George Benjamin (Orangeman)

Transcription

ALAN SEALES: Please welcome Benjamin Scheuer. [APPLAUSE, CHEERS] The show, my gosh, I saw it last week. It was absolutely amazing. It was like this unexpected journey that I didn't expect to go on. I didn't have any expectations going into it. But it's extremely personal. Extremely, I guess, exposed, for lack of anything else. Because you talk about some very serious things, like happy and sad. But actually, happy and sad is very obvious, yes. But I actually want to read something from the website about the show. It says a good storyteller uses everything he has. So Benjamin Scheuer uses his guitar, actually six guitars, in "The Lion," a wholly original downtown musical experience that tells one man's gripping coming-of-age story. The award-winning songwriter inspires and disarms with his raw wit, emotional depth, and leads you on a rock-and-roll journey from boyhood to manhood through pain and healing to discover the redemptive power of music. And that says it better than obviously I ever could. But would you mind playing us a little song to get us started, the beginning of the show? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Sure. Yeah. This is how the show starts. There's no introduction. My father has an old guitar and he plays me folk songs. [MUSIC BENJAMIN SCHEUER, "COOKIE TIN BANJO"] [APPLAUSE] ALAN SEALES: So how old were you when you did get that cookie-tin banjo? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: About 2, 2 and 1/2. ALAN SEALES: Really? That young? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. I found a photo of it recently, of me playing my cookie-tin banjo. It's pretty cool. ALAN SEALES: Really. [LAUGHTER] BENJAMIN SCHEUER: I was so excited to have it. ALAN SEALES: So, um, I mean you really learned-- that's all- like everything in the show is a true story, right? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: It's a true story, it's all a true story. ALAN SEALES: And so I'm going to kind of give a synopsis here. So you learned to play instruments from your dad growing up, the relationship with your father. I mean you're a complete open book. So I'm sharing this with the world. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. ALAN SEALES: The relationship with your dad doesn't go so well. He dies young. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. We get into a big fight when I was 13. And then sort of-- before we had reconciled, a couple days later, he died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. And I totally blamed myself as a kid. I thought, oh, I stressed my father out. And then he died. It's completely my fault. Which is kind of what you think when you're 13 because the world revolves around you when you're 13. [LAUGHTER] ALAN SEALES: Right. So the song, I'm talking about like the lyrics, it's not-- what I like about your song so much is that it's not the traditional kind of pop song lyrics. Everything that comes out of your mouth is telling a story. Like you go somewhere with everything that you sing about. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Well, storytelling, at least in theater, is something that I find really, really fascinating. And the thing about storytelling in musical theater is if you tell a song that stops the action completely, the audience is going to be really bored. Your songs need to be the action. They need to move the story from point A to point B. And so one of the ways to do that is to put something in the present tense. Don't put it in the past tense. I could have said my father had an old guitar and he played me folk songs. But audiences are smart. And they know if I say, my father has an old guitar and he plays me folk songs, and I'm singing as a 10-year-old, they get it, as a two-year-old, as a five-year-old. People are smart. And in musical theater-- so this song is very much a musical theater song in the guise of a folk song inasmuch as the first song in any piece of theater in a musical is, "this is our world." Like in "The Lion King," it's the "Circle of Life." And this is the world we're in. We're in Africa. There's lions. There's elephants. Great. OK. And then usually the second song in a show is the main character's "I want song." "I Just Can't Wait to be King." Or in "The Little Mermaid," I want to be where the people are. She says, "I want" in the first line of the song. And so the first line of "Cookie-tin Banjo" is my father has an old guitar and he plays me folk songs. OK. So there's a kid and his dad, guitars, and folk music. Great. That's our world. First line, done, check. Easy. And the second line is what's usually the second song in a musical. It's the main character's "I want song." There is nothing I want more than to play like him. OK, cool. So little Ben wants to play like Dad. Off we go. And so I don't like to waste words. Everybody's time is valuable. And so, yeah, each song is very much a story. And I try to get to things quick. ALAN SEALES: Right. So you were playing-- like I thought from the show, that you started it later. But you're saying that you started when you were two. So like 2 to 13 is a long time. So you played with your father for-- like how often? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah, 10 years. ALAN SEALES: And your brothers too. Like, all of you played? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. I've two younger brothers, Adam and Simon. And Adam played the drums. And Simon, who's 5 and 1/2 years younger than me, just kind of played whatever we let him because he was so little. ALAN SEALES: Played the blocks. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. Now he's a killing songwriter, writing songs professionally. But my dad played the bass and played the guitar. And Simon would also kind of play the piano and play the guitar. And we'd all play music together. And that's the way that my father and I got along. Because otherwise we'd didn't get along so great. Because he was super academic. He went to Harvard and then Columbia Law School, really, really bright. And all I ever wanted to do was play music. But I kind of sucked at everything else. ALAN SEALES: Because he knew maths. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: He was very good at maths. Which they call math in England. ALAN SEALES: Because your mother's British. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. Mom grew up in London and Dad grew up in New York. And Mom moved to New York when she was in her 20s. And she and my father met. And then when my father died, when I was 13, my mother moved our family back to England. And I went to an all-boys boarding school, where I studied music and English. But they made me study math, which I really sucked at. And I was a pretty angry teenager. I was frustrated with my mom for being sad all the time. That was really nice of me, wasn't it? ALAN SEALES: It's nice to throw blame. