Joe & Lauren: Making Music in Boca Grande on Friday, March 20
The iconic Joe Iconis and the marvelous Lauren Marcus are partners in art and life. Iconis wrote the hit score for Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical Be More Chill, the show where Marcus made her Broadway debut playing Brooke Lohst. A celebrated writer and composer, Iconis is recognized as a leading voice in the world of contemporary musical theater, with works spanning Broadway, Off-Broadway, and theaters across the globe. He regularly performs concerts with Marcus and other frequent collaborators as “Joe Iconis & Family” at venues throughout New York, including a Christmas show in the basement of the old Studio 54. Marcus is a beloved Hermitage artist and performer in her own right – actor, writer, and singer-songwriter are all hats she comfortably and regularly shifts between. Together, they are a New York theater power-couple who will share original work during this beachside sunset concert at Boca Grande.
We grabbed Joe & Lauren earlier this week for a quick Q&A about their coming trip to Boca Grande on behalf of the Hermitage Artist Retreat, and their work together. The evening at the Range Light at Gasparilla Island State Park is presented in partnership with Barrier Island Parks Society, and generously sponsored by Alice & David Court on Friday, March 20 at 6:30 p.m. Register HERE.
Below are some excerpts from that conversation.
Beacon: How are you going to decide what you’re going to do for the show?
Lauren: I think it’s going to be a combo of some songs that maybe we haven’t done in a while — for me, anyway, that I haven’t gotten the opportunities to sing for people. … The last one was in Sarasota in November, when I was at the Hermitage alone. For me, I’m really excited to do a bunch that I just haven’t gotten to do recently.
Beacon: We’ve got to introduce you all to the Boca Grande audience too, because some of us are not so much aware of what’s on Broadway, and what you all have done.
Lauren: I’m an actor and a writer and a singer-songwriter. I’ve been on Broadway, actually, in Joe’s show, “Be More Chill,” that he wrote. I work a ton regionally. About eight or nine years ago, I did a show at the Asolo Rep called Beatsville. I was in the film “Tick, Tick … Boom!” directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, starring Andrew Garfield.
Beacon: So what’s harder — starting a Christmas show in the basement of Studio 54 or doing something on the beach when you have to entertain folks like us?
Joe: Basement, baby. With my crew, I’ve played so many different types of venues over the years. I really feel like basements have been our most consistent environment to perform in. Honestly, being able to play on the beach sounds like a dream. I also feel like, especially with my stuff, it brings a real sort of New York energy. I like the tension between the New Yorkiness of the energy and the setting of a beach at sunset.
Beacon: How often do you perform with your wife?
Joe: We do it quite a bit. She’s been in a lot of my theater pieces. She’s been in a lot of my concerts, and we haven’t done a ton where it’s just the two of us — it’s more like where she’s amongst a larger group of people. We do have this one show that’s kind of our salute to June and Johnny Cash, where we sing songs that they sang and songs that are inspired by them. What we’ll be doing in Boca Grande won’t be that show, but it will definitely have elements of it. It’s rare that we get to perform just the two of us. That’s usually a larger thing, and that feels exciting.
Beacon: What part of the Hermitage residency are you going to be in when you arrive?
Joe: We’re basically at the Hermitage — that’s sort of the home base — and then we’ll come down for a day trip or so to do the gig and just hang out a little bit and experience some of the community. I tend to do well in places where there are other people and things and interaction.
Beacon: There will basically be some time afterward to visit and things like that. How do you do that with these kinds of on-location things?
Joe: One of the things I love about doing cabaret is that there’s no barrier between the performer and the audience. It’s an opportunity to actually connect with the human beings who are in the room. And so for me, something like the performance in Boca Grande — I’m excited to actually speak to some of the people who are watching the show and get to know people. So many of my closest collaborators are people that I happened to meet at a show, people that I sort of encountered who are either fans coming to see my stuff or fellow artists. And so for me, actually getting in the middle of the community who’s coming to see my stuff is part of the whole thing. So I’m excited to make some new friends.
Beacon: How did you all meet?
Joe: We met many, many years ago, when she was an undergrad at NYU and I was a grad student. She was in a production of “Merrily We Roll Along” and she played Mary in that production. I saw her, and I was immediately smitten. I was immediately like, Wow, who is this? The first scene of “Merrily,” her character is drunk at a party — belligerent, screaming — and she falls down and throws a glass. And it was just like, wow, who’s that?
Beacon: With both of your work, do you all have pockets of audiences around the country for all the things online? People know these songs.
Joe: We’re very blessed in that we have a sort of cult fame. I’m always surprised how “known” we are out in the world. I think it’s a combination of social media and the fact that a lot of young people really respond to the stuff that we’ve done, both together and separately. … We have these sort of pockets of fans in places that we’d never expect. Sometimes I’ll book a gig in, like, a random spot — a show in Carmel, Ind., and it sold out. We’re very blessed that we have a bit of a following. I’ve already gotten so many messages from people saying, “Oh my gosh, we can’t believe you’re going to be in Boca Grande. We’re going to come see you.”
