On Location: ‘Illinoise’ Puts the Midwest—and Sufjan Stevens—on the Broadway Stage

Matthew Murphy

From Chicago to Metropolis, Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 folk opus Illinois packs what feels like a whole nation’s history into the borders of one state. Covering everything from the World’s Fair and UFO sightings to the invention of cream of wheat, the album captivated listeners far beyond the Midwest.

One of those listeners was Justin Peck. An award-winning choreographer, Peck worked with Stevens over a decade ago when he used his music for the New York City Ballet, but long had the idea to turn Illinois into a show of its own. With Stevens’ approval, Peck called on the help of Pulitzer-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury to craft a story based on the album’s songs, and tell that story through dance.

Illinoise—whose title is spelled and pronounced with the “e” as it’s stylized on the artwork for Stevens’ album—opened on Broadway this March, and has since earned several Tony nominations, including a win for choreography. With four weeks left in their run at St. James Theater, we caught up with Peck and Drury about taking inspiration from their midwestern friends, the logistics of dancing in hiking shoes, and telling a story about America only with movement and the music of Sufjan Stevens.

The show is framed by this big campfire scene, where the characters are sitting around reading from their journals. How did the idea for that come about?

Justin Peck: The campfire is the oldest place for storytelling. You can go back to the origins of humanity, and people would gather around a fire for warmth, and they would have time to kill, so they would entertain one another with stories or songs or dance. There's something about a campfire that's very equalizing, like everyone can find access to it. It's an experience that almost everyone's had, whether it's out in the woods, in someone's backyard, or on the beach.

Where I grew up in San Diego, there were public beaches that had these concrete pits, so you could just go with friends, find an empty one, and make a night of it.

Jackie Sibblies Drury: The campfire was really Justin’s idea, but I grew up going to sleep-away Girl Scout camp in northern New Jersey. That was my campfire experience, telling ghost stories and singing songs, roasting marshmallows.

JP: It had to do with the aesthetic of the music, too. A lot of songs [from Illinois] have this folktale quality, and the album itself was made in a very DIY way. Sufjan was very scrappy about it and I felt like the setting of the campfire aligned quite well. If the music wasn't the way it is, I don't know if we would have gone to that place.

JD: Like, if we were doing Nirvana, I don’t know if it would be set around a campfire.

Another scrappy element in the show is the booklet that comes tucked into the Playbill—it reads like a journal of the story that the protagonist, Henry, tells on stage through dance.

There’s a part in that booklet I love where Henry won’t let himself write the F-word, and he says that’s “the most midwestern thing about me.” Was it important to y’all to make these characters feel of the Midwest?

JD: I do feel like Henry is a Midwestern character. He isn’t a liberal coastal elite. He is someone that grew up in a different class and had different access to art and to people who lived their lives in different ways. I also feel like every Midwestern person I know has this need for politeness deeply ingrained.

The whole show feels very American—even the set. Justin talked a bunch with our set designer, Adam Rigg, about trying to figure out this post industrial, worn down, re-naturalized setting. It's something that feels American but also really Midwestern. The show is sort of suffused with this landscape.

JP: There's also certain choreography that we harness to help define the characters. For example, during the song “Decatur,” which shows the beginnings of Henry's journey, we see the environment of his small town and his relationships with his two best friends. There was a sincerity to it that felt very pure, and we wanted to set that character in that kind of small town setting, so that there was something left for him to desire—a kind of curiosity to explore more of what else is out there in the world. Choreographically, “Decatur” is actually quite simple. It's mostly inspired by mundane body language and games that young kids play together. The film Stand By Me has a quality of that—playing on the outskirts of town on the train tracks.

That contrasted with the next choice that Henry and Carl make during the song “Chicago,” to leave it all behind and speed down the freeway to Chicago and then to New York. Then, we get the exhilaration of the transition away from the Midwestern, from the small town to big city. I think some people get confused because it's called “Chicago,” so they're like, “Oh, it's a song about Chicago,” but it's really about this wanderlust and this adrenaline of travel, and moving into a bigger metropolitan space.

There’s so much joy onstage during “Chicago.” Did stories from your own lives inspire what you did for that song?

JP: Definitely. I grew up in a kind of sleepy surf town just north of San Diego. So even though San Diego is a pretty major city, it had a quiet feel to it. I craved something with more energy, and I couldn't get to New York soon enough. I came to New York [for school] when I was 15, and I haven't left since. At 15, or your late teens, it’s a big moment for establishing a sense of independence and self, so that feels very personal to me with the “Chicago” scene. We were trying to capture the spirit of what it feels like to go through that as a young person—the potential in this new beginning.

