Looking Back and Moving Forward with Dessa Rose
Lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty have been one of theater's most popular writing teams since they joined forces in 1983. Their collaboration includes the stage musicals Once on This Island, My Favorite Year, Seussical, A Man of No Importance and Ragtime, which won the 1998 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for their score. They also garnered two Academy Award nominations and two Golden Globe nominations for their score of the animated movie Anastasia. Now Ahrens and Flaherty are back where they belong: the New York stage. They are behind the current musical, Dessa Rose, which is playing off-Broadway at Lincoln Center. Here, the beloved musical theater writers share their excitement and inspiration for Dessa Rose, which is based on Sherley Anne William's novel about of two women who surprisingly unite during slavery in the Deep South. Ahrens and Flaherty each share different, intimate views into how childhood memories moved them while working on this new piece.
Dessa Rose: "A Story Needin' to Be Said…"
By Lynn Ahrens
A few years ago, my mother handed me a tape recording wrapped up with ribbon. On it was her 20-something voice reading a bedtime story from Winnie-the-Pooh, playing each character, making up tunes and acting out the tale with high drama for an enthralled four-year-old me. What an amazing and prescient gift. It was at the moment of listening to this bit of personal family history that I realized for the first time why I'm still so madly in love with the telling, singing and dramatizing of a good tale. No wonder the novel Dessa Rose practically leaped up and grabbed me by the throat when I first read it. Dense with southern dialect, it's not an easy read, but the story… the story! The novel, written by Sherley Anne Williams, is by turns dramatic, romantic, horrifying, lyrical and funny, and it weaves together the lives of two powerful women who actually lived. When I first read it in 1986, I felt--as one lyric in our show goes--"This is a story needing to be said." It was a story I knew had to tell. Part folk opera, part adventure, our musical adaptation unfolded naturally as an oral history told by the two main characters as old women, who then transform to their young selves one momentous summer in 1847. On opening night, one of our actors gave me a printed homily by an anonymous writer, which describes the importance of storytelling as "one of the primordial acts of our species/vessels of meaning that carry our lives through often-tempestuous waters." In our show, Dessa Rose begins her narrative, "It all started back with that banjar." My own tale, that of a writer for the stage, may well have started back with my mother's dramatic bedtime readings; every night as audience members lean forward in their seats, intent on the unfolding story of Dessa Rose, I'm reminded of my four-year-old self listening, rapt, as my mother read me stories.
Dessa Rose: We Are Descended
My work on Dessa Rose is dedicated to the memory of my father William Flaherty, who, on January 8, 2005 at the age of 75, quickly and quietly passed away in my hometown of Pittsburgh. Dad's death happened unannounced on the third day of our rehearsal period. Even though Dad might have protested that the ensemble in our opening number sings "We are descended from a long, strong line of women" without mentioning the men that were involved, I am convinced he would have loved this show.
Never a big fan of musicals per se "Don't let all that singing and dancing get in the way of your music, Steve!" Dad was a true believer in the primal power of music, its ability to heal, and the thrill of a great story well told. I'd like to believe he'd think Dessa Rose has all of the above.
Dad was a modest man, more Alfie Byrne than Alan Swann, with a dry wit and a killer set of ears. He taught me to hear, really hear, which, as any musician worth his salt knows, is where all music truly begins. He sometimes used to play his old trumpet in the attic of our house after dinner. But what was a 10 year old to make of Dad's plaintively soulful version of the old spiritual "Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen" as it poured out of the attic window and over the rooftops of Biltmore Avenue? And how did this man, who was descended from the Irish working class, know how to bend notes like that? One of the true mysteries of Pittsburgh, and one for which I am eternally grateful.
Dad, now your son is writing, "Lord, give me wings like Noah's Dove," and the audiences at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center are feeling the ache, the struggle and hopefully the joy. I'm sure some of them are wondering, "How can this little white guy from Pittsburgh hear, understand and write those sounds?" Maybe that will have to be our personal secret.
In any case, Dad, I hope you are enjoying the show from your seat way, way up in the balcony. At least you are enjoying it in my dreams.
By Stephen Flaherty