The Making of a Musical

ON CEDAR STREET HOLDS ITS WORLD PREMIERE AT THE UNICORN THEATRE.

By Anastasia Stanmeyer
From the pages of our August 23 Issue.

Hayden Hoffman, who plays Jamie in the upcoming On Cedar Street, is with Addison, who plays Charley. They are sitting outside of The Unicorn Theatre, where the musical will premiere. PHOTO BY DAVID EDGECOMB

World premieres are a regular summer feature in the Berkshires—at Shakespeare and Company, Berkshire Theatre Group, Barrington Stage Company, Chester Theatre, Great Barrington Public Theater, WAM Theatre, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. One upcoming world premiere caught my eye: Berkshire Theatre Group’s production of On Cedar Street. Actress and singer Lauren Ward, who plays the lead as Addie Moore, describes it as a “chamber musical” or “a play with music.” The storyline, the music, the lyrics, the all-female creative team—it has all the makings of (dare we say?) a Broadway musical. Equally impressive is the cast of nine (including two local children) and a dog. The musical will be staged in the intimate setting of The Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge.

“It feels really special to take a role and create it,” says Hayden Hoffman, 16, who plays Jamie, the grandson of Addie. Hoffman, who lives in Lenox, had been going over the songs quite a bit before rehearsals began. “It’s the first time the world has ever seen this. And I’ve never worked with a dog on stage, which is another new element. I’m excited to work with a four-legged friend, and I’m also excited to get my hands dirty and learn a lot from this incredible creative team.”

On Cedar Street’s creative team includes Emily Mann (writer), Susan Schulman (director), Susan Birkenhead (lyrics), and Carmel Dean and Lucy Simon (music). The play is adapted from Kent Haruf’s novel, Our Souls at Night, with previews beginning August 12. The adage goes that most Broadway shows take eight years on average to be developed. This one moved at relatively lightning speed, including rehearsals that are running for a mere four weeks before the proverbial curtain is raised.

At its core, this is a musical about being human, making mistakes, making amends for those mistakes, and mending relationships. In short, the world is not perfect, so try to give others—and yourself—a break.

“The story is very poetic, and that’s what also drew me to it. It’s positive. It’s a desire for people to find happiness and fulfillment and family,” says Schulman. “When you go to the theater, I want to feel empowered and I want to feel provoked, but I also want to feel better. I want to feel that it’s possible to be happy. It’s possible to find love. It’s possible to find family. It’s possible to change. All those good things.

This show has all of that. It’s also multi-generational. And we have a dog. She’s a pro. Addison’s got as many credits as a lot of the actors.”

The story of how On Cedar Street came together begins with Mann, who first met Simon five years ago when she was introduced to her by Marsha Norman at a social gathering. Simon, sister of Carly, told Mann that she wanted to write a musical with her. Nothing came to mind at the time, so they started looking. And looking. Then Simon called Mann one day and said, “I’ve got it! I read this novel, and I heard music.”

“So I read Haruf’s novel, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is gonna be tricky because it’s not full of action, as many musicals are,’” recalls Mann. “But it’s achingly beautiful, and so many of the melodies that Lucy writes are like that. She told me, ‘It’s a love story for this moment. These people are isolated and feel like they’ll never love again. We watch what can happen if you break through the shell of your own isolation.’ I got very excited.”

Mann was winding down her 30-year tenure as artistic director and resident playwright at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey. During that time, the theater won a Tony Award® for Outstanding Regional Theatre. (Mann herself was twice nominated for a Tony® as a playwright and director.) Every year, Mann did a writers retreat, and that summer of 2020 she asked Simon to attend the workshop and work with her on the musical. They proceeded to write up a storm.

“She wrote beautiful pieces, and we realized we really, really wanted to go forward with this project,” says Mann. “Then Lucy said, ‘We need a lyricist. And I’ve got just the person.’”

That person was Birkenhead.

At the time, Birkenhead was working on two musicals that were headed for production and couldn’t think about taking on another project. Then the pandemic struck.

