Magic to Do: Conjuring ‘Pippin’

In 1972, the United States was caught in a moment of profound uncertainty. The Vietnam War was ongoing, and public trust in government was eroding. The optimism of the 1960s counterculture had faded into a more cynical mood, and young people in particular were grappling with big questions: What is the point of life? What does fulfillment actually look like? Can the grand ideals of the past be trusted?

Right in the middle of this fascinating historical crossroads landed the musical Pippin. Directed and choreographed by the legendary Bob Fosse, and with a score by Steven Schwartz, the Broadway show about a medieval prince and his father, Charlemagne the king, was immediately the subject of controversy for its bold, stylized, and unusually existential take on the era’s mindset. 

 

Its central character—a young man searching for meaning through war, politics, pleasure, and revolution—mirrors a generation disillusioned with traditional paths to success and heroism. Pippin’s journey through imagined life choices subtly critiques empty notions of glory and the idea that fulfillment comes from grand, external achievements, undercutting the idea of Broadway convention and theatrical spectacle itself. Instead, the hero rejects these and chooses ordinary life as the truest source of satisfaction.

According to musical theater scholar Scott Miller, the iconic show, though under-appreciated today, was “surreal and disturbing” and immensely influential in its time. The “quasi-Brechtian” elements Fosse introduced to audiences broke the illusion of reality, prompting questions about the play’s meaning, while his sensual and cynical choreography provoked viewers who were accustomed to more traditional approaches. An ambiguous ending, in which Pippin remains “trapped” by ordinary life, forced audiences to decide for themselves whether the hero’s quest was a fruitless one.

More than half a century later, Colorado Academy’s Upper School spring musical production of Pippin finds new relevance in the show’s questioning of authority, spectacle, and ideology, and engages viewers, cast, and crew in a timeless search for meaning.

 

“Pippin was incredibly groundbreaking in its day,” explains director, choreographer, and CA Dance Instructor Melissa Zaremba. 

 

The despair of the famous ending, she goes on, exemplified its radicalism. “There’s a moment when the ensemble strips everything away from the hero—costumes, lights, sets, all the trappings and magic—and leaves him with nothing, alone on the stage facing the audience, as if to say, ‘Is this what you want?’ Such self-awareness had never been part of musical theater before.”

 

When Pippin was revived in a Tony Award-winning version in 2013, the show received a new, more hopeful ending and an injection of circus-inspired elements, illusions, and other colorful touches that were just as groundbreaking for the time. To stage the CA production, Zaremba combined the best of the original and the revival versions.

 

The result is a uniquely entertaining but deeply challenging piece.

“Any dancer or choreographer would tell you Pippin is a difficult musical,” Zaremba says. Mastering Fosse’s distinctive and exacting style, when combined with the lengthy production numbers involving almost the entire cast, is regarded as one of the most demanding assignments in theater. The acting and singing, too, ask much from high school talent.

 

“It’s a whole different mindset than traditional musical portrayals,” explains Zaremba. “You have to be cynical and charming at the same time, a manipulator and ringmaster in the circus that is Pippin’s quest—yet likable and entertaining to appeal to the audience. It’s a musical, after all.”

But why dare staging such a difficult show, one seemingly so removed from today’s students, their TikTok dances and Instagram reels?

“We have the largest number of Seniors in the program that we’ve had in some time. Many are students who’ve done every musical with us for years, going back to Middle School. I wanted to give them something to challenge them before they leave,” says Zaremba.

Embracing the challenge

Seniors Rory Goldstein and Gideon Silverman-Joseph have appeared in CA musicals together since Ninth Grade, when they both had roles in that spring’s Upper School production, the crowd-pleasing Mamma Mia!

In Pippin, the two portray the leads: Goldstein as the ringmaster-like Leading Player and Silverman-Joseph as the titular hero. And they are in agreement: This is no easy show.

 

“This musical has definitely challenged me in ways that I’ve never been challenged before in CA Theater, or any theater,” attests Silverman-Joseph. 

