Joe Calarco to Direct New Off-Broadway Musical The Burnt Part Boys

Joe Calarco has been tapped to direct the forthcoming off-Broadway musical The Burnt Part Boys, a unique co-production by Playwrights Horizons and the Vineyard Theatre. The musical is slated for a spring 2010 mounting at Playwrights Horizons. Calarco, who directed an earlier lab production of the musical for Barrington Stage Company, succeeds Erica Schmidt, who has stepped down “by mutual agreement,” according to a news release. Schmidt directed a fully staged mounting of the musical in July at New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College.

The Burnt Part Boys features a book by Mariana Elder, lyrics by Nathan Tysen and a bluegrass and pop-inspired score by Chris Miller. Set in West Virginia in 1962, the musical follows a group of teenagers whose fathers were killed 10 years earlier in a tragic coal mining accident. When they learn that the mine will be reopened, they set out secretly in the hope of seeing the site and keeping it closed.

Calarco is the adaptor/director of Shakespeare’s R&J, which ran for a year off-Broadway and earning him a Lortel Award. He previously directed Miller and Tysen's Drama Desk-nominated song cycle Fugitive Songs as well as the new musical Floyd and Clea Under the Western Sky at Playwrights Horizons. Calarco is currently directing Philadelphia Theatre Company’s production of The Light in the Piazza, which begins performances on November 13.

No casting has been announced for the off-Broadway production of The Burnt Part Boys. Schmidt’s production at New York Stage and Film featured Skylar Astin, Joe Cassidy, Al Calderon, Noah Galvin, Andrew Durand, Molly Ranson, Timothy Warmen, John Schiappa and David Abeles.