{"id":1397,"date":"2025-03-06T16:28:23","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T21:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=1397"},"modified":"2025-03-06T16:29:38","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T21:29:38","slug":"how-idina-menzel-and-tina-landau-brought-redwoods-to-broadway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/how-idina-menzel-and-tina-landau-brought-redwoods-to-broadway\/","title":{"rendered":"How Idina Menzel and Tina Landau Brought Redwoods to Broadway"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Idina Menzel<\/a> stepped foot into Tina Landau<\/a>\u2019s office and saw it filled with photos of trees, she knew she\u2019d found the right director to make her vision come to life. She\u2019d recently fallen in love with redwoods \u2014 that mythical species of tree that stretches taller than any other in the world \u2014 and wanted to bring them them to Broadway in a big way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought there was something really cool about a woman living in a tree,\u201d Menzel tells PAPER<\/em>, referring to activist Julia Butterfly Hill. \u201cThe idea of escaping \u2014 the strength, courage, fortitude to do something like that \u2014 and I fell in love with the redwoods and everything they stand for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Landau, a directing legend with credits like Mother Play<\/em> and SpongeBob SquarePants, The Broadway Musical<\/em>, was incredibly game to help Menzel bring her towering tree-lined vision come to life. \u201cWhen we first met up, we really dug into the question of, Why are we both obsessed with this<\/em>?” Landau says. “The idea sat dormant for a while… and during COVID I called Idina and said, \u2018Remember that story about someone in a tree? Are you still interested?\u2019 She said, \u2018What took you so long?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The two set to work on creating an original story centered around the redwoods as a central image; the result is Redwood<\/em>, which opened on Broadway last month after a stint in La Jolla. The show follows Jesse, a woman who drives away from her grief and ends up in a redwood forest, where she begins to learn about the trees \u2014 and subsequently about herself. Redwood<\/em> includes a full tracklist of original music by Kate Diaz (much of which is sung by Menzel entirely on her own), stunning panoramic bespoke video footage and scenic design that includes, yes, an enormous redwood. And Menzel belts while singing from that tree, oh yes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Below, PAPER<\/em> caught up with Menzel and Landau about creating the show together from scratch, scaling redwoods and bringing the musical from La Jolla to the Nederlander.<\/p>\n

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Congrats to you both on the show opening. Can you tell me a bit about the show\u2019s inception?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tina Landau: <\/strong>Maybe 15 years ago or something, Idina invited me to have coffee. We\u2019d known each other from around the theater community and wanted to work together. She told me a story about Julia Butterfly Hill, the activist who went into a redwood in protest of logging practices in the 1990s. I\u2019d been reading The Baron in the Trees<\/em> by Italo Calvino.<\/p>\n

Idina: <\/strong>I thought there was something really cool about a woman living in a tree. The idea of escaping \u2014 the strength, courage, fortitude to do something like that \u2014 and I fell in love with the redwoods and everything they stand for. And when I took the idea to Tina, her whole office was decorated with art of trees.<\/p>\n

Tina: <\/strong>When we first met up, we really dug into the question of, Why are we both obsessed with this<\/em>? The idea sat dormant for a while… and during COVID I called Idina and said, “Remember that story about someone in a tree? Are you still interested?” She said, “What took you so long?”<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve both worked on a lot of original theater material in your careers. How was this process similar or different to other new shows you\u2019ve worked on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Idina:<\/strong> The big thing is I\u2019ve had a hand in the creative. I contributed to the writing, I\u2019m producing \u2014 I\u2019m wearing a few different hats, which I\u2019ve never done before. It\u2019s similar to other projects in that there\u2019s the exhilaration of creating something new… and having the patience to go through a process that can be painstaking at times, because you have to keep making improvements, advancing and recalibrating. And of course there\u2019s nothing like standing at a piano with your composer with a completely new song they\u2019ve written for you.<\/p>\n

Tina: <\/strong>I\u2019ve tended to do a lot of big shows, meaning, you know, with lots of people or big visuals in them. This has been very intimate. It\u2019s only five characters, and a lot of the time it\u2019s only Idina on-stage. So rehearsals were really just me and Idina, or me and Idina and one or two other people. That kind of intimacy has led to a process that\u2019s personal and very focused. Big shows, they’re like big machines you\u2019re spearheading. This, meanwhile, is like sitting down with close friends, dreaming and musing and finding worlds together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What is it about trees that fascinates you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tina:<\/strong> I have loved being around trees since I was young. Escaping into trees, climbing trees… many of us, from our childhoods, have a sense of our relationship to trees and what that conjures for us in terms of play and innocence and connection and magic. As I got older and learned more about trees and how they communicate with each other, what their life cycles are, they became very emblematic to me of many life lessons \u2014 how I hope to live in order to be more like a tree.<\/p>\n

