Open Book: ON YOUR FEET!'s Bookwriter Alexander Dinelaris Finds Songs To Move Stories Forward

ON YOUR FEET!, a musical biography of Emilio & Gloria Estefan with a score comprised of songs they produced and recorded, is the Broadway debut for bookwriter Alexander Dinelaris. Previously, his plays THE CHAOS THEORIES, STILL LIFE and RED DOG HOWLS have been produced Off-Broadway and he is one of the four screenwriters who won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for the 2014 satirical dark comedy about a Hollywood star on Broadway, "Birdman."

Growing up on Long Island, Dinelaris and his grandmother would often take the train into New York for theatre trips.

"The first two Broadway shows I saw were GODSPELL and PIPPIN, but it wasn't until I was in high school seeing shows like SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE and GRAND HOTEL that I really began to appreciate musicals. I loved Sondheim. I saw SWEENEY TODD when I was a kid. SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE was one of the ones where I sat there at intermission thinking 'Oh God, I'm ruined.'"

But his first experience working on the book of a musical was with a much lighter and uplifting project. ZANNA, DON'T!, which opened Off-Broadway in 2002, is about a magical matchmaker in a world where being gay is the norm and straight people are looked on with fear and suspicion.

"I was basically helping out Tim Acito who was the genius who wrote the music and lyrics and the original book. I was brought in to offer an outside eye to make it a little more concrete. Tim was so closely involved with everything. It was really a lot of fun and it had its heart in the right place. And we were honored with Drama Desk nominations for Best Musical and for the book, music and lyrics. After growing up loving musical theatre that was my first time working professionally on one. The music was wonderful and the lyrics were so clever. I was supplying the glue to keep it all together."

"There's a Mark Twain quote. Something like, 'I'm sorry to write you such a long letter. I would have written a shorter one, but I didn't have time.' That's bookwriting. You have to be concise. You have to get to your point quickly. The big difference between musicals and plays is that in plays the big scene is usually two people throwing it all out there against each other. In a musical the big scene always has to leave room for the music."

Dinelaris followed ZANNA, DON'T! with three high-profile Off-Broadway plays: THE CHAOS THEORIES at the McGinn-Cazale Theatre, STILL LIFE, produced by MCC at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, and RED DOG HOWLS, mounted by New York Theatre Workshop. His first job writing the full book of a musical, a West End production based on the 1992 film "The Bodyguard" and using songs recorded by Whitney Houston, came about when the producers contacted his agent, Olivier Sultan, inquiring about a few different choices for the musical's bookwriter.

"I wasn't on anybody's radar as far as the books of musicals are concerned but my agent felt out the material and told them he thought the best person for the job was Alex Dinelaris. And they probably said 'Who the hell is that?' But he sent them my play STILL LIFE and they immediately called back and said 'Yes, we want to talk to him.' I wasn't sure if I wanted to do THE BODYGUARD at the time, but I did the research and watched the film and saw how it could become a musical. So we met and I told them how I would do it. Then they called Olivier and said they loved my ideas and that's how I got involved."

Naturally, there would be the presumption that certain fan-favorite songs would have to be worked into the show, but Dinelaris says that wasn't the case.

"Nobody told me what songs to choose. There are some songs that not everyone would know, but they're the best songs to move the story forward."

Still there were certain restricts to contend with.

"With THE BODYGUARD I had a catalogue of songs I couldn't change the lyrics to. That's not malleable. It's concrete. And then I have a movie that everybody knows. The challenge of catalogue musicals is choosing a song that one way or another moves the story forward. It has to be there. You can't just stop and sing the song."

"There was a Whitney Houston song called "Oh, Yes" that nobody really knew, but it was a song I needed."

When the opportunity came to write the book for On Your Feet!, there was a bit more flexibility involved. Gloria Estefan's father suffered from multiple sclerosis and Dinelaris created a scene where, while she's at his bedside, she imagines him advising her with "When Someone Comes Into Your Life."

"The song is originally a love song, but I saw that if I could change one word in the lyric it could be a song a father would sing to his daughter. "When someone comes into your life, take a chance, my love...." "It might even feel right when you kiss him goodnight and not me..." When you take it out of a romantic love context it's very sweet. When a man replaces your father, that's what happens.

There's a lyric that said, "I will love you the same as I did that first day I found you," and I asked Gloria if I could change this one word to change the whole context of the song. Change the world "found" to "held." All of a sudden the rest of the lyric fell into place and the song can push the story forward."

"Good bookwriting is like good lighting. People don't really notice it but they shouldn't if it's serving the story. Then you point out what it's doing and they say, 'Ah, that makes sense.'"

While Dinelaris has received offers to write books for musicals with new scores, he hasn't come across one that feels right to him. He says "size" is the main quality he looks for in source material.

"The content, no matter how quirky, needs to have dramatic size, emotional size. It has to make me feel 'This could fill a theatre. This could be big.' Not that there aren't good chamber musicals, but it needs to have a certain epic-ness, whether it's romantic or artistic."

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On Your Feet!, the new Broadway musical is based on the life of seven-time GRAMMY winning international superstar Gloria Estefan and her husband, nineteen-time GRAMMY winning producer-musician-entrepreneur Emilio Estefan.

Directed by two-time Tony Award winner Jerry Mitchell (Kinky Boots, Hairspray) and choreographed by Olivier Award winner Sergio Trujillo (Jersey Boys, Memphis) with an original book by Academy Award winner Alexander Dinelaris (Birdman, The Bodyguard Musical), ON YOUR FEET! landed on Broadway following a world premiere summer engagement at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago.

Emilio and Gloria Estefan have sold over 100 million records, won more than two dozen GRAMMY Awards, and sold out stadiums across the world - but their music is only half the story. From the heart of Havana to the streets of Miami came a cultural phenomenon unlike anything the music industry had ever seen. On Your Feet! is a new Broadway musical that follows the Estefans' journey to superstardom, set to their chart-topping, smash hits, including "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You," "Conga," "1-2-3," "Get On Your Feet," "Mi Tierra," Don't Want To Lose You Now," and "Reach," in addition to an original song written by Gloria and her daughter Emily Estefan.