“What have you been reading?” Award-winning American playwright Julia Jordan laughs. We’re discussing her latest project, new rock musical Murder Ballad – for which she wrote the book and lyrics, with music from indie singer-songwriter Juliana Nash – and I’ve observed that violence seem to be a preoccupation of her work. From the grief-tinged tales of Walk Two Moons (2005) to the cornfield murder at the heart of Dark Yellow(2006), the extinction of life hangs over her plays.
Jordan concedes a fascination not only with death, but with crime in general. Focusing on New York Upper West Sider Sara, whose actions drive the story, Murder Ballad is rooted in the stories of real-life murders of passion that Jordan observes are now so popular on American television. And from authors like Agatha Christie to Patricia Highsmith, she argues that female writers have a particularly close relationship with violence.
“I think there’s something in us that is brought up to be afraid. Women have to be on their guard and protective. And it’s true – it’s out there, it’s real. It’s something that we’re constantly being told about. We have a fascination with what it is, with could it really happen, and how. And who are the people who do it?”
Jordan believes that this is inflected in crime prose in a way that distinguishes female from male writers, with the notable exception of novelists such as James Ellroy, whose works include The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential. “He has, as some men do, another insight,” she argues, “because his mother was murdered.” As a result, “he has something that women have, in that he sees from both sides. He has a way into the victim.”
Writing about murder also offers Jordan a way to lay bare the true nature of people when placed in extreme situations, while indulging her interest in the lurid. “It’s about asking, how far would you go? And the further the story can go, the more dramatic it is, and the more fun it is to write on a really prurient, visceral level – which I kind of love,” she confesses.
Murder Ballad’s name invokes a centuries-old verse form. This sub-genre of the traditional ballad is folky and anecdotal, its tales of murderous events constantly evolving to reflect different people, places and times. It was thanks to Kylie Minogue that Jordan first became aware of it – specifically the video for her haunting duet with Nick Cave, Where the Wild Roses Grow, from his 1996 studio album Murder Ballads.
“I was living in England at the time, I saw that video and it just struck me,” she recalls. “And then I started hearing murder ballads everywhere,” she laughs. “You know, you realise that ‘Copacabana’ is a murder ballad, that ‘Hey Joe’ is a murder ballad.” Much like the original verses, these songs “are part of our lives. They go right by our ear and we sing along, without always listening to what’s really going on.”
Set to music, the archetypal figures and enduring themes of jealousy and revenge that have seen the murder ballad reincarnated through the ages achieve “an aesthetic level” of enjoyment, Jordan argues. And it was “the rhyme and patterning” when “you add the art” that ignited her enthusiasm for writing a ballad of her own – along with Elvis Costello and his song ‘Psycho’.
“What hit me was the fun of the story, the fun of the lyrics: there are so many twists. When I heard that, I could see how this would work”, she enthuses.
But as the extreme pitch of Jordan’s murder ballad found its echo in Nash’s amped-up music, “the form became looser and more of the drive of the story started to enter the songs, so now it’s not a pure murder ballad with a beginning, middle and end,” she explains.
Jordan and Nash worked on the music and lyrics collaboratively, riffing on Nash’s songs and the back catalogues of their favourite artists to find inspiration for their story. “Juliana had never done any theatre, but she has this mind-blowing ability to get into a situation and identify what the feeling is,” Jordan marvels. “She’d come up with something, which almost never sounded like whatever song we’d been talking about – but it always accomplished what we needed it to.”
Jordan compares the process of working out the tone of Murder Ballad’s songs to acting. “We would get to the bridge, I’d tell her what the switch was and how this woman, Sara, had changed.” These character beats, “what the feeling was without the words,” were what the lyrics and music flowed from. “Although it was really easy in a way,” Jordan laughs. “Sara wants to kill. That was pretty straightforward.”
A distinctive feature of director Trip Cullman’s production of Murder Ballad at The Studio at Stage II is its trampling of the divide between cast and audience: the performers clamber over tables and argue their way between people sipping drinks in a set dressed as a low-rent bar. This in-your-face approach seems like the perfect fit for a seedy story of deception and betrayal, but Jordan reveals it wasn’t what she and Nash had originally envisaged.
“When we started writing it, we thought of it almost as a radio play,” she says. “We’re doing the album right now and, basically, apart from one sight scene, which has no words, you could listen to the whole thing and get the whole show, because the lyrics contain time and place – everything.”
Coupled with what Jordan describes as Nash’s “huge aversion” to all things musical theatre, this meant that the original idea was to perform the piece in an actual bar, with a band. It wasn’t until they discussed their plans with Cullman that the production took on its current shape. “He was really smart and basically said, OK, that’s what we’re going to do – set it in a bar.”
Initially, this “freaked out” Jordan and Nash, but they quickly came round. Weaving a tale historically rooted in communal storytelling through a throng of theatre-goers has “added a lot” to the experience, Jordan says. “And we have a really, really sex cast – bizarrely sex,” she adds, smiling. “A lot of them are big musical theatre people. One of the thrills is being so close to these majorly out-sized talents. It’s not like a big Broadway stage, where they’re up there with the scenery. Here they’re in your face.”
With Murder Ballad now open, what does this explorer of the darker side of human nature have lined up next? “My dream is to write a trilogy of these crime ballads,” she reveals. “I think I know what the next one is, so I’m beginning to mull that over.” While she doesn’t go into detail, one thing is clear: audiences should expect some “some dark things” to come their way.
Murder Ballad is on until 16 December at The Studio at Stage II, New York City Center. You can read our review here.
First published by Exeunt Magazine
Posted in: Interviews