During the pandemic, I lost a young nephew who I was very close to. I was boarded up in Connecticut in a very beautiful spot surrounded by trees. As I started writing the piece, I was dealing with those two things: one, the grief and two, the solace and wonder I was discovering by staring at the trees every day and walking amongst them. That winter, my partner and I drove cross-country and ended up in the redwoods, and I began my real learning about them.<\/p>\n

Rent<\/strong><\/em> famously premiered at the Nederlander in 1996. What\u2019s it been like being back on the stage there, Idina?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Idina, would you say you relate to Jesse? Have you ever considered disappearing like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Idina:<\/strong> I relate to her vulnerability, to her frustration. To her maternal instincts and her desire to be a better person, and, yes, to her desire to pack everything up sometimes and change my life. I mean, I\u2019m a mom of a 15-year-old \u2014 who I am more in love with than anything else \u2014 so I wouldn\u2019t just disappear now. But I do relate to the idea of rewriting your story, especially in the past, when I might have been severely depressed or heartbroken. The need to find solace and perspective in my life.<\/p>\n

Has the show changed much since you mounted it at the La Jolla Playhouse?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Idina:<\/strong> We spent a lot of time through the years at La Jolla. They embraced us and allowed us to workshop the show there. It\u2019s a wonderful place to work on new material. We were pleasantly surprised, because people really connected to the material right away. That was encouraging. Instead of feeling like anything was wrong, we just felt like things could be made even better. We had time to say, \u201cCould this song be even more memorable? Could this or that help better define the character?\u201d We wrote some new songs, we cut some. We didn\u2019t have that \u201cIn the Leaves\u201d performance in there.<\/p>\n

Tina: <\/strong>After La Jolla, I basically sat down and asked about every single moment: \u201cCan it be better? What would make it more surprising or deeper, more funny or more true?\u201d I was rigorous with how I went through the show. We ended up cutting five songs \u2014 and writing six new ones. \u201cIn the Leaves\u201d was the big one we added, with Idina swinging through the trees and singing.<\/p>\n

Speaking of, what was it like learning to climb and dance in the tree like that, Idina?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Idina: <\/strong>Our choreographers are from a vertical dance company called Bandaloop, Tina found them. They dance on the side of mountains, trees, buildings, they are just astounding. They really took us under their wing. They taught us how to climb, about the harness and safety. I had many sessions with them. I\u2019d go to Oakland to work with them; they\u2019re extremely proud of their work and extremely safety-oriented. And then I went to a studio and learned how to really swing around and use my body \u2014 I love that part of the show, because so much of Redwood<\/em> is about the abstract and the poeticism of the trees. That\u2019s my favorite part of my show, being up there \u2014 I\u2019m brought back to that innocence of being in trees every night. It was difficult at first, the singing and swinging, but it\u2019s getting much easier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What\u2019s it been like working together on this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tina: <\/strong>Working with Idina has been the best. It\u2019s been very unique. It\u2019s not like any collaboration I\u2019ve had with anyone else, in that the lines are very fluid, it\u2019s very open. It\u2019s been like family \u2014 home-grown, in a way. It\u2019s been very unpredictable. She\u2019s been my rock and my inspiration and my guide through the process.<\/p>\n

Idina: <\/strong>Tina is a very special human being. She\u2019s a writer, a director, a lyricist, a mentor. She can really see into somebody\u2019s soul. She\u2019s very empathic and intuitive. It\u2019s important to her to know how people feel; she knows we can do our best work when we all acknowledge what we\u2019re feeling. She really gives actors the permission and freedom to make their own choices and find their own way into the material.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Idina Menzel stepped foot into Tina Landau\u2019s office and saw it filled with photos of trees, she knew she\u2019d found the right director to make her vision come to life. She\u2019d recently fallen in love with redwoods \u2014 that mythical species of tree that stretches taller than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[87,81],"class_list":["post-1397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-87","tag-redwood"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/13REDWOOD-1-e1741296568574.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-mx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1397"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1399,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions\/1399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

Idina: <\/strong>Oh, it\u2019s been like a homecoming. A full-circle experience. It\u2019s been really emotional… it feels right, like everything\u2019s in its place. You know, like we belong there. There was a moment during tech, I was brought back \u2014 what is it, almost 30 years \u2014 I was standing center stage, and I had a moment where I stepped back in time. I feel really at one with it.
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