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. Absolutely. And I felt this responsibility that I had to look after my two little brothers. But I had no idea how I was supposed to do that. I was just a kid. And so I got back to New York as soon as I finished high school, sort of as quick as possible. And was playing gigs. Actually, I had a residency right around here. There's was this club on 14th Street, between Eighth and Ninth, called Rare. It was a short-lived, really awful place. And I played there with my rock-and-roll band sort of once a week. And it was great fun. But then I met a girl, which was nice. And she kind of took me from feeling sad, to feeling a little understood. And her name was Julia. ALAN SEALES: Is this leading into a song here? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: I'm going to lead into a song, yeah. See how I did that? And Julia and I had a great relationship until we didn't. And then we stayed together for 6 and 1/2 years. And eventually she told me that she-- well, her parents had an affair. Her mother had an affair. And so Julia started to see sex as something shameful that ruins relationships. And so we had sex less and less. And I asked her what is going on? And she didn't want to talk about it because she didn't want to betray her mother. So Julia and I talked less and less. And I started to feel ill. And I was losing weight and sweating through my sheets. And the left side of my lower back hurt when I drank alcohol. And then Julia told me she wants to go on a trip around the world by herself, without me. And we don't mention breaking up. And I tell her I'll wait for you. I'll be lonely when you go. And she says, Ben, you're the loneliest person I know. Even if I stay, you'll be lonely. I said where exactly are you planning on going? [MUSIC BENJAMIN SCHEUER, "INVISIBLE CITIES"] And off she goes. And I really love her. And things have gotten so bad between the two of us that if what she needs is to figure herself out, away from me, then that's what she should do. I don't hear from her for a long time. And then I get an email. [MUSIC BENJAMIN SCHEUER, "INVISIBLE CITIES"] So Julia never comes home. And that song came out of my trying to understand why. And so I wrote it from her perspective. And I find that oftentimes writing from somebody else's perspective allows me to sort of figure out that perspective a little bit more and appreciate where they're coming from. And the same is true for writing from my own perspective. I was told by a songwriting teacher once the best piece of songwriting advice I'd ever gotten, which is if you want to write a good song, write what you don't want other people to know about you. And if you want to write a great song, write what you don't want to know about yourself. And so writing for me is very much discovery and exploration. And whenever my pen hesitates above the page, and I'm like, ah, fuck, I absolutely cannot say that. I don't want people to know that about me. They won't like me. They won't want to hang out with me. That's where I try to start. So you guys want to write some tunes? Write down the one thing you don't want anybody to know about you. And start there. And I promise you the first time you do it, it's terrifying. But if you do it every day for three months, it'll just be your job after a while. And it'll stop being that scary. And also you'll realize that the thing you're so frightened about, if you show it to somebody else, thinking they'll never speak to you again, they'll very possibly say, oh, me too. And I can't tell you how good that feels. To think the thing you think is the worst thing about you. And realize that, in fact, somebody connects to you because of that. That's pretty awesome. ALAN SEALES: And that happens-- that happens after your show, right? Like you'll have people have come up to you and they'll say like, oh, yeah, that happened to me too. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Oh, it's great. The best compliment I can get is when somebody says, hey, man, your story is just like my story. And then they tell me the story that has nothing to do with my story. [LAUGHTER] My mother moved to Tennessee with my dad's canoe. And like my dad and I used to canoe together. And I couldn't work out why this was happening. And I think I have an answer. I think it's not that the stuff that happens to us is the same. It's that we pretty much feel the same way about the stuff that does happen to us. So like we feel alone. We feel lost. We feel loved. We feel understood by other people, by ourselves. ALAN SEALES: Especially, yeah-- in a city like New York, it's like there's so many people. It's so easy to get like lost up in the shuffle of anonymity. I mean, do you find the process of songwriting, and these people come up to you, and whatnot, is it more therapeutic for you and for them, do you think? Like just to talk about things that you're so afraid to mention publicly. And then have like total acceptance. People like, oh, yeah, he's a songwriter. It's cool. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: To feel that-- I mean I really try to do away with guilt and shame and feeling bad for the stuff that I want and feeling bad for the stuff that has happened. And worrying that people are not going to like me or are going to think that I'm strange or think that I look, or sound, or feel weird. Because we all feel that way. And it's just fucking tiring. It's tiring to not-- to sort of put up a front. And New York can very much be that kind of city. When I go hear songwriters who I feel tell their truth, and they're not showing how hip they are, they're just showing how human they are, that's what I connect to as a listener. I don't need you to be the coolest person in the world. But I'd appreciate it if you're the most honest person. Because then I feel like actually we can have a conversation. And I can come up to you and talk to you. And getting to play the show for, for I guess the theater I'm in right now is about 220 people. And so it's a really lovely little space. ALAN SEALES: The Lynn Redgrave Theater? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. It's the Lynn Redgrave Theater. It's on Bleecker and Lafayette. And I play six shows a week there. I'm off on Mondays and Tuesdays. And then I play on Wednesday and Thursday, and then Friday, and two shows on Saturday, and a show on Sunday. And the only thing that really changes night to night is the audience. And different people react differently. And I can pretty much only see the front row because I'm not wearing my eye glasses. It's just like here. I can see you all in the front row. And they become my cast members inasmuch as I react to what they're reacting to. And I take the pace off of them. And I'll sing different things to different people. And then I'll chill with people afterwards. Actually the other day somebody was sitting in the front row, just like texting. And I couldn't-- but in a theater. And I couldn't tell if they were like really psyched and really wanted to text or that just had never been to the theater before. And didn't know that you're probably supposed to turn it off in a theater show. ALAN SEALES: Right. So we haven't gotten to like the real meat and potatoes of the show, which I guess, spoiler alert. Spoiler-- he gets cancer, which is not a fun thing. Thanks for laughing. Yeah. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: It just gets better and better. ALAN SEALES: It gets better. The show is amazing. So you get cancer. You beat cancer. You talk about all this. But we'll talk about that separately in a moment. But I want to talk about like, doing it, what did you say, six times a week, right? