In this ShowbizU interview, book writer/lyricist Kevin Hammonds and composer Kristin Bair discuss the conception and development of their superhero musical Up and Away. Hammonds cites the minimalist storytelling of The 39 Steps as inspiration for telling an epic tale with a small cast, and both creators wanted to avoid reliance on costly special effects, focusing instead on character and narrative. They chose to explore the origin of the world’s first superhero, predating Superman, and examined how classic superhero tropes (capes, costumes) could be reimagined on stage. The duo reflects on the challenges of marketing a superhero musical, noting the lack of precedent beyond Spider‑Man: Turn Off the Dark and the need to identify new audience cohorts. Their participation in the Theater Accelerator program helped them define target audiences, distill the show’s core theme, and develop a concrete marketing pitch. They emphasize the importance of being the show’s best advocate, integrating business insights with creative decisions. Recent read‑through feedback highlighted structural issues with the openings of Act 1 and Act 2, prompting rewrites to better hook audiences without over‑exposition. Overall, the conversation underscores the interplay of artistic vision, audience strategy, and iterative development in bringing a novel musical to the stage.
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I'm Kevin Hammonds. I'm the book writer and lyricist for Up and Away.
And I'm Kristen Behr, and I'm the composer of Up and Away.
Well, firstly, I saw 39 Steps in London, actually, and I just loved how they used so few characters to tell such a massive story. So I kept thinking, I want to do something like that where I can tell this epic story with just a few people. And I still remember to this day them having the train chase on top of steamer trunks in 39 Steps. And they just had someone blowing smoke and it was so effective. And I really wanted to capture that. And I didn't know, I was thinking, should I do the Bible? Should I do Gone with the Wind? What should it be?
I wasn't part of those conversations.
You weren't a part of that yet. Then I met Kristen in BMI workshop. And we were looking for a project, and at the same time, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark was in its previews on Broadway, and I just kept reading so many articles about how things were going wrong with the special effects and the technical aspect of it, and I thought, well, gosh, don't they know that if they just focused on the story and the characters, that the special effects is secondary to that. And so then we started talking about, oh, what if we did a superhero story like that, like 39 Steps, with just a small cast and no flying? Don't worry about the special effects. And so that's kind of— that was the impetus of the show.
I think everyone's always fascinated with superhero origin stories, and what we did was decide to focus on the world's first superhero, which would be in our world even before Superman. And so we got to play around with, okay, well, how did the trope that they wear capes come about? How did they get the costume? All those things that kind of have evolved into what we think of as a superhero now, we had a really good time with just playing around with that. And for us, without going into too much about the show, we have simple characters that then go on this journey that also involves these epic things where people are flying and all the superhero stuff. So I pulled from a lot of different genres because I had to touch on their simple origins, but I also had to almost make it feel cinematic to stage the big superhero fights and that sort of thing. So to be truthful, the things that I drew from the most were movie scores. I think it was— it came at a really interesting time for our show because we had a production in Pittsburgh. It was a world premiere and we were so excited about it. We also— it gave us from a business side a perspective of, okay, this is our show and this is how a theater chose to market it. And with a superhero musical, it's a little bit tricky because there really, except for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, there hasn't been a superhero musical. With knowing what the demographic is for the typical theatergoer, superhero musicals were not necessarily on their list of to-dos. So we were a little hesitant to say, "Hey, this is a superhero musical, so maybe people interested in superheroes would want to go see it." And with Theater Accelerator and the process we went through as far as who's your audience, who are the cohorts, who are your circles of influence, that sort of thing, we had to actually gather evidence and decide, like, make it more concrete who our audience was. That going forward we actually have more information on, yes, these are areas that we can explore. Maybe they're new audiences for musical theater, but we feel like our musical is going to be a bridge to bring those audiences in. So that's where it was very helpful for us.
And it's like helped us be able to market the show better, just pitching it.
The other thing that was really helpful is when we had to come up with what the theme of the show was. And that seems like, oh, we know this, and it's this big long sentence. And then Tim and you and Christopher were like, no, not quite, go back. And we had to keep doing it until it was just distilled into its very essence. And that was so centering to the rest of the process, and no one had really asked us to do that before, so that was awesome.
I would say Definitely do it because it's not just— it's not your typical workshop or your typical program where you're learning about the craft of writing. It's about so much more, and it's about you owning your project and taking ownership of it and marketing it on your own terms and not waiting for someone else to come in and say, This is what you should do. You learn the business aspect of it, which I am terrible at. If I were good at it, I'd be a billionaire right now, but I'm not. So to learn how to do it and learn the steps and learn what's important, like to learn your target audience, and that's so important. So I would tell them to do it because there's so much more to writing than just playwriting. Learning the business side of it is crucial.
And I feel like the, the biggest takeaway that I had from a creative side was that you have to be your show's best advocate. And in order to do that, you need to have a deep understanding of what you're trying to say with your show, why it exists. It seems like such a simple thing, but when you really have to think about it and have to understand why people are going to want to go see it and why— what you want to say to the world, it's— it really also has an effect on your writing as well. So even though there is a business side to it, there's also that business side flows into the creative.
We had a reading today and we discovered that we're closer to what we want it to be, but oddly enough, we were talking after the read-through I think we need to take another pass at the opening of Act 1 and the opening of Act 2. It's interesting how the two problem areas— I wouldn't call them problem areas— but the two problems that we want to focus on are the beginning of both acts. How you set up a show, how do you get the audience back into a show. It's really kind of very important and it's very tricky, and you have to set up as much as you can at the top of the show without without seeming like you're giving too much information. And the same way with Act 2, you have to set up where we left off, what balls had we left hanging in the air, and how do we pick it up as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But it's a fun problem to have because we're close and we feel like we got some really great feedback today, so we think we have a direction, and that's exciting. It seems like rewrites would be a real bummer, Initially, in the moment when you're like, "Yes, we got it!" No, we didn't. But it's also— we like writing, that's why we're in it, and we want to make things better and better. So in the end, it's satisfying to get feedback and know that, "Aha, I think I have a solution."