She found herself in her apartment “with a big load of nothing,” she says. When they asked her to do the lyrics for On Cedar Street, Birkenhead thought, well, why not?

“I read the book, which I had never read, and I met with them on Zoom. We talked about it a little bit. They had done a chunk of it, apparently, including the lyrics. I gave them some notes and said, ‘Well, you know, I’m concerned about this, I’m concerned about that.’ Emily is such a great collaborator and such a great writer, and she said, ‘I completely understand. We can go back and start again and make it all right.’ So we began.”

They turned to a dear friend, Victoria Clark, to direct the musical. It was good timing for her because she was looking to explore directing. Clark later told the group she had to step away to workshop Kimberly Akimbo. Reluctantly, she left On Cedar Street with the blessings of Mann, Birkenhead, and Simon. The Broadway show has since become a hit, and Clark won a Tony Award® this year for Best Leading Actress in a Musical.

They needed another director and approached Schulman. For one thing, she lived in the building next door to Birkenhead. She also worked closely with Simon on The Secret Garden. Mann sent the book to Schulman, who thankfully was interested in taking it on. “There is a similarity with On Cedar Street and The Secret Garden in a non-literal, romantic underpinning, and there’s a poetry to the way the story is told,” says Schulman. She was also drawn to the story because it is female-centric.

It was during that time that Simon got the terrible news that she had cancer. When she realized that she wouldn’t be able to finish the musical, they reached out to Dean, who was a big fan of Simon and, like Simon, is melodically driven in her composing. “Lucy and I were on a lot of Zoom calls with the whole team,” says Dean. “We talked a lot about structure and story. She knew that she wasn’t up to writing anything new, but she was still a part of all of these conversations. She and I spoke a lot about which of her existing music she loved and wanted to make sure it was definitely included. We also talked about what still needed to be written and the things that I would work on. It was a lovely overlap.”

Simon died in October of last year.

“As much as I would love to be in the room with Lucy, knowing that can’t happen, it’s still lovely to have her incredible music be such an integral part of the process,” says Dean, who has a Dropbox folder of Simon’s music. “I get to take some of her melodies and weave those through the underscore, as well.”

Dean is the youngest of the musical’s creative team. She began as a classical pianist until she was 17 years old, when she discovered musical theater and took an abrupt left turn. Her gateway musical was Side by Side by Stephen Sondheim. Her first Broadway show as music director was Green Day’s rock musical, American Idiot. Other music director/arranger credits include the Broadway productions of If/Then, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Hands on a Hardbody.

Dean worked closely with William Finn on Spelling Bee, and they have remained close. (She calls him “Uncle.”) Developing that musical was the first time she came to the Berkshires, 20 years ago. The first production was in the high school cafeteria in Sheffield for Barrington Stage Company. She also has performed her own music—the show was called Carmel’s Candy Store—at Mr. Finn’s Cabaret and later at 54 Below. She also worked on The Royal Family of Broadway at Barrington Stage a few summers ago.

“This is the perfect group of artists to be exploring that kind of material, because they know exactly what Addie is going through,” Dean says about team On Cedar Street. “There’s also something that I found so nurturing about being with this group of women, especially as we were seeing Lucy decline. There were days where we would have Zoom calls, and Lucy was Zooming from her hospital bed. Someone else had thrown out their back another time and was Zooming from their bed, and someone else had a hip replacement, so they’re on the couch. It was always just so warm and nurturing, which I don’t think would have happened if we weren’t a group of women.”

Dean says that every time she is working with the creative team of On Cedar Street, “it’s like a masterclass in theater.” She certainly has that right. For example, Schulman has had a long history of directing, including the York Theatre Company production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd in 1989, which Sondheim happened to see. Impressed by her work, he recommended her for the Broadway revival that was wittily re-dubbed Teeny Todd, earning her a Tony Award® nomination as Best Director of a Musical.

“He taught me a great deal about collaboration,” says Schulman, who also directed a revised version of Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along for the York Theatre Company. “One of the things he said when I thanked him for his generosity opening night was this: ‘You know, Susan, giving is the easy part. Learning how to take is the hard part.’ I thought, Oh, yes. That’s the core of collaboration. You need to learn to shut up and listen, as much as you talk.”