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. ALAN SEALES: So this is a hugely deep, personal journey that you are just putting out there. You're sharing with these 220 people every night. I mean do you go to the same place in your mind every night to dig up-- I guess, for lack of anything better to say-- inspiration for giving a fresh performance all the time? Or does it become tiring reliving this all the time? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Well, it's a different kind of reliving in that when I-- so I was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin's lymphoma, all these sweating through my sheets at night, and my losing 25 pounds, and the pain in the left side of my lower back when I drank alcohol, those were all symptoms of cancer. And in my case, it was advanced stage cancer. And when I was ill, I had no control over my life. I had no control at all. But when I write a song, it allows me to take a bad thing and turn it into a good thing. I can go from feeling really, really alone and feel connected directly. And writing allows me to be an alchemist in that I can take something bad, cancer, and I can turn it into a song, which is something good. And so that to me is really extraordinary. I think there's really a great amount of value in telling the truth, in telling the truth in art, in telling the truth in art about bad things. I promise, tell the truth in art about bad things and you'll be doing something good. And so every night it feels different because I get to control cancer. Cancer is not controlling me. There's a part in the show where I sing as cancer. I take on the sort of character of cancer and sing as cancer. And it's totally terrifying when I first wrote it. But just like if you do something enough times, it becomes strengthening. Also it's a happy end-- like he lives at the end. He lives. It feels lovely to be able to take bad things and turn them into good things. I think it's really a special thing about song writing. ALAN SEALES: So you recently gave a TED Talk where you discussed exactly making good things out of bad, right? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. I did. It was TEDxBroadway. So there's a sort of Bohemian Rhapsody of cancer in the middle of the show. I'll play a little bit of it for you guys. So the way I found out I had cancer is I was losing all this weight and feeling really ill. And I was running through Grand Central Station and I slipped and I fell. It was wintertime. It was December 2010. And I spent the next day in bed, banged up and bruised. The following day, I go to my doctor, who sends me for some X-rays. And when we sit down to discuss the results of these X-rays, he looks serious. He looked scared. And he says, listen Ben, you broke your pubic bone in the three places. And the reason you did is you have lytic lesions in your pelvis. I said lytic-- I don't know what that is. And he said something's eating your bones. So what, like a good kind of an eating, like a-- [LAUGHTER] And they send me for more tests. And the following day, I sat down with an oncologist. And I'm expecting him to say, listen kid, you're fine. You got holes in your bones. You got to drink more chocolate milk. But instead, he asks me, have you lost 25 pounds lately? And I said yeah. He said have you been sweating through your sheets at night? Yeah. And he said, do you have pain in the left side of your lower back when you drink alcohol? [MUSIC BENJAMIN SCHEUER, "THE CURE"] And so I did six months of chemotherapy, which is once every two weeks, 12 doses, from February to July 2011. And then-- [MUSIC BENJAMIN SCHEUER, "THE CURE"] And when I learned that I was cured of cancer, I called my mother and my brothers, who had come back from England to look after me. And then I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. And I learned something really interesting, which is 85% of people who are successfully cured of cancer suffer from depression. And it seems kind of head scratching at first. But the thing about it is you're working towards this extraordinary goal, which is not dying. And you have this crazy medical treatment. And everybody is around you and rooting for you. And then they tell your you're cured. And they're like OK, you're good. And you feel as sick as you've ever felt in your entire life because you've been pumped full of poison-- which is what chemotherapy is-- for the last, I mean in my case, it was six months. But everybody's like, you're good. And then they all kind of go home. And they're all fine and they're not worried anymore. And so I thought, well, what can I do? And I started writing. I started writing about it. I started telling other people about what it was like. And it didn't seem at the time that maybe there was value to it. And sometimes it felt stupid. And sometimes it felt like it was kind of pointless. But I carried on and I wrote about it. And I'd really taken the worst thing in my life and turned it into what has become the best thing in my life. I made this record of these songs. And I started playing the record around little coffee shops in New York, just sort of 10, 20 people at a time. I made the record with my band, Escapist Papers. And the song was called "The Bridge." And the way this show came about at all is I just didn't know what I was going to say between these songs. And so I wrote it down. And I figured I'd memorize it. And I wouldn't tell people I'd memorized what I was going to say between the songs. I wanted to be able to connect the tunes to one another better, to be able to frame each song more clearly. And so I wrote it down. And then I had a script and a score. And that's basically a musical. [LAUGHTER] And so I was invited as a writer-in-residence to the Goodspeed Theater. It's up in Connecticut. It's a developmental theater. It's basically a nice little college campus. You get a house and a kitchen. And they pay you to write. And I told them I was working on a musical. It was not a musical at the time. It was just these songs. And living next door to me were the guys who wrote another show called "Urinetown." It was Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis. These Tony award-winning writers, really extraordinary, sort of senior members of the Broadway community. And they were developing a new show with their director Sean Daniels. And so we all became buddies. And I got invited-- this was January of 2012. And then-- is that right? Yeah. January of-- no January of 2013. God, it was just four years ago-- three years, two years ago. Ah-- math. ALAN SEALES: Maths. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: I'm not good at maths. ALAN SEALES: Maths. