October 8th, 1997 to October 14th, 1997

Robert Jess Roth, Gay Director of 'Beauty & the Beast,' Speaks Out

by Rick R. Reed

Robert James Roth, director of Broadway's Beauty and the Beast, slated to begin performances at the Chicago Theater this month, fell in love when he was six years old. "My parents took me to see Fiddler on the Roof at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway and it totally changed my life. I took the cast album home and I played it endlessly, envisioning it in my mind. I was acting out the parts and doing all that kind of stuff. It led to a life in the theater for me, which I'm very happy to have."

Recently, Outlines had the opportunity to talk with Roth about Beauty and the Beast, working in the theater, Disney and their much publicized "gay issues," working with Elton John, and what effect being an openly gay director has had on his life and career.

Outlines: Tell me about Beauty and the Beast. Any big differences between the show people will see here and the one in NY?

Roth: There aren't any big differences. We put a few changes in the show that we developed while we were in London. For example, three dance numbers had new choreography. Matt West, the choreographer, was in London and called me and the studio heads and said, "Hey, look at this; I like this better. Do you?" And I went, "Oh yeah." And we left it this new way. And then when Disney execs came to the show in London they said, "Hey we like this better. Why don't you do this on Broadway? And while you're at it, let's go back and re-visit it before we go to Chicago."

When we started the national tour two years ago, Disney was very concerned that we deliver the Broadway show so they told us to go for it so we did: 30 trucks full of stuff are coming to Chicago. Chicago Theater here is not very deep so I know that Stan Meyer, the set designer, has had to go back and kind of juggle some things, like configuring the Beast's palace slightly differently, but the show will really be the same. I don't think people would be able to tell the difference.

Outlines: We've all seen the animated film. How does the stage production of Beauty and the Beast differ?

Roth: The animated film had five musical numbers in it. And we have maybe 14. The score is more than doubled. Because of that, you learn a lot more information about the characters, their relationships and their inner inner lives. The story remains the same, but it's a little richer, a little deeper. Linda Woolverton (screenwriter for the film and the play) got to go to back and create a lot of new scenes that are not in the film. Even the scenes that are in the film she's re-tooled and expanded.

Outlines: What are some of the things you've liked best about doing the show?

Roth: I've gotten to do the show with my two best friends, Matt West, the choreographer, and Stan Meyer, who's the scenic designer. I met Stan in college, at Rutgers University 14 years ago and I think Beauty and the Beast is maybe our 18th production together. I've know Matt West for about eight years. I met him at Disneyland when I was doing shows out there with Stan and they're my two best friends. Matt actually lives on the floor below me in my apartment building in New York and Stan lives down the block. And we hang out and go do stuff together. And now we've gotten to do a Broadway musical together which has been a dream of all of ours.

Outlines: What else?

Roth: I definitely get a little charge when I walk into the theater and see mom and dad and the two kids. Because I hope that some percentage of the kids that see the show here will go home and get the CD and kind of get sucked into the whole theater thing.

My mom and dad were really supportive of me when I was real young. I wanted to be an actor and they didn't discourage me. They would drive me to auditions and pick me up from the community theater. They were really behind me and so it's been really nice for me to be able to fly them to say, the opening in Japan. It just felt really good for me to say, "Hey you know what? I was like a nightmare child, but now maybe it's paid off a little bit."

Outlines: What are your least favorite things?

Roth: Travelling's my first. I always thought, "Wouldn't it be glamorous to fly all around the world, get picked up by cars and taken to nice hotels and everything?" and it's just not. Like the first year, after the show went on tour, we did seven productions of Beauty and the Beast around the world ... I was on a plane for a year. I think I was home for three weeks that year. It's glamorous for the first week.

I don't like it when things break. When you're mounting a new production with new computers, new equipment and a new set, sometimes things break and you have to sit around for three hours while they figure out what's wrong.

Outlines: Any really memorable problems?

Roth: Michael Eisner (president of Disney) and Jeffrey Katzenberg (then president of Disney Animated Features) both came down to Houston for the second preview. Jeffrey had been at the first preview which went well ... we actually got through the whole show without stopping for the first time. This next night for some dumb reason I agreed to sit with them. I don't know what I was thinking. The curtain goes up and in the first 30 seconds of the show it's already going bad. Someone flies up in the air and is supposed to shoot a fireball from her hand and fly off. She flies up in the air, throws the fireball and then ... hangs there. Eventually some crew guy had to come and grab her feet and pull her off the stage. It went downhill from there. I'm sitting between these guys thinking my career is over, done. They were actually very nice, trying to calm me down.

Outlines: I would imagine that with a show like Beauty and the Beast, there are a lot of technical issues to work out.