JD: One of my favorite parts of the show is during the verses of “Chicago,” when there's very little movement at all, and you're watching this silent, naturalistic scene between these two boys, Henry and Carl, and they're just talking and making each other laugh. It feels so intimate, even though there's 10 cast members around them making the image of this car. It’s the magic of that to me—you're in the car with them, feeling exactly what they're feeling.

In my own life, I've had the best and, sort of, deepest conversations with people that I love while we're driving somewhere. There's something about the attention of looking at the road and other things outside that means you end up being able to talk about really deep things, or just to spend quality time.

The road trip is such an American rite of passage, too. When you talk to people from other countries, the idea of being in a car for 12 straight hours—you would be in another country by then. Here, you’re barely through Pennsylvania. There's something about the expanse of it that Justin captures so beautifully in the choreography.

Did the show always have this through line about the experience of travel? Or did that come about somewhere in the creative process?

JP: It was guided by the music. It feels expansive in the way that the geography of this country is expansive too.

JD: Yeah, I realized we accidentally made a classical bildungsroman, not to use obnoxious words, where a young boy needs to leave home in order to learn about himself and be able to go back. In Illinoise, Henry doesn't necessarily go back to the Midwest, but he's able to go back to himself. There is this idea—which I think is common for a lot of young people—where you need to leave home to figure out who you are. That's true for your entire life. For some people, it's true for just a trip or a vacation to get out of your normal situation, so that you can think about things in a different way.

JP: You can live vicariously through the travel experience of the show. For me, I'm not a big camper. This is the closest thing I'll ever get to camping—to create a musical that shows people camping.

On that note, can we talk about the costumes? Most of the dancers are wearing flannels, hiking gear, or some other outdoorsy garb, which I assume is not typical of Broadway. Was that a challenge?

JP: Oh, the cast loved it. It’s the most comfortable show ever. Those are clothes designed for comfort, flexibility, and mobility, so it was an easy match.

The one thing I'll say is that the shoes are a little bit tricky to figure out. The gripping of sneakers or hiking shoes is too much to be able to turn and maneuver, so we had to develop a kind of sueding for the bottom of the shoes. It's down to a very precise science where it's part suede, part a slightly more grippy material called cat's paw, and then another part of suede. Some of it’s down to a very precise science, and there was a lot of trial and error.

JD: Oh my gosh, you could make a documentary about it. Like a Jiro Dreams of Sushi-style documentary about surface mechanics between floor and bottom of shoe. It's so insane.

The costuming as a whole, too, is really amazing. Because there's no dialogue, and you're not able to do set changes because you need space on the dance floor, the costumes are a big way to communicate a sense of place. For example, Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung [the show’s costume designers] dressed the character Shelby, played by Gaby Diaz, in this very specifically colored dress that is so small town Midwestern. It’s this cornflower blue—I don't see people in that particular color outside of, like, the 90s and 2000s in the Midwest.

There’s also so much history being communicated through the album Illinois and then through the show. Can we talk about “Jacksonville” specifically, and what histories y’all were aiming to tell with that song?

JD: A lot of the stories voiced by characters in the show are pulled from the perspective of a person who is trying to wrestle with something in their own lives. In “Jacksonville,” it felt very much like it was an African-American character, who was from the Midwest and trying to figure out what her place is in the politics of our country and of her town. It's a character who's trying to contend with being a Black person in America, but then also, it's about a Black dancer dancing in America, and thinking about the lineage that we owe our ability to perform to.

To me, there's something neat about “Jacksonville” where the story that's being told is able to be more than one thing because it's not defined by language. When I see [cast member] Byron Till come out, and he's wearing a suit and has tap shoes on, I see this Black ancestor character and also this Black preacher character, which is referenced in the song. I also see Black dancers from history. He's able to be all of those things at the same time, and that's something that you don't get to do very often.

Lastly, before the show came to Broadway, Illinoise played at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. How was it performing Illinoise in Illinois?

JP: It was amazing. The audiences immediately took ownership over it and connected with it—I feel like we had some of our most enthusiastic audiences there. I remember at the first preview we had, there was one audience member who made charm bracelets and sent them out to everyone. I have this one that says “Man of steel, man of heart,” which is a lyric from “The Man of Metropolis Steals our Hearts.”

Jackie, do you know which one you have?

JD: I was just trying to remember what it says, because it was something from “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” and it wasn't a lyric that you sing very much. I was like, whoa.

JP: Oh yeah. Some of them were really obscure so, you know, you could tell that was a real fan.

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler

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