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: 2013, two years ago. All right. And I got invited to this other developmental theater in April 2013, in Vermont. And the guy in Vermont said, man, why don't you bring a director? You need another pair of ears, another pair of eyes to help you out. And so I called the only director I knew or really ever heard of, this guy Sean Daniels. And I asked if he could recommend a young director for me to work with? Because I figured Daniels, himself, was way-- he was-- way out of my league. And he very kindly made three suggestions for three different directors. And he said for what it's worth kid, I'll direct your show. I like your songs. You're a cool guy. And I said, how would that work, your directing my show? He's like what do you mean? I was like-- what? What do you mean, what do I mean? How would it work? How would you direct my show? He's like oh, Ben, you don't have a show, man. You have like four songs. And you're probably going to cut two of them. [LAUGHTER] What I'd help you do is make the thing you really want to make. I'd help you outline the piece. And we'll put scenes on white cards and songs on blue cards. And I never heard of this before. And we'll tell the story you want to tell. And I'll tell you when it's boring. And I'll tell you when it's stupid. And I'll tell you when it's confusing. And this seemed sort of overly simplistic to me. But man, I promise you, if you get rid of boring, and stupid, and confusing, your thing is so much better. Boy, oh boy. [LAUGHTER] And so we took the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I applied without telling Sean. And I was like Sean, we got a gig for the show. It's going to be great. And he said where is it? And I was like it's in Scotland. He was like why would we go to Scotland? And there are 3,000 pieces of theater out there in the Fringe Festival. It's the biggest theater festival in the world. And we went. And the show was still called "The Bridge" at that point, named after the record. And so I staged the show, one chair, three guitars, no light cues-- no guitar microphone, just a vocal microphone. And I sat in the chair. And I performed to sort of 20 people a night. And then we won the award for best lyrics in the whole Fringe Festival. And then a theater in London called. And they said, why don't you put the show up? We'd love to do that. And then a theater in New York called, the Manhattan Theater Club, based at City Center. And they're an amazing theater. And they sat me down and they were like we to do your show. We're going to put a lot of money behind it. We're going to do whatever you want. The thing is we like working with directors that we know. So that's how we're going to work. And I said, guys, I couldn't agree more. I like working with directors I know, too. So we're going to work with Sean on this piece. And it wasn't out of some false idea of loyalty. He's the right guy for the job. And so we worked with him. And we put the show up in New York. And it sold out. And we went to London and played it there. And now I'm back at the Lynn Redgrave Theater. And it's been a really extraordinary journey. It's been really, really cool. And it just came out of playing in these little coffee shops on Cornelius Street. ALAN SEALES: Did you imagine the show would be met with the critical success that it is? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: I thought that maybe some people would dig it. I was just trying to tell the truth as hard as I could. But I try not to worry about critics because I mean nobody ever put up a statue to a critic. ALAN SEALES: Well, yeah. So every night you have these complete strangers there, coming in night after night. Are you over, I guess, impersonal aspect of playing to strangers? Do you feel like it's you and them on stage? Or is it just you and you're in your head and you're telling the story, reliving it every night? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. It doesn't seem impersonal at all. It never seems impersonal. So I really try to-- every night try to tell the story more simply and more honestly. Just like as if your best friend introduced you to some friend of his that you never met. And you're hanging out, the three of you guys. And you're telling a story to that person. Like that's what it feels like. That's how I try to make it feel. I'm just kind of talking. I do try to write songs that feel like I'm talking when I'm singing. I'm not a singer really. I like writing for other singers. But when I sing, I try to write the melody the way that I would talk because then it's easier for me. Like I can't sing big Broadway notes. I could never be in anybody else's musical truly. Because I'm not an actor and I'm not a singer. I can just kind of tell my story and play a little guitar. ALAN SEALES: So going back to cancer. So you worked with a photographer. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. ALAN SEALES: Riya Lerner, right? Yeah. So she took your picture once a week when you were getting chemotherapy. And it turned into this book. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. I made a book to raise money for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. It's a foundation, a cancer charity that's very close to my heart. And Riya photographed me once a week. That was the first photo she ever took of me. I was very, very, very ill. And so on my left pectoral muscle they put a little tube, an IV insertion point right there, that had a tube, that went up over my collar bone and under my ribs and directly into my heart. And so that's how chemotherapy works. I mean I was so desperately thin. But the problem with New York City is when you're kind of 25 pounds underweight and gauntly skinny, people will come up to you and be like, oh, my god, you look amazing. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. And so Riya came and photographed me once a week with an old '70s Rolleiflex camera. And we documented this little journey. And the terrifying thing was we didn't know what the end of the story was going to be. We didn't know if the last photo was going to be a gravestone or whatever. Or if it was going to be kind of thumbs up, like yeah. And so I kept a journal. And Riya photographed me. And I learned a lot from photography about songwriting inasmuch as a photo really should be about one thing. It should be very simple. And you should get rid of all the cluttering stuff that's in the way. And it should have one focal point. And the focal point isn't necessarily what the photo is about. Meaning you can write a song about one thing seemingly, but it's actually about another thing. And so I learned a lot about just art in general from Riya and from her extraordinarily keen eye. I think we've got a couple more images. Yeah, that's a pretty gruesome picture. That's what chemotherapy looks like. There's a needle in the IV insertion point. And what's in the syringe at that moment is Adriamycin, which is a very, very potent, very mean chemotherapeutic drug. And it's got sort of the consistency of jello. It's very thick. And it burns. You can feel it like going into your heart and burning, which is real fun, let me tell you, real fun. And then every few months I would get what's called a PET scan. And a PET scan is how cancer is tested for. So cancer is basically a problem of growth, of reproduction. Cancer cells are cells that grow way too fast. And so when you get a PET scan, which is a cancer scan, you're injected with a radioactive glucose that attaches itself to your cells. And then you go into this machine, this machine over here. And the machine sees how fast the cells are reproducing. And so it's pretty amazing technologically. And one thing that I sort of discovered is the first PET scan I got took about 45 minutes. The last PET scan I got took about 20 minutes just because the computer technology had improved. And when I go back now, they take about five minutes. ALAN SEALES: Wow. