Meet Cle ex-pat Lori Scarlett
Her Notebook production at the Beck is a dream-come-true

Now based in Los Angeles, local actor-turned-songwriter Lori Scarlett considers herself a lucky woman. Why? Her new musical The Break-up Notebook: The Lesbian Musical is getting a hot professional production at Lakewood’s Beck Center, helmed by her dream-come-true director: musical maven Vicky Bussert. "When I first started working on this project, I knew that Vicky was the right person to direct it, and to help move it further along," says Scarlett.

As any musical theater creator knows, developing a musical, shopping it around, and getting it picked up for production requires a kind of alchemy: a potent brew of talent, lucky breaks, hard work, and just the right connections. Sometimes those connections go wayyy back, to the people you first met in college.

So it was for Scarlett and Bussert. Their association started back in 1991, when Lori was a student at Kent State University and Vicky was a guest director at Porthouse Theatre, directing her in a production of Quilters. Flash forward 15 years. After years of directing Broadway tours, Chicago productions, and a long-standing gig at Great Lakes Theatre Festival, Bussert was now the head of Baldwin Wallace’s Musical Theatre Program, taking young actors and turning them into crack professionals.

Scarlett was in L.A., where she and her writing collaborator Patricia Cotter had just applied for the prestigious National Association for Musical Theatre Festival in N.Y., an opportunity to get a 45-minute version of the show in front of New York producers hungry for new product. “I went straight to Vicky,” says Scarlett. “She has done wonders to shape the show into what it is today.”

Scarlett’s journey from performer to writer has taken a winding path. She has had a strong stage presence and clarion voice since she was a teenager. I should know: she lit up the stage in the premiere of my own first musical The Last Red Wagon Tent Show in the Land at Akron’s now-defunct Actors’ and Playwrights’ Theatre back in 1986, when she was just in high school. Bitten by the acting bug, she went into a BFA program at Kent State, but left school before graduation with her Equity card, moving to Chicago to find acting work like so many young hopefuls.

“That was a mistake,” she admits ruefully. “In Chicago they like you to come up through the ranks. Nobody would hire me. There was even an article about me in the Tribune about how I couldn’t get acting work there.”

In 2001, after a break-up with a boyfriend, Scarlett moved to Los Angeles, hoping for better opportunities. (She starred in the cult lesbian serial killer classic, Girlfriends, shown below at left). In order to get seen and make work for herself, she started writing her own material. Some of her songs eventually became part of the snarky new musical Sneaux, a parody of V. C. Andrews’ horror-romance novels directed by Andy Fickman, the guy who helmed the long-running Reefer Madness. The chops she showed brought her to the attention of Cotter, who was looking for a female composer/lyricist to turn her play The Break Up Notebook into a musical. The L.A. premiere won the 2006 Ovation Award for Best New Musical.

It’s no surprise that the show has been making waves, from its award to a whole lot of buzz at NAMT. The Break Up Notebook is witty and original – often laugh-out-loud funny – with terrific roles for one male and 6 women who play everything from lawyers to sex-club dominatrices to line-dancing cowgirl lesbians. Much of its success comes from Scarlett’s delightfully clever songs, which have more in common with alt-rock groups like the Indigo Girls than the typical warmed-over Sondheim wannabe. How can you not love a lyricist who writes memorable songs about bad first dates – “Meaningless chatter on a Saturday night” – or an obsessed lover who imagines her ex “laughing at my name on the Caller-ID” – or reminisces about a first concert at the Richfield Coliseum?

I ask Scarlett how different the Cleveland production is from the one in L.A. “In L.A., they pushed the comedy almost to a sitcom level. But Vicky doesn’t just go for the easy laugh. She wanted to go deeper, and it shows. She found the show’s heart. The cast is…well, awesome. And Russ Borski’s set! We couldn’t be happier.”

The Break Up Notebook continues at Beck Center for the Arts thru 3/22. Visit the Beck online at http://www.beckcenter.org.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Linda Eisenstein lindaATcoolcleveland.com
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