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PLEASANT GROVE — A Utah-made musical that premiered in Pleasant Grove last year is in negotiations with London theater companies and hoping for an eventual West End debut.
The musical "Relative Space" first started as 10 songs a teenage girl named Kjersti Long wrote. After a Broadway executive listened to Kjersti's music, she and her father Jeremy Long had a "light bulb moment" and decided to find a playwright to turn the songs into a musical.
The show, originally described as a rock concert mixed with theatrical drama, tackles mental health through a lens of generational trauma.
The story follows a mother and daughter who are floating through life separately, not talking to each other about their struggles. Throughout the show, they deal with the wall that has been built between them, and learn how events in the past are affecting both of their futures.
The show premiered at the Liahona Theater in June where several award-winning Broadway music producers flew in to attend.
"I think what they've achieved is something very unique and very powerful. The way they've brought attention to this incredibly important issue of mental health, I think is going to touch a lot of people and hopefully help a lot of people," Broadway Records President Van Dean said at the premiere.
Since that performance, the musical has been evolving and gone through five rewrites and five readings to become what it is today as it vies for a professional debut.
Jeremy Long, one of the show's producers, said Dean signed onto the show after its premiere as a lead producer to take control of the continued creative movement. A Grammy and Tony award-winning producer, Dean has been helping shepherd the show through readings and development.
The show is very different now, Long said, and has become a straight musical with Kjersti's original role just as a singer in the background being changed to a character that is a rock star idol of the main character.
The rock star dies by suicide early on in the show, triggering the rest of the story and causing the daughter to question how her idol could also feel so helpless. The daughter and mother start to bond over skipping responsibilities as they're coping from mental health challenges, then the musical rewinds in time to show the mother's teenage life with her mom.
"There's this connection between her idol who dies very early on in the show and her music is what carries through the generations," Long said.
The show had a staged reading earlier this year and got some additional feedback that prompted more changes.
The final version of script and music was submitted to 42nd Club — a six-time Tony Award-winning club for Broadway investors and producers that was involved with "Moulin Rouge," "Waitress," "Company" and other successful Broadway musicals — and the club decided to sign on to the show as well.
Producers originally planned to go to New York City, but the show started getting interest from theater companies in London. Long explained that a lot of great shows have found their start in London, moved up to the West End, then transferred to New York after.
Starting a brand-new musical in London also costs significantly less and takes notably less time, Long said. There is a group of theater companies in London that are funded by the royal family — the most famous being the Royal National Theatre — which put shows on themselves and pays for the cost of production.
Long said the four theater companies are known for cultivating some of the best shows because the productions don't have to focus on raising money and can just focus on talent. Shows such as "Matilda," "Hadestown," the "Tina - The Tina Turner Musical" and more have started at these companies before transferring to the West End and Broadway.
"It's very prestigious. It's almost impossible to get into," Long said.
Through the show's connections from its producers, "Relative Space" is now in negotiations with two of those companies, but Long said he couldn't say which two since no deal is finalized.
"If they take it, that's like insane. That will be like unheard of," Long said. "It's looking like one of them will!"
If a show gets chosen to be part of one of the companies, the show gets paired with a big director, gets tied to the impressive reputation of the company, and the show doesn't have to raise any money since the company will pay for it.
If "Relative Space" isn't taken up by one of the companies, Long said the producers will go through more readings, make connections with more production teams, and raise money to go on their own to try to get a debut in London.
All shows have their own path to get to the West End or Broadway, but being taken up by one of these companies expedites that process and helps shows with less money reach the stage.
"We just started in a unique place where we put up a very early version of the show in Utah and a bunch of people saw it. And when that thing comes out on Broadway here in 10 years and wins all these awards, it's not going to look anything like it did when you first saw it, but you're going to be able to say, 'Hey, I was there when they first put that thing up,'" Long said.
Long is hopeful for a 2025 debut in London.
"People are very excited about this show and about the vision here and most of it is because of the music. They hear the music and they're just like 'This stuff is insane,'" he said.
Although Kjersti isn't a Broadway writer, Long said said the rock and pop music she has written is incredible and makes the show stand out against others.
Kjersti recently got the opportunity to write Vanessa Williams' new single and she is planning to release an EP of her own music at the end of this year.
"Whatever happens, I'm super proud of it. It's changed and evolved a lot," she said about the musical. "The story is a lot richer and deeper, and it added some really interesting elements. I'm super excited to get to show it off."