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: It's pretty amazing, yeah, how these technological advances in data processing affects all kinds of stuff, including cancer treatment. ALAN SEALES: So obviously we know the end of the story. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: He lives. He lives. By the way that book, "Between Two Spaces," you can check it out at betweentwospaces.com. And all the proceeds go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's a good cause. ALAN SEALES: It's a very nice book. How did you get connected with her in the first place? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: I wrote to a cousin of mine, who is a photographer. And I asked her who would be good for this project? And she recommended Riya. And I actually interviewed some photographers. And the first photographer I interviewed came over and she's like, I'm so sorry to hear what's going on. I was like, no, no, no, no. I don't need your sympathy, darling. Like this is an art project. I've got my friends and my family. Thank you. And I told Riya about the project. And she's like this sounds awesome. I want to work on this. We can make something cool. And I dug her dedication. And that she kept impersonal in a way that ultimately allowed us to be very, very close friends. She could kind of disappear and take a photo, to the point where I wouldn't notice. Like I'd be going about my day. I'd get into the shower, be like floating in the bathtub. And we have a sort of very fascinating relationship because the intimacy of being there, photographing my body. And what we thought it was going to be was just she would take a nude portrait of me the whole time. And we'd just see how the body changed. But we realized that actually cancer affects life in all kinds of ways that you could never anticipate. And one of those ways was that clothing took on this really powerful meaning for me. Because kind of one of the only things that I could do on any given day that I had any control over at all was get dressed. And then when you go to your doctor, you're in like the green gown thing. And you feel sort of half of a person and you're dehumanized. And so clothing became control. It became armor. And that still sticks with me today. ALAN SEALES: So I want to digress for a second and talk about your custom, wonderful custom suit here. It's a little bit lopsided, right? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. It is lopsided because it's cut to play guitar in. So this right arm is cut to go like this. The left arm is cut to hold like this. And the left leg of the trousers is moving around because I move this leg, but not my right leg. My guitar sits right here. So it's cut asymmetrically. And that actually comes from military and hunting tailoring, when you cut a jacket to hold like this. The British tailors get it right. They get it right. ALAN SEALES: Because they hunt in Britain, more than in the US? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Well, the fellow who makes the clothes-- ALAN SEALES: Gun control. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: The fellow who makes the clothes for the show is a guy called Kirk Miller. And he makes the most fabulous suits, really, really beautiful stuff. And he runs a shop called Miller's Oath, which is on Spring and Greenwich Street, just down in the western part of Soho. And I mean really, really rad, beautiful, beautiful clothing. And in the show, I wear a mic in my hair. You can't see it. But just so when I'm kind of walking around. As so I wear this bra that has like microphone wireless things sitting behind my jacket. And so the jacket is cut and the shirt is cut to sort of accommodate it at all. It's all very tricky. It's all made to look like I'm sitting in your living room, but with better lighting design. ALAN SEALES: And six guitars. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. Absolutely. ALAN SEALES: Why six guitars? I mean you've got two here. You've only played one of them so far. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. ALAN SEALES: Obviously, we got more songs to come. But why six? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: I play six guitars because a lot of the songs require different tunings. And what I mean by different tunings is I tune the guitar to a different chord. And this one right here is tuned C, G, D, G, C, E. And having different chords allow for different textures, different tonalities, different voicings. This guitar to my left that I'll play in a little bit, I play two songs in the show with it. This one is tuned to D, A, D, D, A, D. And so you can do stuff. [MUSIC PLAYING] We were talking earlier and you asked me about the guitar part in that first song "Cookie-tin Banjo" and why do I have six guitars? Well, I like to try and use each guitar as sort of a few different instruments at once. In the "Cookie-tin Banjo," the melody goes-- [MUSIC PLAYING] And the baseline goes-- [MUSIC PLAYING] And so together that sounds like-- [MUSIC PLAYING] And if you do that and you put chords in between the bass and the melody, it sounds like this. [MUSIC PLAYING] And there's an electric guitar for a couple of the songs that I play as an angry teenager. It's a '72 Goldtop Les Paul. It's a really rad guitar. There's a guitar that plays the role of dad's old guitar. And that's a 1929 Martin O-18. This one over here is a Froggy Bottom. They're made in Vermont. And they build about 100 guitars a year. And this one was built for me. My brothers got it for me as a 30th birthday present. It's Adirondack spruce up top, walnut back and sides. And I don't know-- you probably can't see. But there's a little watercolor of a lion painted on the heel of the neck there. It's pretty awesome. ALAN SEALES: So I expect everyone to be able to play because he gave you such direct lessons. So do you ever talk to your ex-girlfriend about any of this? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Julia. Do I talk to Julia? Well, she plays a pretty prominent role in the show. And she did write to me when the show opened in New York last summer at the Manhattan Theater Club to wish me well and congratulations, which was very cool of her. Beyond that, no, we don't talk. ALAN SEALES: What about your family, are they still in London? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: They are in London. Actually Simon, my brother Simon was in town. And he came to see "The Lion" a couple weeks ago, the same night that Bruce Willis came to see it. And Bruce took me and Simon out to get sushi at Nobu. It was very cool. And he was telling me he's about to do a Broadway play in the fall. And so we were just kind of talking about the intimacy of acting in a really small room. But at the end of this show, ultimately he decided that he was going to come play the character Ben in my musical. And I decided I was going to go be an international action superhero. [LAUGHTER] ALAN SEALES: How is that working out so far? