Excuse me, miss. You dropped your -
Crabtree & Evelyn scarf.
Don't know much about
your life.
Don't know much
about your world.
Don't want to be alone
tonight on this
planet they call earth.
You
don't know about my past.
And I don't
have a future figured out.
And maybe this is going
too fast.
And maybe it's not meant to last.
But what do you say to
taking chances?
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's
solid ground
below, or a hand to hold, or hell to pay. What do you say?
Rose!
What on earth are you doing sitting
with that aging twink?
Darling, please, board already!
Our very future depends on it.
We've been on this very interesting
journey of like what is a parody
and how do you market that?
What is the value of that versus
a new musical?
And that's been a very interesting
sort of dialog
that we've been massaging as
we've created this.
I think I would love for Titaníque
to be a show that not
only sort of lays new
ground in terms of like what is a
new musical versus what is a parody?
'Cause we have elements of both, to
be honest.
But I also would love for
parodies to be able to be viewed
in a more elevated manner.
You know, I would hope that we can
add to the sense that wait
parodies can be effective,
touching, have tons of heart,
can operate on all cylinders,
just like a hit Broadway show.
So I would hope that, like, maybe
we can change the the focus
a little bit more, refocus how
parodies are seen.
I like to consider us a new comedy
even though we parody the movie.
I definitely think there's something
to
what we've done in kind of
reinventing the wheel of this genre,
making it really clever and
super tight, and
bringing in everything from
nostalgia to the current
day. And I just think it's a
mix of everything.
So it's not just a straight up
parody. There's definitely new
moments that make it a
brand new musical.
Do you know who was first in line
for dinner? Me.
I love dinnertime, it is my favorite
time.
But as I was standing at the buffet,
who did I see there?
But Rose.
She looks so beautiful, waiting for
her new love, Jack.
I got so inspired to sing about it,
I decided to invite onto
the ship, my dear friend and
two-time Grammy Award winner Sir
Peabo Bryson.
To sing, yes, to sing our
hit duet.
Beauty and the Beast. How are you?
And when I asked Disney for the
rights to this song, they say to me,
"LOL who do you think
you are?" And I say
to them, "I am Céline.
Fucking.
Dion."
We're all idiots.
The entire cast is a bunch of
idiots, and we just try to make each
other laugh onstage.
And I think that that transcends.
I think we wrote a very, very
funny script.
I mean, I don't want to pat myself
on the back, but I will.
I'm very proud of that.
So I think that the humor
shines through no matter
what person is playing it, no matter
what understudy is on.
I think it's a very smart book and I
and that is because we
just did this with so much joy
and without a care in the world
and like, hey, whatever happens,
happens. And now here we are.
They did love it.
Any of those, like, moments where
bullshit happens and ya'll
have to recover, they live.
Yeah.
It's like that SNL breaking and
trying to hold it together thing.
Yeah, exactly.
My mom is always like, it's so much
fun to watch you guys try
to hold it together.
Mhm.
Or try to come back from that.
And I'm like, alright, well, fair.
But that can't be the whole show.
Yeah.
Connie deliberately makes me try to
break in certain scenes, but he'll
just, like, look at me like that
during "Because You Loved Me." And
so I tried doing it one night to
him, but you were in the audience
and you saw me doing it and you're
like, "What the hell is she doing?"
Just me behind my mask like-.
Yeah, you're like, Marla?
Marla,? Are you okay?
"Uncut gems", I think, is when-
Yeah, "Uncut gems"
That's a big moment.
Because then he makes Alex laugh and
then Alex breaking makes him laugh,
and then watching him break makes me
laugh.
And then I want to keep going.
So then I look at Alex and I try to
make her break again.
Mm hmm.
It's a downward spiral.
Ah, theatre.
Yes, yeah, it's a downward spiral.
I wonder- you know something we should,
we're going to need to address is
your whole improv scene.
Why? Is it bad?
No.
Okay.
Titaníque is a Céline Dion
fever dream, where Céline Dion
thinks she was on the ship in 1912.
And so, she recounts the tale
through her eyes and her songs.
I think that's a good logline for
it.
It's one of the biggest movies
of all time, right?
She is a global icon.
She is beloved all over the place.
And the more I dug into it,
I realized that she never wanted
to record "My Heart Will Go On".
She lives with a level of disdain
for that song.
