How did you move as a kid? Did you always see the world in a different way, in a colorful way, in a magni- like, you're a creative genius, and I'm just curious, like, was it always in you, or did you find it?

That is such a generous question that I, I, I feel very raw today, so I'm gonna just, like, try to stay in the center of the question.

Um, I grew up in a very small town in southern Virginia.

I was an only child.

Um, I had parents who, I'm gonna say, did the best they could.

And, uh, I was a real loner.

I was, like, a kid with a room full of books who was happy to have that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Uh, if we had made that thinking it was gonna be on Broadway, it would've probably been rotten, but risk was rewarded.

And in the case of making Rocky Horror, risk has been rewarded.

So I don't, I think it's unfair to downtown to be like, "Well, that's downtown, and this is uptown." It's like, what if we were just, like, excited about, like, risky, cool, exciting stuff that was worth leaving your house for?

Please

... that we've made a great musical that just stands on its own as a fun night at the theater.

And I hope it's additive if you have no idea what you're walking into, that you get dunked into this experience of a kind of slightly feral fandom that may be around you at times.

Or did you know Cole beforehand?

Yeah, I knew Cole.

Cole and I kind of, um, grew up in the gutter together, and it w- we, we're around the same age.

We moved to New York around the same time.

Um, we, we did a show together downtown, like, t- 14 years ago that I choreographed, that Cole was in, this, like, amazing, deranged musical about Madonna and Britney Spears that we love very much.

Um, so I always knew and kind of was in awe of Cole.

I saw Cole perform at Joe's Pub a lot.

Right.

[laughs]

And she said, "It's Pam Grossman," and I was like, "Pam Grossman who wrote that book that I love so much.

What's happening?" And you came out, and I'm not trying to blow smoke, I, for those like seven minutes or whatever it was, experienced something in the theater, like an active theater, that was so honest and so, pardon my language, magic, and it was transformative.

I like left the theater feeling different than I did, and it felt so connected to that space.

Mm-hmm.

And, and it's been reflected back to me in really beautiful ways of like, "Hey, I know that may have felt a little, like, embarrassing or uncomfortable, but then it meant something.

It meant something that I said this thing out loud or that I took 20 seconds in silence to, like, set some kind of intention." And I don't know, I think that, like, this process of Rocky Horror, and frankly working with you, has made me be like, oh my God, the call was coming from inside of the house.

And I've, like, looked back on how I've worked all these years, and I think I've tried to make the part of myself that really believes in magic and wants to, like, insist on the existence of magic in rooms, I've tried to make that smaller.

It, uh, how is it different, how is it different today having that much time to actually think about it?

Sure, yeah.

I was originally gonna direct Rocky Horror in San Francisco in a production that was very Bay Area-centric, that kind of celebrated all of the collisions, uh, in San Francisco.

I, I'm a big believer in the kind of chopped approach to theater where you just use the things that you have in your kitchen cabinet.

Um, in this case, the kitchen cabinet is Studio 54 and the greatest cast ever assembled in a Broadway musical.

And so, uh, I got to take, you know, eight years of thinking about this incredible, enduring piece of theater, um, and just trust that that was there, and come into the room with this cast and these incredible designers in this room that has all of this history and say, "Okay, how do these things hit up against each other now?" Um, it would not look or sound the way it did-

Yeah.

Uh, if we had made that thinking it was gonna be on Broadway, it would've probably been rotten.

Mm

...

the most impossible, the most worthwhile about Rocky Horror is, like, I agree to the dominating narrative for people who have been transformed by Rocky Horror or who have a great affection for Rocky Horror is some version of, "I felt seen, I felt embraced, I found my people.

I found a way that I could expand."

[laughs]

But it's actually what's so irresistible to me about this and that, and, and it's the thing that has made me addicted to making it at the scale, is the collision of experiences and histories that people bring to it.

It's a thing that's really special about doing it on Broadway is, like, for every person who's like, "I know every word," there's somebody who's like, "What is this?" And that is, it's this, like, incredible, again, impossible and really beautiful thing to say, like, it's been this thing for 53 years, and this is what it is now.