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: I got the boots. [LAUGHTER] ALAN SEALES: So your fingers-- I mean I just love watching you play. I'm talking way less than I should as a moderator. But I just love when your fingers just start moving at the speed of light. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Thank you. ALAN SEALES: Did that come about sort of naturally as you developed your own style? Or were you ever trying to emulate like the power chords on the radio? And you're like, ah, this is just really boring, degern, degern, degern. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. I wanted to learn to play like Eddie Van Halen. ALAN SEALES: Oh, really. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And so I practiced six to eight hours a day to learn to do all the acrobatic and crazy technical stuff for the guitar. I really wanted to see what the guitar was capable of. And it was cool to do all that stuff technically. But I came to the horrifying conclusion that Eddie Van Halen already plays like Eddie Van Halen. And he's pretty good at it. So if I was going to figure out how to play, I'd better learn to play like myself and figure out what that actually is. I mean in a really technical way, I do a lot of hybrid picking. Meaning I hold a guitar pick between my thumb and my first finger. And then these other three fingers just kind of have a mind of their own. They're doing other stuff as I'm doing it. So that's why you can play a bass, and a melody, and chords in between. These will be the ones playing chords, these fingers. Pinky is playing the melody. And my pick is playing the bass. And so I like to get different sounds. I mean there's one little bit of a Van Haleny trick in the show at the very end. It sounds like this. [MUSIC PLAYING] And it sounds really, really complicated. I promise you it's not actually. It's really not. But that's a little bit of the Van Halen influence coming into my acoustic guitar playing. ALAN SEALES: So do you end up listening and liking more blue grassy, folk music sort of stuff? And what do you listen to in your spare time? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: I listen to a lot of hip hop. Yeah. ALAN SEALES: I'm going to let that sink in for a second. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: I mean storytelling is really what I dig. I dig a compelling story and Tupac Shakur, Marshall Mathers, OutKast, Nas. Marshall Mathers is Eminem, of course. Biggie, Big Pun. I'm a big fan of his record, "Capital Punishment" in 1996. It's a great record. Yeah. And these guys are taking what really is lyrically the most advanced-- it's the most advanced kind of lyricism. And here's the thing. So the best piece of musical theater up right now-- and if you haven't heard of it, you absolutely will. Paul McCartney was there last night-- is "Hamilton." "Hamilton" was written by a guy called Lin-Manuel Miranda. And it's about Alexander Hamilton. And it is a hip hop show. And it's not trying to sort of falsely squeeze hip hop onto Broadway. He is a rapper and he is a writer. And he is one of the best guys around. And he wrote a show that's completely a game changer, just the way Leonard Bernstein thought, well, why don't we take real orchestral music and put it on stage? And he wrote "West Side Story." And everyone was like, oh, OK, right. You've changed the way musical theater works. Lin-Manuel has on the same thing. And though my stuff, it absolutely sounds folky and sounds blue grassy, that's just because I play the acoustic guitar. But in actuality to me, hip hop is much more the thing that I'm really, really interested in. Because these guys are doing-- guys and girls-- are doing things that I aspire to do, that I would love to do. I would love to tell these dense and complex stories. I mean "Hamilton" is 2 hours and 45 minutes. And there's not a wasted syllable in that show. Every syllable is extraordinary. I mean go. Go see it if you can. It's amazing. And I listen to a lot of jazz, Oscar Peterson, the pianist. The musicals I do dig, I dig Frank Loesser, who wrote "Guys and Dolls." That's absolutely my favorite show. Actually before "The Lion," the sort of preshow music, is Miles Davis and his quintet playing songs from "Guys and Dolls." And I wonder how many people have caught that. But I get to warm up in my dressing room to "If I Were a Bell." It's a wonderful melody. It's wonderful lyric. I mean those melodies are so strong that when you just hear the melody, you hear the words too. And that's the kind of things that I'd like to write. I'd really like to write a melody that's so strong that you can hear the words. Or write a lyric so strong that you automatically hear the melody. ALAN SEALES: Well, you have. After the show and during warm-ups and everything this morning, I've have "Cookie-tin Banjo" in head nonstop. Like even as I'm sitting here listening to you talk, I have "Cookie-tin Banjo" going through my head. After you played the other stuff, I still go back to "Cookie-tin Banjo." BENJAMIN SCHEUER: It's a sticky little melody. ALAN SEALES: It is. It is. I really like it. So we've talked about the music, the song writing, and the lyrics, and everything. So now, we've got the show. You've got music videos, too. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. I'm making a record right now called "Songs From The Lion." So musical theater has been doing it backwards. Musical theater makes recordings of the shows as souvenirs to sell in the lobby. And this is so stupid to me. Like if you make a record, don't make a souvenir. Make a piece of art. And your show is not to sell your record. I mean, I'm playing to 200 people a night. What am I going to sell, like 150? 10 maybe? Your record is to sell your show. You put out a record, you should try and sell a million copies. And if you ask any 10-year-old how do you listen to music, they'll tell you YouTube. And so put out a single. Put out as many singles as you can. And make music videos for them. And so I've made a music video for the song "Cookie-tin Banjo." And it's an animated video. It has seemingly nothing to do with the show. But to me, it's the same story. And then I made a video for the song, "The Lion." And I made these both with a fellow called Peter Baynton. And "The Lion," it premiered at the Annecy Film Festival. Annecy is a town in the north of France, just south of Switzerland. And it's the biggest animated festival in the world. And we made a little video for just over $10,000. And it was playing at Annecy alongside videos from Bjork. And Thom Yorke from Radiohead had a video. I mean some really amazing artists, who I really, really admire. And I was out there for a couple days and I didn't stay until the end. I went back to London to see my family. And I got a call from Peter Baynton, the director/animator. And he's like, hey, man, I just want to let you know we won. And I was like we won what? And he said, we won the best commissioned film in the festival for "The Lion." And I could not believe it. And so Pete and I are making a third video right now, third animated video. And we're also making a film video and one for the song "Cure," the cancery one that I played earlier-- cancery one, yea. ALAN SEALES: Did you film during the process too? