["Two Player Game" from Be More Chill]
--Yo Broadway.com! I'm George Salazar and you were watching Pac-Man Tattoo. I'm in
front of the Lyceum on 45th Street because Be More Chill the new Broadway
musical is coming to Broadway. So, I'm not you to assume that everyone on Broadway.com
knows what the hell Be More Chill is or even knows who I am for that
matter. So, here's a quick rundown on what Be More Chill is. Be More Chill is a
brand new Syfy musical comedy written by Joey Iconis and Joe Tracz, directed by
Stephen Brackett, choreographed by Chase Brock, starring Will Roland
as Jeremy, a very ordinary kid who's got one friend. He's not a really cool guy,
super nerd. And the bully of the school, Rich Gransky play by Gerard Cananico tells
him about this little pill you can take that implants a supercomputer in your
brain that instructs you on all the ways to fit in and be cool.
Jeremy takes the pill, his life starts changing and he begins hanging out with
the popular kids. In that process, he turns his back on his best friend,
Michael Mell, who I play. And thus all in pursuit of this
dream girl, a drama club nerd named Christine Kenigula, played by
Stephanie Shu. This pill takes the form of of a very smooth talking, really cool
guy played by Jason Tam. And hilarity ensues, things start to get a little dangerous,
and I'm not going to tell you anymore because you should buy tickets to see us.
We start previews February 13, and we open on March 10th. I can't believe it. I
my heart is exploding with joy. I had the day off yesterday, and honestly couldn't
wait to get to the Lyceum.
And now, for those of you who have no idea who I am,
I am actor here in New York City .I've been in
New York for 11 years. I made my Broadway debut in the Broadway
revival of Godspell, back in 2011. Since then, I've found like a really nice
creative and artistic home off-Broadway. I, since doing Godspell, was in Here Lies
Love with The Public. I did the off-Broadway revival of tick, tick... boom!
with Nick Bleymeyer and company. I did The Lightning Thief, the Percy
Jackson musical, which funnily enough, was also directed by Steven Bracket
with a book also written by Joe Tracz. And most recently I was in a musical called
Be More Chill off Broadway at the Signature Theatre. Off-Broadway, our show
ran for nine weeks initially. We sold out our nine week run before opening
night. And then after we opened, we released an extension we
released a week of tickets, and those tickets sold out in nine hours. Never did
any of us ever think that that would happen,
a, and that b, we'd be looking at the Lyceum with our marquee
up. Again, you're gonna hear this a lot and I'm really sorry, but it's true.
So many dreams coming true. I'm watching all of my friends, some of the most talented,
some of the most hard-working, and some of the most good people in New York City
will be making their Broadway debuts with Be More Chill. I'm talking Stephen
Brackett, I'm talking Joe Iconis, I'm talking to
Joe Tracz, Jason Sweet Tooth Williams and Lauren Marcus. Oh my god the
list goes on. It's it's truly an exciting thing to get to do a Broadway show
truly surrounded by the people that that I love so so much. So, yeah let's
let's get me a coffee because it's early and it's tech, and we're going to be here
until midnight. Come on. So, we just walked into the stage door
here at the Lyceum. Let's go.
[music]
--Hey, we finally made it. It's like climbing Mount Everest to get up here..
But you know what? I love it because look at this view. Come on up here. So, my goal
here is to sweet-talk everyone at the Lyceum and get a storage unit so all of
this stuff can leave here, and then I can build a ferris wheel.
Cuz look, there's totally room for it. I can totally put a ferris wheel,
zipper perhaps. Hmm...
one of those bungee slingshots that
shoot people up in the air. Maybe maybe we don't have enough room here for that.
uhh...
Bumper cars. Bumper cars. I could do bumper cars down here. But look at this
come on Broadway House. The Lyceum is the oldest continuously running and
operating Broadway house. This is one of the first theaters to have air
conditioning. This is a really fun fact. Beneath the Lyceum are some rooms where
they would just cram ice into, and air would fans would blow cold air up
through the floors through vents in the orchestra. And that's how people got to
stay cool, stay chill, during the hot summer months in the 30s. Crazy, right?
We take these things for granted. We take these things for granted.
And here we are. My dressing room is just a fire escape.
--Well... looks like you're
gonna have to tune into next week's episode of pac-man tattoo to see my
dressing room because she's locked! No worries.
This is the perfect spot to tell you more about our show, more about what to
expect on pac-man tattoo.
Right?
--Umm, okay let's...