She tells a story about it in her
shows. And so I just thought, wait a
minute, that is
a good catch.
What if she could retell Titanic
through her lens with
the knowledge that she didn't ever
want to sing that song?
She kind of got stuck with it, but
it also made her a global superstar.
So, for me, there was always that
little inside
connection that
she never wanted to sing it.
And so give her a mic,
and let her talk about it.
I was living in Los Angeles, and I
was directing shows
at this dinner theater type place
called Rockwell Table & Stage.
And so we were doing these movie to
musical parodies like Devil Wears
Prada and Scream and Troop Beverly
Hills, where you would take this
iconic movie and you would add
these kind of pop culture songs to
it.
And once we were doing the Scream
parody, I looked at them and I
said, "We have to write our own
thing". So, we were having drinks at
the bar one night after the show,
and I was definitely a little tipsy,
and I go up to Marla.
I'm like, "Marla, we're- the
next parody musical we're going to
do is I'm going to be- we're going
to do Titanic, and it's going to be
all Céline Dion music. And you're
going to be Céline and I'm going to
be Jack and Alex is going to be
Rose, and I think it's going to
work."
And at the time, I was a little bit
tipsy. I was like, "cool, cool, cool,
tight, tight, tight.
Never gonna happen." I was like, I
don't want to be Celine Dion.
She's the greatest singer of all
time. So I just thought it was like
a funny pipe dream.
And Marla was- and looked at me as
she was like "never going to happen,
sweetie." And then that night,
I went home, and I just had this
burst of energy,
and the light bulb clicked, and I
sat at the computer, and I started
writing out this outline of
every Celine Dion song
from her catalog and how it would
fit into the outline of the movie.
And miraculously, it worked.
And then two years later,
Tye called me.
And he said, "I think it's time to
bring that idea that you had to
life."
And in that instant, something said
to me, "It's time to write the
Titanic show".
I immediately texted Connie and
Marla and I said, "We got to work of
out of this dark space.
Let's just get together on Monday
nights.
Let's write.
Let's build these musical
arrangements." And
that's really where it came from for
me.
The need to create, the need to
laugh, the need to build something
that in a time
when I felt like I had no control
over anything, at least
I had this one little passion
project that I could look forward to
every Monday night, and we would go
to Constantine's apartment and just
get silly and create.
The night.
Okay.
Let's go to places for
this.
We'll go from the same place that we
started from. I just want to give
them, you know, the ography,
we won't do the curtain.
I think Priscilla, we can probably
skip lights.
Is this cue enough for you guys?
Do you need more light? Would you
like color?
Let's go from Céline's reveal,
please.
Full out, right?
Yes. Fall out, please.
How is everybody doing over here?
Ye-ye-yeah.
And how is everybody doing over
here?
And how is Patti LuPone doing
over here?
You think you are?
I'm Celine Dion.
Word!
I love you Patti.
You've set my heart on fire.
You fill me with love,
made me a woman
on the clouds above.
Come on, everybody! God knows
that, that I'll be the one standing
by through good and
through trying times.
And it's only begun.
I can't wait for the
rest of my life.
Ha ha ha ha.
When you call on me,
When you call on me.
When you reach for me,.
Call me! When you reach for me,
I get wings to fly.
Here we go! Patti LuPone!
When you bless
the day,
Bless the day,
I just drift away.
All my worries die.
I know that I'm alive.
Zah, ba, ba, baba ah!
Oh, I get wings
to fly.
God knows that
we're alive.
Hmmm
The writing process has been
interesting and s uper fun.
Every time we would throw it up and
do a new reading of it
or a new cast member would come
and we'd find new things, or a
couple of months and time would go
by. And, you know, we
pull a lot from present day and
top 40 like pop culture
and hits and things like that and
what's going on and, you know, in
the world today. And we have to stay
current because I think that's what
really adds to our show.
So it's forever changing.
The three creators and
Nicholas, we are very, very
symbiotic, which
I think is what makes the show so
wonderful is that there's a lot of
love and there's a lot of respect
for each other.
And what we usually do is we let
an actor play.
We let them do it a couple of times,
and if it's still not working, will
convene and we'll say, "Okay, this
isn't this isn't working.
We got to cut it or try this
instead." We have been very good
at respecting each other's
boundaries and saying yae
or nay. And usually
we decide upon something as a team,
although one sometimes one
of us goes rogue, mainly me.