Roth: It took a long time to just get the computer programs that run all the scenery to work right. Once you do figure it out, they're great. But getting them programmed right and adjusting them takes time. Unfortunately, we were doing that in front of an audience. I was pretty stressed out because it was my first Broadway show. I was 29. It was Disney's first Broadway show. It was Matt's first. It was Stan's first. There was a lot riding on it. And the show itself went through a lot of changes, so, in addition to all the technical stuff, we were also trying new scenes, trying new songs, flipping stuff around, you know, trying to do all that kind of stuff, teaching the dancers new choreography, stuff like that.

Outlines: Pretty stressful?

Roth: It was a lot of tension. I remember my mom and dad came to Houston. My mom flipped out when they came to the hotel. I guess I must have looked pretty bad, like I lost weight and I was smoking five packs of cigarettes a day. So she was really upset that I wasn't taking care of myself. And now, it's just a lot more fun. Like London, for example, was my West End debut and it was just fun because I know the show works.

Outlines: Why did you choose Beauty and the Beast?

Roth: I had been at Disneyland with Stan and Matt doing these half hour musical things and we had asked Michael Eisner if we could do a Broadway show. We thought what the hell, all he can do is say no. So we asked him and he said no, but you can ask me again, which we did. Finally he said, "Well if you were going to do a show, what would you do?" So we chose Mary Poppins. So he said, "Why don't you go away and tell me how you would adapt Mary Poppins?" So we're maybe three weeks into working on that when the film Beauty and the Beast opened and he called up our boss at Disneyland and said, "Hey tell those guys to stop working on Mary Poppins and to think about Beauty and the Beast." So the impetus came from him.

Outlines: Do you think there was any particular rationale for choosing Beauty and the Beast over some other Disney animated film?

Roth: Because it was already like a Broadway show; it definitely felt like a '50s Broadway musical. We talked to Alan Menken, who worked with Howard Ashman, the lyricist on the original score for the film. He said, "Oh yeah, Howard and I definitely wanted to do a Broadway musical but we were just going to do it animated." So it seemed like a logical choice.

Outlines: How did your next project come about?

Roth: Right after Beauty and the Beast opened on Broadway, Michael Eisner called and said, "Hey, you did a really good job. Want to direct another one?" I'm like, yeah, of course. And he says, "Okay, we're gonna have a meeting. Come and bring your favorite five ideas." So I came up with my five ideas. I think he liked two of them very much, two of them he hated, and one was like, well, maybe. But then he had an idea. The animation group had purchased a children's book by Leontyne Price, who was the world's most famous Aida. And she wrote a children's version of the story. And they had purchased that book and were thinking about adapting it into an animated film. They hadn't really started work on it. He said, "You know, I think Aida would be better as a Broadway show than animated." I remember Jeffrey Katzenberg was in the meeting too and he was like, "Oh God, now I've got to find something else to do as an animated film."

Outlines: So what's Aida about?

Roth: It's about an 18-year-old princess, which I would have had no idea watching (the opera). I had seen a production of Aida when I was in college and you know Aida's always played by a 40-year-old woman. So I actually got my hands on this book. It's about these two princesses. Aida is from Nubia and she's kidnapped and taken to Egypt, is enslaved and becomes a handmaiden to the Egyptian princess and they actually become friends. Because even though the Egyptian princess doesn't know it, Aida is a princess too. So she understands some of what the Egyptian princess is going through. And they both fall in love with the same man, who was the captain of the Egyptian guard. He's the big, hunky good-looking one. And for Aida it's a real problem because she's in love with the man who's enslaving her people. And the show is really about loyalty and betrayal and putting your own love aside for the good of your own country.

Outlines: So what kind of take are you doing on it?

Roth: We've just taken Leontyne Price's version of the story as the seed. It's turned into it's own thing. Linda Woolverton is writing the book for Aida. Just as she did with Beauty and the Beast, she's added all these characters that are not in the story and deletes characters that were in the story. She did the same thing with this. It's become it's own thing.

Outlines: You're working with Elton John and Tim Rice on this. How's that been?

Roth: Elton and Tim have written 23 songs so far. And it's awesome. Elton's really amazing ... firing on all cylinders. The music's got a wide variety of feels to it. There's some really good hard rock Elton John music which he's great at. In the past few albums, he hasn't done as much of it. I kept saying AC/DC, just rock it up, you know. And he did. And of course, some really astonishing ballads.

Outlines: When will we be seeing Aida on the stage?

Roth: It starts rehearsals next June. We'll go to Toronto to do our out of town tryout and then Broadway in the fall of 1998.

