Easy to Love

May 11

An Interview with Karen Cassady and Travis Sharp of Gutenberg! The Musical!

with Ames Doyle

What do you get when you combine two pals, the theater, and an unlikely dream? The answer (within an answer) is Karen Cassady and Travis Sharp, long-time Dad’s Garage ensemble members and stars of the to-be-remounted Gutenberg! The Musical!, a beloved Broadway hit that follows the off-the-wall journey of two friends and their magnum opus—a musical about the inventor of the printing press, Johann Gutenberg.

Dad’s Garage sat down with the long-time collaborators to chat about their history together, what makes Gutenberg! The Musical! so special, and why now is the time to bring it back to Dad’s Garage.

Karen Cassady and Travis Sharp as Bev Davenport and Doug Simon. Photo by Casey Gardner Ford.

**DG: What drew you to Gutenberg initially?**

KC: The utter chaos of it. It’s a two-person show where you play every character in an over-the-top, dead serious, wildly inaccurate musical about Gutenberg; how could I not be in? I love playing big, bold characters, and this show is full of them. Plus, the “show within a show” aspect lets you play with layers, subtext, and the dynamic between the two writers. It’s a dream!

TS: Gutenberg! The Musical! is easy to love. It's laugh-out-loud funny throughout, and is presented by two of the most loveable, earnest characters in musical theatre history. That's the initial draw—but the more you get to know this seemingly silly show, the more you realize there's so much more to it.

DG: Gutenberg! The Musical! was a smash hit with critics and Dad's Garage audiences when it was performed back in 2014—why do you think now is the time to bring it back for round two?

KC: Gutenberg! The Musical! had a popular Broadway run in 2023, which brought a lot of new attention to it and reminded people how fun and clever it is. But honestly, more than that, it just feels like the right time to bring it back. People could really use a good laugh right now, and this show is packed with them. And underneath all the comedy, there’s a lot of heart too—it’s not just funny, it actually leaves you feeling good.

TS: What a wild journey Gutenberg! The Musical! has been on. It started as a tiny show that would squeeze itself onto a tiny stage at Upright Citizen's Brigade's tiny NYC theatre in the early 2000s. Got an Off-Broadway run in 2006-2007. Some Dad's Garage folks had seen it and thought the humor and sensibilities were perfect and we did the show in 2014. And then this little show about a couple of hapless creators dreaming of making it to Broadway made it to Broadway in 2023. Honestly, the timing is perfect because we somehow managed to get the rights to perform the show. Why weren't we doing this before?

The poster for the 2014 production of *Gutenberg! The Musical!* starring George Faughnan and Rene Dellefont.

DG: Karen, what's it like collaborating with Travis Sharp?

KC: The best! I’ve gotten to work with Trav over the past 16 years on improv, scripted stuff, and even a kids' podcast we’re working on together called Tales from the Cloud Sea, and every time I’m reminded how smart and hilarious he is. He’s so good at bouncing off people in the room and turning that into really fun, creative ideas.

DG: What's it like collaborating with Karen Cassady?

TS: Working with Karen is nearly impossible in the best way. She is sooo funny, it's hard to focus. Every reading, every rehearsal, every scene she is doing something hilarious and new and I have to constantly remind myself, "you're not her audience right now, you're her castmate—focus!"

DG: What do you each uniquely bring to this particular production?

KC: Trav brings so much to this. He’s a playwright himself and has written really successful shows—including Hot Jambalaya, which is up at Horizon right now—so he just has a great instinct for the writing. He’s really good at pulling out little moments that Anthony King and Scott Brown wrote and helping me see them in a new way. He brings this tone that shows not just how funny he is as an actor, but also how much he gets the script as a writer.

And for me, I bring the fact that I’m a woman into a show that was originally written for two men. It’s been really fun to play with that and see what it opens up, especially since there have been more productions lately with all-female casts. It makes it feel like we’re part of that shift and getting to tell the story from a slightly different perspective.

TS: Karen Cassady is one of the most watchable performers I've ever seen. She makes comedy look so easy—every choice she makes is gold. She can cross the stage funny. She can walk down stairs funny. She can read the phonebook funny (no idea where she found the phone book—do they still make those?). Audiences are going to freak out when they see Karen playing so many different ridiculous characters, it's a comedy buffet.

I'm playing this show like a playwright. My character is an optimistic (and potentially deluded) playwright with dreams that haven't quite materialized. I'm an optimistic (and potentially deluded) playwright with dreams that haven't quite materialized. As Buck Owens says, "All I gotta do is act naturally."

DG: Karen, as a director of many Invasion: Christmas Carol **shows, would you want to direct Gutenberg! The Musical! if it were pitched to you by Bev and Doug?**

KC: If I could make it a comedy… then maybe.

DG: Travis, you've written musicals in real life—is playing Doug almost TOO real?

TS: Yeah, me playing Doug is pretty on the nose. Doug is a hapless playwright who just keeps chugging along writing musicals and hoping the next one is going to make it to Broadway. I'm currently working on my seventh musical and if any of them have made it to Broadway, I haven't heard about it yet. There's a beauty to that. As you watch this silly show about a poorly conceived play, you start to realize that the story isn't about Johann Gutenberg and his invention, it's about sustaining yourself by pursuing your dreams alongside people you love. I've been lucky enough to do that at Dad's Garage for a quarter of a century, so I'm OK with art imitating life so damn closely.

DG: If you were going to write a musical about one invention, what would it be?

KC: The Banana Slicer.

TS: Gelatin doesn't get nearly enough attention. It's popularity seemed to peak in the 70s and now nobody gives a shit about it. We can make almost any food into a jiggly translucent glob! Why aren't we embracing this more?!?!

Gutenberg! The Musical! opens at Dad’s Garage Friday, June 5 and runs every Thursday through Sunday through June 28, including matinee performances on Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Previews are June 3 and 4.

GUTENBERG! THE MUSICAL! is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals.

www.concordtheatricals.com

Lillian Boff