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Part of the McClatchy Media Network Wednesday, December 27, 2023 Today's eEdition NATIONAL The stars of the Avett Brothers musical ‘Swept Away’ embrace their emotional journey BY ADAM BELL UPDATED DECEMBER 27, 2023 6:36 PM Read more at: https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/nation-world/national/article283352043.html#storylink=cpy
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Part of the McClatchy Media Network Wednesday, December 27, 2023 Today's eEdition NATIONAL The stars of the Avett Brothers musical ‘Swept Away’ embrace their emotional journey BY ADAM BELL UPDATED DECEMBER 27, 2023 6:36 PM Read more at: https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/nation-world/national/article283352043.html#storylink=cpy
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The article discusses the musical "Swept Away" by the Avid Brothers and the experiences of the four lead actors. The play explores themes of survival and redemption after a shipwreck. The actors share a dressing room to decompress after intense scenes. The show received positive reviews and may transfer to Broadway. The actors discuss their connection to the Avid Brothers and the authenticity of the music in the musical. The production faced delays due to COVID but eventually premiered in California and later moved to Washington, D.C. There are discussions about the future of the show, including potential Broadway performances or a national tour. The actors express their gratitude for the collaboration and the emotional depth of the show. This is an oral reading test being taken by Omar King for the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Hi, my name is Omar King, and today I will be reading from the Ledger-Enquirer, a national article titled, The Stars of the Avid Brothers Musical Swept Away, Embrace Their Emotional Journey by Adam Bell, updated December 27, 2023. The article begins with a trailer depicting the play, and the description of the play is below. When a violent storm sinks their whaling ship off the coast of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the four survivors face a reckoning. How far will they go to stay alive, and can they live with the consequences? With music and lyrics from the Avid Brothers, Swept Away is an electrifying, soul-stirring new musical exploring how facing tragedy can open the door to forgiveness, if only we'll let it, by the Umbrella Rooms. When rehearsals for the Avid Brothers' first musical moved into this Washington, D.C. theater this fall, the four lead actors of Swept Away quickly realized they had a problem. It wasn't the material. They'd long embraced the emotionally challenging show, an intense tale of sacrifice and redemption following the wreck of a whaling ship in 1888 New England, set to songs by the Folk Rock Roots Band from suburban Charlotte. No, when they got to arena stage, they didn't want to remain in separate dressing rooms. That's no way to unwind after spending a good part of the 90-minute show crammed on a lifeboat, adrift without food or water, while confronting an unfathomable decision about survival. So now we're crammed into a small dressing room together, said Stark Sands, while wiping things off and cleaning the dirt from our skin, and talking about the experience we've just had. It would be a lot harder to decompress if we didn't have that. Sands, a Tony nominee, plays the protective big brother. He shares that dressing room and the stage with wide-eyed little brother, Adrian Blake Inskoe, Tony winner John Gallagher Jr., the worldly mate, and Wayne Duvall's veteran captain. After battling COVID delays, Swept Away held its world premiere at California's Berkeley Repertory Theater in early 2022. That show transferred to the arena stage for its East Coast debut last month, buoyed by robust sales alongside strong reviews from the Washington Post and other local outlets. Swept Away received a two-week extension to January 14. In a recent interview at the theater, the four actors spoke of the show's demands and rewards as they approached the cusp of what's next for Swept Away, the possibility of transferring to Broadway. Intro to the Abbott Brothers A different dressing room served as Sands' introduction to the Abbott Brothers. In 2010, he and Gallagher were a part of Green Day's American Idiot musical at the St. James Theater on Broadway. The first thing Sands saw when he walked into Gallagher's basement dressing room was an Abbott Brothers poster capturing a live concert at Charlotte's Bojangles Coliseum. Stark asked about the band. Oh, you gotta hear these guys, Gallagher said, and immediately put on one of their albums. Like Gallagher, Inskoe considers himself a longtime fan. His indie band, Bandits on the Run, often played at UNC's School of Arts in Winston-Salem, where he encountered the Abbott sound. As for Duvall, he became hooked after his sister-in-law introduced him to their music. Not your typical jukebox musical, despite all of the Abbott songs in Swept Away, it was never going to be a typical jukebox musical. Such shows tell a singer or band's story while dropping in their songs throughout the piece a la The Temptations, grooving to Ain't Too Proud. But Swept Away wasn't about Scott and Seth Abbott growing up on a Concord farm, learning how to play music, then taking their band on the road. Instead, it focused on an early Abbott album, Minionette, itself inspired by an infamous 19th century shipwreck in the South Atlantic, and what the crew did to survive. Swept Away, book writer John Logan, a Tony-winning playwright, expanded the show's reach by utilizing songs from across the Abbott catalog. Gallagher initially wondered if the tunes he knew so well would feel organic in the musical. But not to worry, as Esco put it, it just comes off as being an authentic folk rendition of these characters' experiences. Swept Away was supposed to start rehearsals in California ahead of its mid-2020 Berklee Rep premiere, but COVID upended those plans, along with the rest of everyday life. The cast did not know if they'd ever