That collaborative environment is the essence of the creative relationship between Schulman, Dean, Mann, and Birkenhead. They all agree it has a lot to do with the all-female collective.

“No one’s protecting anyone’s ego,” says Mann. “We talk simply and honestly and from our hearts to each other, and there’s just a great deal of wanting to do what’s best for the work. We know what we’re talking about. We’ve lived it. We’ve had many, many, many hours of talk on Zoom as we were building this together. It was just such a wonderful evolution. When a song came in that was just so brilliant and didn’t quite fit into the scene as written, I had to find ways to make that work. Other times, I’d write a scene that they would love, and it was a springboard for a song, and all I had to do was cut the end of the scene. The book always informed the songs and the songs always informed the book. It was like that infinity symbol. It was thrilling. The dog also has an emotional through line. He’s as much a part of the cast as everyone.”

When Schulman came on board, Mann made changes to the script, including a few fairly large ones. Birkenhead and the others agreed with her. “When you adapt something for the musical stage, you need a little bit of magic,” Birkenhead explains. “You need something that lifts it a few inches off the ground. A play is grounded; it stands solidly on the ground. A musical is heightened reality. You need various things that lift it higher.”

What drew Birkenhead to the story was when Addie goes tromping across the street, knocks on Louis’s door, and says, “I have a proposal to make. Not a marriage proposal, but would you come and sleep in my bed with me?”

“Immediately, I thought that was incredibly funny, gutsy, and I loved it,” says Birkenehead. “That’s what hooked me in. What reeled me in the rest of the way was that it’s just a love story between two people who are older who have seen a bit of life.”

For the stage, the creative team felt that the book’s conflicts needed to be deepened.

ARTWORK BY JOHN MCCARTHY COURTESY OF BERKSHIRE THEATRE GROUP

“There had to be a reason to tell this story now, in 2023 and 2024, with what is happening in the world around us,” says Birkenhead. “What intrigued me was the division in this country, the fact that not only towns and neighbors divided, but families are divided. In the story, you have a town in the high plains of Colorado, and you have to make some drastic changes because there’s a drought and this and that. You’re gonna have a lot of people in that town saying, ‘Who’s telling me not to take a shower? Who’s telling me not to water my lawn?’ I’ve always believed, and I hope that I’m right, that when the crunch really comes, when it’s life or death and we’re at the edge of the abyss, somehow, people come together as human beings and save each other.”

On Cedar Street has been a good balance to other musicals that Birkenhead has been writing lyrics for, including Boop! The Musical, which makes its pre-Broadway premiere on November 19 in Chicago. “On a practical level, in this business, you have to have at least two or three or four balls in the air, because things fall apart and things get delayed,” says Birkenhead, who was nominated for Tonys® for Working and Jelly’s Last Jam. “You just can never tell. From a creative point of view, it’s a great thing, because you can get so close to something and so focused on it, that you begin to grow a set of blinders and you need to step back and take a look at it and say, ‘Oh, God, did I do that?’”

What are two of her favorite songs in On Cedar Street? “One is ‘Somebody’s Got to Be the Skunk at the Garden Party’ because I love the character Ruth, the truth-teller in the town, and another is a song called ‘The Girl We Were,’ where Addie is looking in the mirror and sings this song. This is one of the most beautiful melodies Lucy ever wrote.”

The script has a different ending than the book, and some additional scenes were made for the stage production.

Emily Mann

“Part of writing the book of a musical is giving structure to the piece,” says Mann. “We searched hard for the ending, but once we knew what it was going to be, everyone asked me to write a really fat play. Susan said we’re going to cannibalize your scenes for songs. So write quickly, don’t worry about polishing, don’t worry about editing. It was a constant, working, reworking, as the musical part of the play came into being.” Mann loved having collaborators who had great notes and great ideas. She never felt alone—and even had the book’s author in her head, guiding her.

