Casting a wide Aquanet

Former Dallasite and Broadway veteran Michelle Dowdy plays Tracy Turnblad in the new production of ‘Hairspray.’

DTC and ATTPAC team to reach a broader audience with a splashy new version of ‘Hairspray’

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

Considering how busy Joel Ferrell is as a director and choreographer for more decades than he’d probably like to admit, even he finds it amazing that not once has he ever worked on Hairspray, perhaps the campiest, most joyous musical of the current millennium.

“I know, right? Every time I say that people are like, ‘You’re kidding? There are several biggies I haven’t made the rounds to. I haven’t directed The Ten Commandments yet, but I feel it’s coming,” he jokes over an early morning cup of coffee on the first day or rehearsal.

If he seems calm for the start of a big undertaking — other than having to wake up early — it’s because being a newcomer to this show aside,

Ferrell is one of the most experienced and respected directors in Texas, who has staged some musicals with casts of 75 actors. So even a full-scale version of Hairspray doesn’t intimidate him.

“It’s not a show that needs reinventing or reconceiving, which tends to be my [specialty],” he says. “If you have a good team the scope doesn’t scare me; you just need more smart lieutenants and associates. I like to say directing a play is like driving a speedboat, but a musical is like a cruise ship.”

What makes this version especially noteworthy, however, is that it represents a rare partnership between the Dallas Theater Center, where Ferrell serves as associate artistic director, and the AT&T Performing Arts Center than runs the Downtown Arts District.

“I think both entities have been pretty thrilled over this past decade [since DTC moved to the Wyly] that despite being landlord and tenant, the staffs work really incredible well together. Probably over the last two or three years, I figured we would do something that blurs the lines [between the organizations].” It was just a question of finding the right project, Ferrell says: “What’s the show we want to do and the way we want to combine forces?”

Since Kevin Moriarty took over the DTC as artistic director, the company has traditionally staged a family-friendly summertime musical to appeal to the kids across the region who are out of school. The issue has always been one of mechanics.

“I remember thinking when the complex opened that my parents would be intimidated coming here… and they are!” Ferrell says. “I [could] spend the rest of my years just figure out how to make theater more affordable, trying to get the barriers down all over the city for people coming to this part of Downtown and enjoying ATTPAC.

“Any time you do a fully large-scale musical [in a theater with 550 seats like the Wyly], it’s really tough — the math just doesn’t work. The running cost of the show is almost always gonna top what you can bring in [five weeks].”

But they didn’t want to compromise on Hairspray, which led to the partnership; although it will only run two weekends, it will do so at the Winspear Opera House, which seats 2,220 … meaning as many audiences members could potentially see it as they would in a month-long run across the street.

If it’s Ferrell’s first time, he’s one of the few newcomers; much of the cast he’s assembled are old pros at this story of race relations in Baltimore in the early 1960s.

“I find it crazy [that Ferrell hasn’t done the show before] because he’s perfect,” says the star of this production, Michelle-with-two-Ls Dowdy (“I don’t trust a one-L’d Michelle,” she quips). “There’s a lot of us who’ve done it.” Dowdy herself has mad cred — she was the standby for

Tracy Turnblad, the open-hearted but heavy-set dancing queen, for three years on Broadway, and has performed the role in numerous other productions. “I’ve got a lot of mileage out of this face!” she laughs.

Tracy is in virtually every scene of the show, so it’s a surprise that Dowdy pegs as her own favorite moments as the duet “Timeless to Me,” performed by Tracy’s parents, or watching Motormouth sing “Where I’ve Been.” “Those are some of the few scenes Tracy isn’t in so I actually get to drink water and do a costume change.”

Dowdy’s costar is another local veteran, David Coffee, who plays Tracy’s mother in unacknowledged drag — a role originated in John Waters’ non-musical film by Divine and created in musical form by Harvey Fierstein.

“David’s great,” Ferrell says. “He doesn’t project, ‘Look at me inside the role being adorable!’ He just plays the role, which is great — it’s what Divine did.”

What he loves about the show itself, however, is how much it reminds him of the works of his favorite Broadway team, Rodgers & Hammerstein.

“R&H were just two Jewish kids writing about stories that the common man could attach himself to,” he says. “What I love about Hairspray is, it is the new classic American musical, because it is about the American experience.”