Feature  

Rockin' Housewives

Hope Juber discusses the new musical It's the Housewives!, about a trio of PTA mothers who become as big as the Beatles.

Jamey Hood, Corinne Dekker, and Jayme Lake in It's the Housewives! (© Michael Lamont)

Hope Juber may be married with two kids, but no one could use the word desperate to describe the co-creator of It's the Housewives!, which begins a two-month run on September 6 at the Whitefire Theater in Sherman Oaks, California. An accomplished writer, producer, and actress -- and daughter of Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz -- Juber has shown enormous patience in putting this show together. And she's had a lot of fun too.

"I started writing songs with my husband Laurence [former lead guitarist of the seminal rock band Wings] right after we got married in 1982," she says. "And then I became inspired by celebrating the mundane things a housewife does, when I had my kids. I eventually built up a catalog of songs and I'd perform them with other women in clubs -- Florence Henderson's daughter Barbara was part of one of the groups. And the response we always got was that they were really good rock 'n' roll songs, not just some silly parody."

Last year, however, Juber got the idea of developing a book around the songs, about a trio of PTA mothers who eventually become as big as the Beatles. She found the perfect collaborator in Ellen Guylas, who she met at her local gym. "We sweated together for a year before we discovered we were both writers. And she can type, which I can't. So we worked in a room together, and I hovered over her shoulder while she typed, and we came up with this really organic plot and characters. It was so natural."

Working with her husband has been equally pleasurable, she says. "We bring out the best in each other. And we both go off into creative jags whenever and wherever; in the Jacuzzi, walking the dogs, or in bed at 3am," she says. "He once mentioned he felt a little outnumbered by all the women on this project (including director Kelly Ann Ford and choreographer Kay Cole), but he's over it. And we've hired some guys too, so there's enough testosterone to balance the show out. I never wanted it to get too pink."

 

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