“I feel like I’ve been in communion with Kent Haruf,” says Mann. “He’s been on my shoulder. I tried to use as much of his words as I could and then ask for his blessing in my ear when I invented. It’s different and yet keeps the spirit of Kent.”

How about the 2017 movie that was adapted from the book, starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford? Did that help her creative process? “The film didn’t reach me or move me,” admits Mann. “It made me understand that you can’t just take Kent’s words and think they will just come alive in theater or a film. You really need to work with it, to adapt it to the new media, which I spend a lot of time doing. But I found it a useful tool.”

Somewhere along the line, Mann was contacted by David Auburn, who is best known for his 2000 play Proof, which won him the 2001 Tony Award® for Best Play and Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Auburn is associate artistic director at Berkshire Theatre Group, and he asked Mann if she had anything new.

“I said, ‘Actually, I do,’” says Mann. “We were almost done with the book and a few songs, and he was in tech for Dracula. Somehow, he must have read it because within a week, David called and said, ‘We want to do this.’ That never happens. It was just so beautiful, and it was such a great lift as we knew we were losing Lucy.”

Susan Schulman

With the support of the Shen Family Foundation, Berkshire Theatre Group brought the creative team and a group of actors together for a workshop and reading in January in New York City. Mann and the others learned how far along they actually were, as well as what still needed to be done. Then they visited the theater in Stockbridge. It was perfect, in a way, because they can’t have a literal set. That has allowed the creative team to go even further with a non-literal physicality to it.

“As I was writing the final draft, I wanted to be able to picture it on the stage and know what the relationship of audience to stage was going to be like. It was very informative,” says Mann. “It’s small for a musical, and yet our piece is so intimate that I just loved that we were going to premiere it in that little jewel box. We had to pair everything down to its essentials.”

Schulman agrees that seeing the theater was essential before she could even talk with the set designers. The Unicorn Theatre is adorable with its own set of peculiarities, she says. One challenge is that there is no backstage.

Carmel Dean

“Most small theaters are idiosyncratic,” says Schulman. “As we say, adversity sometimes makes the best possible motivation for a great vision. We did the first Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd in 1989, originally at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, and their theater space was the basketball court. When we moved it to Circle in the Square, I wanted to keep the same configuration.

“The environment plays a very important role in On Cedar Street. Nature is a catalyst for a lot of what happens in the musical. That’s what I call the King Lear part—the storms or whatever is going on here, the drought, are what also instigates things to happen.”

A musical doesn’t exist on the page. Until you start putting it up on its feet, you don’t really know. It’s a three-dimensional thing. Audiences get as much information from what they see as from what they hear in theater, says Schulman. “When you adapt something, you choose the things that you think are theatrical, and that’s what you use from the book. I always say you need to be faithful to the intent, not to the words. I’ve done a lot of shows—including Little Women and The Secret Garden—that have been adapted from books, and you can’t be slavish to the source material. You have to be honest about the intent, and you have to be grateful for it and respect it, but you can’t be slavish, because it’s a different medium.”

Susan Birkenhead

Every time Artistic Director/CEO Kate Maguire watches the creative team, she recognizes how privileged Berkshire Theatre Group is to support such talent. “It’s always exciting to present new work, especially a musical, as we get to watch the collaboration of a group of artists creating the whole picture,” says Maguire. “In this case, these artists are all women who are much lauded, representing the best of our industry. To have the team of Emily Mann, Susan Birkenhead, Carmel Dean, Susan Schulman, and the imprint of the late Lucy Simon as well, working creatively and collectively—it’s about as good as it gets.”

Mann has more than 40 world premieres under her belt, but never in the Berkshires—until now. “I’m just so honored. The Berkshire Theatre Group has so much history. I love the Unicorn Theatre. I adore David and Kate. I feel we’re going to be so beautifully supported and served. And I love the Berkshires. Some of my happiest childhood memories are in the Berkshires, when I went to camp. I’m always aware of what’s going on in the theater there.”

They didn’t have to hold auditions for the parts because they knew most of the people who were chosen to be in it.

