Herringbone
Music by Skip Kennon
Lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh
Book by Tom Cone
Barrymore Award
Outstanding Direction of a Musical
Nominee
Flashpoint Productions
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Music Direction by Dan Kazemi
Choreography by Jenn Rose
Scenic & Lighting Design by Thom Weaver
Costume Design by Kathleen Geldard
Sound Design by Rob Kaplowitz
Starring Ben Dibble
A Note from BillHerringbone was an invitation to take a big risk.
Visionary designer turned Artistic Director Tom Weaver asked me to join Flashpoint Productions in tackling this strange, electrifying, and daunting one-man musical, a piece in which a single actor embodies eighteen characters, often colliding with one another inside the same moment. It demanded every tool I had as a director: rigorous attention to the text, musical storytelling, physical theatre, clowning, psychological precision, and a willingness to follow the material into some very dark places.
The production marked my first collaboration with the extraordinary Philadelphia actor Ben Dibble. Together, we built an intensely physical and highly detailed performance vocabulary capable of holding the musical’s humor, danger, sexuality, and theatricality. At its center, I found a story about what an artist must sometimes encounter, and survive, in order to claim a life in the theatre: the seduction of performance, the cost of transformation, and the difficult journey through darkness toward something resembling freedom.
Herringbone was sexy, unsettling, exhilarating, and fearlessly theatrical. It asked me to bring all of myself to the work and affirmed my belief that some of the most rewarding theatre begins with the decision to take a genuine artistic risk. Ben went on to receive the Barrymore Award for Outstanding Performance, and I was honored with a Barrymore nomination for Outstanding Direction. I remain enormously proud of that collaboration and that production.
