It started as a show called Feeling Electric. In 1998, when the playwright and lyricist Brian Yorkey saw a TV news story about electroconvulsive therapy, he suggested it as the topic of a brief musical to his friend and fellow Columbia University student, Tom Kitt. They wrote a draft of a musical inspired by the story for a musical theater workshop in New York. Ten years later, it arrived off-Broadway, where it promptly failed. That’s usually the end of the story for musicals, but it wasn’t for this one, which evolved into a hit show called Next to Normal, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2010, and in 2011, was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, winning three. David Schweitzer is an internationally acclaimed director of plays, musicals and opera who has returned to Center Stage with a new production of Next to Normal. He joins Tom in the studio, along with a member of this engaging and compelling cast, KallyDuling. She plays the role of Natalie.
More on "Next to Normal"
Next to Normal is at Baltimore's Center Stage until November 16th. To find out more about the production, click here. Our theater critic, J. Wynn Rousuck will share her review of Next to Normal on Monday morning. Mark Komrad wrote an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun about the play on Wednesday. You can read that here.
