Even in the animated video to Benjamin Scheur’s song “The Lion,” something deeply emotional happens less than a minute in. It isn’t just the nostalgia of the brown and yellow landscape, on which paper cutouts of animals — giraffes, lions, and their cubs — spring to life, nuzzle, and teach each other. There’s something deeper there too, caught in the just-flinty parts of Scheuer’s voice.
“I’m learning what it means to really roar,” he sings out. You can hear a bold, ready edge in the lyrics. This is where the rubber is hitting the road that’s otherwise called coming of age.
Scheuer’s The Lion, which opens at Long Wharf Theatre this Wednesday, is filled with that sort of soul-bearing honesty and candor, telling the story of Scheuer’s first 30 years on earth through narrative-packed song, six finely tuned guitars, and uncharacteristically well-crafted audience banter. Lifted from his afternoons and evenings gigging at coffee shops in New York’s Greenwich Village, the play traverses life events — his father’s death, a major break up, a cancer diagnosis, and more — to bring the audience a story to which they can, he hopes, relate. Performances run through Feb. 7; more ticket information here.
I had the chance to catch up with him about how the work has changed since its celebrated debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and performances in cities across the United States, and what his hopes are for New Haven’s theater attendees this month.
New Haven Independent: Let’s start with the genesis of The Lion.
Benjamin Scheuer: Well it started as a coffee shop gig … I’d written a bunch of autobiographical songs and I didn’t know what I was gonna say between the songs at these gigs. So I figured: ‘well, I’ve memorized the songs, so I might as well memorize what I’m going to say, and I can write it down. And so that’s what I did. So I realized … at a coffee shop gig, you can tell when people are bored, right? They check their phone, they get a cup of coffee or something. And so I’m trying to play the best gigs possible, I try to see when people are bored and get rid of those moments.
NHI: I’m curious how this has changed and morphed, as something that was always in front of an audience. Do you feel like there’s been organic change that’s happened?
Scheuer: Since it began as a coffee shop gig, that change has been a constant. I’ve never done it without an audience. Every single time I perform it, it informs how I can better perform it.
NHI: It’s interesting, though, to turn that form into a show — because the art of gigging and audience banter is a very specific thing. I feel like if someone is a very proficient musician, but they can’t pull off all of the different aspects that come together for a live performance, it’s not a great show.
Scheuer: Yeah, exactly. You go see a band and you realize the between song stuff is boring and it loses momentum. One thing that Nine Inch Nails does really well is that they craft their shows as pieces of theater, where their between-song connective tissue is as thoughtful as the songs themselves. They’re making theater.
NHI: That seems like an appropriate segue into asking about your influences, not only for this show, but as a musician, which is where you started. It sounds like you were bitten by the music bug very very early in life.
Scheuer: Yeah. My father taught me to play the guitar … and as a kid, I wanted to play guitar like Eddie Van Halen. It was only when I realized to my horror that Eddie Van Halen played guitar like Eddie Van Halen that I realized I could play like myself. That said, I had a ton of influences. I’m a big hip-hop man, lyrically, Tupac Shakur, Outkast, Nas, Jurassic Five. I loved Frank Lester, Cole Porter, George Gershwin. Jean Rohe is a big influence of mine. Paris Monster I’m a very big fan of — and then of course Nine Inch Nails. I was lucky enough to work with Josh Freese, the drummer from Nine Inch Nails, on the record for Songs From a Lion coming out later this year. Things are coming full circle, and that’s been really cool.
NHI: So you come back to NiN as a group that’s really successful at coming back to the audience and honing their craft, and looking at show that’s a holistic thing where you can’t just perform good music and leave it at that — do you remember going to other shows as a musician who was working your way up in the ranks?
Scheuer: Where the between-song banter was really smart? Yeah. Rufus Wainwright is a pretty astounding performer, and I guess it’s no surprise that he works in theater. I think he really knows the value of costume and dialogue and monologue … he’s written opera. I think he does a really great job. AC/DC is really good at putting on a good show. Stone Temple Pilots was an amazing band.
NHI: In performance, there is often this question of: how much of your “soul” do you want to bear on stage? This show is very much a coming of age journey about you. So did you kind of just shrug off self-consciousness? Do you feel like you have to, as a performer?
Scheuer: Well, conveniently, even though I’m playing myself, I’m still playing a character. I think all performers are. I’m telling the story of the first 30 years of my life in 67 minutes. I make sure that I’ve gotta hyperbolize and I’ve gotta leave things out. If fiction is lying by what you put in, nonfiction is lying by what you leave out.
NHI: So at the end of the day, do you feel like it’s what most worked at most of your shows? At all of your shows?
Scheuer: The director Sean Daniels and I really made an effort to craft a piece of theater that would work and be built very classically … my story is not an original one by any stretch of the imagination. My father died when I was 13. That happens to people. I was dating and then broke up with a girl. That is in no way original. I got advanced stage cancer. All this stuff has happened to a ton of people. All of this stuff is not original … but there’s my way of telling it. In that way, it’s not even my story. It’s my version of everybody’s.
NHI: But there’s also something deeply comforting in that, no?
Scheuer: Yeah. Sometimes “me too” are the most spiritual words you can hear. “Me too.” It takes the worst things in our lives, the things that make us feel disconnected from other people, and actually those are the things that connect us. That’s magic. That’s cool.
NHI: How has the feedback been?
Scheuer: After the show, I sell a book in the lobby, it’s called Between Two Spaces. I would photograph once a week while I got chemotherapy. I made a book of these images, along with text from a journal I kept. I raise money for the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society. It’s something that’s important to me. So I sell it in the lobby and I go hang out afterwards and sign the books and chat with the audience about it, and they come and tell me their stories. I really like meeting folks who are musicians and artists and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters. One thing I really like doing is coming to a town and hanging out at the local coffee shop and going to the open mics, hearing what all the other writers are working on. That really excites me.
NHI: And do you feel like now you’re able to be in a mentor kind of role for younger artists?
Scheuer: Yeah. Teaching’s very important to me, and when I have the opportunity to help writers, certainly young writers, I take that opportunity to be a blessing and take it very seriously.
