Elliott Forrest

Hey Michael, always good to see you.

I hope so.

Who would've thought?

Uh, Michael, actually, um, I, you know, I grew up in a relatively small West Texas town, Midland, Texas, and uh, I was 19 years old when I walked into a bank and I said, I think you should give me some money. I'm going to do a show in the park. Uh I didn't even want to borrow it, I just wanted them to give it to me and be a sponsor. And uh, they did. And um, I, I produced Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in the park with my friends. I, I bought the rights, I did everything right. I got went to what was it MTI or whatever it was. We rehearsed in, you know, basements and and uh backyards and uh at 19 I, uh, had a a thousand people come see a show in the park. And um, I've basically been recreating that sort of feeling of uh taking charge on a show, conceiving of something and then seeing it through to the very end, uh, for, you know, 40-some odd years. I, I have, I don't even call it a detour, it's a big, a huge part of my life to be a broadcaster, but my degree uh was in theater as a director. And um, I just never, I came to New York to be involved in theater and to produce and direct and just never made any money at it. And uh, and so was on radio and then 12 years at A&E Television, and then uh, I got a call from a friend who was producing a concert in 2005 at the Hollywood Bowl. And uh, and said, you should take the lead on it, I'm too busy. And so it was really that concert that brought me back after decades of really not producing and directing on a really big scale. It was the last 90 minutes of Götterdämmerung with John Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. It was a big success. We got, yeah, we got a we got a big review and everyone loved it. And then I came back to New York and I said, this is a business. I'd like to add visual elements, add theatrical elements, not just projections, but other theatrical elements to symphony concerts. And uh, have been doing it ever since, including most recently being on tour with Itzhak Perlman.

Uh, you know, no. Uh, as a matter of fact, and I had a partner at the time, a business partner, said, are we doing confetti and fireworks? And it was really uh set the stage for the way I've worked ever since, which was I let the music tell me what the what to add theatrically. And as you know, Wagner wrote the stage directions for the Ring Cycle. And um, and there it didn't say fireworks and uh and confetti. So, but there was fire, real fire and you know, we can I can send you pictures, but uh yeah, we put propane on top of the Hollywood Bowl because Wagner wrote in the distance, you can see Valhalla going up in flames and it's like, okay, let's have that go up in flames. So it was extremely theatrical and very exciting, uh, but again, I I always want the music to tell me what to do, rather than trying to add on anything that um, that that that uh is, I mean, I hope that my concerts are fun, but I don't do it just for fun. I try to let I try to amplify the music with the theatricality.

Oh no, there's huge I've had a long that was that was uh 2016 was a Matthew Shepard and uh directing for PBS and being on tour with them. So, uh no, there've been uh dozens of shows in between. The one of my biggest collaborators has been the Little Orchestra Society. Uh right after I got back from uh doing the Hollywood Bowl, I met with a number of orchestras and the Little Orchestra Society hired me to do uh uh a gala of theirs at Town Hall and then several shows at Lincoln Center. They actually came to me and said, uh, you got an idea for something, we're thinking Americana. And I knew that we were a couple of years away from the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, I guess. And um, so we did a big Lincoln concert at Lincoln Center and uh, it was it was really great, it was great fun. I got uh James Earl Jones to be the narrator. We also did a an another program after that called um, Music Takes Flight about the man's interest in flight from Icarus through the space program. And Sigourney Weaver was the narrator for that. We did that both at Alice Tully and Lincoln Center. So there were a lot of shows in between in which I've added again, theatrical elements, set pieces, um, in some cases costumes, and usually, almost always, some level of projections.

Um, I uh, I'm not sure um, you know, with you know this, Michael, that unfortunately in our business and classical music, things tend to devolve into two different categories and it's not usually young and adult, it's usually serious or pops. And we kind of don't have any other terms for that, which is really too bad because I think a lot of the things that I've done have been not serious, but not pops. They've been great fun but not pops. Um, and then some of the pops things have had some serious undertones as well. So I'm not sure what to call it. But um, I've done a couple of things for children. I just did um, it wasn't so much for orchestra, although I had classical music. I did my own adaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes, which is now out on video and on YouTube, but um, I had um, kept hearing The Emperor Has No Clothes in the news stories, and I thought, what's the original story? What's the actual original Hans Christian Anderson story? So I got a as close,

Unfortunately, he's not in the theater business anymore. Right now. Or maybe he is. Frankly, maybe he is in the theater business.

