Area Stage Company Opens Its Season at the Arsht Center with Be More Chill

When Area Stage Company kicks off its season on Friday, February 11, with Be More Chill, it will mark its first-ever production at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

The musical is a retro-yet-futuristic-feeling adaption of Ned Vizzini's book by the same name. It centers on Jeremy, an awkward high schooler who wants to fit in with his peers and impress his crush. But when he gets that opportunity from an overpowering supercomputer called SQUIP (Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor), he realizes popularity isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Despite the sci-fi-sounding score complete with a talk box and the use of a chunky television set atop an A/V cart to portray the SQUIP in Jeremy's mind, for the cast, the show isn't really about technology at all. The real lesson is to be yourself, especially in an age where the line between social media and real life blurs.

"I want people to walk away with that clarity and understanding that all this artificial crap is not important," says Teddy Calvin, the actor who portrays Jeremy. "Who we are and what we do and how we treat others, I think that's the most important thing."

The characters aren't the only stronghold of youth in the production. Directing Be More Chill is Giancarlo Rodaz, Area Stage's 26-year-old associate artistic director.

His parents, John and Maria Rodaz, created Area Stage Company in 1989 at its initial South Beach location. Giancarlo — often affectionately addressed as "Jon Jon" in rehearsal by cast and crew — is their youngest child and the only one who ended up in the family business.

At about age 13, Rodaz began coming to the theater with his parents to help backstage and act in productions.

"I wanted him to start at the bottom and learn the whole thing," John Rodaz says. "Then he was off to the races."

After his first year of high school, Rodaz switched to homeschooling to get more involved in theater. At age 16, his parents gave him his first directing job for the conservatory's production of Winnie the Pooh. Since then, he has directed about 40 shows, 15 of which have been professional productions.

For Be More Chill, Rodaz tried to recreate his short-lived high-school experience.

"When you watch the show, I want you to feel like that really shitty Monday morning, 7 a.m. unattractive school vibe," Rodaz explains. "I wanted to find humor in the banality of high school."

One way to actualize that was through the stage itself. From the slightly mismatched colored tiling on the floor to the sterile white lighting and the blue plastic classroom chairs, the mood Rodaz sought to create came from the eye of set designer Frank Oliva.

"We did this soul-sucking set that just feels, to me, like being in class all day," Rodaz says. "Just this oppressive box that's cold and uncaring, like a factory. God, school sucks."
First adapted as a musical by Joe Iconis and Joe Tracz in 2015, Be More Chill made its off-Broadway debut in 2018 before moving to Broadway for a six-month run in 2019. The show is currently playing in London's West End.

But although he loved the show's script and music, Rodaz didn't like the approach of previous productions.

"They tried to make it a standard Broadway show. It just doesn't work," he explains. "To me, it's much more interesting than that. It really does have an almost underground vibe to it — an indie film of musicals."

So instead of going with the written present-day setting, Rodaz wanted to make it feel 2008-esque — pre-social media and at the dawn of the ubiquity of smartphones.

Still, making that vision materialize on a stage has not come without challenges.

Not only is it Area Stage's first production at the Arsht Center's Carnival Studio Theater, but it's also the largest one it's done since the pandemic. Technical difficulties caused the company to cancel its first preview last Friday.

"It's very ambitious — the only way I'd want it," Rodaz says. "Whenever you try to do something new and cool, everything is going to get in your way. I've done so many shows that it doesn't phase me."

So far, COVID is something that hasn't gotten in the way, according to Rodaz, adding that the cast hasn't had any positive cases during the four-week rehearsal process.

"It was scary for a bit. I thought, if anything happens, we're screwed," he says. "It's more like a dread because, at any moment, this could go away."

That possibility is heavy on the mind of Jorge Amador, 23, the show's only swing performer. At a recent rehearsal, he sat in the audience, intently following the show with its sheet music on his iPad. It's Amador's job to know every lyric and line for seven different characters and be able to hop on stage at a moment's notice.

"It's really hard because you have to learn all the songs essentially seven times because everyone has a different harmony line or word," Amador says. "And there's a lot of dialogue in the show."

He hopes people will come to see this production in particular because it’s not what audiences might be used to from musicals. "I think it's something that's super different," he says.

Rodaz's approach and youth, Amador adds, bring a fresh element to his shows.

"A lot of people think, 'Oh, he's so young,'" Amador says. "But it's the best thing about him because he can make it edgier for all ages, especially the younger generation."

Be More Chill. Friday, February 11, through Sunday, February 27, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 305-949-6722; arshtcenter.com. Tickets cost $63.