From Floyd Collins to Redwood, Tina Landau Explores the Power of Letting Go

For over three decades, writer/director Tina Landau has carved a singular path through American theater, known for her genre-defying vision and emotional depth.

From the haunting underground journey of her early musical, Floyd Collins to the treetop revelations of her latest project, Redwood, Landau’s productions explore transformation, loss, and the quiet power of letting go.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Landau reflects on the origins of Floyd Collins, now receiving a Broadway production at Lincoln Center Theater, the unexpected parallels between two of her most personal projects, and the artistic freedom that comes from ignoring the rules and following what moves you.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

When did you first come across the story of Floyd Collins, and how did you and Adam Guettel see a musical in it?
When Adam and I first came across the story, it was a little blurb that was titled Deathwatch Carnival. We were taken by the image of something like a carnival occurring around the site where someone was dying, both how macabre and fascinating that was, and also how it spoke so much to some aspect of human nature.

As we dug, if you’ll excuse the pun, into the story more, we connected with the character of Floyd himself. It’s representative of a kind of person and a kind of journey that many of us relate to or go on in different ways; not those specifics, but the story of a dreamer who is looking for some meaning and glory in the universe, some way his life will pay off. He is forced to encounter obstacles that lead him to face his own helplessness and mortality.

It’s really a story about someone going after something and learning the lesson we all ultimately must, which is surrender. No matter what we want and try to do, there are things that come from life and into our path that are different than what we expected or dreamed, but that might give us gifts of other kinds that are unexpected.

I left feeling very emotional.  You honor the person, and don’t turn this into the same kind of charade.
It’s definitely a different kind of musical. It doesn’t subscribe to the standard formula that one expects in terms of balance of book scenes to songs, in terms of the role of dance, in terms of the role of comedy. We’ve tried to approach the production in the same way we did originally, which is directly and simply and elegantly and leaving as much as we can to the audience’s imagination. We are storytellers, but we’re not trying to replicate and demonstrate and show everything, especially in terms of the setting and the cave. We know there’s no way to replicate or express that in any real way, but what we have are the gifts of metaphor and theatricality and space and light.

Do you see a through line between Floyd Collins and Redwood?
I didn’t when I first agreed to do both in this little condensed time period. I hadn’t really thought about it. As soon as they were both scheduled back to back, I went, “Here’s one from pretty much the beginning of my career, here’s one from the latest in my career, and although they’re very different, they share certain themes and structural qualities.”

In one case, you have a man who travels into the earth and stays there. In the other, you have a woman who travels up into a tree canopy and stays there, and they’re both configured as if those two characters are a gravitational pull around which other satellites spin. In both cases, they are the story of an individual who goes on a similar journey of transformation that results in the same thing I described in Floyd, which is ultimately the need to let go and surrender and accept what is rather than what we wish was.

I was also moved by that production and could relate to it personally as a mother. Is it your intent to leave audiences feeling something so deeply? 
I don’t think that was a formulated preconceived intention. I go to a story that compels me and feels true to me and important to me and that I am impassioned about, and I try to tell it in the best way possible. My personal tastes run towards what you see in both these shows, which are  stories that are somewhat unlikely topics for musicals, but wherein I still feel the role of music is essential and necessary to express the heights and the complexities of what these characters are going through. I’m interested and want to talk about the things that interest me.  I certainly don’t set out to create something commercial.

One of the things I thought was interesting about Redwood was the set. With the screens, I felt like I was part of the show. Was that intentional?
That was very intentional. We hope to use technology in a way that was not distancing but was embracing and inviting. Just like we chose not to show the cave in Floyd Collins, we felt the same way about the redwoods that we didn’t want to put forth a kind of National Geographic replication of the forest in a kind of documentary way. We wanted to enter the world of the redwoods through the point of view of Jessie, the main character, and the goal was to have the audience be with her as close as possible so that we could see and feel what’s around her in the same way she was. We intentionally broke the fourth wall.

I know that you are a skilled writer and director. Do you think it is important for someone to try out these different roles before trying to figure out what you’re good at?
What’s important is to not be limited by preconceived or old fashioned notions of what someone should or shouldn’t do in making art. I felt a need to tell stories a certain way. I started writing and knew I was going to direct. There is traditional wisdom in the theater that one shouldn’t be as much a multi-hyphenate, and that you need other perspectives, which I certainly have on both shows and in all my collaborators. I would say to try everything and don’t let others define what you can or can’t or should or shouldn’t do in making art.

What was it like growing up in such a creative household? 
I’m very grateful to be in this family. Growing up, I was the black sheep because they were all film based. Not my sister, who was younger, but certainly my brother and my parents. We were a film family. We went to movies, we went to theater. I was taken to Broadway shows from probably three or four years old, which allowed it to be part of my DNA very early.

I was constantly asked “when are you gonna do a movie?”  I did these weird little theater things and experimental, site specific locations made it that were very different, but they were certainly embraced by the whole family.

It wasn’t until even just recent years when I stepped back and I looked at my brother and my sister and myself, and I realized that the three of us have all made a little mark in our respective fields, and I’m just really proud of that. I think my parents would be very proud.