Broadway musical fans and supporters of LGBT-themed theater
welcome a new musical theater concept album. Released last month,
Ken Howard's (music/lyrics/libretto)
"On The Boulevard" Original Cast Concept Album, is available on
Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube, and all music streaming services.
"OTB" is a fresh take on George Bernard
Shaw's classic 1914 play, "Pygmalion" (which was later
adapted into "My Fair Lady"), but
with an LGBT twist by having two gay male protagonists in the
former Eliza Doolittle and
Henry Higgins parts (now
"Eli Dillingham" and "Robert Riggins"). In a re-interpretation that is
both progressive and often sentimentally poignant, instead of
Shaw's Edwardian London flower girl learning to speak like a lady
to gain social prestige with the help of an expert phonetician, an
obese gay nerd from the Midwest goes from zero to hero when he is
transformed into a hunky actor worthy of Hollywood superhero movies with the help of a
celebrity personal fitness trainer and his sidekick acting teacher
("Christine Picard", a twist on the
original "Colonel Pickering"). With themes of LGBT self-love,
self-respect, and personal realizations, the story is narrated by a
fierce black drag queen named "Elphaba." It takes place in
West Hollywood, California, the
gay haven neighborhood (and its own incorporated city) in greater
Los Angeles, and its historic
"Boys Town" venue of Santa Monica Boulevard, home to numerous LGBT
bars and clubs, "where your night begins." With twenty-nine tracks,
the album tells the full story, with the hopes that this tuneful
score entices support from a producer or theater company to earn a
fully-staged live theater production. Other musicals started out as
concept albums, such as "Evita," Chess," and "Jekyll & Hyde,"
before their successful debut staged productions.
WEST
HOLLYWOOD, Calif., July 12,
2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The new "On the Boulevard"
Original Cast Concept Album is the labor of love product of
Los Angeles psychotherapist and
life/career coach Ken Howard (music,
lyrics, libretto). Howard created the album over years of
composing, casting, and recording on weekends after a week of
providing psychotherapy and coaching as a specialist in working
with gay men for over 30 years in a full-time private practice in
West Hollywood. Musical theater is
in Howard's blood; he is the great-grandson of 1920s Broadway music
director J William Howard II ("My
Maryland, "Blossom Time"), as well as the great-nephew of
actress Esther Howard, prominent in
Broadway musicals of the 1920's such as "Sunny" (Kern), "Tell Me
More" (Gershwin), and "The New Moon" (Romberg) and later a
character actress in countless Hollywood films from early talkies to the
1950s, playing a rotation of playful flirts, glamorous comedic
dowagers, and boozy hags. Howard earned a degree in Theater from
UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, and later an MSW
(Master of Social Work) from the University of
Southern California, where he later taught LGBT Social Work
and Couples Therapy.
Howard adds, "I learned a lot about the
labor of love that happens among theater people. The abundance of
talent in the cast, but also the perseverance that each song
required of the team, breathing life into them like they've been
playing these parts for months."
Howard gave up an acting career in the eighties but held a place
in his heart for Broadway musicals, performing with the Gay Men's
Chorus of Los Angeles in the early
nineties at the height of the AIDS crisis, which inspired him to
become an expert in HIV mental health and support the quality of
life for gay male individuals and couples. He also became one of
the few gay nationally Certified Sex Therapists from AASECT, the
American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists.
His work with gay male clients struggling with body image issues
and gay men's cultural pressures about appearance led to Howard
observing how the local currency of West
Hollywood was focused on gyms and competitive physiques, and
reminding him of Shaw's sardonic social critique in "Pygmalion"
about how society bestows prestige, social status, and popularity
with rather dubious qualities such as how one speaks or how one
looks, currently ubiquitously observed in the proliferation of
visual social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
"We all know the platitudes and themes: don't judge a book by
its cover, it's what's inside that counts, 'only bad witches are
ugly', and so on, but when was the last time you saw a guy with
anything other than an idealized masculine physique playing a
superhero? The heavier or nerdier guy is always the sidekick in the
lesson from Hollywood. That, and
Hollywood's frequent hypocrisy of
being of, by, and for gay men, yet still pressuring its closeted
gay male heartthrob actors to stay hidden or mysterious, all
informed the somewhat exaggerated but still timely story of the
show," Howard explains. "With all the invalidation that LGBT people
go through, both growing up and certainly even currently with civil
rights being undermined, and the negative long-term effects of
those on self-esteem that I see in my clients, I wanted to tell a
story about how gay men really know what love is, for the self and
for others. That's the message show. All set to music and narrated
by a fierce drag queen, of course."
