One night this summer, Alicia Keys fell asleep listening to songs from musicals. He was on vacation after a five-week concert tour, but his mind was still working: He’s 12 years old developing “Hell’s Kitchen,” a musical based on his adolescence in a then-rough New York neighborhood, and at the top in his to-do list was writing a new song for the actress who plays the main character’s mother.
So she took a nap with headphones on and listened to a playlist of mommy theater songs. When he woke up, he could feel the rhythm. She could hear the chords. She could see the title. She went into a closet and started singing into her phone. She did some research online to strengthen her lyrics. When she returned to New York, she began writing, playing the piano in her recording studio.
“This takes up a lot of space in my mind,” Keys said of the musical, as she was transported to a rehearsal room at the Center, concentrating on getting where she wanted to go.
That day, where I wanted to go was the Public Theater, the celebrated nonprofit theater where “Hell’s Kitchen” began off-Broadway performances on October 24. With 15 Grammy Awards, five number 1 albums and around 5 billion streaming downloads of his songs, Keys is an unusual figure in the music world — a classically trained pianist turned R&B singer-songwriter who signed a record deal as a teenager and remains, at 42, resolutely in control of her creative life.
Their musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” is also unusual. Unlike many biographical works that chronicle the childhoods of celebrities, this one is both focused and fictional, portraying a few months in the life of a 17-year-old girl named Ali. Maleah Joi Moon, 21, makes her stage debut playing Ali.
In “Hell’s Kitchen,” Ali, like Keys, is the daughter of a white mother and black father and grows up in Manhattan Plaza, subsidized housing on the outskirts of Times Square, where 70 percent of the units are for performing artists.
The supporting characters—a hyperprotective single mother, a piano teacher who changes her life, an older boyfriend, and an unreliable father—are based on figures from Keys’ own upbringing.
“We’ve fictionalized the details a lot,” said Kristoffer Diaz, a playwright and librettist who has been working with Keys for more than a decade on the musical.
Doing a musical may seem like a departure for Keys, but the truth is that the overlap between the recording industry and musical theater is substantial. Keys has attended theater her entire life and dabbled in acting as a child, but her passion has always been music.
She studied piano from the age of 7, was part of a girl group and wrote her first song around 11, and signed a recording contract at 15.
She was the valedictorian of her class at the Professional School of Performing Arts and attended Columbia University in New York for a month before dropping out to pursue music. Her career took off in 2001, with the release of “Fallin’.”
In 2011, Keys co-produced a Broadway play, “Stick Fly,” about a wealthy black family struggling with race and class.
“’Stick Fly’ ignited this desire in me, in all storytelling mediums, to be able to start hearing and feeling and seeing stories that I know exist, but that in many ways the world doesn’t see,” he said.
“I was really ready to reinvent theater,” she continued. “I almost felt compelled to create this play that would be something that people who can’t stand musical theater at all would love.”
As? Are there people who can’t stand musical theater? Apparently so, and one of them is Keys’ husband, Swizz Beatz, a renowned hip-hop producer.
“He’s not a fan,” Keys said, laughing. “Don’t bring it to the play where mid-sentence they start singing the song. “He falls asleep.”
One of the goals, Keys said, was to create a work that her husband would like.
Keys has long had an entrepreneurial streak: She founded a babysitting club when she was 11 and has a skincare line, Keys Soulcare. “I’m really interested in business right now,” she said when asked what’s next.
She’s totally committed to “Hell’s Kitchen,” of course. She intends to continue developing Keys Soulcare. And she will make more music.
“I am clear about what I want and what I don’t want,” he said. “I’m not afraid to voice and verbalize a lot about it, and I feel like I’m in a place where I can do anything, anything. And I haven’t even started yet.”
By: MICHAEL PAULSON
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6963240, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-10-31 19:50:36
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