying, Croatian acrobats, fire jugglers, Russian dancers, and a British West End cast. It became about the kid's magical journeys to ancient Greece, Phaoronic Egypt...
D: We had to look that word up.
S: Qatar during the pearl diving days. The show grew to...
D: Mammoth proportions.
S: Radio City without the Rockettes.

Question:
Were you nervous about the prospect of working in the Middle East?

S: Well, at first we were. I mean you can't live in this world and not know what it going on over there and we were not experienced in traveling to that part of the world.
D: I had to tell my sick mother in Queens that we were doing the show in Paris. She would have been too scared for me if she knew the truth.
S: But when we got to Dubai, we felt totally safe. It felt like being in Las Vegas...
D: But without the gambling. It was so architecturally spectacular and modern and built up.
S: We felt just as safe in Qatar, even when we went swimming in the Persian Gulf!
D: Our nerves about being in the Middle East were nothing compared to putting on this huge show...The show was scary!
S: But the experience was enlightening, hilarious and full of all the comedy and drama of putting on a show in any foreign place.

Question:
What was the experience of prepping for the production in Qatar like? How was it different from working on shows here in NY?

D: First of all there was the language barrier...
S: We had translators. One very memorable translator who is now a character in the show...our Lebanese valley girl, Nazirah. She would translate for us. We never quite knew if what we were saying was really going through.
D: And there was the cultural difference. Bargaining is part of the every day life. But mostly it was about how inexperienced our producers were in putting on a new musical of this size. There were over 100 people on the stage!
S: Everything was bigger there. We had a pre-recorded 70 piece orchestra.
D: We recorded in Bratislava! They also treated the show when it was finished...as finished. They didn't invite us to be part of the rehearsal process, so we couldn't do any rewrites or cuts as we would normally do to make a show better.
S: Once we handed them the script and the orchestra was pre-recorded, that was that. We were like Birdseye. Frozen. Seeing the show on opening night was surreal. We hardly remembered what we had written. And yet, the Emir stood up at the end and cheered.
D: There's nothing like royal applause!

Question:
Were there any customs or cultural changes that you had to get used to while staying in Qatar?

S: We were only in Qatar for less than a week and treated royally. We were fed the best food...
D: Stayed in the best hotels...Same thing in Dubai, which is a totally different country.
S: And culturally, the funny thing is, Arabs and Jews are very similar. They are forbidden to eat ham and shellfish...same as Kosher law. We learned some words and did our best to be polite. We learned you don't sit with the sole of your shoe showing, that's impolite. We learned that your dressed nicely, nothing too revealing...I never went out in my speedo.
D: We were wide-eyed and so were our hosts. They were in awe of our American musical theatre expertise...
S: That's why they hired us. They wanted the best of everything. And the United States (particularly New York) is were you go to get the best new musicals.

Question:
If you had to compare The Road to Qatar! to any other musicals, which would you choose and why?

S: We think The Road to Qatar! is totally unique in that it is totally...
D: Well, almost totally...
S: Yes, almost totally true. And also because it's a 95 minute comic musical. It's both hip and old fashioned...hip because it's so up to date in its subject matter and old fashioned because it's got a bouncy melodic musical comedy score that makes you think of the good old days of musical comedy. When Comden and Green were ruling the street.
D: I think the show is like Showboat.
S: Showboat? Why not Porgy and Bess? It's kind of The Producers meets A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum meets Forbidden Broadway. Irreverent, off the wall...
D: Fun!
S: Fun-ny!
D: My favorite quote about the show is..."Makes the Middle East Funny!"
S: It's what we need right now. Musical comedy heals.

Question:
Besides the writing of a new musical, what else were you able to get from this experience? What did you learn?
D: Well, believe it or not, one of the big reasons I did the show was because I had this romantic notion of bringing peace and love to the other side of the world. To prove that art could perhaps heal the wounds that have separated our cultures. \
S: And in a way, we did do that...I mean we met people that we never would have met, saw places we never would have seen.
D: We learned that people are very different and also very much the same...
S: Our producer was exactly like any other theatrical producer. He wanted to put on a great show...
D: Except with camels!
S: I also learned that you can write a musical in 6 weeks. Who knew? I usually take a year or so. I mean when you are given a task and a list of what has to be part of that...
D: Not to mention when you know there is a check and a production at the end of your task...
S: At first, like anytime you put your fingers on the keyboard and type "scene one", you can't imagine you will ever get to "curtain"...
D: But you can.
S: I also learned to answer all my emails. I mean who knew from one little email would come a huge show in the Middle East and then another show all two short Jews going to the Middle East and writing a musical. Who would have dreamed? Would you?
D: Don't forget the best part. We became collaborators and friends.
S: Of course. We were put together by people from the other side of the world. How did they know we would be so compatible? It's like fate...Kismet.
D: That show was Middle Eastern too.