“When I read the script, because I’ve worked with so many people, you see actors, you feel actors,” says Schulman. “Lauren Ward for Addie, the lead, I heard her voice. She was just out of school when I worked with her the first time. She’s gone on to do many other things and has been in London for the last 20 years or so. I just sent her the script because I was hearing her voice. We have Stephen Bogardus, who’s playing opposite of her. I’ve worked with him several times, from the first show when he played Tony in West Side Story, and now he’s playing a 60-year-old man. Lenny Wolpe, I’ve worked with several times before, too. Dan Teixeira, who plays the 15-year-old, was a student of mine. There are new actors, too. Lana Gordon. She’s new to me, but not to my associate, Terry Berliner, who has worked with her on The Lion King. She’s also worked with Ben Roseberry, who is also in the cast. So, it’s kind of a little family feel here.”

The last time Ward worked on a production in the U.S. was Matilda. She originated the role of Miss Honey, in which she was nominated for a Tony®. She was sent the tracks of On Cedar Street to learn Addie’s musical vocabulary.

“I’m now slowly going through and dry memorizing the scenes, which makes me recognize how brilliant this writing is,” says Ward, preparing before rehearsals began. “I am trying to learn as much of the material as possible so that I don’t have that stumbling block when I’m there. You don’t want to be constantly going, ‘I can’t remember my lines.’ You want to be beyond that point so that you can play.”

The musical really touched her, and she made arrangements with her children and husband to travel to the U.S. for the production.

“It’s a beautiful story about redemption and loneliness and also being able to find your own joy at any time in your life,” says Ward. “I think they handled that beautifully in the script. I’m excited to explore that. It is hopeful. Life is hard. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t find little, tiny moments. And it sounds cliché, but I do think that’s how you can lead a full life. I sort of feel like that’s what Addie is trying to do. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it at the time. She’s trying to fix something, and it becomes something else. And that’s a beautiful thing.”

Two actors from the Berkshires were selected for the children parts: Hoffman and Wild Handel (daughter of actress Lauren Ambrose), who plays the young girl and later replaces Hoffman as Addie’s grandchild when he leaves for boarding school.

“I met them when I went up earlier this year. We knew we had to cast the children locally, and they’re lovely,” says Schulman. “We wanted to see if they can deal with a dog because that’s something they have to do in the show. We were very fortunate to have Bill Berloni, who is the premiere theatrical animal trainer on Broadway. He has a farm nearby, and he brought a rehearsal dog because Addison was working.” (See page 26 for more on Berloni.)

Not every place that stages a new musical outside of New York attracts a top cast. Because of its close proximity to the city and other factors, the Berkshires has a great track record. “People like working there,” says Schulman. “Kate Baldwin is someone I’ve worked with several times, and I said, ‘Hey, Kate, what’s it like? Love it? Great!’”

Schulman isn’t thinking at all about whether or not this would go to Broadway. She doesn’t think in those terms. “We didn’t even know if we should have critics come, but the critics are going to come anyway because there’s too many names attached to the show. That’s fine. They’ll understand that it’s the very first production ever. Like the very first production of any new show, it changes.”

If there is any concern, it’s the short rehearsal period before the opening. So much work goes into presenting a new musical—there are sets that have never been designed and props that nobody ever knew they needed. This musical has to use a video projection for a big forest fire at the end. “I just had a full-day session yesterday with my associate, Terry, who was going over every scene,” says Schulman. “We only got halfway through, deciding what props we needed and where they could be stored. It’s an endless amount of pre-production, because what I don’t ever want to do is waste an actor’s time.”

They were set to arrive on July 16, beginning with a “pre-day” for the kids and the dog to get accustomed to each other. The dog is trained beforehand, and then the people have to be trained on how to cue her.

“I’m so excited,” says Dean. “Most shows will have a long road before they go into production, and this has happened so quickly. Three other shows that I’ve been working on are nowhere near production. So the fact that this one’s happening so quickly, and Berkshire Theatre Group has just been so, so enthusiastic. It’s just so inspiring, as an artist to have this kind of support and encouragement from a theater company.”

