Tim Acito on "Zanna Don't"

In Tim Acito's world, it's always 1973.

Zanna Don't, the first musical by writer and composer Tim Acito, is a lighthearted high school romance set in a world where being gay is the norm. Acito's latest project is The Women of Brewster Place, a gritty story of seven black women surviving tough times in an American city. Is there any connection between the fluffy Zanna, which was an off-Broadway hit in 2003 and makes its New England premiere this weekend in a production by Speakeasy Stage, and the hard hitting Brewster Place?

"I always say," offers Acito, "and only half jokingly, that no matter when my musicals take place, it's always 1973. Zanna was inspired by all the pop styles you would have heard on AM radio in the 70s. And that's the time period Brewster Place takes place in, though this show has edged more towards R&B and gospel."

As we spoke, Acito was dashing from rehearsal to grab dinner before a preview performance of Brewster Place, which opens Sept. 12 at The Alliance Theater in Atlanta. He sounded remarkably calm as he discussed the process of launching a new musical.

"The first previews have gone about as well as you could hope for a new musical. Everyone's doing terrific work, but there's just so much to do. At this point what we're trying to do is trim. Just get the flow and momentum to be as relentless as possible. It's cutting a verse here, a chorus there, getting rid of these three sentences ... it's about taking away at this point, instead of adding."

That's a process that began when he first thought of adapting the Gloria Naylor novel into a musical. Acito explains that Brewster isn't such a big leap from Zanna, because there's a mythic quality to both shows; Zanna is a parable that takes place in a deliberately generic high school, and Naylor never names which city is the home of the Brewster Place building.

"What's so interesting to me about the novel," continues Acito, "is how it's so grittily real, but there's an abstraction to it as well. It has references to the 1970s but in general it's an unspecified American city in a vague time period. It feels both rooted in reality and suspended in a mythical reality."

Acito was also drawn to the book's complexity. "It addresses a lot of huge, Shakespearean themes, through seven domestic stories. It's such rich source material. To try to bring all the stories together into one cohesive theatrical event has been a glorious challenge. There are roughly 20 times the number of words in the novel as there are in the musical. You could say that for every 20 amazing things from the novel, we had to eliminate 19 and keep one."

"You have to balance what you intellectually believe are the most important parts of the story, with what your artistic instinct might tell you are the parts that are best musicalized. You can have a wonderful piece of writing in a novel that will fail if you try to translate it directly to the stage. Conversely, there might be some little detail in the novel that you pass by, that is actually the kernel for a magnificent song."

It sounds like a daunting task, especially for someone who took an unusual road to musical theatre. Acito graduated from Berkeley with a degree in history, then studied dance at Princeton Ballet. He danced full-time for six years with the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Momix.

"In the dance world," he muses, "you really trust how much silence and gesture can speak. I try to let that inform my work. But musical theater is its own beast. You can't simply translate a modern dance aesthetic directly onto the Broadway stage."

Acito is mum on the likelihood of The Women of Brewster Place being translated to the Broadway stage - "Let's get to opening night first," he demurs - but plans to keep working in musical theatre. He even has a new project in mind, "sort of Chekhov combined with Tom Stoppard and science fiction. It's either going to be really innovative or a huge mess!"

Speakeasy Stage presents Zanna Don't at The Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., Sept. 14-Oct. 13. Tickets $42-$50. For more information call 617-933-8600 or visit www.BostonTheatreScene.com