Next week, La Jolla Playhouse will unveil its latest world premiere musical, "The Heart." Here's how a play about a human heart came to life.
Human organs aren’t usually the leading characters in a play, making La Jolla Playhouse’s "The Heart" the exception that proves the rule.
"Yes," said La Jolla Playhouse Artistic Director Christopher Ashley. "This is a world premiere musical, which takes place during 24 hours in the life of a heart."
Ashley, who is also directing the play, has been guiding "The Heart" through its long evolution.
"The two composers, Ian and Anne Eisendrath, and I started out about a decade ago working on a musical about a heart transplant based on different source material," Ashley said.
But composer Ian Eisendrath noted that the focus was all wrong: "Because the story began with a heart recipient waking up from surgery. But that is the other end of the journey. We realized we were really missing the real conflict that leads to the resolution of a heart beating in somebody else's body."
That’s when author Kait Kerigan suggested a French novel called "Mend the Living."
"And this is a beautiful, warm, deep, extraordinary, moody, electric story about 24 hours in the life of a heart," Ashley said.
"We realized, 'oh, my gosh, this book ends exactly where our other show started,'" Ian said. "And this show has so many more perspectives — it's basically anybody that has agency with the heart, from the parents to all the medical team who are so invested in not only this person's life and continuing this person's life somehow, they have all these people around the world that need these organs. And it's a pretty crazy roller coaster relay race."
And it's running against a clock.
"We have to get this transplant accomplished in a given amount of time," Ashley said. "So the pressure on the parents to decide whether or not to donate their son's organs really moments after they discover that he's in a coma. The whole thing is under the pressure of that clock, which is great for a musical. It really organizes the time in a beautiful, beautiful way."
The human heart also provides the play with its musical pulse.
"We started in on the project, and I was like, 'well, what if we use electronic music to tell this story?'" proposed composer Anne Eisendrath. "I have a background in electronic music dating back to the late '90s when I was a teenager, and I would go to dance clubs. And a heartbeat is a kick drum in a way. It's that four-on-the-floor, 120 BPM right inside of us."
The character of Juliet is a DJ and when she meets Simon — the young man whose death sets the transplant clock in motion — she notes that his heart rate is 60, and the beat she is playing 120 BPM — exactly double.
"In the book, Juliet, the girlfriend of Simon who passes away, she was an artist in the book. And I think as we got deeper and deeper into the electronic music, I think it was Kait that was like, 'well, what if she was a DJ?'" Anne said.
"The DJ has the ability to control heart rate in a lot of ways because you speed up the track, the energy of the room speeds up, and just that crazy correlation between music, heartbeats, and that was just really exciting to us," Ian said.
Juliet’s DJ is onstage driving the beat, and so too is the play’s music director, Wendy Bobbitt Cavett.
"Our music director is on stage cueing the whole thing together with the actors," Ashley said. "The theatrical work of the show is very exposed, and it's part of the fun and the interest of it. The play happens in a 22-foot square, sort of all the real-time action."
And it’s action driven by a human heart, a potent symbol in our culture.
"It's hard to talk about it without making a metaphor or a simile about, 'Let's put more heart into it in rehearsal.'" Ashley said. "But there's also something about the idea of when someone's been injured, the generosity of donating your organs so other people can have further and better lives."
Which Anne said makes the show feel timely: " I think it's a time when people are feeling really helpless right now with what's going on in the world. And I think one of the messages of this story is that everybody can make a positive difference. On a small level, it's telling the story of a greater story of how we all make a difference, and we all keep everybody going and life moving ahead."
The play seizes a moment when we need a reminder to take care of each other.
"I think it's such a divided time to tell a story about how we're all interconnected and in which we all have responsibilities to care for each other feels," Ashley stated. "It's a satisfying story to tell right this minute."
Ashley and his team are racing their own clock to make final tweaks before "The Heart" makes its world premiere next week.
Organ Donation Resources
(from La Jolla Playhouse's website)
- Donate Life California: To check or update your organ donor status, visit register.donatelifecalifornia.org
- UC San Diego Health - The Center for Transplantation: National hub of clinical expertise and research, among the nation’s best in lung, heart, kidney and liver programs. Since 1968, the center has performed thousands of transplants under a national standard of care model.
- Lifesharing: Federally designated organ procurement organization serving San Diego and Imperial counties. When a patient’s life cannot be saved, Lifesharing works to save organs and match them to patients on the waiting list, and also coordinates tissue donation at the end of life. Visit Lifesharing.org.
- Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network OPTN: A public-private partnership linking all professionals in the U.S. donation and transplantation system, as well as individuals who sign organ donor cards, comment on policy proposals and volunteer to support donation and transplantation. Learn more at optn.transplant.hrsa.gov.
