King, Mellencamp, and T Bone chat up Ghost Brothers

Group press conferences about artistic projects tend to be lovefests, so it’s no surprise that the Alliance Theatre’s Dec. 15 presser for Ghost Brothers of Darkland County served as a mutual admiration society. “How often do you get a chance to work with this kind of trifecta?” director Susan V. Booth asked of Ghost Brothers’ principal creators: book writer Stephen King, lyricist and composer John Mellencamp, and music director T Bone Burnett. “Ghost Brothers” could even describe their working relationship.

The press conference capped off the Alliance’s 10-day workshop with Ghost Brothers’ full cast in advance of its world premiere on April 4, 2012. The conversation emphasized good-natured joshing around over the nuts-and-bolts creative process of the musical.

When Mellencamp said, tongue partially in cheek, “Susan has a vision and ability to deal with all three of our egos and idea,” King added, “We’d get another email from Susan and I’d say ‘There goes another two pages of the script!’ Which was okay, since the script was 500 pages.”