A NOTE FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT

My relationship with Scotland began at eighteen when I crossed an ocean a few months after my father died. I arrived in Glasgow to study at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, carrying a grief too vast for language. But Scotland did not hurry me toward healing, nor did it trouble itself with answers. It offered something more sustaining: community, music, language, and an eternal wisdom: that a life is not lived beyond grief, but in its company. 

That experience has stayed with me ever since, deepened, and shaped every line of this adaptation. I wanted to preserve what has always made Brigadoon beloved, while allowing its citizens to live more fully inside their world. This version is grounded in a historically and culturally specific Scotland, which ensures Brigadoon is a real community bound together by memory, sacrifice, and the quiet understanding that no one shall be left to weather life alone. 

At its center are two American men who have, in different ways, turned from life. Fiona—and the Brigadoon she inhabits—asks Tommy, and all of us, an ancient question: are we willing to choose a life that is real, even when it demands everything of us? It is a frightening thing, to be known. And yet it is the only way we come fully into being. 

 This work has been shaped in profound collaboration with an artistic soulmate: our director-choreographer Katie Spelman, as well as a company of artists I am honored to stand among. Together, we have tried to build something that feels both faithful and new: a Brigadoon that honors the legacy of Lerner and Loewe while allowing it to speak to a contemporary audience with clarity and urgency. 

If there is a single idea I hope lingers after the final note fades, it is this, included in my stage directions on the very final page:

 
 WIDOW LUNDIE: Come, lad.  [She extends her hand. In her gesture is both a terrible and tender truth: that while men stumble and falter, sometimes the world does not hold their failure against them. Sometimes the door opens again. And in that opening lies the mystery of grace: that we may be welcomed home, even after we have turned away…]  

ALEXANDRA SILBER 
Playwright

A LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR/ CHOREOGRAPHER 

There are many reasons to fall in love with Brigadoon – its sweeping and romantic score, its message of love conquering impossibility, or even the feeling of Lerner, Lowe, and DeMille’s genius reaching out to us from the past to give us a new lens on the present. I fell in love with Brigadoon when it was introduced to me by my mentor and friend, the late director/ choreographer Rachel Rockwell. She believed – as do I – Brigadoon belongs in the cannon of Golden Age shows, the ones that reveal the beating heart of America through its one national art form: the musical. Her love for this piece became my love, and after she passed, it became all the more precious to me.

To be able to bring Brigadoon to life with a whole new book has been the honor of my career. The care that Alexandra Silber has taken with her script can be felt every time a character speaks, moves, or sings; she has cracked the show open to reveal what we both always knew was inside: a story of love conquering all, yes – but also a story about community, about faith, and about how grief and joy often sit side by side, each giving the other meaning.

Brigadoon, at its heart, is about how joy and grief are more poignant when they are processed with a community. Ultimately, human connection is the most important thing; and while Tommy and Fiona’s love story is of course the axis on which the story turns, Brigadoon also shows us love in many different forms: friendship, family, respect, and mourning. It is not lost on me that the loss of Ms. Rockwell is one of the hardest things I have ever had to experience, and that my friendship with Al Silber – my artistic soulmate - has been one of the most substantial joys of my adult life. It seems fitting, then, to be back in this piece many years later – and to have it all layered with new and deeper meaning. The laughter and tears are all there, but with new grace and gravity.

It is no accident that Tommy and Jeff are the window through which the audience meets the town of Brigadoon. Silber has made them our contemporaries, and with good reason – the world has brought us infinite ways to connect instantly, and yet we as a species seem more isolated and divided than ever. Perhaps we are all in need of a reminder of the things that truly matter. It is an honor to have you in the Playhouse for two hours and change, an honor to be in community with you, and an honor to tell this story when it is needed the most.

KATIE SPELMAN
Director/Choreographer