A one-night stand that goes a little too well—this was the seed of the story that was planted in Ariella Serur’s mind when their partner, Sav Souza posed the question: “If you could write a song about anything, what would it be?” As a simple exercise, the couple broke off into separate rooms to create their own lyrics and melodies, and then came back together to workshop what they had made. “It ended up being a fluff song about nothing,” explains Souza, but nevertheless, they had a song that would eventually give rise to their show, “We Start in Manhattan: A New Queer Musical.” As a part of the 37th Powerhouse Theater Season at Vassar College, Souza and Serur will be bringing their musical to the Powerhouse theater on July 14 and 15.
Souza and Serur, who are best known for their roles in the recent Broadway revival of “1776,” both harbored ambitions in the realm of musical theater from a young age. Souza grew up performing in the small community in Tracy, California, and eventually moved to the East Coast to study at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. “I came into myself as a trans and queer performer, and fell in love with writing for musical theater,” says Souza.
Similarly, Serur knew she wanted to be a performer throughout her childhood on Long Island. After graduating from Ithaca College, she moved to Manhattan to pursue her passion. “I had trouble finding a place in the industry, especially coming into my nonbinary identity,” explains Serur.
When the couple met in February of 2020, Souza was already preparing for their role as Dr. Josiah Bartlett in the “1776” revival. It wasn’t until after they had begun dating in August, and the pandemic was slowing, that Serur joined the entirely gender nonconforming and female cast of “1776” in the role of George Read. When they weren’t rehearsing and performing for the Broadway production, the couple was writing and workshopping “We Start in Manhattan.”
“This process was born very organically as two people who are in love. It’s a very natural thing for us to work together and to create something together,” explains Serur. “We are creating this musical, we are creating a home. It just feels like another thing that we are putting our two brains and souls and bodies toward.”
As Souza and Serur were developing the play, they noticed how friends and family were drawn to the origins of their own relationship, which roughly correlates to the starting plot of the musical—two queer individuals have a one-night stand just before one of them leaves for a road trip. From there, the story veers away from Souza and Serur’s own relationship—they’re still together—into an exploration of a different type of intimacy. After their one-night stand, the two characters in the show, Linc and Jess, accompany one another on a month-long road trip. In this condensed time, their round-the-clock closeness intensifies their affection as well as their conflicts, until they eventually go their separate ways. “I think one of the most universal experiences we have as humans are relationships that don’t last forever,” says Souza. "We are exploring the beauty of that experience through a queer and nonbinary lens.”
The connection that Souza and Serur’s have with their musical has occasionally posed an obstacle. “Sometimes it's been a bit of a struggle when writing it, because we feel too connected to our characters, and we don’t want to make them flawed,” says Souza. “Ellie has been really helpful in that.”
Ellie Heyman, the director of the show, echoes this sentiment, “Couples go to therapy to solve their issues. I am the opposite of that to these characters,” explains Heyman. “I am the instigator.”
Heyman, who’s past work has included “The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels in America” (2020), and “Dreamboy” (2018), met Souza after casting them in a reading of “The Tattooed Lady.” She joined the team when Souza and Serur reached out to her during the early stages of We Start In Manhattan. “Content wise, it’s a great fit,” says Heyman. “I am very interested in intimacy, in lovers, in friendship, in parents and children. I always had a real need to understand myself and the people around me, and I remember being a little kid and staring at people, almost looking into them. I would play with dolls to explore those things, and I sort of graduated from dolls to actors.”
Under Heyman’s influence, the show has transformed into something very separate from Souza and Serur’s relationship. “By the time we will be sharing this version at Vassar, it will be the first audience receiving this piece where these characters feel pretty different from who we are,” explains Serur. The iteration of “We Start In Manhattan” being shared at Vassar is in workshop form, as is tradition during the summer season at the Powerhouse, which features a dozen workshop performances and staged readings through July 29. Other notable shows to have passed through Powerhouse in their early stages include the 2016 Tony Award winners for Best Play and Best Musical, Stephen Karam’s “The Humans” and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton.”
Heyman, Souza, and Serur are aligned in their desire to explore and diversify representations of love and intimacy on stage. “Musicals are spaces that have traditionally been extremely gendered,” Says Heyman. “To take a romcom and queer it in this sort of way, with it being a musical, is very exciting.”
When asked who this musical is intended for, the team is clear that the story is one that will appeal to a diverse mainstream audience. “If you have notions about queer and trans people, you may leave with some broken,” says Heyman. “But Either way, this is a story about love.”