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: No. There's no video footage. I don't believe so. Ah, that would've been a good idea. Eh. ALAN SEALES: Next time. Don't relive it. So we've got "The Lion" video now. It's queued up. That's why the screen went black. So we would like to have you play it live while the video's going in the background. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. Absolutely. And before I play, I just want to say thank to you guys for listening to me talk and sing. And thank you very much for having me. [APPLAUSE, CHEERS] Here's "The Lion," friends. [MUSIC BENJAMIN SCHEUER, "THE LION"] [APPLAUSE, CHEERS] ALAN SEALES: Nice. So we've got microphones in each aisle. We've got some tickets to give away to those of you who may have questions. If you have questions, please go there now. This has been absolutely wonderful. What was the process like making the animated video in the first place? Do you have a lot of input into that? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Well, Peter is a-- he went to Cambridge in England. And he studied architecture and oil painting because he likes making three-dimensional things in two dimensions. And eventually, he realized, you know what, I think actually I'm supposed to be an animator. I want to tell stories, big three-dimensional stories in two dimensions. And so we had a mutual friend who connected us. And I'd finished recording that song, "The Lion" on the record "The Bridge" with Escapist Papers, my band. And so I called my friend Alex and I said, I'm looking to animate this video. And there's so many words in it. And I really want to do it pretty literally. Do you know any animators? And he said, yeah, you should talk to my friend Peter Baynton. And so I went to meet Pete. I'd sent him the song ahead of time. And he turned up at our meeting with this cardboard guy he'd made with an Exacto knife and a piece of cardboard. And he said, what about him as the main character? ALAN SEALES: It looks just me. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Yeah. And I just kind of burst into tears, I was so moved. And Pete and I talked. It took us about nine months to make the video. And actually I met his mom at the British Animation Awards, where Pete took home the award for "The Lion" for public choice for best music video. And Pete's mom said, I thought that-- Peter was at home. And the kitchen floor was covered in cardboard. And I didn't know what was going on. And Pete, I really just let him do his thing. He sent me an animatic initially. And what an animatic is, it's basically a slide show to the song, which is kind of drawings of how the story would work. And one thing that was really important to Peter was character. In the very beginning of the video, there's a table with all the pictures of all the lions in the family. And what's fascinating about that is Peter followed every single one of those characters on a journey through the song. There's no character that doesn't have a journey in the song. And so it was very much about telling everybody's story very specifically and being really true to that. And there's no wasted time. Similar to the way Riya, the photographer, works. Peter works the same way. And I love, man, I loved working with him. And I don't have to do a lot with Pete. I send him a song, and I send him my ideas, and I let him get on with it. And he'll come back and say, this is what we're doing. And it's awesome. And I hope to-- we're going to make two more videos. And one day, I want to make an animated feature film with him. We've made these little movies for a little bit of money. One day, I want to go bother Pixar and go get $10 million and make a real movie. I mean he's going to be an extraordinary person to do that with. Radish Pictures is his company. Mark my words, in 10 years, Radish Pictures, they'll be fighting you guys for real estate. ALAN SEALES: Oh, yeah, question? AUDIENCE: Hey, Ben. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Hey. AUDIENCE: Kevin. I've been a fan of yours since you played guitar in the production of "Tommy" that I produced at Harvard. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: No kidding. Hey, man. AUDIENCE: Best undergraduate production of "Tommy" guitar player ever. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Well, thank you. That was really fun. AUDIENCE: It was awesome. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. It was like 14 years ago. So like obviously, you're a great songwriter. And 50 years ago, you might be on like a Stephen Sondheim path, where you just write musicals and they start in Boston. And then they go to Broadway. Other than "Hamilton," I don't know if there are many like original musicals coming to Broadway. So what does the career look like for someone who wants to be a Broadway songwriter? And given like most of the Broadway theaters right now are Disney or movie adaptations, what are the plans for your career? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Well, I wholeheartedly believe that making records and making theater are not in opposition to one another. They're, in fact, the same thing. And that if you want to write a show that you want to be successful, there's so many tools that can reach beyond the theater to get audiences that don't go to the theater. I mean the people who come to see "The Lion," yeah, it's a theater audience. But it's also kids who just hang out at Rockwood Music Hall, kids who dig pop music or who dig folk music. And so I think that if you're writing a show, release your singles. And if they don't work as singles, rewrite them. And if then they don't work, then probably your show isn't going to work in the contemporary era. And if your songs are compelling enough, then people don't even know they're from a show. It doesn't matter. People don't need to see the "Cookie-tin Banjo" video. If they like it, they don't need to know it's from "The Lion." I mean it's a humble video. It's only been seen 125,000 times, which is nothing in sort of big YouTube terms. But it's way more than people who have seen the show. There's only 200 seats in the theater. So I would advise any songwriter who's writing for the stage-- and I do, in my group of writer friends. And it's really a huge community here in New York. I mean Sam Willmott is an amazing songwriter. Jean Rose, an amazing songwriter. Shaina Taub is an amazing songwriter. These people are really putting on creative, different sounding, excellent theater. I advise them to write about themselves. Because man, if you can't write about yourself, like good luck writing about somebody else. Good luck telling somebody else's truth if you have a hard time telling your own. Beyond that, yeah, I think thinking of different ways to do theater. I mean different venues. Anything goes. I mean I was told that doing a one-person autobiographical musical was a terrible idea. And I was like, OK, cool. Maybe no one will like it. But that's what I feel like doing. And I don't think there really are rules. And I think the young producers, some of whom are in this room today, they dig that. And they'll help you make your thing. If you believe wholeheartedly, and you put together a good team of people, and you have a cool story to tell in a cool way, like it'll totally work. That's what I think. AUDIENCE: And I work on YouTube now. So I'll see what I can do about getting that play count up. