How Susan Stroman and Joshua Bergasse Created a Broadway Smash

More than a decade after the curtain fell on NBC’s Smash, the cult-favorite TV series about the making of a Marilyn Monroe bio-musical has finally achieved what it has always seemed destined for: a real-life Broadway debut.

With five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman (Stro) directing and Emmy-winning choreographer Joshua Bergasse returning to reimagine his signature numbers for the stage, Smash is coming full circle — but with a twist.

In this conversation, Stroman and Bergasse talk about the show’s long road to Broadway, how a new creative team cracked the code for the stage version, and what it takes to bring backstage chaosto life eight shows a week.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Josh, as someone who worked on the television show, was there always a plan to bring Smash to Broadway? And if not, when did the idea for a stage version come about?
Joshua Bergasse: When we first did the TV show, the idea was that whatever show we created each season would go to Broadway right away. That was their thinking, and then they realized it’s not quite that easy.

I know they talked to so many different writers [through the years], and so many people had ideas how to do it, but none of them quite worked until Rick Elice and Bob Martin pitched their idea. They worked on it for a while, before I even knew they were working on it. I went to see a reading and it was brilliant and really funny, and it was a great way to capture the heart of the show but turn it upside down and change the tone.

Stro, were you one of the loyal viewers of the series?
Susan Stroman (Stro): I never missed it. I loved it.

How did you get involved with the project, as someone who wasn’t part of the series?
Stro: I got a call maybe three years ago. I was thrilled that it was going to be a musical comedy and not so much a soap opera. It would give the fans what they wanted: the wonderful numbers and the idea of a show called Bombshell. But we would show our audiences what it takes to put on a musical — how you always go in with the best intentions, and then you get hit with snowballs in the back of the head for the entire process.

Josh: Oh, yeah. That one line that he says, “It’s like one of those Korean zombie movies.” You think it’s over and it just keeps coming. It fees like that. Every day of rehearsal, there’s another wrench thrown in.

Stro, this is your first Broadway musical that you’re just directing. Tell me about working with Josh as choreographer, and whether that was the intention from the beginning.
Stro: To be quite honest, that was the gig. The first thing my agent said was, “Would you ever direct and not choreograph?” And I said, “I don’t think so, unless it was some kind of extraordinary situation.” And he said, “The producers would like you to direct Smash, but they want Josh to do the choreography.”

I absolutely understood that. Josh won an Emmy Award for his choreography. I remember watching the show and thinking how lucky they were that they had a choreographer that could pull it off. Josh and I had a lovely lunch, and from then on, I knew we could work together. And in fact, it has been a magnificent collaboration.

Josh, where did you begin? Did you pull out your bible for the television show and start slicing and dicing, or did you go from the ground up with fresh inspiration?
Josh: I wanted to go back to the material that we did and find out what was successful. I had to reconfigure it for the stage to make sure the audience knew where to focus, because we didn’t have a camera. It was interesting to go back to my original stuff and see how I could use it and change it, and what worked and what didn’t.

Stro, a lot of people have likened Smash to The Producers or, going even further back, Crazy for You. Do you see it?
Stro: Definitely. It’s a backstage musical. In The Producers, you learn how to be a producer through the eyes of Leo Bloom. In Crazy For You, you learn what it takes to mount a show in the desert, and that doesn’t go well for the lead character, Bobby Child, until it does. Smash is the same idea. It’s showing a group of collaborators trying to put on a musical. It does have an essence of reality. It’s not cartoonish in any way. Everybody is real. They are eccentric, but that’s what you find with theater people. The comedy comes out of them being real eccentric musical-theater people.

Josh, was there anything you were able to create for the stage production that you wanted to do for the television show but just couldn’t?
Josh: It was nice to have that solo moment for Ivy at the end. I never got to choreograph a solo for either Ivy or Karen. It was all group numbers with people around them. But when you have a triple-threat performer who does a scene, and then she bursts into song, and then the song can’t contain her emotion anymore, so she dances, it’s classic. We never had that in the tv series.

Stro: We are very lucky to have Robyn Hurder. It’s rare that you get someone who is such a triple-threat, where everything about her is a plus. She’s old school. She’s the first one in in the morning to warm up and the last one to leave. And Robyn and Brooks are great leaders of the company. They rally everyone and they both rehearse at 100 percent. It’s a heightened rehearsal that’s always on and always funny, and because they do it, the rest of the group comes up.

How do you create comedy gold in the musical-theater form?
Stro: It’s allowing the actors to have freedom in rehearsal. You absolutely have to have a plan in your head, so you have to wrestle them in. But you give the performers freedom, so they feel comfortable when they end up with the final product.

Josh: It’s the same thing for choreography, as well. We have a little duet that Brooks and Robyn get to do. We had it choreographed, but as they were going along, they came up with these little bits and we would tweak the visuals before it became set. With Robyn’s solo at the end [as Ivy], we had it choreographed, but certain things feel better on her when she’s dancing, so we shaped it around what felt great for her. Allowing that conversation to happen brings out the best in the performances.