Interview: Douglas Lyons on Beau, Queer Legacy, and Making Space for the Next Generation of Artists

Douglas Lyons wears a lot of hats—actor, writer, composer—and he wears them all with heart.

A two-time Emmy nominee this year for his work on Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, Lyons got his start performing in Broadway hits like The Book of Mormon and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, while writing all the while. Since then, he’s created plays like Chicken and Biscuits and Table 17, which was nominated for multiple awards this past season and heads to the Geffen Playhouse in November with most of its original cast still on board.

Now, he’s telling a more personal story with Beau: The Musical, presented by Out of the Box Theatrics at their home at 154 Christopher Street. Co-written with collaborator Ethan D. Pakchar, Beau follows a young queer man, Ace (played by Matt Rodin), who reconnects with the grandfather he never knew. Our critic called the show “immensely empathetic,” and it’s already started building a devoted fanbase online.

In this conversation, Lyons opens up about how Beau came to be, and why he’s so passionate about creating space for new talent to shine.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How are things going down on Christopher Street?
I think it’s a movement in the making. We’ve had a mother and daughter see it four times, we’ve had some queer kids come back three and four times already. There’s a TikTok that went viral, and we saw ticket sales pick up. I think it being downtown makes it a little less accessible just for the everyday conversation, but the people that see it really love it.

How could you not want to see Matt Rodin in a queer love story? (Author’s note: Matt Rodin is an old pal)
Yeah! It’s a special moment for the show, but also for him. Something I realized after the success of Table 17 with Michael Rishawn is that I like the idea of creating new works that expose and birth new stars.

I feel like that’s what this moment is for Matt. He was doing a concert; it must have been in 2017. I was early in the script, and I showed up and I was like, “Who is that?” I hadn’t done any formal readings of the show yet, but that was the sound. Three or four weeks later, he was at the table.

It’s cool that you’re actively trying to create space for that, since not many people are.
It’s like pick a star, any star, and a revival and pop it on Broadway. Like, that’s cool. But it’s not adding to the canon, you know?

Did you start out as a writer, or was becoming a writer a by-product of being an actor?
Full blown BFA in musical theater from the Hartt School at University of Hartford. Left between my sophomore and junior year to do the national tour of Rent at 19, went back, graduated, did the Dreamgirls tour. Broadway debut was Book of Mormon and did the first national of that.

Then I met Ethan, who I wrote the music with on this show, and that turned into writing sessions in hotel rooms while we were touring. When I got back and got into Beautiful, our agent was like “You need to write an actual musical.” That sort of steamrolled us into Five Points. But I was afraid to write books, so I didn’t do that for four- or five-years. Beau was actually the first script I wrote, before Table 17 and Chicken and Biscuits.

What was Beau born out of?
A mixture of things. When I was doing Book of Mormon on Broadway, Steve Kazee brought me to the final dress of Once and I had never experienced anything actor-musician like that. I wanted to create something that was like a Rent meets Once. That was the exercise. And it was literally written five pages at a time. I didn’t have an outline. I didn’t really know where it was going. But I knew that the actors in the band would step out and play roles.

A lot of the details came from my mother’s parents down in Oriental, North Carolina. It was a culture shock for me to go from New Haven to Oriental, where there were dirt roads and fields, and they would go fish and then they would deep fry the shrimp they caught for dinner. I wasn’t doing that in New Haven.

It was a bit of an homage to my grandfather, who I would only see during the summer. That’s the big relationship between Ace and Beau: once he finds him, they see each other for five summers straight.

Beau is a queer love story; you’re running a few blocks from Stonewall…
That was intentional. That was really intentional. You know, I got a text message from a friend on Friday that someone on Fire Island was talking about the show. Matt got one too. So, the kids are finding it. And that’s really what my mission was. This country is literally trying to erase the LGBTQIA community. I want queer kids to find this show the way I found Rent at 19. Rent introduced me to love and friendship and community. There are kids in the middle of this country that don’t have someone to take care of them, that feel alone. This show is for them.

You’ve been part of a lot of shows that are living in the world right now. A lot of regional theaters are doing Beautiful, for instance. But does it feel different to know that something you wrote, like Chicken and Biscuits, is currently living in the world outside New York, as opposed to a show you once performed in?
For sure. It’s an honor. I just got tagged in a video this morning of this woman who did Chicken and Biscuits. She lost her father, I think, right before the run, so it was very triggering, but she did it in his honor and was grateful for the show. There was another woman in Portland, Oregon, who got a cancer diagnosis right before she was cast, and on her days off, she was getting treatment, but the show kept her spirits up. That type of stuff is bigger than any critic’s pick.

We’ve had the Beau album out since 2019, and people from around the world have been buying the sheet music for years. It’s been in so many showcases. I found theater around 16, 17. I joined very late. I know what it’s like to find a show and have it become your identity. A lot of kids can’t necessarily afford what’s happening on Broadway, but Beau is something that’s accessible and speaks to where the queer conversation is right now.

I get excited now thinking about where Beau is going to go next. Actor-musicians are going to find the show. Who are the people that are going to step into these roles that have never done theater but are going to sing the shit out of it? That excites me.