American utopia broadway runtime full#
American utopia broadway runtime series#

I’m not going to say none of it makes any sense, but there’s not a super logical connection between all the movement and what the songs are saying. It may not have been originally conceived that way, but it ends up happening. If somebody moves a certain way and the music’s doing this, and the words are saying this, your brain puts it all together and it tells you that somehow that movement has some connection with what’s being said. It doesn’t always have a logic to it, but what we discover is that as a viewer, in our brains, we tend to connect things that happen at the same time. Our conversation with Byrne has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. It’s an absolute masterwork in musicianship, an unmatched technological feat, and an all-encompassing product of one of the most important creative minds of our time. Through the construction of American Utopia, David Byrne has mastered the art of making you feel without telling you how or what you should be feeling. Running just under two hours with no intermission, the show is nothing short of a marvel, quite unlike any live music experience out there. He then proceeded to detail the parts of the brain that we use to go about our everyday lives, and the parts that help us to derive joy, and I was fully sold.

My uncertainties were remedied within the opening number, which revealed Byrne alone on the stage sitting at a table in front of a model brain. Geez, was I proven wrong - and quickly, too. James Theatre, daring David Byrne and American Utopia to prove my doubts wrong. After nearly two years without an indoor concert, I put on two masks and headed to the St.

American utopia broadway runtime full#

I made a point to not watch the film on HBO Max, knowing full well that I should take advantage of being a New York resident and see the show live when it returned after the COVID-induced Broadway closure. With stellar reviews and numerous awards, including a Grammy for the album and a handful of Emmys for the Spike Lee-directed film adaptation, I have to admit that I feared American Utopia couldn’t possibly live up to the hype it has generated over the last several years. If anything, they listen more than a concert audience listens.” It took a while for us to figure out, ‘Oh, they’re really listening, their heads are moving. “We’re used to judging how we’re doing by whether people get up and dance. If it fails, it fails, but at least I’d be trying something new instead of just sticking with exactly what I’m doing.'” He enlisted the help of choreographer Annie-B Parson and Broadway veteran Alex Timbers ( Moulin Rouge, Oh, Hello! On Broadway) to restructure the set, add some more monologues, and build out a story, all whilst retraining his performing brain for a new type of show. Once Byrne and his band eventually hit the road, it wasn’t very long before Broadway producers started to take notice and express interest in bringing the show to the “proper” stage.Īfter the tour wrapped, Byrne immediately turned his focus to this new adventure.

American utopia broadway runtime series#

With American Utopia finally out in the world, it was time for Byrne to embark on a series of tests and experiments working toward delivering to the stage the unique vision that popped into his head that evening at Brian Eno’s house. 3 on the Billboard 200, marking the first time that Byrne’s work ever broke the Top 10.

Listeners latched on quickly, and the album debuted at No. The project received its title during a moment of euphoria at a 2017 Chance The Rapper concert, which Byrne remembers as “a very positive show, a wonderful feeling in the crowd at that show,” and American Utopia dropped in March of 2018. “Eno’s drum tracks were so energetic, and exciting sounding, I thought, ‘Man, this would be really great if you could do a live show with a bunch of marching drummers,'” Byrne explains over the phone from his New York City apartment during a short reprieve from signing limited edition copies of his forthcoming book of illustrations. During a casual get-together, Eno played the beats for his friend David Byrne, and, in that uncanny and indescribable way that it just happens, an idea was born. Like a jazz drummer, there were some variations here and there, but the groove maintained. Long before it was hailed by NME as “the best live show of all time,” David Byrne’s American Utopia existed just as a series of innocuous programmed drum beats sitting on Brian Eno’s hard drive.