Montego Glover
It's got exuberant dancing, through-the-roof singing, a moving, racially tinged love story and two of the great musical theatre performances of the season. The musical is Memphis, and those performances are delivered by vocal powerhouses Montego Glover and Chad Kimball. The new musical at the Shubert Theatre casts Glover as a struggling singer in 1950s Memphis, who must ultimately choose between her career and the man who has most believed in her. Glover, who made her Broadway debut in The Color Purple, gets the chance to display her rich, rangy and emotionally powerful voice in several standout numbers of the Joe DiPietro-David Bryan score, and it should be noted that she is well matched by the equally thrilling Kimball. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with the up-and-coming Glover, who spoke about her six-year journey with Memphis; that interview follows.

Question: How did you originally get involved with Memphis? I know you've been with it for a few years.
Montego Glover: It was a pretty regular day [for an] actor in New York City. I was working, and I got a call from my agent saying, "Listen, I have a reading of this new piece that's going to have a reading and then a full production. The artistic director of this theatre, where it's going up, would like for you to read this role." I said, "Sure." My agent said, "I'll send you the script, and let me know what you think." I read this thing called Memphis and responded to it immediately and agreed to do the reading.

Question: How long ago was that?
Glover: That was six years ago.

Question: When and where was the first production mounted?
Glover: The first developmental was mounted at North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Question: Was there any song that got cut that you were sorry to see go?
Glover: All of the changes have been superb and have really worked and have absolutely pointed us in the direction of strengthening the telling of the story. But there are always songs where you're like, "Aw, that's a fun song," a fun song to sing or a fun song to listen to and you think, "Well, whatever they replace it with is going to be better for the health of the play," but you go, "Aw, I enjoyed that song."

	Montego Glover in Memphis
	photo by Joan Marcus

Question: How would you describe the character of Felicia?
Glover: Felicia Farrell is a young African-American girl in Memphis 1950 who has a talent, who has a thing that she is passionate about. She is passionate about this music and being a singer. What I think happens with Felicia over the course of the play is that she knows she has a vehicle, a way to say things. She's just not sure what she wants to say. I think over the course of Memphis she figures that out. I also think she has never been in love when this play starts, and by the time the play ends, she has. That, for anyone, I think, is a life-changing event. Whether it's in your life to stay or whether it's in for a reason and a season, as they say. [Laughs.] But I still think being in love, falling honestly, madly, deeply in love with someone is a life-changing event. For her, I think that's what we get to observe. I also think that she is full of fire and ambition and heart and humor. There's a part of her, because she lives in the time that she lives in, her daily life and her dreams are shaped by segregation, shaped by the division between races… out-and-out racism in this country.

Question: Did you do much research into that era or was it an era you already knew a lot about?
Glover: When I got the reading of Memphis years ago, I actually took a trip up to the Schomberg [Center for Research in Black Culture] in Manhattan and did some listening and reading from the DJ that the main character is based on and DJ's like him in that era. I did some research and listening and reading on all of them and on the kind of music that women were or weren't making as they broke into blues and as rock and roll was being born — so a lot of books, a lot of articles, a lot of interviews with people living in Memphis. It was about what was going on in the country at large and what was going on specifically in Memphis, which is very, very detailed. There is a wealth of information, which is great. We were also really served very, very well by our dramaturgical team from Memphis. There is a wealth of information about the time in this country, about that era around the world…

Question: Was there anything that you learned that really sticks out in your mind or something that you didn't know or something that was sort of shocking or something that was maybe good in a way?
Glover: There were a couple of things. One, that this music, this blues, serious, heavy, rhythmic, thick music was being played at extreme ends of the radio dial, where the frequency was the lowest. So it wasn't reaching that far. But where it was going, people were finding it, and people who weren't meant to be hearing it were hearing it. So those stories of kids who happened to be white cuddled under the bed sheets with the radios on, listening to this music that they were not allowed to listen to, really happened. These stations that were playing this blues music were reaching people and changing their minds about what music is and how far it reaches. When things were unfair or unkind or wrong, these stations that were playing this blues music, these DJs who were putting this stuff out there, were getting on and saying, "This is wrong. We need to stop this." There's one great story about a white woman who had been terribly injured, and the closest hospital was a black hospital. Because she was white, the black ambulance and the hospital weren't allowed to take her. So they call for the white one, which was clear across town, and it took forever to get there, and the lady died. One of the DJs got on the air and said, "This is ridiculous. If they'd just let us touch her, we could have saved her life. These women and men take care of your garden and your children and make your food and put our hands in every part of your life. Why can't we help you stay alive?"

Question: Do you think the show has a message, or what does it say to you?
Glover: Yes, absolutely Memphis has a message. There's a great lyric in the closing number of the show that says, "If you listen to the beat and hear what's in your soul, you will never let anyone steal your rock 'n roll." If it's in you, if you know the truth and you know that it is in you, and you feel it in you, there is no way to deny it. There is no way to not come out of it, no matter how inconvenient or ugly or inappropriate-seeming the circumstances are. What are the chances that this kind of awkward, gawky white guy stumbles into a hot, liquor bar on Beale Street alone to hear the music? And what are the chances that he not only follows the music that he loves so much but he finds a woman that he loves so much, who happens to be black. But he loves her, and I thoroughly believe that you can't help who you love. It just is. That's it. I think [it's about] following what you know to be true and honest without delay.

	Montego Glover in Memphis
	photo by Joan Marcus

Question: Do you have a favorite moment in the show for Felicia?
Glover: [Laughs.] You know, I'll tell you, Andrew, because I've worked on it and have been so privileged to have a hand in it from the ground up… we've poured over every single element of this entire piece. I've poured over every single element of her, and I continue to do that because I find these things every day. I have to be honest with you: all of it! [Laughs.] It's every single step. I remember going back to the table with the creatives and saying, "What do we feel about this? What do we think? What are these words? What's the economy in the speech? What's the melodic structure of the song?" Every bit of it I'm just so happy with and proud of.

Question: You're on stage so much and have so many solos. How demanding is doing eight shows a week?
Glover: Well, eight shows a week of any show, play or musical, is a job. What's beautiful about actors, especially stage actors, is they're there because they love the work, they love the job, and they also make it look like fun, or easy. ...It requires skill and it requires discipline and focus. Otherwise the workload is really heavy. For me it goes in two parts. The first is [that] I'm so, so lucky that this role was written with me in mind, on my voice, on my instrument. Because our team has been so collaborative, I've had an opportunity to really be involved with the sound of her and what her overall shape is vocally in the show. I would never have agreed to anything that I didn't think was true to her or that I couldn't produce consistently. Number two is once you lay a foundation, you can also improve on it. Over the course of six years, over the course of the last six weeks since we started previews, I've just been able to continue to reach and reach. Holding it up every day is about, for me, keeping it simple. I warm up, I get rest, I use a technique that I paid so many thousands of dollars in college education for. [Laughs.] I go to work every day with an agenda, some things I want to touch on in the run of things.  Continued...