“We’ve never really done a show in my time here that is so complex, so up for interpretation,” he goes on. “The amount of freedom that we give the audience—it takes a certain amount of trust. And with that, sometimes it feels like your singing, dancing, and acting have to be just that much better.”

 

“In a show like Pippin,” adds Goldstein, “you’re constantly asking yourself: One, are these people good enough to play these roles, and two, can you get this complex story across?”

“It’s been interesting for us as performers at CA,” Goldstein continues, “because I think the roles we have played have matured along with us. Starting off with Mamma Mia! and ending with Pippin, the distance between those two pieces is amazing.”

“There’s something that just feels so exceptionally important and fulfilling—to go along with the theme of fulfillment in the musical—about us being able to do this show as Seniors,” says Silverman-Joseph. “I really wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Just like these two talented leads, according to Zaremba, the entire cast of Pippin has embraced the challenge, holding themselves to the “higher standard” that such an icon of the genre, shaped by one of its most iconic choreographers and directors, demands.

 

“This work is so well-established, and the numbers are so precisely designed, that you don’t get full license to interpret or make it your own,” says Zaremba. “You have to conform, figure out how to do something that doesn’t feel so comfortable—which itself is maybe the biggest challenge for young people today.”

 

Still, she says, the unique ensemble style of Pippin, in which most scenes have the entire company on stage as participants—playing everything from farmers to soldiers to dreamlike dancers—means the show brings everyone together around its shared ideas.

“I think they relate to it because of how current many of the themes still feel,” Zaremba explains. “There’s the universal quest for meaning and purpose—the sense that you’re missing something and looking everywhere to find it. Students see themselves in that journey.”

And then, Zaremba continues, there’s Pippin’s pursuit of “shiny objects—women, love, war. All of that eventually surrounds him with mirrors—an overdose of shiny things. The cast has talked about how social media feels just like that: too much self-reflection.”

 

Remarkably, Pippin’s Vietnam-era politics feel relevant, too. 

“When we chose the show a year ago,” says Zaremba, “we had no idea what the world would look like now, during the rehearsals and performances. There was no way we could have predicted we’d currently be at war with Iran. So the giant battle sequence and the song ‘War is a Science’ just hit differently; it’s exciting for the students.”

 

One of the show’s most iconic moments, the “Manson Trio” of vaudeville-style dancers who eerily entertain the audience as death and destruction descend on the musical’s battlefield, spins “chaos as entertainment,” Zaremba notes.

“Fosse’s idea was that as people are dying, we as spectators are being told, ‘Look over here! Look over there! Focus on the glory, and pay no attention to the horrors of war.”

An extraordinary visit

Early on during rehearsals over the winter, Zaremba invited a friend and fellow dancer to come to the Leach Center to meet with the cast and crew. Candy Brown, a longtime stage and screen performer who lives in Denver, happened to have been one of the featured dancers in Fosse’s original 1972 staging of Pippin on Broadway; she also starred in his 1975 musical Chicago, which went on to become the longest-running show in history.

 

It was she, Brown revealed to the students as she sat on the Leach Center’s stage one day in February, who first dubbed the wartime entertainers the Manson Trio in 1972; Brown was one of the three performers who would make this scene so unforgettable.

 

Fosse, she related, wanted Brown and her colleagues to wear a “totally deadpan” expression throughout the dance sequence. “And then at the end, when we raised our hats to do a ‘ta-da,’ he wanted us to flash a big, cheesy smile. It was so creepy, and with all those bloody limbs being thrown around behind us in the battle, I said it was just like Charles Manson,” the notorious serial killer whose crimes were in the news right around the time of Pippin’s debut.

 

The moment was of a piece with Fosse’s dark vision for the show as a whole, Brown explained. 

“He told us that we should imagine ourselves as a troupe of performers who travel around with the Leading Player conducting a sort of ritual that gets darker and darker, as we try to convince Pippin that ending his own life would bring the ultimate fulfillment—immortality.”

