A Night To Remember

Embark on a Musical Journey Through the Greatest Love Stories Ever Told in Baz – Star Crossed Love,

- T.R. Witcher

The typical musical is pretty straight forward: We sit down in a theater, face the stage and watch a linear narrative unfold atop a parade of great songs. BAZ – Star Crossed Love, which launched in July at The Palazzo Theatre, is definitely not your typical musical.

In fact, its creators say it’s not a musical at all. Rather, it’s a genre-exploding mash-up of three love stories – jam-packed with song and dance – which puts audience members right in the middle of the action. It’s part concert, part drama and part nightclub. In others words, it’s a slick new take on cabaret. “We’re our own thing,” says talent scout-turned-producer Shane Scheel.

The show has its origins in Los Angeles, where Scheel began staging monthly cabaret showcases in a 60-seat bar in East Hollywood. “I was kind of tired of hearing Broadway show tunes that people had in their audition books,” he tells us. “I said, ‘Hey, we should plan a night where everyone sings a song from a Tarantino film, and it’s more of a theme night.’”

His theater company, FOR THE RECORD, began to build shows around the films of famous directors known for injecting indelible music in their movies, including Martin Scorsese, 80s teen-comedy auteur John Hughes, and the Coen Brothers. “We started just layering in classic moments from movies with the soundtracks,” says Scheel. “It was an interesting way to bring the music to the forefront and give it a little context in this cabaret world that we’re trying to create.”

Scheel and co-creator/director Anderson Davis began kicking around ideas about how to make it bigger. Saturday nights turned into Thursday-Friday-Saturday. Their audience grew. They knocked down a wall and took over the space of an adjoining restaurant. Then they partnered with a West Hollywood bar owner and moved to an even bigger space.