There’s so much joy onstage during “Chicago.” Did stories from your own lives inspire what you did for that song?
JP: Definitely. I grew up in a kind of sleepy surf town just north of San Diego. So even though San Diego is a pretty major city, it had a quiet feel to it. I craved something with more energy, and I couldn’t get to New York soon enough. I came to New York [for school] when I was 15, and I haven’t left since. At 15, or your late teens, it’s a big moment for establishing a sense of independence and self, so that feels very personal to me with the “Chicago” scene. We were trying to capture the spirit of what it feels like to go through that as a young person—the potential in this new beginning.
JD: One of my favorite parts of the show is during the verses of “Chicago,” when there’s very little movement at all, and you’re watching this silent, naturalistic scene between these two boys, Henry and Carl, and they’re just talking and making each other laugh. It feels so intimate, even though there’s 10 cast members around them making the image of this car. It’s the magic of that to me—you’re in the car with them, feeling exactly what they’re feeling.
In my own life, I’ve had the best and, sort of, deepest conversations with people that I love while we’re driving somewhere. There’s something about the attention of looking at the road and other things outside that means you end up being able to talk about really deep things, or just to spend quality time.
The road trip is such an American rite of passage, too. When you talk to people from other countries, the idea of being in a car for 12 straight hours—you would be in another country by then. Here, you’re barely through Pennsylvania. There’s something about the expanse of it that Justin captures so beautifully in the choreography.
Did the show always have this through line about the experience of travel? Or did that come about somewhere in the creative process?
JP: It was guided by the music. It feels expansive in the way that the geography of this country is expansive too.
JD: Yeah, I realized we accidentally made a classical bildungsroman, not to use obnoxious words, where a young boy needs to leave home in order to learn about himself and be able to go back. In Illinoise, Henry doesn’t necessarily go back to the Midwest, but he’s able to go back to himself. There is this idea—which I think is common for a lot of young people—where you need to leave home to figure out who you are. That’s true for your entire life. For some people, it’s true for just a trip or a vacation to get out of your normal situation, so that you can think about things in a different way.
JP: You can live vicariously through the travel experience of the show. For me, I’m not a big camper. This is the closest thing I’ll ever get to camping—to create a musical that shows people camping.
