Interview: Director Danny Mefford on Spelling Bee and Bigfoot!, Plus His Pick for Guest Speller: Mayor Mamdani

To have worked on even one Tony Award-winning Best Musical is a dream shared by many and realized by very few. Danny Mefford has worked on three.

As a choreographer, Mefford was responsible for the skating in Kimberly Akimbo, the ’70s grooves of Fun Home, and the internet-age vocabulary of Dear Evan Hansen. He created the hoedowns in The Bridges of Madison County and turned dead presidents into the emo rockstars of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Along the way, he’s collaborated with contemporary greats ranging from Jack O’Brien to Lear deBessonet. And now, he’s striking out on his own.

Mefford made his New York City debut as a director and choreographer with his lovely revival of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, now d-e-l-i-g-h-t-i-n-g audiences at New World Stages (his production debuted as part of the now-deceased Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center). His immediate follow-up is Bigfoot!, a new musical comedy about a town with a corrupt mayor and an 8-foot-tall outsider who can save the day.

With these two productions, Mefford steps fully into the spotlight, announcing himself not just as a master choreographer but as a director with a singular voice…And an 8-foot-tall future.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

As a choreographer, you were an integral part of some of the seminal musicals of the 2010s: Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Fun Home, Dear Evan Hansen. I’ll count Bridges of Madison County and Love’s Labour’s Lost in there too because I was a groupie for those shows. What an education.
That was a gestation period for me. It was like an apprenticeship where I was getting to work all these amazing directors, like Alex Timbers and Sam Gold and Lear deBessonet and Jessica Stone and Jack O’Brien and Michael Greif and Bartlett Sher. I choreographed for all these people, and I got to see how they did what they did, and I hope they would all forgive me if they heard this, but [I also learned] what I didn’t like about what they did.

Tell me about your evolution from choreographer to director.
To answer that, I have to go back a tiny bit, to my evolution from actor to choreographer. That was not intentional at all; it just kind of happened. This move, from choreographer to director and choreographer, has been very intentional. I’ve been trying to make the transition for a few years, but like everything in the theater, there’s this catch-22. Until you do it, people don’t really believe you can do it. I had to be given the opportunity, and then I hopefully get to keep doing it.

Spelling Bee was that opportunity.
Right. So, I choreographed Kimberly Akimbo for [producer] David Stone. Jeffrey Finn, who was running the wonderful, now-gone program at the Kennedy Center, wanted to do Spelling Bee, and he contacted David Stone, and David Stone said, “I think you should meet with Danny Mefford.” He knew that I wanted to transition into directing. That wasn’t a secret to anyone who knew me. It feels like a natural expansion.

Your Spelling Bee revival hit the right nostalgia buttons, while reminding everyone that it’s not only a fun show, but it’s a deep show.
I had the benefit of staging Spelling Bee [at the Kennedy Center] before this New York revival, so this time around, I was able to improve things from what I created before. That piece is this kind of Trojan Horse. It presents really frivolously, and then it deepens and deepens. I had the best time working on it.

And Bigfoot! is your first world premiere as a director. What even is it?
I’ll tell you the evolution of the piece, which might help people visualize it more. Amber Ruffin and Kevin Sciretta and David Schmoll started writing this like 12 years ago as a thing in LA. It was like a competition, you had to create an idea and then every week, you would come back with a new scene with an original song, and people voted on it like a reality show. They didn’t win, but apparently, they came very close.

When Amber was working on Some Like It Hot, she saw Shucked, and was like, “Oh, I see how that sketch thing we made could become a full theatrical experience.” The songs are bangers, and there’s a lot of comedy in it, but there’s also a lot of political satire. It’s about an economically depressed town with a corrupt mayor and an outsider named Bigfoot who is ostracized and then ultimately saves the town.

Like, Bigfoot Bigfoot?
You know…I mean…His name is Bigfoot.

Right.
I keep calling it dumb-smart. Even though we’re a few weeks away from having an audience, I’m still being like, “What exactly is the right tone of this show?” There’s deeply, deeply funny shit in there. Finding out where to pitch the heart and mix the dumb with the smart, where that line is for this specific piece, is interesting. Spelling Bee doesn’t reach the full level of buffoonery that Bigfoot! wants to reach.

All right, bonus question: Who is your dream guest speller for Spelling Bee?
Who would be my dream? Mamdani.

Apparently, he sings “Waving Through a Window” on his long drives, so there’s your in.
Let’s get him in there.