'On The Boulevard' was originally entitled, 'PygMALEon',
referring to its adaptation from Shaw's 'Pygmalion', with the
creative spelling emphasizing its male leads. While Howard produced
the album, as a non-musician, he had a lot of help from
collaborators who provided arrangements, scores, orchestrations,
and multi-track accompaniment that sounds like a full orchestra
that the actors sang against in the studio. "It was classic
Hollywood 'let's put on a show'
collaboration, with the miraculous skills of arrangers like
Stuart Wood, Silvio Buchmeier, and Michael Van Bodgeom-Smith,
all composers in their own right. Howard recruited actors by asking
for friends of friends, or recruiting from other local LA theater
productions he saw. He found the lead, Michael D'Elia, playing the
title character in "Dorian," a musical adaptation of The Picture of
Dorian Gray, and expanded the
network from there, with some recastings over time but always with
the stalwart talent of D'Elia, a vocal powerhouse that drives the
score like Idina Menzel mastered
"Wicked".
"Beyond the project as such, recording the score of an entire
new full-length musical, I learned a lot about the labor of love
that happens among theater people. The abundance of, first of all,
talent in the cast, but also the skill, commitment, perseverance,
and boundless energies that each song required of the team, with
actors, arrangers, and recording studio engineers all taking the
songs on paper and breathing life into them like they've been
playing these parts for months, before the show even has its first
production. Plus, it was a lot of fun to make something new. In
these times of crazy news and stress, musical theater offers an
escape into a better world where people sing it out," Howard
adds.
Howard's army of collaborators included some of the best of
local Los Angeles theater and
music professionals, such as Kristopher
Gee, Stuart Wood,
Alex Meade, Wayne Moore, Silvio
Buchmeier, and Michael Van
Bodegom-Smith. Young but highly-skilled recording studio
engineers were Brandon Bustamante
and Trevin Clay at Temple Base, and
Chris McMasters of Crystal Digital
Music and Mix Recording Studios. Early readings and recordings from
the evolving workshop cast featured both talented veterans like
Lloyd Gordon, Tracy Powell, David
Pevsner, Jake Novak, and
Rickie Gole, and newcomers like
Teresa DeGennaro, Austen Rey, Scotty-Miguel Sandoe, Max Herzfeld, Ronen
Bay, Meghan Grinczel,
Kim Carlson, Chris Etscheid, Steve
Goodwillie, Alex Morales,
Jemma Wiliamson, Rachel Kellum, Alex
Beneski, Quinn Domalaon,
Ethan Gillmore, and Landon Stovall. Principle roles were enlivened
by the generous contributions of Ryland
Shelton (in the former "Henry
Higgins" part, as the celebrity trainer), Gina Torrecilla (in the former "Mrs. Pearce"
part, now a wisecracking Latina housekeeper), DeLandis McClam (the
black drag queen, with a nod to the Emcee in "Cabaret"),
Carol Barbee (in the former "Colonel
Pickering" part, now a Hollywood
acting teacher in the mold of Stella
Adler or Uta Hagen),
Giancarlo Garritano (in the former
doe-eyed "Freddy Eynesford-Hill" part, now a West Hollywood restaurant server), and the
always-inspirational and the breakout star, Michael D'Elia (in the
former "Eliza Doolittle" part), who
recently wowed showing off his rock/pop talents touring the East
Coast with "Dirty Dancing in Concert."
Early critiques, contributions, and moral support came from
generous friends such as (writer) Malcolm Heenman, (writer)
Dan Kael, (super-fan) Carol Tyler, (director/choreographer)
Tor Campbell, and most of all,
(director) Rob Iscove ("She's All
That"). Family and friends listened to early songs, read various
drafts, and guided the shape of the story's evolution, in part to
reflect the changing values of the times. Howard counts his "when I
becomes we" husband, Michael Ryan,
as the soul of support. Howard and Ryan were among the first 18,000
couples to marry in California
when same-sex marriage became legal. They have been together
navigating the colorful world of West
Hollywood since 2002, a rare long-term relationship in
transient Hollywood.
Further support came from assistants Jenn Jones, Robert
Decker, Lauren Sweetser,
Kelly Shaw, and Alan Wethern; plus Erin
Rae Miller of Screenland Studios, (producing consultant)
Gabrieal Griego, (producing
consultant) Laura Hill,
(videographer) Rob Watt, and the
wise, inspirational teachings of Stephen
Schwartz and the ASCAP Musical Theater Workshop in
Beverly Hills.
The 'On The Boulevard' Original Cast Concept Album can be
streamed on music services like Spotify, with more information on
the show's history on Facebook, and YouTube. The show awaits its
first production.
Media Contact
Ken Howard, On the Boulevard
Original Cast Concept Album, 1 310-339-5778, kbhmsw@aol.com,
https://www.facebook.com/OnTheBoulevardTheMusical
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SOURCE On the Boulevard Original Cast Concept Album