BY EMILY CARDENAS FOR BISCAYNE TIMES
What are the odds that two musicals about the teen experience would be staged at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in the same month? According to Giancarlo Rodaz, Area Stage Company director of “Be More Chill,” it’s a total coincidence.
Continuing the 15th anniversary season of Broadway in Miami, the local premiere of the Great White Way’s “Dear Evan Hansen” runs Feb. 15-20 at the Ziff Ballet Opera House, featuring Miami-born actor Stephen Christopher Anthony, who leads the North American Tour cast in the title role.
Anthony attended high school at New World School of the Arts and graduated from Florida State University with a bachelor’s degree in music theater. In 2018 he understudied the role of Evan Hansen on Broadway for two months. Then he opened the first national tour as an Evan alternate before taking over the role full-time on tour in 2019 until the pandemic hit. Now, he’s reprising the lead character on the road.
“Dear Evan Hansen” is about two teenage boys with mental health issues, their families and what happens when their worlds unexpectedly collide. There’s a mysterious note, a tragic teen suicide and a little white lie that all spiral out of control.
Based on a book by Steven Levenson, “Dear Evan Hansen” collected six Tony Awards in 2017, including one for Levenson, and a Grammy Award for best musical theater album in 2018.
And because many great musicals and stage plays begin with a good book, it’s no surprise that “Be More Chill,” on stage at the Arsht’s Carnival Studio Theater Feb. 4-27, was adapted from the 2004 young adult fiction novel by Ned Vizzini about an anxious high schooler who takes a pill to become popular.
Take a pill, you ask? Yes, if only life was that easy. We like pills. They’re a quick fix. But alas, pills don’t always work and they often come with side effects.
In the case of “Be More Chill,” it’s not just an ordinary pill, it’s a nanocomputer in the form of an easy-to-swallow pill called the SQUIP, which is why this musical is often described as sci-fi.
Once swallowed with the help of a popular soda, SQUIP becomes a powerful voice in your head, telling you what to do and say to achieve ultimate coolness. However, it doesn’t always have the desired outcome, ruining relationships and changing dynamics in ugly ways. As if teenagers can’t be ugly enough without assistance. It sends a strong message to a geeky, nerdy young man trying to fit in that maybe popularity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and that the better angel in your head leads you to better choices.
We’ve all been there. We’ve not swallowed the SQUIP, but we’ve all been to high school. For the play’s prodigious 26-year-old director, Giancarlo Rodaz, his memory is fresher.
“I’m very much reaching back to my childhood,” he said. “The games I used to play. I was very nerdy and geeky and very much an outsider in public school, and I really connected with the main characters and how high school can be a very toxic and difficult place. I read the book and said, ‘I know these people, I grew up with these people.’ It’s very personal for me.”
Rodaz is gaining notoriety for doing things differently. His Area Stage production of “Annie” in 2021 was like none other, with an all-adult cast playing every role in an immersive theatrical experience set in a speakeasy. The gritty take on a major Broadway musical, brought down to earth in a way that had never been seen before, is a hint of what you’ll see in “Be More Chill.”
“None of the actors will wear makeup. They wear school uniforms. They are a very young group of people (between the ages of 18 and 25) who look or sound like high schoolers. They are not being characters, they are being themselves,” said Rodaz. “High school is really unattractive. Other productions have either glamorized it or cast 30-year-olds. These are kids in a terrible, awkward setting, designed by terrible adults. That’s where kids grow up. I want people to come and say, “‘I’ve been here.’”
Rodaz went back to the book for inspiration.
“I read the book to see what the author thought. I feel like most productions missed the point. When I went back to the book, I realized it’s a very different vibe and it’s not at all what people are doing. It’s much darker. I fell in love with the concept, with the story, when I had the full picture,” he said.
Then he went back to the show script with a different perspective.
“There are very painful conversations that take place that sound very real,” he said.
Sounds scary, right? Rodaz says the music takes the edge off.
“The music is very loud and very intense and very modern. I knew I couldn’t treat it as a regular musical, so let’s make it brutally realistic. We’re going for a very institutional, fluorescently lit vibe that most people are familiar with.”
Okay, so that still sounds a little intimidating, but the music is what actually made “Be More Chill” a cult sensation.
Teens became obsessed with it and have streamed the cast album tens of millions of times since 2015, when the play first appeared on stage, even though it didn’t hit Broadway until 2019. Social media made that possible.
The pandemic really put a crimp on attempts to revive the show in London, but now Miamians have the opportunity to experience a fresh take on “Be More Chill,” produced by a professional South Miami-based theater company that has forged a new relationship with the Arsht. This is Area Stage’s first show at the Arsht as part of that new relationship. Three professional shows will be staged this year.
“The author was ahead of (his) time,” said Rodaz. “It’s not about technology, it’s about the social boxes we put ourselves in, how humans treat each other and what our idea of happiness and social status is ... it’s very relevant and will be more relevant as time goes on.”
And Rodaz will become more relevant as time goes on as well. As the son of Maria and John Rodaz, founders of Area Stage Company, he’s been given the necessary tools to make great theater – and we get to bear witness.