Steve Martin’s “Bright Star” is onstage at the semi-professional theater of Elm Street Cultural Arts Village in Woodstock. Martin and Edie Brickell wrote and composed the musical in 2015.
It had a short stint on Broadway and was nominated for five Tony awards. Martin and Brickell won the “Outstanding New Score” award from the Outer Critics Circle. “Bright Star” is based on an actual event in which a baby was thrown from a train on the Iron Mountain and Southern Railway.
The baby survived, grows up, and that’s where the story of “Bright Star” begins. The story follows Alice Murphy at two different points in her life: when she was young and wild growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina; and the second, when she was a magazine editor in Asheville, 22 years later.
“City Lights” host Lois Reitzes spoke with director Annie Cook and Elm Street’s education director, Justin Spainhour-Roth about how the musical was created from the story.
“I think for our audiences who are in the Atlanta or North Georgia area, the music has a lot of heart and for a lot of people it reminds them of growing up and of home,” said Spainhour-Roth about the bluegrass music that’s woven throughout the play.