One of Dean’s favorite songs is called “Another Chance,” which Addie sings towards the end of the show. “The lyrics are so beautiful. ‘I deserve another chance. Another song, another dance,’ which I think is so poignant, and which I’m sure a lot of people who are older want to scream to whoever will listen. Everyone deserves a second chance and deserves to have their stories heard.”

Previews for On Cedar Street begin August 12, with the opening on August 19. The musical runs through September 2 at The Unicorn Theatre, 6 East St., Stockbridge. For tickets and more information, please go to berkshiretheatregroup.org

The Animal Director

COURTESY OF BILL BERLONI

BILL BERLONI and his wife, Dorothy, live in a small town in central Connecticut, a few hours from Stockbridge. They have 20 dogs, all rescues, all living at home with them. They also have some cats, a parrot, a pig, a horse, a couple of geese, and two donkeys. Berloni is the premiere trainer of dogs for theater and film. (Discovery Channel did a series on him several years ago, From Wags to Riches, which can be streamed.) He has trained his dogs for 27 Broadway shows—including multiple renditions of Annie. His rescued dogs have performed in The Wizard of Oz and Legally Blonde, and he received a special Tony® for his theater work.

It all started in 1976. Berloni had recently graduated from high school and was aspiring to be an actor. While apprenticing at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut, he was promised a part in one of its shows and his Equity card if he could find a dog and train it to play Little Orphan Annie’s best friend, Sandy, in the musical’s off-Broadway debut. When we talked recently, Berloni’s dog, Addison, was winding up her latest run of Annie, and her next musical is the premiere of On Cedar Street.

Was it your dog that you trained to be Sandy in the first Annie musical? No. The script called for “a sandy-colored mutt of indistinguishable breed,” in Tom Meehan’s words. Because we were doing it for free, somebody told me they had cheap dogs at the animal shelter. And so at the age of 19, I went casting for a Sandy. I had never been to an animal shelter, and I was profoundly moved. I found a dog that first day who was going to be put to sleep the next day, and I didn’t know what that meant. So, ultimately, I did go back and get that dog for $7, and he became the original Sandy. I made a promise to myself that day, that if I ever get a dog, I would rescue it.

Did you just wing it? How do you teach your dog to fetch a ball? How do you teach your dog to stay off the couch? In my experience, you make it fun for them. You can’t force anyone or anything to do something against their will without a lot of negative reinforcement. So, maybe I bring Sandy with me every day to the theater and maybe the little girls give him cookies. And maybe we play ball on stage. It was the very simple beginnings of a positive reinforcement training, which was kind of unique at that time. Annie opened up on Broadway in 1977, and I had trained the first dog to play a character in a live play, three times a week.

That’s a great story. And you were the very first? If you look back at theatrical history, animals have been “props.” Gypsy the musical has a baby lamb and a dog. Well, you could do that without a baby lamb and dog, Oliver has Bullseye. You could do a show without him. But you can’t tell the story of Little Orphan Annie without Sandy.

How many dogs have you trained? For the theatrical world, we adopt them, we train them, it takes us a year, and then we give them forever homes. So it’s not like a revolving door of animals. Unlike my film business, we represent other trainers. We’ve represented thousands of animals over the years, but I’ve probably trained between 200 to 300.

Which dog is being used for On Cedar Street? The 45th-anniversary tour of Annie went out last fall, and she was Sandy. The tour has taken the summer off. So, my Annie dog just came home. She was chosen because of her experience and her availability. She’s a five-year-old little sandy-colored beige 37 pounds, and her name is Addison. We rescued her when she was a year and a half old from a high-kill shelter in North Carolina.

There was one Broadway production in which Allison Smith played Annie. Do you know her? She’s a good friend of mine.

