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Superstar Parton Jumps Onto Broadway Bandwagon for 9 to 5: The Musical
By Kenneth Jones
17 Jul 2008
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9 to 5 creator Dolly Parton
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | Dolly Parton, the internationally acclaimed country singer and songwriter whose songs have crossed genres, confessed that she's not an expert in the history of Broadway musicals. But that didn't stop the Tennessee-born legend from jumping — with both boots — into writing the score of 9 to 5: The Musical.
"I've never seen that many Broadway musicals," the twangy and ever-upbeat Parton told PlaybillRadio.com's Robert Viagas on July 15. "A lot of the stuff I have seen has been in movies, like 'Oklahoma!,' or 'State Fair,' stuff like that…stuff that you see on TV or you watch in the movies. It wasn't a world that I knew… I think I absorbed just enough of the things that I had seen through the years to know how to make it bigger or littler — the dynamics of [musical storytelling]. So I knew just enough, but not enough to screw me up!"
She may be a Broadway newcomer, but she has the advantage of returning to familiar territory: Parton starred as country-girl executive assistant Doralee in the 1980 movie comedy on which the show is based, so she knows the story and characters intimately.
9 to 5: The Musical will begin Broadway previews March 24, 2009, at the Marriott Marquis Theatre following a Sept. 3-Oct. 19 tryout at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Joe Mantello directs a cast that includes Stephanie J. Block, Megan Hilty, Allison Janney and Marc Kudisch.
Of the Broadway process, Parton admitted, "I was kinda scared of it…I thought, 'This is a whole different world to me. I hear these people can just eat you up alive.' And I thought, 'Well, I'm not one to be eaten alive without kickin' and a-fightin'!'"
Parton said that part of the writing process involved simply trusting her collaborators, who have had success with musicals before. Mantello directed a little show called Wicked, for example, which had musical direction by 9 to 5 music supervisor Stephen Oremus.
"I was more than happy to adjust and adapt to anything they needed me to change," she said. "I didn't take that as an insult as a writer. I thought, 'Well, this is what they do — they should know.' And I certainly can change it, I can write on my feet, y'know. They were impressed 'cause I'd never done [this] before. I was kinda proud of myself, 'cause I didn't know that I could do it at all."
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9 to 5 stars Stephanie J. Block, Allison Janney and Megan Hilty
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| photo by Justin Stephens |
Parton's writing partner on 9 to 5: The Musical is Patricia Resnick, the screenwriter of the original film. How did they work together?
Resnick explained, "I went through my movie script, and I tried to turn it into some sort of a book, and I indicated places I thought songs might go. Then [producer] Bob Greenblatt and I sat down, and he had some input and then we went to Dolly with that and she started coming up with songs for these spots. I would talk sometimes about what was going on with the characters…and she just spit songs out. She writes really fast."
Parton admitted that before she got a script she came up with a slew of songs that would fit characters and moments. She said, "When they asked me to write the music, I just went home, before I ever even got the script, and I wrote stuff for all these different characters. I actually probably wrote 35, 40 songs and narrowed them down. I wrote what I thought these characters were — I just wrote songs I thought would fit. Then when I started with Pat's script, with her, we started placing them in different places, and, of course, I had to rewrite some stuff or had to replace some songs. A lot of the original stuff that I wrote [has remained]. I just throwed 'em out there for them. I figured, that's their job! 'You put 'em where you want 'em! I'm gonna write 'em!' If [Pat] said, 'We need a different song here, or this one's almost there, or could you change this verse?'…we worked really well together. We'd worked together in the past so we weren't ever offended by anything that anybody had to say. It was all constructive and good. …She trusted me, I trusted her, and we just really went after it."
Resnick said, "Dolly is the template for what famous people should be like, and rarely are. She is the most generous, warm, funny, smart person in the world. So to get to work with her again was wonderful." Continued...
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