“It took about a year to write this show,” Brently Heilbron says of his musical Young Greg Abbott. “It was somewhere for my mad feelings to go. And I wish I could write proper protest songs, but this is the way it comes out – kind of vaudevilley. And that's just kind of me.”
Heilbron, despite writing and starring in a satiric musical about the Texas governor, says “I don't consider myself a political comic. I don't consider myself a political satirist. Although I'm pretty political in my personal life, it doesn't really cross over into the art that I do.” That was true for much of Heilbron’s career, but changed a bit when he started to get angry with some of Abbott’s policy decisions, especially some of his policies toward women and immigrants.
“I just felt so strongly,” Heilbron says. “It was one thing after another. I think it was the heartbeat bill… where they made women [seeking abortions], they forced them to listen to procedures, to listen to sonograms, to really insult them and to demean them in terms of just trying to get health care for themselves or for their child. It's just mean. Your policies are just straight up mean. And I really don't like bullies.”
Being a comic and a musician, Heilbron’s anger came out in the form of funny songs, which eventually became the musical Young Greg Abbott.
“It takes place in 1984 as Greg Abbott travels from Houston to Austin to take the bar and set a course on his life that will change destiny forever,” Heilbron explains. “He meets a lot of the characters we'll know and loathe in Texas history. It's mostly true. I read his autobiography and I'm pretty sure we followed it pretty closely.”
While the musical was born out of political anger and Heilbron is no fan of Abbott’s policies, he says he did look for the humanity inside the governor while writing the show. “It still is my goal to find humanity with Greg Abbott,” Heilbron says. “I think it's way more fun and way more interesting of an approach to satirize someone like Greg Abbott. We're just taking him down a peg or two because he's got way too much power over our lives in Texas. He's still a human being and I want him to treat others as human beings. I think it's way more fun as a satirist to find the humanity in the subject that you're satirizing. Whether we do that or not successfully, that's up to you.”
After a few sold-out staged readings of the script last year, Heilbron is ready to present a full-scale version of the musical this month. “Now we're putting on the full show — 11 songs, puppets, actors, musicians — at the State Theatre just steps away from the Capitol. And of course, Greg Abbott is invited. We are most definitely having a seat reserved for Greg Abbott.”
To turn his script into a real-deal stage musical, Heilbron enlisted the help of Sonnet Blanton, who co-directs the show and plays another Texas governor. “I actually knew about the show when he started writing it because we both shared the same kind of anger against Greg Abbott. And then he asked me to play Ann Richards, which I did twice [in staged readings] and then I guess about six months ago or so, he asked me to come on as co-director.”
For the full version of the show, Richards looks a little different. “Can I give away the secret?” Blanton asks, getting clearance from Heilbron to reveal it. “Ann Richards is actually a 9 ft tall puppet. But I will be doing her voice, so I will be in, in spirit, playing Ann Richards.”
Blanton says that her time working on the musical hasn’t affected her political views. “Still not a Greg Abbott fan,” she says. “No, no, not at all. I'm definitely still a fan of Ann Richards though. I feel, you know, she's my forever governor.”
Turning Heilbron’s script into a full musical was a bit of a challenge, Blanton says. “Well, we had the luxury of doing the readings,” she says. “So we certainly could see potential there, but it's a big giant puzzle to put together. But it's a joy and a challenge and like Brently said, everybody involved is so talented and so fun to work with. There's some puppet stuff in there that I didn't quite know how it was going to happen, but that's why you get other people in the room – to figure it out.”
Heilbron several times mentioned that Greg Abbott has a free ticket waiting for him if he wants to come down Congress Avenue and see the show, though he isn’t expecting the governor to take him up on the offer. “Can you imagine if Greg Abbott showed up?” Heilbtron says with a laugh. “I mean, I have a pretty creative imagination, but my mind would be actually blown. And I'm telling you again on air, we have a seat reserved for him. Both shows, free of charge. And if you're listening to this and you're on his staff, you can be the plus one, but you have to pay. Only Greg Abbott is comped.”
'Young Greg Abbott' is onstage for two shows only at the State Theatre on October 18.
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