Ali Louis Bourzgui Reflects on Joining Hadestown, His Upcoming Album and Processing the Experience of Tommy

Last year, Ali Louis Bourzgui was launched like a pinball into the noisy, flashy, bewildering lunacy of the Broadway machine. When we last spoke to him, he was preparing to play the titular "deaf, dumb and blind boy" of The Who’s Tommy at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre and looking forward to unleashing his inner rock star. Bourzgui’s simultaneously commanding and reined-in performance earned him a Theatre World Award as well as Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations, but no Tony Awards recognition. In July, The Who's Tommy closed, after only 152 performances.

This week, Bourzgui made a welcome return to Broadway, playing Orpheus, a young man with a song in his heart, in Hadestown. Here, Bourzgui reflects on the whirlwind experience that was Tommy, his new role and the much needed "recentering" that happened in between.

It was great to see you so busy after the close of Tommy.

It’s been kind of all over the place in a really fun way. I took a little break to resettle, then did We Live in Cairo at New York Theatre Workshop. 

A musical about the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring.

The opposite end of the spectrum from Tommy: very stripped down, very story-forward and intimate. It was also the first time there was a full Arab musical theater cast, which was really cool. As someone with a passionate need to perform shows with Arab narratives, it was a really special project. The character I played is basically Arab Orpheus. After that, I went to Morocco for about two and a half weeks to visit family—I hadn’t been back in seven years, so it was a really special recentering moment.

Let's talk about Hadestown. So, another concept album-turned-musical?

I just had that thought the other day, "Oh yeah, I guess I’m the concept album guy." I’m coming out with my own concept album this summer, so it’s just my thing, I guess.

It’s always felt like I’ve kind of been on a parallel journey with this show. I was a really big fan of the concept album, and I just randomly started picking up the guitar around the time it was at New York Theatre Workshop. It actually had nothing to do with me being like, Oh, I’m going to play Orpheus some day. Then I saw Hadestown for the first time on Valentine’s Day this year—and the next day, I got an email with a request to audition. It was kismet timing.  But also, I’ve always been such a huge fan of folk music. When I write music, it’s all that. So I’m excited to be able to do that in this show.

Yeah, I was curious to ask about your personal connection to Orpheus, given you’re a songwriter.

I’ve been writing music for about five years now and have always written poetry. I’m really connected to the idea of trying to fix myself and fix the world with music and language. 

It’s interesting you putting it that way. Beyond the concept album thing, there’s a common thread between Tommy and Hadestown about the power of music as a way out of trauma.

Yeah, absolutely. Orpheus is a pure optimist. I try to be that. At my core I am that. It’s always hard in this world to stay that way without becoming too jaded. But the moments in which I feel the world making me jaded, that’s when I turn to music. It opens me back up. This character—his main focus is to show people how the world could be. When I saw it, I was in tears thinking about the world right now. World leaders are banking on us wanting to turn our heads. A show like this, and a character like this, is so important. It reminds us that we are so much more powerful if we come together and keep dreaming of the world that we want.

When you played Tommy, you were very serious about honoring the voices of Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, while bringing out your own voice too. What has the process been finding the voice of Orpheus?

Tommy taught me how to bring my voice higher. I’ve always had a strong falsetto—I use it a lot in my own songwriting—but haven’t gotten to use it much on stage until now. Hadestown has this cool balance of chest voice and head voice, so I literally sit down and map out where I switch in each song. It’s kind of like vocal gymnastics—an obstacle course. But once it's in my body, it’s fun. Vocally, I’m bringing a lot of my own colors to it. Hadestown really opens itself up to being about the person playing it.

There was an incredible control and restraint to your performance in Tommy. One might also say that the role is kind of a straitjacket. It must be exciting to be playing a character on Broadway with more freedom of movement. And his senses intact.

Yeah, totally. When I jumped into We Live in Cairo right after Tommy, it was a real shock. Tommy is so much about stillness and presence—even after he’s out of his catatonic state. It’s this very specific tone. Then Cairo was grounded and rooted in reality. Hadestown is something else again—a myth, a fable. Like Tommy, in a way, it has this elevated tone.