Outlines: Disney has gotten its fair share of media coverage on gay issues. One thing we've been hearing about is the Disney boycott by the Southern Baptists. Has that had any effect on your work?

Roth: It hasn't had any effect on my work at all. Has it had any effect on the Disney company? I really can't tell. People are still going to Beauty and the Beast all over the world and all over the country, so I don't know. Disney, for me, has always made me feel totally comfortable as a gay man. I'm allowed to say that both Matt and Stan are gay and it's just never been an issue. I haven't felt like it's been helpful to be gay. I haven't felt like it's been hurtful. I remember I was once on an elevator with Jeffrey Katzenberg. We had just done a preview of Beauty and the Beast in New York and it didn't go well. I was angry, annoyed at something. And we were going up to have a meeting. And Jeffrey turned to Stan and went, "What's her problem?"

Outlines: What would you say to the Southern Baptists?

Roth: I'd say don't go to any movies, don't go to any theater, don't watch TV, don't go shopping, don't do anything. Because there are gay people everywhere. So just get over it! And aren't there more important things to worry about than what people do in the privacy of their own lives? It just seems crazy to me.

Outlines: It seems like this boycott thing has really had no effect.

Roth: They say it's only a handful of people. Some of them were saying, "Yeah I'm not gonna take my kids to see Hercules." I'm like, yeah, right, good luck. I also say to each his own. If they really feel that strongly about it, then don't go.

Outlines: Would you like to see more gay characters or themes in the work you do?

Roth: If it helps tell a story a certain way, yes. But just to have gay characters for the sake of having gay characters, no. I think there's actually a gay character in Beauty and the Beast. You'll have to see the show and tell me who you think it is.

Outlines: The little clock?

Roth: Yeah, the clock. I'm not saying that the actors were playing it that way, but he certainly seems gay to me. He's just not out.

Outlines: Have you had much experience with "gay theater"?

Roth: I've actually directed tons of plays that have a gay character or at least a cross-dressing character in them. When I met Stan Meyer, the first thing he did with me was In Trousers, which was part of the Marvin Trilogy by Bill Finn. The March of the Falsettos, In Trousers and Falsetto Land. Matt, Stan and I just have a gay sensibility because we are gay so you just can't help it. I think "Be Our Guest" in Beauty and the Beast is like a big Busby Berkely number. It has a gay sensibility, though Busby Berkely wasn't gay, which I was very surprised to find.

Outlines: How do you feel about Disney tampering with the classics?

Roth: I feel as an artist that I should be able to take a story and adapt it any which way I want. Linda Woolverton took Beauty and the Beast and adapted it any which way she wanted and ended up with this great, funny, touching thing that's different from the fairy tale. You have to have the freedom to take the chance.

We're taking Aida and we're adapting that and we're gonna get a lot of criticism for that, I'm sure. Like how could you tamper with this classic opera? You know how you can? Because you can! Why not? Take it and look at it from a different point of view, change it around some. I feel like we're gonna be really successful. In some people's eyes, we won't. But there shouldn't be this thing like, you don't touch the classics! All that does is just inhibit people's creativity. I think sometimes when (you adapt a classic) you get a better thing, sometimes you just get a different thing and sometimes you get a shitty thing. But when I hear people say they shouldn't have done that, they shouldn't have changed Hunchback, I'm like, shut up. Don't people have anything better to do than criticize what artists are doing? I've not let that inhibit me. On Aida, Elton, Tim and I have gone, "Hey we're gonna do what we want. We're not letting the little naysayer voices that talk about Hunchback and Pocahontas affect us." And Disney's not either.

Outlines: Has your sexual orientation in any way affected your career?

Roth: No, in the theater, I'm in the majority. I guess being gay has given me a theatrical sensibility, so maybe that's helped some. And in a way, at Disneyland, being gay along with Matt and Stan, did make us stand out, which ended up being good in that we got the attention of Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and all that. Not necessarily because we were gay but just because that was one of the things that made us stand out from the other people that were there. None of the three of us have ever been in the closet about it, so we were always like: "Hey this of us, if you don't like it, you don't like it."

Outlines: So it's been really beneficial?

Roth: It's only been beneficial, and I feel really lucky. I realize people in other walks of life don't have the luxury of being who they are in their workplace and that's horrible.

Beauty and the Beast will begin performances at the Chicago Theater, 175 N. State St., on Oct. 17 for a 20-week engagement through March 1, 1998. Kim Huber, a member of the original Broadway company of Beauty and the Beast, stars as Belle, and Fred Inkley, who starred as Jean Valjean on Broadway and in the national tour of Les Misérables, is the Beast. Tickets are currently on sale, call (312) 902-1500.

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