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Video: Jeremy Jordan Says FLOYD COLLINS Is an 'Incredible Challenge'
Mar 13, 2025
Broadway will be singing a new ballad this spring! Lincoln Center Theater continues its 40th anniversary season with the Broadway premiere of Tina Landau and Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins. Watch in this video as the company chats more about what audiences can expect!
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It's been really exciting and fun and an incredible challenge, but in the greatest ways
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I definitely am more interested in being challenged than trying to pull material up and elevate it
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I have to sort of elevate myself to the material, and that's what I'm attempting to do in this show
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World, Lincoln Center Theater, which is celebrating their first
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40th anniversary season, will present the Broadway premiere of Adam Gettle and Tina Landau's
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classic musical Floyd Collins. We dropped by the rehearsal room to meet the company, led by Jeremy Jordan
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Well, you know, at first it was unreal until I walked in here. The first day for the first workshop, I got teary, and I didn't stop quasi-crying for days
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because it's so emotional and it's so meaningful to us on so many levels
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And I think our goal was to both honor what we're. we did and know that we made something that we don't quite understand how we made it
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but to know that it worked in its own way. And also to apply our grown experience selves to looking at the question of how we might make it stronger and better
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It's been, you know, when you see a godchild or a second cousin or something after five years
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and they're really tall and was sort of like seeing a godchild
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ourselves that way, not tall necessarily, but different, and to be careful about applying what we know now
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to something that is a living breathing thing But we changed it a lot but carefully This show has always been one of my very favorites When people ask me what was your happiest experience in the theater There one day in particular on this show that I point to
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and Adam and I were working on a song together and creating the harmonies in the moment on our actors
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and being really happy with the results. So it's been great to be back in a room with Adam and Tina again
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We're good friends. I've known Adam since he was in high school
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and Tina and I went to college together. So we have a level of trust and mutual admiration at this point that is very, very special
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What's it been like working on this score and finding your version of it
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Yeah, it's been wild because, you know, it's so intricate and so specific and is so like
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you know, like Adam tends to do and the counting and the timing
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So we were very lucky. In November we did like a three-week workshop kind of closed session
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where the whole cast was there and we all learned all the music
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So when we came back in in February, we just had a little review, which is great
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I'm still working on it, obviously. And it's mostly just like, the hard part for me is like all the counting
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and all the like making sure everything lines up and when you get the instruments in there
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that's going to change the ideas of it. But the musicality and the show itself
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and the gorgeous sweepiness and the strangeness of it. I've just leaned straight into and, um, you know, a lot of it's muscle memory too, but it's, um
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it's been really exciting and, and fun and an incredible challenge, uh, but in the greatest
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ways Like I I definitely am more interested in being challenged than you know trying to pull material up and elevate it I have to sort of elevate myself to the material and that what I attempting to do in this show
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I mean, the score is so incredible and genius and intricate and also, like, not intuitive in the slightest
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but it's so beautiful, and I think Adam is just, like, a genius
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And it's been so fun to sing these songs, and they just feel almost like they were written for me to sing
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Like, it really feels like divine timing that I was available for this
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and it happened at the same time that I was right. It just like all feels like it's falling into place
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It has this like merrily we roll along feel. That Tina, Adam and Ted Spurling, who made the original our back
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reuniting after all these years to do it again, it's been amazing to see them kind of, yeah, like you said
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rediscover what this is because they've separated from it a little bit
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because they knew that until they were ready to revisit it, they had to kind of have some distance from it
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And so watching them greet the piece again, along with all of us who are new to it
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has been really, really special. I mean, the fact that it is so new, it's so collaborative
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it's such a passion project. It's such a gorgeous piece. I mean, Tina said, I mean, she comes in every day
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with new words, new dialogue that are kind of changed up, and it fits the piece the way it was before
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but it just expands on it, and it makes it more accessible. It's so wonderful. It's so great
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How cool to work on a show with such a long arc of fruition to the Broadway stage
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I think very rare that a show has a legend built around it, and it's a show about a legend
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And we get to now bring that older piece to a newer stage and bring it to a larger audience It very unique and really really cool It wonderful to us to be entrusted as a company that she so incredibly selected
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to take care of what I feel like they've also called, like, their baby
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And we get to be the aunts and uncles and cousins that get to bring this thing to life
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And it's just a wonderful experience to watch and work with these high
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vibrating, high-frequency artists, like, you know, and learn from every day. They're still stretching us every day to tell the story
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This has been my favorite musical for as long as I can remember. I used to scream the riddle song in the car on the way to school until I could taste blood
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They didn't ask us to sing in this one. I think maybe kind of the blood tasting might have a little to do with that, but I couldn't be happier
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There's something about it that just really speaks to, I think, people's humanity
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And I really do believe that's why people connect with it so much
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is that it's saying, like, achieving the dream isn't necessary the glory
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The glory is actually being in the moment and aspiring to something
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That's what's glorious. And I really do feel like that's such a huge part of the show
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And it's never said outright, but I think anybody can relate to that
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We were talking about how Floyd wasn't exactly received the way I thought it should have been
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The same thing happened with Parade when I did Parade here. and then, you know, 25 years later
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had that glorious revival last year. So I think it's the right time for the show
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and I think people are ready. Chicago was not well-reviewed. Sweeney Todd was not well-reviewed
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Shall we go through the list of iconic shows that were not well-reviewed
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because they were ahead of their time and singular in their voices
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and this is one of them
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