--What else did I want? Okay,
so I told you about the plot of Be More
Chill. I've explained who I am. Let me explain to you the the wonderful journey
that this show has been on. In 2014, I did one of the first workshops of Be More
Chill. I had auditioned for another Iconis show called The Black Suits. And I
didn't get it. And Joe was talking to me while we were decorating 54 Below for
the Christmas show in 2013. And Joe was like, You were great.
They were just they were truly trying to cast 18 year olds. But I'm writing
another musical, and I think there's a role that's perfect for you, so keep your
eyes peeled. I'm gonna send you an email soon. And sure enough, in 2014, in the
spring, I got invited to be a part of this reading. And a couple of months
later, we went into production for Be More Chill at Two River Theater in Red
Bank New Jersey. We ran for four weeks and it seemed like at that point that
the show's life was kind of done.
But the good people at Ghost Light Records Kurt
Deutsch and Greg Brunswick and company loved the show and wanted to preserve Be
More Chill on a cast album. So in the summer of 2015, we recorded the cast
album. It was released on Halloween in 2015. And then, as
Joe Iconis likes to say, many people enjoyed the cast album. As many people
who who would enjoy a cast album from a show that ran in New Jersey for four
weeks would. And, we all carried on. We moved on to other projects. And then, in
this late spring, early summer of 2017, something really strange and unusual
happened. Suddenly and without warning, that's a Little Shop reference, the
internet found Be More Chill, found the cast album, found a video of Joe and I
performing Michael in the Bathroom at 54 Below. And it just kind of started to
spread like wildfire in this really like cool, and organic, and very like 2017
kind of away. Tumblr users were sharing, Instagram users were sharing, Twitter was
talking about it. And little by little, that our show that we loved so much and
that we kind of you know bid adieu to was coming back. And people were talking
about it and people were drawing fan art and making dolls of Michael Mell and
Jeremy, making backpacks that matched Jeremy and Michael's backpacks. And people
were dressing up as the characters. And it was um it was truly insane. And so a
couple of us were really we're really anxious to try to see if this momentum
online could translate into a production of the show in New York City, you know?
This had never happened before, like shows that never play New York City
don't become this popular. And, so, we felt like it was important that that we try
to get this show back in New York City for the people who love it so much, and
and also selfishly for us because we loved doing it so much in New Jersey. And
what a dream it would be to get to do it New York. And so so 2017 happens, and and
we meet Jerry Goering, our amazing, amazing lead producer. He had
been an admirer of Joe's for quite some time, and he was the, he was the captain
of the ship. He was the guy who was like let's do this thing. So, we found out in
the spring of 2018 that in the summer of 2018, we would be moving into the
Signature Theatre Center to do Be More Chill off-Boadway. And that's the
crazy journey that we've gone on. After that sold-out run off-Broadway, we're here at
the Lyceum.
I've cried a lot.
Yeah. What you can look forward to
with pac-man tattoo, this this video series, is an eight-week
behind-the-scenes journey. I can't wait to take you along with me for this ride.
I feel like this is the moment that I've been waiting for my whole life. I feel
like all of my hard work, and the hard work of all of my friends, has kind of
led us to this place. And so, I'm really excited to get to document this whole
journey, and to have you guys, the Broadway.com audience, along for the
ride. Eight weeks is a long time, and so you're gonna kind of join me and the
rest of the cast and the rest of the creative team as we finished tech-ing Be
More Chill, as we do our first preview, as we go through previews with lots of
changes and edits. And then opening night, you're gonna be along for that whole ride.
And so it's my goal and my wish for this series to also introduce you the
audience to all of the pieces of this puzzle that make a show happen. It takes
a village to make any show happen, but it takes like truly like continent of
people to make a Broadway show happen. And so I'm excited to introduce you to
all the departments, so you can meet all of our wardrobe people, everyone
backstage and our creative team and our and our cast, just so that you guys have
a really clear idea of all of the love and hard work that is being poured in to
Be More Chill here at the Lyceum. I'm so excited to have you guys along for the
ride. Please keep watching. And, yeah.
--I guess that's it for the first episode
you guys. I promise there'll be much less exposition on on the rest of the videos
for pac-man tattoo.
I'm now sitting in the house waiting for my dressing room
too get unlocked. Thank you so much for joining,
and I can't wait to see you next week
right here on Broadway.com with pac-man tattoo, backstage with me at Be More Chill.
["Two-Player Game" from Be More Chill]