Um,

Um, yeah, so I um, got a translation of the Hans Christian Anderson, made a couple of editorial changes, very few, frankly. Um, and and did that. But I think all, you know, my stuff for kids have always, my favorite stuff as a parent has always been like the Muppets or or Pixar where there's always a little something for the adults and you know the kids aren't getting it, but there's a little something because somebody else paid to go see the movie. So, um, yeah, it's um, and Little Orchestra was not always they they used to have an adult program and many of the shows I did were actually not for kids. Um, uh, the Music Takes Flight and the Lincoln, you know, certainly young people were invited, but it was actually more for their adult audience.

Well, I would watch it by myself. I'm not sure my kids watched it nor my wife, but I've seen Pee-wee, yeah.

I know, and if you can go on YouTube and see Mario Cantone's old shows for kids too.

Mario was a little eye-opening as well.

Yeah, it's where they shoot uh Austin City Limits, the long-running television show. Yeah. Um, was where we shot it in Austin. Uh the Moody, I think, was the where you saw it in Dallas, I think.

In Washington.

It was stirring, right.

Right.

Yeah, for those who don't know, and you know, it's a part of history now.

Yeah, it's uh, you know, Matthew Shepard uh was a gay young man in in Casper, Wyoming, who was uh taken out to a field, beaten horribly, tied to a fence and left for dead for 18 hours. And um, it was a turning point in the gay rights movement. It was really the first time in America that America really stood up en masse. Clinton was president, Ellen DeGeneres had just come out. Will & Grace had just started on the air within within months of that uh ahead of time. So really it was the first time uh uh a gay man was uh killed and America revolted uh emotionally, and it was a turning point not only in the gay rights movement, but ultimately the Hate Crime Act that is now a federal hate crime act is named in part uh in in Matthew's name along with James Byrd, the African-American who was dragged by a truck in Texas until he died.

Right.

Oh.

For that?

Yeah. So the the back story is is that in 2016 they had already workshopped the it's an oratorio, if you haven't seen it or heard it, and you can hear the music, it's on Spotify and Google Play and everywhere. And the video is is on um you can probably link it to this conversation if you want, I can give you the link. But uh the PBS special I directed is is part of that as well. But I got a call in 2016, they had workshopped it already, they were going to shoot it for television. And a friend of mine who had done the staging ahead of time said he thought I was the right person to direct it for TV. And then I got involved right away and it's stunning. As you said, the music is amazing. Conspirare has been around for more than 20 years. Full disclosure, I'm on their board now, so uh I I I I don't get paid or anything to say that they're phenomenal, but they're phenomenal.

And um, it's a beautiful work and we were we've been on tour. We did it twice at Ravinia. We played in Laramie. We literally went back to the scene of the crime and performed this uh all over the country. And now some 40 other productions have have been around the world. And we're just now about to release a video of all of us, which is the big chorale at the end, and the audio mix is from, I don't know, 25 or 30 different productions of different singers and you see people from all over the world singing in it.

Yeah. And um, and I sort of insisted or, you know, uh, as the director, I took the lead on saying that I felt like we needed projections uh for not only the television version, but the touring version because it's um, while it's Matthew's story in somewhat of a linear narrative fashion, it's still not completely easy to follow. Um, because it jumps around a little bit. And so I felt like putting it in time and place and having uh the emotional connection of having landscapes and pictures of Matthew.

And pictures of the killers.

Yeah, and all those other aspects of projections, uh, would help the storytelling.

Well, um, I mean, the first part is the first part, which is what what do I what's what is the emotional arc of the story? That's first and foremost. Where are we coming from and where are we going to emotionally? Um, and and then from the narrative, what can I do to reveal that narrative both uh contextually and and emotionally. And sometimes projections and uh theatrical elements are um, sometimes they're a background to what's going on in a foreground, sometimes they are the foreground and they take center stage in what the audience is watching. And sometimes it's counterpoint. So, uh I think about all those things. I think do I want to counter what's going on on stage? Do I want to amplify what's going on on stage or do I want to take take the stage? And um, so I just try to sort of do an interesting mix of those three things so that I know I'm I'm I'm helping the story along. I what I never want to do, particularly with an orchestral work, if I take an orchestral piece and it's a symphony orchestra and they're no soloists and it's projections in the back, which I've done many times, I never want the orchestra, I never want the audience to forget that there's an orchestra, that there's a 85 or 100 real live people on stage. I never I light the orchestra, I never turn the lights off on the orchestra and say, hey, watch the movie. You know, and that's a different experience and that's happening now where you can watch Back to the Future or Raiders of the Lost Ark or ET with a live orchestra, which I love. But that's not the experience I'm I'm going for.