In rehearsal, I had to recalibrate my acting energy. You can’t go too realistic—it doesn’t work. You have to carry the whole space in your performance. Nothing can be casual. If I look somewhere, it’s not just a glance—it’s a full-body turn, because what I’m looking at is a god. With Orpheus, what I’ve found is he’s a pure channel. He doesn’t create with ego; the poetry flows through him. He’s shocked by what he makes, as if it’s not even coming from him. He wears his heart on his sleeve and is just open to whatever comes through. That generosity—creative and emotional—is such a beautiful part of who he is.

Tell me more about your songwriting. I know being immersed in Tommy inspired you to lean in a more concept album direction.

Around three years ago, I started writing things I actually felt good about; it took a while to find my voice and remove the filter. I noticed a common theme across many of the songs, and when I started writing with my roommate, that thread became even more apparent. At first, I worried we were just writing the same song over and over, but working on Tommy changed that perspective. I realized the similarities were actually a strength—there was a throughline we could work with.

I’ve written something like 20 songs for it and started mapping it out. Inspired by Pete Townshend, I wrote an overture, interlude and finale. There’s a theme, there’s motifs. It focuses on the idea of what home is—your childhood home, how you've moved forward from that, what things you've left in the past and when it's time to let certain things go.

Many of the songs I wrote on the road when I was touring for a couple years. A lot of them we wrote here in New York when we first moved here and were trying to figure out how to make New York a home. I'm very excited about it. We're going to be releasing a bunch of singles over the summer and then releasing the album in early fall. 

Did Pete Townshend give you any actual songwriting tips or was it more osmosis?

Definitely osmosis. He never gave me advice directly, but I dove deep into researching him, watched videos of him at my age—he wrote Tommy when he was 24, which is wild. The thing I took away was his confidence. I’ve sat on songs for years, thinking I needed to hit a certain technical level before releasing anything. He didn’t do that. He had this rockstar “f**k it” attitude. He just wrote what he wanted to write. He wrote “Pinball Wizard” in a single night. That spontaneity—and the weirdness in some of his lyrics—was inspiring. I learned not to overthink and not to box myself in with too many rules. There are no hard rules in music. If it’s honest, if it healed something in you, then someone’s going to appreciate it.

Apropos of our conversation: Might we see a stage-show version?

Yeah, you know what? My dream is something like Illinoise, where you’ve got the band performing live and dancers telling the story around them. I’d love to perform the music with my collaborator and have the story expressed through movement.

Get Justin Peck on the phone.

That would be the dream.

Can I ask you a sensitive question? You got a lot of recognition for your Broadway debut, but then the show closed after a relatively short run. How do you make sense of that experience?

It was a whirlwind of many bucket-list items at once. But also this immense pressure—and a lot of pressure I was putting on myself. It's one thing to make your Broadway debut, figuring out how to lead a show and how to do a role that taxing eight shows a week; it's another thing to be doing that at the same time as awards season, going to these press junkets and marketing the show and marketing myself. I’m an introvert, so I had to figure out when to say no, how to recharge, and how to show up for others while not burning out myself.

When I performed on the Tonys... I've been dreaming of that my whole life. But if I let that truly sink in, I would've freaked out and had an anxiety attack. You just have to click into the job and do it—but because of that, you don't feel the weight of it. It wasn't until a month or so after that I was able to sit down and be like, Wait, that happened?

And then, honestly, it was devastating when the show closed. We didn't see that coming that early. But it gave me a break when I probably needed it. And then it set me up for perfect timing to be able to do We Live in Cairo—one of the most special projects I've ever done. In the long run, it was one of those universal-timing things.

I appreciate you sharing that. And I hope you take this in the spirit it’s intended: I think you would make an excellent singing vampire.

[Laughs]

Tell me about the reading for the Lost Boys musical you were involved in.

That happened right when I got back from Morocco. Tonally, it’s this perfect combo of serious horror and '80s camp energy. It was fun to be a rock star—but as a vampire. The writers rewrote a lot in the room. And The Rescues, who did the music, were incredible. We had a lot of freedom to bring our own ideas. It's another very, very special project. I'm excited to see what happens with it next spring.