Beacon: Does Lauren help you run the Christmas nightclub? That’s a very different skill than writing plays and performing.
Joe: I started producing my own work just kind of out of necessity. I don’t come from a family who’s in the arts at all — or in entertainment or anything. And so I kind of didn’t know how it went. When I first was starting out, I was like, Well, I’ve got all these songs, I have these pieces of theater I want to make — I don’t want to have to wait for a producer or a theater to give me permission to do it. I just kind of want to figure out how to do it. And so I sort of figured out how to self-produce and make these things. Now, with something like the Christmas show, which has a cast of 65 people, it has grown into something impossibly huge.
Beacon: Do you have a set list already?
Joe: Heavens, no. We’ll talk about it once we’re there. Lauren, in addition to being a writer, is an actor and performer. If someone says, OK, you have to do an hour-long show in 20 minutes — go — we could be like, great, that’s fine, that’s easy. Everything else in the life of an artist, trying to make new work in New York City, is the challenge. But doing a show? We’ve got that. We’ve got nothing but material; we can pull it together. I think we’re excited to get to the Hermitage and get amongst the environment and meet some people, and then decide: Oh, maybe this song is going to be a good fit. Maybe this song is going to be a good fit.
Beacon: You’re currently working on a musical about Hunter S. Thompson.
Joe: We did it in La Jolla at La Jolla Playhouse. Then we did it in Washington, D.C. And now the next stop will be New York City. It’s a show I’ve been working on for a long time. The idea was that Hunter S. Thompson feels like the worst possible person to write a musical about — and so I must write a musical about him. How do we take this man who seems like everything about him is diametrically opposed to musicalizing and make a proper musical about him? And so that’s what we’ve been working on for many years.
Beacon: How is the evening going to work?
Joe: I’m a piano player, so I’ll have a keyboard and I’ll play some tunes and sing. And Lauren plays guitar and ukulele, so she’ll do that.
Beacon: So you’re going to go from character actor to cabaret on the beach?
Lauren: I guess if Joe and I are kind of tag-teaming a show, his stuff really is character-actor singing, and mine is more singer-songwriter. But I wouldn’t be lying if I said I was really used to turning that on and off. And I actually think it’s really fun to kind of switch the focus. It’s funny — when I first started writing my own music, I actually had no idea how to sing a song as myself, as silly as that sounds.
Beacon: As a married couple, how do you balance out what you are doing up on the stage?
Lauren: We do both have a big body of work. I’m excited because I do have the knowledge of having done one concert down there, and the audience was lovely. They were so attentive, listened to every word, and I kind of got the feel for the songs that they seemed to enjoy a little bit more. So I’ll have a little bit of knowledge there, hopefully. I feel like we’re probably going to go about half and half. This is a new negotiation — we’ve never done this. It’s really like, you go, you go.
I think he’ll probably make his own set list, and I’ll make mine. And also, I know that I have a piano player for this gig — because I don’t play piano — so that might inform some of what I do.
Beacon: The sand is limiting, though? I just wouldn’t want to get sand in the keyboard.
Lauren: I’ll have my ukulele, which I think is going to work really well in the sand, if I had to guess. But like Joe said, I’m trying to think of some of the stranger places we’ve performed. I mean, we’ve performed in basements across the country — like, moldy old basements — so sand sounds kind of exotic and fun.
Beacon: When you’ve got to present yourself to people, you just have to edit down?
Lauren: It’s a combo, I think, of what each of us feels like singing or expressing at that moment. You know which ones tend to go over a little bit better with a new audience. Whenever Joe doesn’t know what to sing, I have two of his songs — I’ll say, start with this, because I know if I were coming to his music for the first time, it’s something I would respond to as an audience member. He has a large body of work. He has an astronomical body of work — I don’t know, over 500 songs or something. It’s insane. I actually have a song — I don’t know if I’m going to do it or not — but when I was at the Hermitage Retreat in November, I wrote a song there for a play that I’m working on. So maybe I’ll try it out in front of the audience. We’ll see. And his musical, the “Untitled, Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical,” I wouldn’t be surprised if he played some songs from that, because those are probably circling around his head right now.
Beacon: Do you all do some storytelling in between songs?
Lauren: I’ll usually give a little background. If it’s one of my songs, a lot of times they’re autobiographical, so I might give a little setup. And Joe’s certainly always require a little bit of theatrical setup.
Beacon: Do you have any other accompanists with you?
Lauren: I play some guitar and ukulele, and he does the piano. Usually there’s some handheld percussion, but I think it’s just going to be us for this one.
To register:
The evening is Friday, March 20 at 6:30 p.m. at the Gasparilla Island Lighthouse – Range Light (Boca Grande. Bring a chair. There is a $5 registration fee. Register HERE. More information is HERE. The Range Light is at 220 Gulf Boulevard, Boca Grande.