Or Frankenstein, which I've done. I've done your Frankenstein.

I produced that.

We're in our 11th 11th season in Rockland County, in New York.

Thank you.

Mardi Gras.

Well, thank you for that. Um, you know, it started pretty organically. One of my board members once said that uh every community needs a hospital, needs police, needs a fire department. They also need their own arts. And that's really the idea of it is that, you know, uh Nyack, New York, is 45 minutes from Times Square. But having said that, not everybody can afford to go, have been able to afford to go, has the wherewithal to go to the Met or Broadway. So the idea was to bring professional performing arts to our own community at an affordable price, uh in a way that even if you can't afford it, we'd give away a lot of tickets. Uh, it's not a very big organization, uh uh and uh by design, and as a matter of fact, probably if it were a really large organization with their own venue, we probably would've gone out of business during this uh lockdown. Uh, but um, but we're still here and I hope to just continue the mission of professional performing arts in and around our community for a diverse audience. And uh,

Yeah.

And do. Yeah.

Well, we have a number of venues. We have a number of venues that we use. One is uh, you know, you were at one that was like a hundred, but we also have one that's 500. And um, you know, I know that when I put on a concert and 500 people come before and after, they're going to go to restaurants, they're going to go to bars. Of course, this is both pre and post. Yeah. pandemic. Uh, but it's part of the economic fabric of any community to have these kinds of events and uh, that's why we do it.

Yeah.

It took me 10 years.

Yeah, it took me 10 years to get him to come here and then like a a year later, two years later, uh, Lady Galway calls me up and goes, we need a run-out concert. We're doing one in your area. Can we come do another benefit for you? It's like, who says no to that?

I've forgotten all the good work we've done. I I so appreciate this walk down memory lane. I I I I.

Yeah, probably more.

Well, I literally felt like, uh, you know, I've been doing all this work for orchestras and not that much for young people, and people kept coming to me and going, Tubby the Tuba, Peter and the Wolf. There's nothing else. And so I thought, well, maybe I should write something. And um, I literally started with Tubby the Tuba, uh, maybe I'll start with a piccolo. And so I started to write this little story that, uh, you know, in a way was a bit of an allegory. Um, you know, the story of a young woman piccolo player who was tired of playing alone and ventures into town and discovers that uh there's an orchestra there, but they it's just a cacophony. They can't talk to each other. Every section of the orchestra speaks a different language. And so it, you know, it became a metaphor for society that people not getting along and and not being able to play well with others. And um, so it it came out pretty quickly. It's in rhyming verse. I was pretty happy with it and I said, I had this piece and and uh at the time you were the head of an orchestra, and I said, uh, but there's no music to it. Maybe we should find somebody. And you said, how about me?

We've done a lot of salaries that way.

Composer, composer, uh, conductor, narrator, writer. Right.

Of course.

Well, it's been quite a gift, frankly, to come back to producing and directing in a much bigger way than I ever imagined and not in a world I ever really thought about when I was younger and doing theater and was focusing so much on plays and musicals, to be a part of the classical music world. And then to get this oratorio was a gift and be able to direct that as well. Um, I um, I love being on the radio and and I think that that will continue. But I think that uh there are more and more pieces that I would like to direct and produce. There's um some interesting new technology that has come my way recently that I'm interested in toying with. And um, and I'll just give you a little a little tease too, is that there's uh there's a back of the drawer story uh that sounds horrific, which it is, uh the very first child abuse case to go to trial in America, uh and the way it really came about is a great American story. It's a 19th-century story. It's kind of amazing, actually. It involves people like P.T. Barnum and the people who started the ASPCA. There's it's a it's an amazing ragtime kind of story where it's uh, you may not know the story, but all the people involved you know. Um, and I've been working on that for a while. So, uh, if I don't finish this and get this up on its feet somewhere before I uh die, it it would be a shanda. So, um,

I I have I have projects. I got I got things backed up. I hope to get to.

I've thought about it as as an opera. Um, I can I can tell if it's a play or an opera or a musical or a movie. Or a shadow play, or a radio play, which I'm involved.

I know, I know. I got to figure out the platforms.