return to the stage or if anyone would. I just remember clinging quite desperately to the hope that it'll all come back, Gallagher said, and I want to choose my words carefully because I'm not trying to say, like, yay, I'm glad COVID happened. But I really do think that the stakes of this show and what we have to go through on an emotional level, I don't think that in a pre-COVID world of 2020, I could have done the same performance without watching the world careen off its axis. With COVID, Gallagher said, those experiences remain part of his DNA and his characters. After their first complete run through rehearsal, Gallagher recalled how their director, Tony Winner Michael Mayer, approached the four actors. He told them, that was exactly how to perform the piece, no more, no less. And you know, not everyone is going to walk out saying, I love that, Mayer said, but you won't be able to deny that everyone will walk out of the theater saying they felt something incredibly deep. Finally Swept Away debuted January 2022, propelled by strong reviews and a mix of avid and theater fans. It was extended three times, even though it never played to a full house because of COVID. When the show finally closed, fans wondered, is that it? It wasn't. They set sail for Washington as the creative team further refined the musical, a common practice for shows on the road. There's no intermission during Swept Away, and the stars are on stage virtually the entire time. For an actor, Duvall said, it's an exhausting, exhausting show, but in a good way. You get to delve into the areas of your life that you don't always get to. Once they are in the lifeboat, tensions accelerate, even as action slows down. Francisco likened it to being on a four-way seesaw. When one of us adjusts, everybody feels it. But there's so much trust between the actors. Gallagher, who had signed on to Swept Away even before there was a finished script, acknowledged that some nights are harder for him to perform than others. Some nights I don't know if I have it in me, but it's like an act of surrender in a lot of ways. It has a mind and an engine of its own, this piece. It really does. At a mid-December show, none other than Scott Abbott was in the crowd, taking his wife and kids, ages 8, 12, and 15, to see it for the first time. Abbott had tried to prepare his 8-year-old for the show's intensity. Afterwards, his son told him he didn't think it was as scary as his dad had made it out to be. In an interview, Abbott expressed pride in Swept Away, and how much he enjoyed working with everyone on it. This was the second or third time I've seen it. I walked away going, I'm still not sure what just happened to me, and that's a good sign to me. Seeing his songs recontextualized for another art form isn't as odd for Abbott as you might think. The music he writes with his brother, Seth, has a visual feel to it, so seeing it in a musical felt really natural to me. Abbott then recalled his thoughts when the show began in California. Regardless of what happened, it's enough to know that we just put something out there that's moving and meaningful. What's next for Swept Away? The show producers, Charlotte native Matthew Mastin and Sean Huddock, along with producing partner Madison Wells-Lodd, continue to believe there's life after Washington. If Swept Away does make it to Broadway, Mastin said the earliest that could happen would be next fall. But a lot of things still need to fall exactly in place, and they have other options, like a national tour or taking the musical abroad. We're certainly confident in the future of the show, Huddock said. For Gallagher, the strong collaboration across every aspect of the show has made it so special. No matter what happens next, it has reaffirmed my belief in what is possible when people come together to make theater for the truest of reasons, he said. It's been soul-stirring. I feel like I'm over here crying and being all spiritual and weird in this interview. I try not to be like that, he added, but there's a genuine mysticism, I believe, to this piece. It's alive in a really interesting way that I can't quite put into words, but if you just kind of let it carry you through, it really will. Want to see Swept Away? Where? Arena Stage, 1101 6th Street, Southwest Washington, D.C. When? Now through January 14th. For tickets, go to Arena Stage's website, arenastage.org. About the Swept Away actors, Wayne Duvall, Duvall was in 1984 on Broadway, with off-Broadway credits including the encore's production of Big River and Of Thee I Sing. The veteran actor's numerous movie and TV credits include Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Billions, and Suits. Adrian Blank Inskoe. Inskoe tackled another 19th century role as one of the leads on the Apple TV series Dickinson. He recently starred in the independent film Breed of Greed with Gina Garrison, co-created the indie folk opera The Moon Children Opera, and is in collaboration on a new musical with his bandmates and others. John Gallagher Jr. In 2007, Gallagher won a Tony for his role as Moritz in Spring Awakening. Other Broadway work was in Jerusalem, American Idiot, and Long Day's Journey Into Night. TV and movie credits include The Newsroom, Hush, and 10 Cloverland Lane. He also has two albums out, Six Day Hurricane, and 8th and Jane. Mark Sands. Sands is a two-time Tony nominee for Kinky Boots and Journey's End. Other Broadway credits include Aunt Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, and American Idiot. He starred in the miniseries Generation Kill and Minority Report, as well as had other TV and movie roles, including in The Post, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Six Feet Under. The Avid Brothers' songs in Swept Away include A Gift for Melody Ann, Ain't No Man, Lord Lay Your Hand, Complaint Dune Montalon Morant, Go to Sleep, Hard Worker, Lord Lay Your Hand on My Shoulder, May it Last, Murder in the City, No Hard Feelings, Nothing Short of Thankful, Satan Pulls the Strings, Swept Away, Through My Prayers, and The Once and Future Carpenter.
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