Brown told the cast and crew that in Fosse’s original ending to the show, Pippin resisted, choosing life, but was trapped in a dull, ordinary existence. The creative team objected to this bleak outcome, and Pippin was allowed to say he felt “trapped—but happy.”

 

She shared an anecdote about the significance of yet another Fosse influence on Pippin: “jazz hands,” Fosse’s own invention, which appear out of the darkness to start the show and then reappear throughout his distinctive dance sequences.

“I think what Bob always wanted us to express was precision. You can’t just put your hands out normally—you put them out sharp, with your fingers outstretched. That’s why the dancing in Pippin looks as good as it does: It’s precise, not general. Everything is very specific—we smile at specific times, we lean together at specific times, and it all has to mean something.”

 

For the original Broadway version, Fosse used car headlights shining up from grates in the stage to light the performers’ hands so they would appear to float during the opening sequence, when the Leading Player introduces the company and promises there’s “magic to do.” Zaremba recreated the number for CA, using footlights to illuminate the students’ hands pushing through the stage curtains.

 

“It’s moments like that when the audience either buys into the work or not,” said Brown. “It matters how you move, or how you sing—with specificity. I can’t stress that enough: That’s how it turns into the story you want to show people for the next two hours.”

Looking out over the students eagerly listening from the Leach Center’s orchestra pit seats, Brown added, “And that means you’ve got to rehearse your butt off.”

Hard lessons

Goldstein, who next fall will attend Chapman University in the Theater Performance BFA program, recounts that rigor was exactly what she wanted in her final year at CA.

“I had a conversation this fall with Miss Zaremba and Mr. Looper (Theater Instructor Maclain Looper) about how I wanted them not to hold back with me—I already knew I wanted to go into a BFA program, and I asked them to be brutally honest.”

And they were, Goldstein adds. “I feel like I learn best when someone sets those high expectations. On day one of rehearsal, I had to put on the Leading Player’s high-heel boots, and I wore them every day after that; I’ve never done a show in high heels, and it’s a very different experience having to dance elevated above the floor.”

 

Zaremba, a professional dancer and choreographer with years of experience on and off Broadway, also impressed on Goldstein and the rest of the cast just how far they’d have to stretch to make their Pippin a success.

“We learned we can’t rely on the singing to carry the acting,” Goldstein says. “You’re not there just to listen to the music—each scene needs to hold up against its song.”

Adds Silverman-Joseph, “That’s definitely something it took me a while to learn. Even when I was young, I always loved the flashiness of musicals, the big belting number where someone just sings their heart out. That was the peak of theater to me.”

 

One of the most important things he’s learned from Zaremba and Looper, he continues, is “just how much all three skills—singing, acting, and dancing—all matter. It’s so easy to fall into this superficial view of theater, but here I’ve become a much more balanced performer.”

“Gideon and I have truly grown up with each other in CA Theater,” Goldstein reflects. Even in their Ninth Grade year, she recalls, they “would have these conversations about Senior year and where we’re going to be by then.”

“A lot of the growth that I’ve had as an individual has come from CA Theater,” she goes on. “You learn so much about storytelling and how to understand other individuals and their perspectives in the world. You’re able to step into other people’s shoes and really feel the weight of a different story that’s not your own.”

With Pippin, perhaps more than any other recent CA production, Zaremba explains, “The reward as a teacher and director comes from seeing my students’ recognition that they’re capable of doing something hard, of holding themselves to a higher standard and not shying away from that.”

That applies equally to the crew behind the scenes. Notes Zaremba, this challenging show wouldn’t have been possible without the dedication of a large group of veteran Tech Theater students who have made Pippin their own.

 

Lead Sound Engineer Senior Kit Freeman is “a great example of someone who found an interest and ran with it,” pursuing an independent study in sound engineering with Technical Theater Instructor Ian Marzonie. So is Junior Stage Manager Theo Mohraz, Zaremba adds, a master of organization who designed his own spreadsheet system to track crew responsibilities moment by moment throughout the show.