She lives right here in the Berkshires and is co-owner of Stonover Farm. And she is in another story in our magazine, in this same issue. (See page 34.) I was wondering if there might be a connection! She’s a New Jersey native who went to California and moved back east with her family when her kids grew up. I love her to death. I used to babysit her when she was nine. I lived in Jersey at the time, too. I’d pick her up from home and drive her and her mom in, and we would do the show. For more than two years she did the show, we were very close. So now I have to call her today and tell her!

How will you train the dog and the cast for On Cedar Street? We take whatever actors are working with the animals and turn them into trainers. One of the things I knew way back when is that in a stage production, I can’t be in the wings telling the dog what to do. The commands had to come from the onstage people. They had to be as bonded and as skilled as I am so that the dog leaves me to go with them. For this production, it would have been unreasonable to start from scratch with a dog. Addison knows all the commands because she’s seasoned. What I’ll be doing is twofold: going up and taking the one or two child actors and teaching them how to work with her on stage. And, more importantly, working with the creators, because they’ve never done a show with a dog. They may not recognize how much an animal upstages a scene. They may not recognize how much an animal enhances the stage. If they didn’t have a dog who had done 3,000 productions, who could walk into that small space with the audience 10 feet away and be okay with it, it wouldn’t be able to be done. I’m very excited to come in and be a part of this process with this particular team of creators.

Have you visited the Berkshires for this project yet? We had a preliminary meeting. Addison was working, so I brought another dog up, just to explain to the director and choreographer and lighting designer, and to look at the space to determine what is possible. There are no wings in this theater. When an animal’s onstage, it can be controlled by the actor. When you want the animal to act independently, it’s working with the trainer off-stage. So if you have no wings, that automatically removes the ability for the animal to act independently.

When you say act independently, what do you mean? For example, somebody’s sitting there, and they’re looking down, and the dog has to come over and sit next to them. If the actor can’t give it a cue, how does it do it? Somebody always has to be in control of the dog.

So what are you going to do? I don’t know. After 45 years of doing this, my gift is that I know how to take what the writer has written, what the director is trying to say, and turn it into a reality. There’s another aspect to this, too. Do you have a dog?

I do. I have two dogs. Do dogs run up to people who don’t like dogs and hang out with them?

Most of the people I’m around like dogs. The two children we’re working with are not well-versed with animals. One of them has never had a dog, So how do I create that bond with someone who’s afraid to pet the dog?

Tell her mom to get a dog? That usually happens after the show’s over when the child can no longer live without one. And then the parents curse me. I started my career working with children. I protect children as much as I protect the animals. I never go into any show setting expectations that kids can’t meet, that are going to make them feel bad about themselves. We will figure this out. It falls on me to put what we have together so that the creators can tell the story.

Has this ever happened to you before? The first encounter I had with that was the youngest Annie on Broadway. Allison Smith was 10 years old. Her mom was deathly afraid of dogs. She had been bitten by a German shepherd and taught all their children to be afraid of dogs. But this little 10-year-old came into the auditions, blew them away with her voice, and was really cute. I’d been doing the show for three years. I said to Allison, “Hey, come over and meet Sandy.” And she goes, “I’m afraid.” I asked the director, “What are we going to do?” She said, “What are you going to do? You have to make this work.”

How did you overcome this challenge? Because they lived in Jersey, during the rehearsal period, I said to them, “Hey, do you want me to drive you home?” Sometimes mom would be sitting in the front seat and Sandy would be in the backseat with Allison, and he’d stick his nose up in front, and it would scare her mom. Then I asked Allison, “How would you like to play a joke on your mother?” And she looked at me and smiled. “What?” “You can train Sandy really well. You can go up and scare her.” That became the game. That clicked her into wanting to do something to trick her mother. It was her first love story with a dog. It was beautiful to watch.

Bill Berloni with Bowdie preparing for the musical Because of Winn Dixie.

