arts & entertainment

Reed L.
\Shannon
as Michael
Jackson
(center) with
the Jackson 5
in Motown: The
Musical First
National Tour

Jenn Jacobs

I Special to the Jewish News

M

usic lovers across Metro Detroit
are happily anticipating the return
to the spotlight of the musical
genre that started right at its core, at Hitsville
U.S.A., and later went on to reach the ears of
the entire nation and world.
Motown: The Musical First National Tour
— co-produced by Motown founder Berry
Gordy Jr., who also wrote the book for the
musical — will stop at the Fisher Theater
from Oct 21-Nov. 16, tracing the evolution of
Motown Records from its earliest days and
featuring dozens of musical numbers from
Motown's vast catalogue of hits.
Actors will portray such characters as
Gordy (Clifton Oliver), Diana Ross (Allison
Semmes), Smokey Robinson (Nicholas
Christopher), Marvin Gaye (Jarran Muse)
and Michael Jackson (Reed L. Shannon).
"I'm very pleased with the caliber of talent
we'll have on the road:' New York-based co-
producer Kevin McCollum told the Free Press
earlier this year.
"When you're dealing with iconic [char-
acters] — including some artists who are
still with us — you really have to honor that.
This is about a time at Motown when young
people, through talent and passion, made
this great body of art:'
Equally as important as the sound that
originated in the heart of Detroit is the image
that went along with it. Pop Art colors and
the looks featured during live performances,
including many on The Ed Sullivan Show,
pepper the musical.
One mastermind behind re-creating the
semblance of 1960s Motown, as envisioned
by director Charles Randolph-Wright, is
Tony Award-winning lighting designer
Natasha Katz, who collaborated with scenic
designer David Korins and costume designer
ESosa to create the look of the show.
"So much of the lighting for the show is
based on the set:' says Katz, explaining that
Korins traveled to Detroit to do research. She
is no stranger to the Motor City either, hav-
ing visited many times with her former hus-
band, Beverly Hills, Mich., native and sound
designer Dan Moses Schreier, and their two
children.

Joan Marcus 2014©

Motown: The Musical finally heads home to Detroit, and there's sure to
be dancing in the streets!

Clifton Oliver as Berry Gordy Jr. and Allison Semmes as Diana Ross in Motown: The

Musical First National Tour

Katz used a combination of colors and
moods for the show, which starts out in black
and white, adds sepia tones for memories
and uses many different colors to create the
buoyancy and vibrancy that underlies the
entire production.
"Our overall hope is to
allow the audience to have
their own memory about
what Motown is," says
Katz. "There's a lot left to
the imagination — to not
completely replicate what
happened at the time.
Lighting
One person will have a
Designer
different memory from
Natasha Katz
another:'
In addition to reflecting
a happy and vibrant time in Detroit music,
Katz and the rest of the Motown team cover
other histories happening in 1960s Detroit,
including the 1967 riots that prompted
Gordy's move to Los Angeles.
The show compares the ever-changing city
of Detroit with the ever-changing music of
Motown.
As Katz explains, "Gordy had a lot of trust
in his artists. The range of people he repre-
sented was enormous. Stevie Wonder was
so different from the Supremes who were so

different from Marvin Gaye who was so dif-
ferent from Martha Reeves. He let them be
who they needed to be:'
Katz points to the Supremes as an example
of one of the first successful female groups
and cites them as an inspiration for other
women who were finally able to watch
female performers onstage. All of this came
from the mind of Berry Gordy Jr., says Katz.
"He really did do something, I believe, to
bring the world together in a peaceful way,"
she says. "It's unbelievable. I think people
have trouble believing ifs a true story, but it
is a true story:'
Katz grew up in New York City, attending
theater "all the time as a child. I've always
been interested in theater," she says.
When she set off to attend Oberlin College
in Ohio for a liberal arts education, she knew
she was "going to want to work in the theater
department. And the great thing was there
weren't that many theater students, so I got
to work on shows and in the shop:'
While Katz did not initially study lighting
design, she was able to design several college
shows — a desire fueled after assisting on
her first Broadway show, I Remember Mama,
a musical with a book by Thomas Meehan,
lyrics by Martin Charnin and Raymond
Jessel, and music by Richard Rodgers, which

ran on Broadway in 1979.
That opportunity came through the Great
Lakes Colleges Association, which offered
Katz a semester's credit to go to New York
and assist on Mama.
Since then, Katz has gone on to design
more than 50 plays and musicals, as well as
ventures into opera and dance.
Nominated nine times for a Tony, she
won for the musicals Aida (2000) and Once
(2012) and the plays The Coast of Utopia
(2007) and The Glass Menagerie (2014).
Katz has several shows still playing on
Broadway, including the New York produc-
tion of Motown: The Musical, Aladdin and
Once (a touring production comes to the
Fisher Theatre in February).
Upcoming productions include the world
premiere musical of An American in Paris,
which will hit Broadway in the spring after a
November out-of-town tryout in Paris, and
revivals of the plays Skylight and The Iceman
Cometh. But first, Katz will celebrate the
opening of Motown: The Musical in Detroit
and explore Hitsville U.S.A., the original stu-
dio founded by the man who started it all.
Hopefully, she'll also have some time to
revisit her favorite Metro Detroit haunts: the
Cranbrook Academy of Art, the Detroit
Institute of Arts and the Franklin Cider
Mill.

❑

Jenn Jacobs is a recent graduate of the

University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre

and Dance, where she studied lighting design and

stage management.

Motown: The Musical First National

Tour runs Oct. 21-Nov.16 at
the Fisher Theatre in Detroit.
Performances are at 8 p.m.
Tuesdays-Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m.
Saturdays; and 2 and 7:30 p.m.
Sundays. There will be a 1 p.m. mati-
nee on Thursday, Oct 30; there is
no performance on Friday, Oct. 31.
There will be an open-captioned per-
formance at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov.
9. $39-$95. (800) 982-2787; www.
broadwayindetroit.com .

October 16 • 2014

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