NiteLife Exchange (NLE) asks Peter Kellogg (PK) Six Questions:
NLE: Over three decades you’ve created an impressive body of award-winning work. To date, do any works stand out for you as a “favorite” or especially meaningful, more that the others? If yes, why?
PK: Desperate Measures at The York was definitely my favorite theatre experience. We had a great cast and director, producers who were devoted to the piece, and a lot of support and help from Jim Morgan and The York. It also turned out to be timely, since the villain of the show shared a lot of similarities with Donald Trump. DM started as a comedy and ended up saying far more than we realized. The composer, David Friedman, and I have another piece that also feels relevant—more so with every passing year: Chasing Nicolette, which has had three regional productions, is about the love between a Christian and a Muslim in 1224.
NLE: What’s your creative process when you begin writing? Of the book and lyrics, is one easier than the other to write, or do both come to you with the same ease?
PK: Most times I start with the idea and write straight through from beginning to end, book and lyrics. I write a scene of dialog until it feel like it needs to move to a song. I hate even showing it to a composer until there’s a complete first draft because if it doesn’t work, I don’t want to waste his/her time or embarrass myself. Then after that, there’s a lot of time spent going over ideas with the composer and a lot of rewriting.
NLE: What’s the process of “finding” a composer to collaborate with. Do you have a wish list or is the reverse true—or do ideas spring to life through mutual rumination with composer friends/colleagues?
PK: I have been very lucky in “finding” composers. I met Dan Levine (who wrote the music to Anna Karenina) at the BMI Workshop. I actually sent the script to Chasing Nicolette without any music (a strange thing to do when I think about it) to Theatreworks. Gordon Greenberg read it and loved it and suggested David Friedman for the music. It turned out to be a wonderful match. We’ve written five musicals together. I honestly can’t remember how I first got hooked up with Steve Weiner. But I was working on a musical based on The Rivals that needed a mock classical style, and Steve did that well. We did a production The Rivals (with Harriet Harris as Mrs. Malaprop) at Bristol Riverside Theatre that got a lot of acclaim. But I also saw Steve’s musical Rocket Science in a workshop and knew he could write contemporary rock music and that seemed the right style for Penelope.
NLE: Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure was an inspiration for Desperate Measures. Is there a like inspiration for Penelope?
PK: The first inspiration for Penelope is of course The Odyssey. The story is so male-centric, with women mostly reduced to staying at home and waiting. But I always thought, wow, would she really have been so forgiving when Odysseus finally came home and she found out what he’d been up to—living on an island with a nymph named Calypso, sharing her bed for seven years. Would Penelope really have said “No problem, dear. Welcome home.”? The second inspiration is Cinderella. There must be five musicals now about a feisty feminist Cinderella who does more, wants to be more than a stay- at-home wife and mother. And I thought, Penelope could be all that and more. She’s the paragon of the faithful wife waiting passively for her husband to return. Here’s a chance to turn that idea on its head. Also, it was a story about a married woman in her late thirties rather than a young girl, and that felt fresher.
NLE: There’s a feminist point-of-view in Penelope. In March 2003, The Lysistrata Project coordinated theater companies around the world to play that Greek play as an antiwar statement. Does Penelope seek to make a similar statement of gravitas? What should audience members come away with?
PK: The main message of Penelope, I guess, is that no one should live entirely through or for someone else. Penelope comes to realize that her life, her adventures (in this case, writing) are just as important as 
her husband’s. And marriage is better when it’s a marriage of true equals. But all that makes it sound so serious. Did I mention it’s mostly a comedy?
NLE: Desperate Measures, which began development in 2004, eventually came to the York Theater and transferred for a run Off Broadway. Does Penelope have a good shot at replicating that success? And beyond Penelope, have you an idea for what’s next
PK: I would be very happy if Penelope has the same trajectory and success as Desperate Measures. In this case, though, we have already signed deals with Stage Rights and Broadway Asia to license the piece here and abroad. Broadway Asia, which sent a rep to the reading, thinks it will do well in the Far East because it has a boy band (the suitors) and they love boy bands, I hope he’s right.
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