And I'm like, "Cut it, get rid of
it". And Tye's like, "No, don't do
that. It's good."
He's a lot more
gracious than I am.
We try to, like, keep a balanced
approach when we're deciding
what works.
And, you know, if two
of us agree that something works
great and the other doesn't,
then, you know, majority wins
usually is how we operate things.
But as a director,
I always want to hold space
for well, let's just try this
if we're not sure this is going to
work, we have the benefit of a week
of previews. Let's have option A
that we try first, and then if
three nights of that is not great,
then we'll try option B, you know,
for me it's all it's this like
filtration process of seeing
what is the best idea.
Best idea wins, always.
There's something in me, Jack.
I don't know what it is, but I can't
wait to find out.
What's this?
Just some sketches.
Oh, Jack.
These are quite good.
These are very good.
You think?
You have a gift, Jack, you do.
You see people.
It's a cat.
The biggest challenge, I think,
is finding the balance
of giving you enough
Céline and enough
of the film, the iconic
lines, the iconography
of this. And, you know, "I'm flying,
Jack, I'm flying" while not
going too far into just
doing a film on stage
and building our own plot.
You know, I think that was really
important for me, having done so
many parodies.
I really wanted the plot of this and
the book of this to stand
alone without
the songs, without the movie.
And I think we- I think we're
getting there.
Should we just do the whole thing?
I think we should just do the whole
thing.
Yeah, whatever you want.
Okay, great.
I'm here.
And really like the focus of it is
the ritardando going into the
mash-up chorus.
Yes, I know what you care
about here.
Yeah. Let's go from rehearsal letter
B.
Let me get in the right key.
Okay.
cool.
Rehearsal letter B.
Yeah. So this is
the "Oh, I
can't do it. Jesus, move.
No." And he goes "All
that I-"
-am and all that I'll be,
means nothing at all,
if you can't be with me.
Your most innocent
kiss,
or, your sweetest caress
seduces me.
I want you to have it, Rose.
There's nothing I couldn't give you
nor anything I'd deny
you. So don't deny me.
We're going to do it tonight.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
So Rose went
to bed, scared, alone,
conflicted.
Would she have sex with Cal
while wearing a necklace from
Jared's?
Getting to experience people's
reactions. And
just seeing the masses.
Laugh and truly
forget about their lives for 90
minutes is the biggest
blessing and-
I could ever have ever dreamed
for or ever happen with this show.
It feels right
for this moment.
I feel like we've all been through a
terrible time these past two years.
And if you can just
check out for 90 minutes and come
to a piece of theater that
is light and fun, and it
was gonna, you know, hit you with
some nostalgic, beautiful moments
from this movie, also the incredible
songs.
That, to me is
why we do this.
When I die, I want to be standing
in the back of the theater where
something I created is running
for years and just be
a ghost in the back.
And can get to witness all the
smiles and laughter that I get to
give to people.
That's what matters the most to me.
And so I would hope that
whatever the life of this show
is that
I always say, like global
domination,
which is maybe a harsh phrase.
But I want- I would love to do this
show all over the place
in every language and
give as many people on this planet
as possible the joy that
those 165 people are
getting every night.
This is the most joyous,
humbling, surreal experience
of my life. I will take myself as
an actor out of it.
As a struggling writer for,
you know, eight years in New York,
eight years in Los Angeles, to have
something that I have co-written
that people are laughing at, that
people are saying it's the funniest
thing that they've ever seen.
It makes my head explode.
I feel like this
is a once in a lifetime opportunity
and I try to
immerse myself in how grateful I am
every single day because I
don't know if I'll ever experience
something like this again.
So the joy that I feel is
profound.
So if you know the words, please,
please sing along with us.
And I'm sure you here will know the
words because let's face it, most of you here tonight are gay! You're
here, there's nothing I fear and I know that my heart will go on, we'll
stay forever this way you are safe in my heart, and my heart will go on
and on.
Thank you so much for coming to see Titaníque.
Ooo I love
you so much, good night! Some way all the love that we had can be saved, whatever it takes we'll find a way. Ladies and gentlemen, John Mayer! Come on! Believe me (Believe me), I will make you see (oo ahh) all the things that your heart needs to know. I'll be- Wait for it! -waiting for you here inside my heart. I'm the one who wants-