Encores! Unscripted: When Pop Writers Go Broadway

Broadway’s relationship with contemporary music is a rocky one. Burt Bacharach and Hal David triumphed with their swinging 1968 hit, Promises, Promises, but the team never wrote another musical — a pattern followed by subsequent Broadway one-timers like Roger Miller, Paul Simon, and Dolly Parton. How do songwriters from the worlds of rock, folk, and country adjust to writing for the theater? And why has the Broadway establishment been so resistant to these songwriters’ idiosyncratic and often fascinating shows?

Encores! artistic director Jack Viertel hosts a conversation with Rob Berman, musical supervisor for Bright Star and Encores! music director, and Carmel Dean, musical supervisor on Green Day’s American Idiot and Hands on a Hardbody, written by the front man of Phish. The evening also features a performance by Lauren Worsham from the cast of Encores! Big River.