[This article appears in the November/December 2021 issue of Boston Spirit magazine. Subscribe for free today.]
Grammy and Golden Globe-nominated songwriter and producer Justin Tranter is making the leap from pop music to musical theater as the composer and lyricist for the American Repertory Theater’s world premiere of the environment-themed musical “Wild: A Musical Becoming,” running Dec. 5–Jan. 9 at the Loeb Drama Center.
For a “huge theater kid obsessed with ‘Annie’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’” while growing up outside Chicago, a stage musical might seem a natural progression. But Tranter’s ambitions and talents ventured into rock and roll and popular music, writing songs for a host of top performers including Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Britney Spears. Before that, Tranter fronted the glam-rock band Semi Precious Weapons. But they grew “exhausted from the homophobia.”
“Even though I was the only queer person in the band, the rest of the world couldn’t fathom that a femme queer person and three straight dudes would ever be in a band together. But it happened for 10 whole years,” says Tranter in a phone interview from their home in Los Angeles.
So when an opportunity opened to “step behind the scenes” and write songs for other performers, Tranter decided, “I’m 33, I’m broke, maybe I’ll check it out … It worked out pretty well. I help others tell their stories.”
Now they’re telling the world’s story. Tranter is working in collaboration with three Tony Award winners—playwright V (formerly Eve Ensler), director Diane Paulus and performer Idina Menzel, who anchors “Wild” as a parent confronting what it means for her family and her community to survive in a world facing mass extinction. Rounding out the team is songwriter-performer Caroline Pennell, who plays a young woman dedicated to fighting the escalating climate crisis.
It was Menzel, star of Broadway’s “Wicked” and “Rent,” who first contacted Tranter nearly three years ago about the project. Menzel asked if Tranter knew who Eve Ensler was.
“I was like, I saw ‘The Vagina Monologues’ four times at the Wang Center when I was going to college!” Tranter recalls. “We went to V’s farm in upstate New York and spent time writing a mother-daughter show, a fable …We wrote songs on the spot. This was my first grown-up musical and I got to have Idina Menzel, V and Diane Paulus—these three brilliant, experienced legends—walk me through the process. I feel like I got 12 master’s degrees in three years.”
While working on “Wild,” Tranter auditioned for and won another plum gig: executive music producer on the just announced Paramount+ original series “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies.” Set four years before the original “Grease,” it’s a “modern, feminist, diverse” version, says Tranter, that’s told from the perspective of “four fed-up, outcast girls [who] dare to have fun on their own terms, sparking a moral panic that will change Rydell High forever.”
Tranter celebrated the new job with their parents, who recently retired and relocated to Los Angeles.
“They have been on board since day one. I am the only person in my family who does not make their living coaching tennis. I was a pretty damn good tennis player, too. When I told my parents that I wanted to stop at 12 and be a Broadway star, they said yes and found a theater camp program. When the bullying got so bad at public school, they found me an arts high school.”
But Tranter didn’t find attending college at Boston’s Berklee School of Music nearly as welcoming.
“Coming from an arts high school in Chicago, it was a beautiful experience for a queer teenager in the ’90s. There was such diversity in the student body of 140 weird teenagers. I assumed it would be similar at Berklee, but it was a much different environment,” says Tranter. “I serve a look. There’s always eye shadow or silver boots, and it caused me trouble. It’s probably different now. But from 1998 to 2001 it was not what I was hoping for.”
The process of creating “Wild” was accelerated due to the urgency of the subject matter, says Tranter. The ART will present “a stripped-down version; it’s more than a concert but there won’t be full sets or full choreography. It’s such a pressing issue and we feel so confident in the story and in the music that we needed to do some version of this show as soon as possible.”
Tranter is most gratified to be “using my talent and time on a project that matters.”
“The earth and humans are not separate; it’s all one thing. Nothing matters if we don’t have a planet.”
More: americanrepertorytheater.org
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