On stage, modeling the ‘work we need to be doing in the world’

American composer, singer-songwriter and pianist Gabriel Kahane is booked and busy.

However, when there is an opportunity to come to Northwestern and mentor musical theater students, he prioritizes going to campus to share his expertise, passion and unique perspective on storytelling through music.

Kahane’s musical “February House” is set to make its Chicago debut at the Wirtz Center’s Barber Theater on Friday, Feb. 21. Adapted from a book by the same name, the musical is set in the early days of World War II and tells the true story of eight very different artists brought together to live in a communal utopian experiment in a dilapidated Brooklyn boardinghouse. What results is a makeshift family searching for love, inspiration and refuge from the looming war in Europe.

Northwestern Now caught up with Kahane as he attended a week of rehearsals for “February House.” While “February House” premiered at New York’s Public Theater in 2012, Kahane pushed the student actors to find their unique musical language instead of imitating the existing style.

Inside many Broadway theaters, you’ll find an actor tied to Northwestern. What is your impression of our musical theater students?

Working with Northwestern students is extraordinary. They’re really eager and come prepared. As we speak [in late January], they’re only into their second week of rehearsal, and they already know the score of “February House,” and they’re ready to get on their feet and embody it. I love to empower young artists to take tools that a teacher has offered them and then back away and let them do the work.

Why are you excited to see it have a new life in Chicago as a premiere on a Wirtz Center stage?

I began work on “February House” in 2008. It’s a piece that feels kind of like a first-born child. It’s great to see it re-emerge after being institutionalized over a decade ago. I really admire something about MFA directing student Seth Roseman, who is directing this production at Northwestern. He has been deliberate, intentional and thoughtful about the fact that these young artists or students are living in precarious times and playing artists who are young and living in a perilous time. There’s something very poignant and obviously meta, theatrical and immediate and urgent about that.

Art has the power to bring people together.

Yes, and I was telling the students the other day during rehearsal, throughout my work as a singer, songwriter and solo performer and mainly coming out of the pandemic, it has become more apparent to me the deep spiritual and also political value of people being in a room together. At a time when everyone is so divided, in this play, you see people trying to make a family and love each other. They’re sort of modeling the work that we need to be doing in the world, whether socially or politically. I think currently, when so many of us feel handcuffed without any kind of agency, there is always a choice at the individual level to be kinder and be more curious. So, I think one of the ways to respond to this moment when I’m feeling at my most downtrodden is to remember that every human interaction is an opportunity to make the world kinder.

“February House” runs Friday, Feb. 21, through Sunday, March 2, at the Barber Theater, 30 Arts Circle Drive. Tickets are available online or at the Wirtz Center Box Office.

The show’s actors and a panel of artists and scholars will present “Art Making in a Time of Crisis” from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 16. The public is welcome to this free program, which will examine art as rebellion, joy as resistance and the human need for self-expression in times of turmoil, at the Evanston Main Library, 1703 Orrington Ave.