The Bloody, Bloody Bold Career of Beetlejuice and Moulin Rouge! Director Alex Timbers

Alex Timbers is a man in demand. He has had a hand in three currently running (and wildly different) Broadway shows: Moulin Rouge! Beetlejuice, both of which he directed and American Utopia, on which he served as a production consultant. His other Broadway credits—Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Rocky, The Pee-Wee Herman Show, Peter and the Starcatcher and Oh, Hello on Broadway—also display Timbers' incredible versatility. The director sat down with Paul Wontorek on Show People to talk about what launched his career, his knack for transforming theater spaces beyond just the stage and more.

“When I think back to my earliest theater-going experiences—as soon as you walked through those doors, you’re in a whole new world. With Beetlejuice and Moulin Rouge!, we ran with that,” Timbers said. “But even going back to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and the transformation of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre was really exciting. The audience experience and the role of the audience in the drama is really important to me. It’s at the forefront of my mind from the first treatment stage of a show all the way through the final preview.”

A New York native, Timbers grew up immersed in culture and creativity; he had his own public access TV show as early as high school. The sketch comedy show The Shamu Review—yes, like the killer whale from SeaWorld—aired on channel 69 on Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Don’t expect to find that footage on YouTube, however. “The tapes exist, and they will never be shown,” he laughed. “I would be so mortified that I would collapse into dust.”

While at Yale University, Timbers tried his hand at directing. One of his most memorable productions was a Brechtian How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. “J. Pierrepont Finch was in a gorilla suit in a cage,” he said about the experimental production. The experience was formative for Timbers, who went on to found the outrageous theater company Les Freres Corbusier in 2003 with college pals Jennifer Rogien and Aaron Lemon-Strauss.

The company looked at “historical figures and historical subject matters through irreverent mediums and contexts,” Timbers explained. “We did a Hedda Gabler with live robots called Heddatron. We recreated a Christian evangelical haunted house at St. Ann’s Warehouse called A Hell House. We did A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant, which was a nativity pageant celebrating the life of L. Ron Hubbard with only eight-12-year-olds singing to karaoke tracks.”

The alternative work continued with Dance Dance Revolution, which featured a 60-member cast and looked at a future society where dance is illegal. "It was all to Disney rave music for babies," he said. "That whole team became the team for Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” he said about the show that launched his Broadway career and featured a sexypants Benjamin Walker as an emo-rock Andrew Jackson. Timbers wrote the cheeky musical with his friend and collaborator, the late Michael Friedman.

Nearly a decade later, Timbers is honoring Friedman in his Playbill bio for Moulin Rouge!, saying Friedman's work "exhibited truth, beauty, freedom and love.” The director said his friend was literally one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in my life. It’s such a huge loss not to get to hear more work of his.” 

What advice does Timbers offer to aspiring theatermakers eager to walk in his footsteps? “You’ve got to create your own work; no one ever says you have to have gray hair to direct. I created my own theater company in order to create job opportunities,” he said. “I love the fact that I got to produce my own downtown shows. I think it makes me—hopefully, to the people around me—a more helpful collaborator just knowing a little bit about how things actually get made.”

Watch the full episode of Show People with Paul Wontorek below!

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