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Great man. Thank you very much. AUDIENCE: Hi. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Hey. AUDIENCE: You talked about-- I mean a lot of like what you talked about has come from like your personal experience and your personal story. You also talked about the technical skills that you sought out to learn. So I was curious to know how much of like what you're bringing to the table as far as like your actual-- the musical skills and the writing skills came from a school setting versus self-taught? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Well, I have a degree in English from Harvard. And I spent a lot of time reading and performing in theater and studying structure, studying three-act structure. And so very, very quickly, classical three-act structures. The first act is here is your protagonist. Here is what they want. The second act is here's why you can't have it and how they go off on their journey to try to get it. And the third act is they get it and they go home happy. That's a comedy. They don't get it and they die. That's a tragedy. Or they realize that they actually really wanted something else all along, and they get that other thing, and they kind of change their point of view. And that's a drama. This has been going on for 10,000 years, however long stories have been told. And the thing about that that I've taken away is I try to incorporate that three-act structure that I've learned by studying theater and literature into every single song, into each song. And so, yeah, it's very technical. "The Lion's" structure, the piece of theater structure, is very much based on Joseph Campbell, who's a 20th-century American historian who codified the hero's journey. He was like, OK, what do Buddha, and Jesus, and Moses, and Odysseus all have in common? How are their stories similar? And he kind of worked out that they all follow pretty much a similar trajectory. And so structurally, yeah, I really try to be very technical. Because the closer I stay to the technical structuralism, the farther I can go in telling my version of that. And I've been very lucky to study at the Johnny Mercer songwriting workshop. It's one week long. It's hosted at Northwestern University. And here's the way it works. You apply, if you're 18 to 30 years old. And you send in three tunes. And if you get in, they buy you a plane ticket, and they give you a bunch of money, and they bring you to Northwestern for a week. And you just write with three master teachers. Andrew Lippa is a fabulous writer. He's got "Big Fish," and "Addam's Family," and "I Am Harvey Milk," the oratorio. Craig Carnelia is another songwriter. Lari White is another songwriter, the woman who told me if you want to write a great song, if you want to write a good song. And I just got paid to write. It was the first time anybody had ever said you should do that. This is a job. And there are no assignments. But you go and you write whatever you want. And then these three master teachers will say-- you'll play a tune. And they'll say, oh, you know the second verse is actually similar to this Dylan song that maybe you haven't checked out. Or did you see Stephen Sondheim's version of this song that you're doing? This is a I'm sad you left song, or a I want you to love me song, or a I want to change song. I mean it's all pretty similar. We're writing the same songs again, and again, and again. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier. It's not that our stories are the same. But we feel the same way about it. And it was extraordinary to be able to work with these writers, these professional writers, and to meet other young writers who had similar ambitions. And so to be able to be part of a community of songwriters is one of the most valuable things. Because we'll talk about how rhyme can be helpful, how enjambment can be helpful, how setting up an expectation and then not fulfilling it in a song can be helpful. And these are all the technical tools. And I very much believe that learn the technique as much as you can. And then use it in support of, rather than in place of, what you want to say. AUDIENCE: All right. ALAN SEALES: Thank you. AUDIENCE: I have a simple question. What keeps you moving every day, like what you keep doing? And what's the motivation? Where are you getting it from? BENJAMIN SCHEUER: I get a lot of motivation from the audiences. And some days I wake up and I'm like, man, I do not want to go to the theater. I'm tired. And it's snowing outside. I'm like, I'm comfy in bed. And then I go do a show. And mean I met a young kid who was 17 years old the other day, who's studying-- or 18 I guess. He's at NYU. And he's studying songwriting and acting. And he said, man, you're doing what I want to do. That's inspiring that I don't know how I could write songs about myself and it could be a job. But you're doing that. And that makes me want to get out of bed. And I was like, OK, well, that's pretty beautiful. I'm a pretty happy guy. I get to play guitar for a job and wear red clothes. [LAUGHTER] It's pretty awesome. I love going to the recording studio. I love working with Geoff Kraly, who's my record producer. We've worked together for years. And we have the best time. We get to play with microphones, and play with words, and play with melodies. And also I get to play with some of the people I've always dreamed about working with. That's one of the coolest things. ALAN SEALES: Like Bruce Willis. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Like Bruce Willis. Well, in terms of the record that I'm making for the show, I'm not just making a record with guitar and vocals. That's how it is in the show. But on the record, I was like, all right, well who are the people I've always wanted to work with? And there's this one tune in the show, its on electric guitar. It's kind of a Nine Inch Nails thing. And I was like, why don't we just hire Nine Inch Nails? They're just guys. You can call them. And so we called Josh Freese, who plays drums in Nine Inch Nails, and with Sting, and with Guns and Roses, and we said come play on the record, man. And he sure, why not? And so that's incredibly exciting to me. So something that really motivates me is working with people who are better than I am. If I can keep doing that, I'll be a happy guy. ALAN SEALES: Well, thank you so much for coming out. That was wonderful. [APPLAUSE] So we've got one more song you're going to give us, to close out, that's not so sad, not so cancery. So yeah, before you start, I want to give you a plug. Everyone visit thelionmusical.com, visit Benjamin online, benjaminscheuer.com. The show is great. It's phenomenal. I can't go on-- I can go on and on about how wonderful it and just how touching it is. So I'm going to get off the stage, give you your final moment. BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Thank you very much. ALAN SEALES: Please. Thank you for coming. [APPLAUSE] BENJAMIN SCHEUER: Here's a happy song. [MUSIC BENJAMIN SCHEUER, "HELLO JEMIMA"] [APPLAUSE, CHEERS]