Art often reflects world events, such as politics — but usually those reflections come long after the events happen.
With Salt Lake Acting Company’s current show, the musical comedy “Close Encounters in the Beehive,” one of those events — the 2024 presidential election — is happening in real time. And when President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he would drop out of the race, the play’s creators made changes in real time, too.
Olivia Custodio, one of the three playwrights (alongside Penelope Caywood and David Knoell) said the show focuses on two aliens arriving on Earth “as a part of a mission set forth by overlord Elon Musk, who wants them to determine if the Earth is worth saving or not. In order to come to that conclusion, they’re going to observe the humans in Salt Lake, which is, you know, a great slice of humanity.”
In the show, Custodio said, “The aliens are investigating all parts of what makes Utah, Utah; what makes human beings, human beings. Of course, they get on the subject of politics, and momentarily drop in on this presidential debate moment.”
Originally, the show ended with a scene that features a reenactment of Biden and former President Donald Trump’s Presidential debate from June 27. It also featured a song number.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Actors Noelani Brown, left, and Robert Scott Smith portray Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden in a rehearsal Tuesday, July 23, 2024, for Salt Lake Acting Company's production of "Close Encounters in the Beehive." The play's writers wrote a new scene and a new song for the revue in 24 hours, to reflect the change in the presidential campaign when Biden dropped out.
“The original song, that’s like the debate and they’re talking back and forth in this song,” Caywood said. It’s all set to the song “You Gotta Have a Gimmick,” from the musical “Gypsy.”
Even before Biden’s Sunday announcement, Custodio said she received a text from Cynthia Fleming, SLAC’s executive artistic director and director of “Close Encounters in the Beehive.” Custodio got the text while she was in New York, taking a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“She texted me, ‘You know, we need to think of a contingency plan, if Biden ends up dropping out,’” Custodio said.
Custodio started texting Caywood, who was in Chicago; both were stranded by the global tech outage that disrupted air travel. The pair wrote a new scene and song in 24 hours.
When Biden made his announcement Sunday, and Vice President Kamala Harris announced she would run for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, the playwrights put their plans into direct action.
“We immediately just started texting back and forth ideas about how we could tweak the scene,” Custodio said. “We knew that the scene is such a crowd favorite that we knew we didn’t want to cut it. We knew that we had to rewrite it and figure out how we can move the actors around. Obviously, we would need to add a little bit of a different song.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Micki Martinez, left, and Mark Nielson, play Melania Trump and former President Donald Trump in a rehearsal Tuesday, July 23, 2024, for Salt Lake Acting Company's production of "Close Encounters in the Beehive." The play's writers wrote a new scene and a new song for the revue in 24 hours, to reflect the change in the presidential campaign when President Joe Biden dropped out.
Caywood agreed that “it is a crowd favorite so we wanted a way to kind of keep that. But move things around. So then the questions are, like, ‘Do we now include Kamala? How does Biden take a different role? Take a back seat to that as he has done? How do we pass the baton to Kamala in that moment?’”
The solution came from writing another song for Biden (played by Robert Scott Smith), Caywood said, that would “allow him to pass the baton, essentially, so that Kamala [played by Noelani Brown] can have a bigger part in a mock debate.” They also added a cameo from Melania Trump (played by Micki Martinez), spoofing her appearance at the Republican National Convention.
They then divided the labor. Custodio took on the task of rewriting the scene. Caywood wrote the new song, working with the production’s music director, Zack Hansen. They sent the scene to Fleming, giving the cast 24 hours to learn the new scene and the song before performing it in front of an audience.
On Tuesday, 5½ hours before a show, the cast and crew gathered together to learn their new scene and song, the dialogue and lyrics punctuated by SLAC’s patented humor. Fleming directed the actors, encouraging Smith to talk and enunciate his lines the way Biden does.
The crew adjusted lighting cues and props to accommodate the new scene as Brown perfected her Kamala face, Mark Nielson, who plays Trump, perfected his voice and Scott nailed down Biden’s classic double thumbs-up stance. The plan, as of Tuesday afternoon, was to incorporate the new scene in Tuesday night’s show.
The show, Custodio said, aims every summer to be as “topical” as possible, but this year the magnitude is different, given that the show has already been running since its premiere on June 26, just a day before the presidential debate. The show runs through Aug. 18. Tickets are available at saltlakeactingcompany.org.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Robert Scott Smith, left, and Noelani Brown play President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in a rehearsal Tuesday, July 23, 2024, for Salt Lake Acting Company's production of "Close Encounters in the Beehive." The play's writers wrote a new scene and a new song for the revue in 24 hours, to reflect the change in the presidential campaign when Biden dropped out.
At a Tuesday rehearsal, Fleming said they’ve workshopped the production as things unfold in the political world — like using a golf club prop on opening night, and letting Nielson wear an ear bandage like the one Trump wore just days after the assassination attempt on the former president.
It’s not often in theater that scenes are workshopped at the last minute like this. Caywood said she thinks this case is different for a few reasons, like the fact that this play’s run is longer, and the nature of the summer show.
“Any kind of standard show — that’s maybe not a satire or parody of something else — may not be going through these kinds of revisions, unless it’s been workshopped,” Caywood said. “In this particular case, it’s special, but it’s also really fun, because we have to stay on our toes.”
Creating “Close Encounters in the Beehive” is also a way for Custodio and Caywood to deal with the state of the world, they said.
“I came to Utah 11 years ago now for grad school. I was moving from New York City. For me, when I went and saw the summer show at SLAC, that immediately was where I felt like, ‘Oh, OK, I think living here could be OK.’ It was such a community,’” Custodio said.
The summer show, a tradition that started in 1978 with “Saturday’s Voyeur,” is a “cornerstone” of SLAC, Custodio said. “It is a reflection of local politics, national politics, local goings on that aren’t politics. You know, poking fun at our very, very unique culture, the things that make Utah very much Utah.”
“Seeing the actors perform it and sing the songs or do their stuff. That was such a huge rush. … It’s cathartic. It does give you that release and it makes you feel like you’re not alone,” Caywood said of “Close Encounters.”