Is there something special that you look for in a dog? I will give you the secret to my success, because I’m more interested in people adopting animals than I am anything else. However many dogs I’ve had, they’ve all been rescued. I’m the director of animal behavior for the Humane Society of New York. When you go into a shelter or a rescue group, there are three types of dogs. First, the ones who are overwhelmed by the situation. They’re the ones that are cowering in the back, not knowing how to deal with it. Or there are the dogs that are jumping up and down, and they’re completely out of control. And then they’re the ones just sitting there, dealing with it. Unless you are a trainer or plan to spend a lot of money on trainers, those are the ones you should adopt. They’re in a highly stressful situation, and they’re dealing with it. So transitioning into a home is an easy thing to do. We go for the dogs in the middle, and that’s what I encourage first-time dog owners to do.

Will you be there for the rehearsal of On Cedar Street? Yes, because I’m the only one who knows how to connect all the dots. My trainers can take the dog and get her to do the behaviors, but they don’t know how to design the behaviors based on the actor’s skills or the director and writer’s wishes. Addison is a skilled actress. We’re just pulling from what she already knows. It’s been years since I’ve been able to work on a new project from scratch, and I’m so looking forward to this. It’s what I love doing. It’s how I started my career.

The dog makes the production more real. And more “dangerous.” Sandy was on stage for 11 minutes out of a two-and-a-half-hour musical. Why did he become so popular? Why do people remember that? You come to a play, and everybody’s pretending. Then the dog walks on stage, and it’s, like, wait a minute, what’s that dog gonna do? All of a sudden the play becomes much more real because you don’t know what that animal is going to do next.

Are there any dog stories you’d like to share? Two of my favorite stories are about how wonderful these animals are. Annie just opened in April of 1977 and I’m all of 20 years old. Andrea McArdle was playing Annie, and the show was a huge success. It was October, it was getting cold, and there was a torrential storm before the 8 p.m. show. People were cold and wet, the house was packed. Up until that point, every time Andrea came on stage, or Sandy came on stage, or Daddy Warbucks, they would get entrance applause. So Thursday night, onstage, Andrea calls to Sandy, “Hey, there’s one they didn’t get.” He trots out and he stops halfway. And I’m like, “What?” She calls, “Come here, boy, come here.” And he’s not moving. The audience now knows something is wrong. It seemed like it went on forever. People start whispering and then they start to laugh. And Andrea, being a kid, starts to laugh, and they applaud, and Sandy continues to go to her. The next day, The New York Times wrote, “Star dog Sandy held up the show for entrance applause.” What happened was the situation he had encountered for four months was that he entered and there was this noise to his right. That night, there was no noise. So he turned and looked at them. He was waiting for that noise. He didn’t know it was applause. When it happened, he continued doing what he was doing.

That’s great. What’s the other story? Fast-forward 40 years, and I’m doing Legally Blonde. It’s a Wednesday matinee. At the beginning of the musical, the sorority is looking for their leader, Elle Woods. She’s not there at the sorority house. Her dog, Bruiser, runs out on stage and talks to one of the characters, so there’s a series of barking cues. The dog’s name is Chico, and the young actress was Annaleigh Ashford. Chico runs out to Annaleigh, and we see him stop and start walking towards the orchestra pit. Annaleigh runs over and picks him up. I thought he was gonna jump in the pit. He’s looking at the audience and not barking. So she ad-libs.

What happened? She comes off the stage and says, “There were people in the front row eating fried chicken!” It had been the Broadway festival, and there were food vendors in-between shows. These people decided to come into their matinee with their lunch and sit in the front row. In those moments of terror, it goes to show you that you can always depend on the animals to tell the truth.

Are there any other ongoing projects that you’d like to mention? I’ve always said to my wife, “Why can’t they do Lassie the musical? Why can’t we do Benji the musical? I want to train a dog to be a star. So she went on a quest and she got the rights to a book called Because of Winn Dixie. We’ve turned it into a musical with Duncan Sheik doing music; Neil Benjamin doing book and lyrics; and John Rando directing. We were set to go to Broadway in the spring of 2020. Sandy has seven cues, and he was on stage 11 minutes. Winn Dixie has 122 cues, and it takes four trainers. So, I was able to take more than 40 years of experience and train a dog to be the lead character in a play. Hopefully, when Broadway settles down, we’ll be able to present it.

—Anastasia Stanmeyer