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I was about halfway through my group Zoom video interview with Tony Award-winning director Michael Mayer and a trio of young D.C.-area stage folks who have not won a Tony (yet), when Mayer said, “Can I ask them a question?”
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Sure, I said.
“When we did ‘Head Over Heels,’” he began, “we had all the principals and then we had eight in the ensemble. How many do you have in your ensemble?”
“We have 12 in the ensemble, but eight are featured dancers,” said Kit Aylesworth, co-choreographer of Wildwood Summer Theatre’s production of “Head Over Heels.”
This was shop being talked.
Since 1965, Montgomery County’s Wildwood Summer Theatre has been putting on shows — without adult supervision, you might say. Everyone involved — actors, musicians, set designers, costume designers, stage managers, spotlight handlers, PR mavens — is between the ages of 15 and 25.
Mayer did Wildwood in the summer of 1978, when he was a Jet in “West Side Story.” And in the sort of coincidence beloved by theater folks, Mayer directed the 2018 Broadway debut of “Head Over Heels,” the winsome Go-Go’s jukebox musical that opens Friday in Silver Spring.
“That was a lovely surprise,” said Ileana Blustein, 24, director of the Wildwood production.
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“I’m so glad you’re doing it,” said Mayer, 63.
Mayer always dreamed of a life in theater. Thumb through the program for that 1978 “West Side Story” and you’ll see the dream that came true for many. Just last month, I saw the director of the show, Lawrence Redmond, in Signature’s “Sweeney Todd.” Marty Lodge — Doc at Wildwood — is a veteran of the D.C. theater scene.
Dick Scanlan — another Jet — was already friends with Mayer from their time in the Montgomery County Youth Chorus. Their next collaboration after “West Side Story” came two decades later: They co-created “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” winner of six Tony Awards in 2002, including best musical.
“We were the adults,” Mayer said of the Wildwood experience. “We were allowed our own agency. … We were young people and we were in charge of the whole thing.”
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They were free to pursue their own visions and to make their own mistakes. Mayer remembers “West Side Story” having a disco theme — this was the “Saturday Night Fever” era — and while it wasn’t easy to dance in platform shoes while sweating in polyester, the approach may have helped flip a switch in his brain: Theater is infinitely malleable.
“I’ve got to tell you, my debut as a director at the Metropolitan Opera was a Rat Pack ‘Rigoletto,’” Mayer said. “Who knows, maybe Larry Redmond’s disco ‘West Side Story’ was the first big concept I had ever run into.”
And, full disclosure, the girl who played Anita, Ruth Pritchard, would go on to star in the long-running production known as “My Marriage.” Thirty-six years! Longer than “Phantom!” (My wife left the theater to become a lawyer, though she remains very dramatic.)
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“I'm still great friends with so many of the people from that show,” said Mayer.
There’s no better bonding experience than a musical, especially when you’re young, ambitious and allowed to flex your creative muscles.
With WST, Mayer said, “There was more of a liberty to ask things or suggest things in a way that you might not do in high school when it’s your teacher and there’s that adult/child dynamic. You don’t feel that at WST. You feel like you’re all part of one organism. That felt great.”
Mayer was curious about the approach Wildwood is taking with “Head Over Heels,” particularly the choreography by Aylesworth and Caitlin Vallesky.
“We have a little disco,” said Aylesworth, 25. “And some Elizabethan court dance.”
“I was going to ask if there was court dance,” Mayer said. “That's smart. We did that, too.”
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“There’s a lot of inspiration from vogueing and ballroom culture,” Aylesworth said. “We went far and wide.”
And they ask a lot of their dancers.
“We don’t pull any punches, especially with the choreography,” said Vallesky, 24. “Kit and I sit them down and say they can do this.”
That fits with director Blustein’s mantra: “I say: ‘Is this hard? Yes. Can we do hard things? Also yes.’”
“Head Over Heels” runs on weekends through Aug. 5 at the Montgomery College Cultural Arts Center in Silver Spring. (For info, visit wst.org.) Mayer will be back in Washington in November, when he directs the Avett Brothers’ “Swept Away” at Arena Stage.
Before we all logged off the Zoom call, the Tony winner had one more thing to say: “Ladies, break every leg!”
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