Director and choreographer Justin Peck‘s Broadway adaptation of Sufjan Stevens‘ seminal 2005 album Illinoise opens later this month and today, producers Orin Wolf, John Styles, and David Binder announced the three vocalists set to help bring Stevens music to the theater.
Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova, and Tasha Viets-VanLear will provide vocals for the show’s Broadway debut. All three performed during recent sold-out productions at the Park Avenue Armory and Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Nova, who also records as My Brightest Diamond, provided backing vocals on the original album with Stevens and says returning to the record in this new context brought back old memories.
The original company of ILLINOISE.
Liz Lauren*
“I think whenever you have so much memory associated with the music that memory gets sealed into your body. And so, to come back to it, I have had a lot of flashbacks about being on tour, and making the record, and those kinds of sensations that are all there, and the amount of care that I think we all put into the music the first time around,” Nova tells Rolling Stone. “Now having done the piece for three months, new memories are being made with new people. And so, it’s taken on a totally different life for me.”
Illinoise opens at the St. James Theatre on April 24 and runs until Saturday, Aug. 10. “This project has been ruminating in my mind for nearly 20 years, which makes this moment even more sublime,” The show’s director Justin Peck said in a statement announcing the show last month.
Nova says translating the record’s themes to the stage proved challenging at first, as the album is full of juxtapositions. Songs about serial killers, Superman, and religion all co-existing. “It’s very quick to go from contemplation of mass murder to the underdog, everyone wishing to be a superhero,” she says. “I think it took me a while to adjust to that, but now I just think of it as a quick change.”
“I think what I love about the play is that it’s really a person reckoning with their sexuality, and being young, and finding their way into a love story,” Nova says. “Working through loss, through death, through grief, and really being surrounded by the love of friends, and owning one’s choice of who to love. And for me, I can get behind that.
