Michael Mayer Brings Green Day's American Idiot to the Stage
by Aaron Sankin

When Michael Mayer first heard Green Day's American Idiot, he knew something was different. Meyer had been a Green Day fan for years, diligently listening to the megastar punk rock band's previous albums, but as soon as he popped American Idiot into his CD player, something magical happened: he heard it as a giant stage musical…and giant stage musicals are something that Mayer knows a thing or two about. Mayer has been one of the hottest directors on Broadway for over a decade, helming Thoroughly Modern Millie in 2002, 'night, Mother and After the Fall in 2004, the national touring production of Angels in America and, most notably, the revolutionary Spring Awakening that won three Tonys, including Best Musical. Mayer has teamed up with the band and Berkeley Repertory Theatre to turn Green Day's already-classic album into the full-scale rock opera it always threatened to be.

How did the whole collaboration first come about?

The whole thing started when I listened to the record when it came out. I was completely obsessed with it for a while and I was convinced that it would make an amazing stage show. With the help of my producing partner, Tom Hulce, I made contact with Green Day's management, organized a meeting and talked them through the basic gist of my idea. They liked it well enough that they brought it to the band and Billie Joe came to see Spring Awakening in New York. We went out afterwards, talked all night and had a fantastically exciting conversation about everything including my ideas of American Idiot. He was genuinely excited about it and permitted it to go to the next step in the development process.

What about this record made you feel like this was something that could be meant for the stage?

The way it's structured really is like a rock opera. You feel that when you listen to it. There is, inside it, a narrative that seems very stageworthy to me—which is kind of like a coming-of-age story of this character, The Jesus of Suburbia, who goes to the city and meets this character named St. Jimmy who represents a kind of power and agency that the Jesus character does not have in his own life. He then meets this woman, Whatshername, with whom he has a very intense sexual and emotional connection, and he ends up having to make a decision between living in an authentic way with this woman or sort of embracing the dark side that is represented by St. Jimmy—his idea of what a rebel is. He makes the wrong choice at a certain point and lives to regret it. I think when he comes home he is able to sort of take responsibility for that. I'd like to imagine that he gets on with his life after this in a better way, but it's very ambiguous in the record and there are a lot of different ways to read the relationships.

What I brought to the table was other stories and other characters that I heard and imagined. I created a scenario that describes the lives of three friends who [resolve] one day, during the dark ages of George W. Bush's reign of terror, to make a change in their lives and watch how each of them tries to do this. It's in three really different ways. The people that are in their lives also have voices. I took what is essentially a one-man show—which is the record, all Billy's voice singing the story of those three characters—and essentially have now a cast of 19.

Does the show exclusively use songs from the album?

It works like this: the record is performed absolutely in order. There are all-new arrangements for all of the songs. In addition to the songs, there is some text that is spoken by one of the characters. There are two songs that were on the overseas release of American Idiot, two b-sides, and we're also using four songs from their new record, 21st Century Breakdown. All of this is in flux because we're still making the thing. And then there's one other song as well.

Is that other song a new song written specifically for this?

No, but it is a song that has not been recorded before. All of these new songs sort of interrupt the songs from the album.

So it's very clear that you're going through the album in order and suddenly these new songs just drop in?

Exactly, they just drop in. It's exciting there too, especially if you know the record and you know what's coming next—but it isn't, it's something else—and then you get the thing that you were waiting for. It's kind of fun.

When you took Billie Joe to see Spring Awakening, what did he think of it? Was he familiar with a lot of musical theatre?

Billie Joe does know musical theatre. He's got a working knowledge of a lot of it and he definitely knows a lot of music. The Great American Songbook, he's very familiar with that. Spring Awakening really was very different from most musicals that have come before it, and I don't think that he was prepared for what that experience was going to be. Judging from that evening, it was very gratifying for me because he really got what we were going for in making that show and I think he got very excited by the idea [of] music that people, not just young people, that people would listen to on their iPods or buy the CD [of] and listen to, not as a memory of a show that they saw, but music that was in their life could intersect with a narrative like that in a fresh way. I think that because I'm using a lot of the same collaborators I used for that show, same set designer, same lighting designer, and the same set of producers, Tom Hulce and Ira Pittelman; it was exciting to him to see what we might do with his material. We hit it off incredibly well and he's been unbelievably supportive and enthusiastic about the whole project. That's been great; he's been a terrific help.

How did you join up with Berkeley Rep? How was the decision made to premiere the show there?

On one hand it's kind of an obvious choice given who Green Day is to the community in Berkeley. I am old friends with Tony Taccone and Susan Medak. I've always wanted to work there. Tom Hulce is also friends with them. When we were doing Spring Awakening, the national tour, opening at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, we took a trip over to Berkeley to look at their new proscenium theatre, which I had not seen, in the hopes that maybe that might be a good venue for us, but had no idea what to expect. When we walked in we both had that feeling you get when a space feels inevitable and it speaks so clearly to the work. So we were like, "Oh my god, this is great." And we immediately started to talk to Tony about it right away. Then Berkeley sponsored the next big workshop that we did that happened this past December; we did that in New York and the band was there for that. I had my genius choreographer [Steven Hoggett] onboard at that point, so we staged a bunch of the show so they actually got to see a lot of what we were doing, which was a really important step for us.

How did they respond to that?

They flipped over it; they loved it. The very first time they heard it they actually had tears in their eyes and they gave the cast a standing ovation. I couldn't even look at them, I was so nervous. These guys are not only wildly talented, but they are also spectacularly generous with themselves and with their work and with these kids doing the show. It's been very cool, to say the least.

Do you feel like there are different expectations that come with—I'm not sure if baggage is quite the right word—but a very big, popular thing coming from outside the world of theatre?

What I love about this is that I think there are no expectations because it's not what's done. There is no real template for this. The closest thing I could imagine is something like Tommy, but that was already a film with a very cohesive narrative that everyone was very familiar with, so by the time that came to the stage people did know what to expect. But with this, I feel like people don't know what it's going to be—there are no expectations. I think, I hope. I hope they don't know what they're getting, I hope they love what they got and I hope they want to come back and see it again as we keep working on it as it gets better and better.

American Idiot runs from September 4 to October 11 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Call (510) 647-2949, or visit berkeleyrep.org.