Benj Pasek, the gay half of the B’way team Pasek & Paul, talks about the North Texas debut of their musical ‘Dogfight’
A MARRIAGE OF SORTS | Benj Pasek, left, calls his musical-writing partnership with straight college pal Justin Paul a marriage … except without sex. No, wait, maybe that makes it a marriage.
SCOTT HUFFMAN | Contributing Writer
scott_in_dallas@yahoo.com
From the moment he read the back of the DVD release, self-professed theater geek Benj Pasek, 29, was intrigued with the idea of turning Dogfight — a 1991 film about a group of young Marines who, on the eve of deployment to Vietnam, contribute money to a pool that will be awarded to the one who brings the ugliest girl to a party — into a musical.
“When you describe the plot, people go, ‘Ugh!’” Pasek says. “And that kind of visceral reaction is something so inherently musical. People have an instant connection with this protagonist. Immediately, you are connected emotionally — although it might be in a twisted way because you want to see how the plot untangles.”
Pasek and his straight collaborative partner, Justin Paul, acquired the rights to the story they considered a “hidden gem.” Along with book writer Peter Duchan, they began the adaptation process, a project that offered extraordinary resonance.
“I think that great human stories can be gay stories,” he says thoughtfully. “I really do view Dogfight in a lot of ways as a gay story. It’s really about someone who’s been made to feel ugly and how they then learn self-acceptance. I think that is a gay narrative. Rose [the character unwittingly thrown into the competition] is a character that I really relate to.”
Still, Pasek attributes much of the show’s success to his solid working relationship with Paul.
“I think the strength in our collaboration is that we are really different people,” he says. “There certainly is no awkwardness because of sexual orientation. It’s a marriage in a way: Sometimes it’s rocky, [and] you have highs and lows. But we’ve been working together for more than 10 years. I think it’s a cool thing to share that with someone.”
Dogfight opened off-Broadway to rave reviews in 2012 and was nominated for several awards (winning the prestigious Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding musical), but the production opening this week at WaterTower is the first outside of New York. Unfortunately, his work schedule keeps him from attending.
“It really is insane to us,” he says. “This is a show that we started working on our first year in the city. We didn’t expect people to respond the way they did. The subject matter is sort of dark, and it is a challenging show. It’s crazy how the show has had this life. It’s so cool that it has extended beyond the original production.”
Pasek is equally enthusiastic about the duo’s Tony-nominated adaptation of the holiday classic A Christmas Story, which Dallas Summer Musicals has booked for a December run at Fair Park Music Hall. In early 2010, that show’s producers awarded the assignment to Pasek and Paul after holding songwriter auditions.
“We went crazy and didn’t sleep for like an entire year,” Pasek recalls. “It was our first musical ever to be produced in a major way. If we messed this up, we would have ruined Christmas for a bunch of people. Looking back, I can’t believe that [the producers] let us do that. I think that we were too young to know that it was crazy to do. And I think that’s exactly why it came together.”
While Pasek and Paul were pleased with the results of A Christmas Story, no one was more surprised than they when, after a run on Broadway, the show received a Tony nom for best musical. For Pasek, the best part of the nomination was the six weeks leading up to the Tony Awards, when the team was invited to events with other nominees. They had the opportunity to meet several celebrated actors and musicians — Cyndi Lauper, Harvey Fierstein and Tom Hanks among them.
“As theatre dorks, [the Tony Awards] is the Super Bowl,” Pasek says. “I had never been to the Tonys as a spectator, and now I am going as a nominee. The coolest part is that, once you are nominated, you go to a press event with other nominees. They give you this pin that shows you are a Tony nominee. For us it basically just became permission to run up and stalk every person we are obsessed with. We were basically fangirl-ing.”
More recently, Pasek met Tony-winner Idina Menzel, one of his musical theater idols, backstage at her show If/Then. However, he quickly found himself temporarily unable to speak.
“I tend not to get totally starstruck by celebrities,” he says. “But, to me, [Menzel] is a bigger celebrity than anybody. She was in the original Rent and Wicked — shows that I was obsessed with. Immediately I lose my function to create sounds.”
Pasek also gained some press recently due to another celebrity encounter of sorts. When Shia LeBeouf was recently ousted from a Broadway performance and handcuffed by police, Pasek happened to be walking by. A social media junkie, Pasek posted a comment about the scene on Twitter — a tweet that became the source for a Yahoo! news story about LeBeouf’s June 26 arrest for disruptive behavior. “To me, that was all very embarrassing,” Pasek says. “I was just walking down the street, and I thought how crazy is New York? I didn’t know that my acknowledgement [on Twitter] would make me an eyewitness. I would much rather be known as a writer than as a celebrity gossip source.”
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition July 25, 2014.