The world premiere of a ground-breaking new musical will take the stage at the Dormouse Theatre in Kalamazoo this month.
“The Dead Memoirs” is the latest project from Western Michigan University MFA fiction student K.D. Battle, and music arranger Noah Mercil. Based on the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Brazilian author Machado de Assis, the play brings diverse musical influences, and fast-paced storytelling to the timeless, classic tale.
“We’ve got a flying hippo, skeleton pajamas, a seven-piece band, and a whole lot of heart,” Battle said. “The show is like if we put Hamilton and Hadestown in a blender, and sprinkled in Come From Away. We’re dubbing it a Hip-Hopera, as the show is sung-through, largely consisting of rap and in-verse phrasing. We additionally draw inspiration from jazz, world beat, rock, and the musical theatre cannon, weaving in multiple styles and recurrent themes throughout the show.”
Battle first came upon The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas after reading a review in The New Yorker that described the novel as “one of the wittiest, most playful, and therefore most alive and ageless books ever written.”
“It’s a very unique voice,” Battle said. “I’ve said to people, it’s like if Deadpool was in Victorian Brazil… The character always stuck with me. I’ve read the book like six times. And so here we are. When I had an excuse to make a song for a class for my own graduate work, it honestly started writing itself.”
Battle, who is a Navy submarine veteran, and currently works as Assistant Director of First Year Writing at WMU, also has a background in music. As a teenager he founded and toured with the ska band Orpheus, opening for bands like Less Than Jake and Fitz & the Tantrums, before going on to become an acclaimed writer, and entering the MFA program.
“Writing music was the first writing I ever did,” Battle said. “I had a non-typical high school experience. I was in a band, and a lot of people are in bands… but I was in a band that was fortunate enough to kind of tour summer circuits around the Midwest for two or three years. And we had a lot of success at like 16. So I started writing like horn parts when I was still just technically a kid.”
While “The Dead Memoirs” is Battle’s first musical that he has written, he’s always had a deep love for the form, and has spent time getting caught up on the musical canon, especially modern works.
“I don’t think anyone is doing what we’re doing with this show,” he said. “You hear the adage, ‘Write something you can’t find, and want to read, or want to hear.’ And that’s our aim with this. We’re like, what if we took Hamilton’s rapping lyricism, and mixed it with jazz and horn and alternative rock energy that we like, and mix in Brazilian samba and all kinds of influence directly from the culture of the book.”
Battle met composer and music arranger Noah Mercil, who has a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from the University of Northern Colorado, at WMU as Mercil’s wife is also in the MFA program. Mercil’s passion for world music took him on an adventure to Peru in 2022, with the acclaimed Gabriel-Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet. He brings that experience, and his enthusiasm for musical cross-pollination to the show’s broad musical spectrum.
“I went through school in order to get some arranging chops along the way,” Mercil said. “But part of my background that also attracted me to this book was the setting of it. I’m really into all things South American culture.”
This is also Mercil’s first time working on arranging an original musical, although he has past pit experience working in musicals. The production will feature songs arranged for an eight-person band, who will be on stage. In all the cast will include about 15 performers, with a small crew of three to five helping to run sound and tech, including a videographer creating a whole show recording for future streaming possibilities.
Although this premiere production of the show is a staged reading only, Battle said that the cast and crew are leaning into setting, costuming, and lighting design to really bring the show to life for their audiences. That includes breaking the fourth wall early and often.
“Because this is a staged reading, there are some fun benefits we can use,” Battle said. “There’s a significant degree of actually involving the audience in our show that I think you have to gamify it a little bit, but we’re doing it in such a way that I think the audience will feel invited to join us.”
Battle said that for now their goal is to make this show the best that it can be. But he added that they hope to possibly meet with someone in the future about to see what it would be like as a full scale production.
“It feels like what art should be,” Mercil said. “We have such a good, joyful crew that it’s like, why not just keep doing this? Like follow the arrow of joy here.”
With the show aiming to bring the dead back to life, if just for one night, he added that if they get even 10 people to read the book, they feel like they’ve done right by the brilliance of their source material.
“I guarantee you – and you don’t have to get far – but if you get to the hippo that takes Brás to the underworld and the afterlife that Kyle has named Blimpo in this adaptation, then you’re here for the rest of the story,” Mercil added. “And it’s only going to get wackier and cooler and more delirious and intoxicating.”
The Dead Memoirs
Dormouse Theatre, 1030 Portage St., Kalamazoo
Nov. 8-9, 7 p.m. $10
Dormousetheatre.com