“Because of Theo’s work, I don’t even have to think twice now about who pulls the curtain at what moment.”

 

There are so many other stories like these, Zaremba says: Senior athletes skipping games or practice sessions to make it to important rehearsals, Mock Trial participants balancing afterschool meetings with their musical roles.

“Sometimes,” she admits, “everyone in this show works so hard in the theater and outside of it, I feel like we should get an award when we’re all here together on the same day.”

Years in the making

It is a long road indeed to any opening night; but with Pippin, according to Zaremba, the journey literally took decades.

In 2001, as a recent college graduate, one of the first professional roles she ever landed was as a Manson Trio dancer. Later, she took a leave from her position at CA to direct and choreograph the musical with the Nebraska Repertory Theater—but that production was canceled just before opening night due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That was a real heartbreak for me, because I had put so much love and work into that show and never got to see it through.” 

Pippin remained an unfinished story for Zaremba until spring 2025, when Silverman-Joseph, then a Junior, wondered if she might consider it as the coming year’s spring musical. “He talked about how much he loved it, and I realized, of course, this was the time to finish it.”

So now, finally, Zaremba gets her chance to bring this saga full circle and, ultimately, “give it away,” incorporating many of the ideas she first developed for the Nebraska production, along with the individual histories and talents of all those Seniors and others who are part of this season’s Pippin.

 

“People will see this production and wonder why it seems different somehow,” she explains. “They’ll just have a sense that something is special about it. And that’s what we’ll tell the kids on closing night: ‘This is the last time this particular Pippin will ever be performed; this is lightning in a bottle.’”

Every production, she notes, is the sum of all the individual experiences that have come before, 20 years in the past or just last spring. “You can never replicate that exact combination, this exact group of people and experiences.”

For Goldstein and Silverman-Joseph, too, the story of Pippin goes back years. Their families had already become close by the time they became CA classmates in Ninth Grade. That year, their older siblings, Avery Goldstein ’23 and Desi Silverman-Joseph ’23, took the stage in the Leach Center for the Performing Arts as Seniors to sing together during the Winter Talent Show.

Later that spring, Rory played a young bride-to-be alongside her sister, who as the bride’s mother was one of the stars in that spring’s Upper School musical, the ABBA-inspired Mamma Mia! Silverman-Joseph appeared in that show, too, as a long-lost love of Avery’s character and possible father figure to Rory’s. At the massive wedding celebration that ends the musical, the Goldstein sisters, Silverman-Joseph, and many others who would appear in Pippin danced and sang together to the music of ABBA, inviting the audience to join in.

 

“This group of students truly loves cheering for each other,” Zaremba observes. “As you saw then and as you see now, they are so very supportive of one another, both inside and outside the theater. And that is something that bleeds onto the stage in the best way possible. All those relationships you see under the lights—they are genuine.”

Says Silverman-Joseph, “When Rory and I first came to CA Theater, we both picked up on the same feeling: of being so loved and cared for. This has always been a space of pure inclusion for me.”

“It’s been wonderful to be part of this beautiful group of individuals—especially now that the program is expanding and getting stronger every year,” Goldstein agrees. “It’s so incredible to think about putting on a show, and having someone sitting in the audience, thinking, ‘Wow. I want to do that, too.’”

Both of these CA Seniors had moments like that, moments that got them started in theater, and now, they’ll surely help create those moments for the next generation of singing, dancing, acting Mustangs. But there’s one thing the two never dared to imagine sharing.

“It’s strange,” explains Silverman-Joseph, “how close Rory and I are in Pippin. She’s almost like a guide, helping me discover the meaning of my life. And despite the fact that we’re so close, and we’ve sort of grown up in theater together, it’s something we never got to do on stage before–even though we talked about it in Ninth Grade, how we should be the two leads in the musical.”

“The things that we always dreamed about doing,” adds Goldstein, “the things that we talked about doing—how cool is it that we finally get to do them? Those little Ninth Graders had no idea what they were in for.”

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