WASHINGTON — If you’re a fan of the local indie folk music scene, there’s a good chance you know his band Eddie from Ohio, which was ironically founded in Northern Virginia in 1991.
“Eddie from Ohio has been my career for 17-18 years,” Robbie Schaefer said. “We’re not from Ohio; in fact, Eddie is from Arlington! We always just say Ohio looks better on the T-shirts.”
But like any consummate creator, Schaefer never settles for one genre or form, writing and starring in the world premiere of “Light Years” at Signature Theatre (Feb. 6 to March 4).
“A little over two years ago, I started writing this,” Schaefer said. “I didn’t really realize it was a musical at first, but I also realized I wasn’t going through the normal process of songwriting that would lead to an album. Then, bit by bit, the pieces started coming together and, eventually, I realized that something theatrical might be the right container for this.”
The story follows Robbie’s journey from his native D.C. to his childhood in India and Switzerland, exploring the joy and pain of growing up, pursuing his passion and raising a family. All the while, we see his evolving relationship with his father, who has a haunted past.
“It’s highly autobiographical,” Schaefer said. “It’s a story about a father and son, the space between them, and how they love each other even when they don’t understand each other.”
To understand his father’s perspective, Schaefer researched a family history he didn’t know.
“My father lived through the war, but he never called himself a Holocaust survivor,” Schaefer said. “He was born in Romania and the family was in camps through much of the war. The whole family survived, then after the war and some time in a refugee camp, they emigrated to Israel and my father came here and actually went to Howard University in Washington, D.C.”
While the Holocaust background is a key element in the show, it isn’t the crux of the story.
“While it’s the 11th-hour moment, it’s not really what this show is ultimately about,” Schaefer said. “What my father wanted for himself and his children was security and safety. To him and his generation, that translated to financial security and a reasonable job. The dichotomy is that what he also wanted by coming to the United States was freedom. … So, he at once wanted us to have [an] expressive life, but he also wanted us to be terribly responsible.”
That “expressive life” is, of course, Schaefer’s passion for making music and telling stories through song. Does the songbook for “Light Years” sound anything like Eddie from Ohio?
“It’s somewhat similar,” Schaefer said. “I’m one of the main songwriters for Eddie from Ohio, so I don’t think it’s too far removed. In fact, at our [recent] show at The Birchmere, we covered some songs from ‘Light Years.’ … I play acoustic guitar throughout the show. The musicians are on stage: acoustic guitar, drums, piano, violins, bass. … Definitely a folk-rock sound.”
While he knows plenty about music, he admits a learning process adapting it for the stage.
“I never would have aimed that high; I was just thinking, ‘Let’s do this in my parents’ barn,'” he joked. “While I was writing, I happened to talk to an old friend, [who] was one of the only people I told I was writing a musical. … He said, ‘Whenever you’re at a stopping point, I actually used to be on the executive board at Signature Theatre. If you’d like, I’ll introduce you to [artistic director] Eric Schaeffer.’ I remember thinking, ‘Right, I’ll see you in my parents’ barn.'”
Turns out, the Signature co-founder was familiar with Eddie from Ohio, which persuaded him to not only hear the pitch, but also begin to suggest dynamic ways to flesh it out for the stage.
“It was a one-man show before I brought it to Eric,” Schaefer said. “He said, ‘I think we need to make this more theatrical.’ … He took the script and asked if he could mess around with one of the scenes. … I saw what he had done and I just lit up. He had really touched on something. … From there, I went away for four to six months and rewrote the show with six characters.”
These six characters include three different versions of Robbie — Young Robbie (John Sygar), Middle Robbie (Like Smith) and Adult Robbie (Schaefer) — as well as Robbie’s father (Bobby Smith) and two rather symbolic backup singers (Natasica Diaz and Kara-Tameika Watkins).
“It’s hard to describe, but they like to say, ‘We play the idea of Robbie,'” Schaefer said. “They play the inner voice, the inner conscience, that person we talk to when we talk to ourselves. They just happen to be soulful backup singers; the singers I always wish I could’ve been.”
Not only did he add more characters, he also changed the title.
“The original title was ‘A Small Light in a Dark Room,’ which is a great title but probably best for the book,” Schaefer said. “Eric was like, ‘We need something shorter,’ so ‘Light Years’ it is. It nods to a particular scene, so that’s the literal connection, but to me, the connotation is that there are vast amounts of space between our relationships in life. … Those relationships are at once millions of miles away from each other, and yet, just like that, you can be connected.”
What’s in a name? Ask Eddie from Ohio, whose hometown boy keeps making Arlington proud.
“I’m really impressed with the way they embrace new works [at Signature],” Schaefer said. “There’s a lot of lip service to that — people love to talk about taking artistic risks and putting resources toward new artists, but they actually do it. … It requires an enormous amount of resources, knowing that sometimes it’ll really hit and sometimes maybe not. That’s what you sign up for when your mission is to really commit and be devoted to bring new works to light.”
Here’s hoping that this world premiere is “Light Years” ahead of the rest.
Click here for more details. Listen to our full conversation with Robbie Schaefer below:
