Tres Sheik

The Complete Interview

by Jay Blotcher, June 30, 2009

Singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik’s pop-chamber confessionals (echoing Nick Drake, edged in Rufus Wainwright, and cured in Jeff Buckley) have not only achieved mainstream radio success but critical respect as well. It was fitting that Sheik’s high-drama musical poetry be applied to theater, but few expected the resounding success of 2006’s “Spring Awakening,” a brash and poignant work (with Steven Sater) of sexual stirrings in 19th-century Viennese schoolchildren. The Tony Award-winning Broadway musical marked a new path for Sheik, who is concurrently developing three new works: “Nero,” a gleefully decadent take on the ancient ruler; an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale,” slated to open next year at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater; and the baroque ghost story “Whisper House,” slated for Vassar College’s Powerhouse Theater this month on July 10 and 11.

Collaborating with librettist Kyle Jarrow and director Keith Powell (Toofer on TV’s “30 Rock”), composer-lyricist Sheik has fashioned a score knowingly histrionic but engaging in its melancholy. (He recorded the 10-song score on CD this past January.) “Whisper House” is anchored in vintage artifice, just begging for a film adaptation by director Guy Maddin. The tale takes place on the Maine seashore at the height of World War II. Young Christopher has been sent to live in a lighthouse with his Aunt Lilly. As he navigates his new world, the boy struggles to understand his eccentric aunt, her tightlipped Japanese handyman, and the relentless wailings that come from a gathering of ghosts calling beyond the shoals.

In early June, while on a yoga retreat in Cannes, France, Sheik spoke about “Whisper House,” its fitful journey from the page to the stage, and why all art must contain hope. “Whisper House” will be performed July 10 and 11 at the Powerhouse Theater, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. $25. (845) 437-7235; www.powerhouse.vassar.edu.

[The following is the original, unedited transcript.]
Chronogram: Many playwrights and composers find the Powerhouse format
rewarding; it allows them to see where a work can be improved. What
was accomplished last year for your work-in-progress "Nero" by mounting
it at Powerhouse?

Sheik: An enormous amount was accomplished. We restructured the
piece; I know that I wrote a lot of new songs even in that short
period of time. Steven [Sater] rewrote a lot of the text of the
show, and I think we all had a better conception of what the piece
was ultimately supposed to be about. After the workshop, actually, we
were able to get together and, given what we had experienced there
for that couple of weeks, think about what the next iteration of the
piece would be. That iteration will probably be the real staged
production. So, it was great to figure out the things that were wrong
with it and generally it improved the piece greatly.