Creator Robert Galinsky Talks About The Origins of the Show and the Team He’s Put Together.

by John Donohue.

CULTURE DESK
Notes on arts and entertainment from the staff of The New Yorker

In the early eighties, when “Starbucks” was an obscure term referring to Captain Ahab’s first mate in the plural, the National Coffee Association produced a series of television commercials about being a “Coffee Achiever.” Robert Galinsky remembers watching them as a young man in suburban Connecticut, and he seems to have swallowed the message whole. His latest project is writing and producing a Broadway show called “Coffee: The Musical.” This weekend, Galinsky will be presenting songs from the musical at Coffee Fest, a massive trade show at the Javits Center, where, according to Galinsky, “the heavy hitters in the industry come together, along with the makers of mugs, spoons, sleeves, as well as eleven hundred thousand café owners.”

Galinsky sat down for an espresso inside the demitasse-sized shop La Colombe Torrefaction, on Lafayette Street. The producer, who had come to the Soho café from his East Village home, said, “I found it by the smell, which is always a good sign.” He was wearing jeans and an olive-green Oxford that stretched just a bit over his waist to suggest that, along with his coffee, he’s enjoyed a pastry or two in his forty-seven years. “I first a came up with the idea in the mid-nineties when I was going in and out of Dean and Deluca all the time, spending hours drinking coffee while I was working for an online company,” he said.

A little over a year ago, he met Mark Schoenfeld, who wrote “Brooklyn: The Musical,” which ran on Broadway in 2004. When Galinsky mentioned his coffee-musical idea to Schoenfeld, he got excited. In a booming voice that Galinsky imitated in the café, Schoenfeld told him, “Now you got to raise the money to put on the show.” Galinsky, who had no experience on Broadway, got to work. He began a Kickstarter campaign, and raised fifty thousand dollars in two months from two hundred and sixty-three people. “The contributions were mostly from people I didn’t even know. I was getting notes from people all over the country saying, ‘I love coffee, I’ll support this.’ ”

But it wasn’t easy. With a few days to go, they were ten thousand dollars short (with Kickstarter, if you don’t meet your goal, you don’t keep any money). Galinsky described his predicament to a friend of his, Nile Rodgers, the guitarist from Chic, which gave the world the disco anthem “Le Freak.” Galinsky said, “Nile had heard some of the music, and he got behind it. He donated fifteen hundred dollars, and told me to tweet about his contribution. He then retweeted my message to his nearly thirty thousand followers. Right away another five thousand dollars came in, and we made it.”

Since raising those funds, Galinsky has been working with two musicians from Los Angeles, Willie Wisely and Mike Ruekberg. “Willie is a singer-songwriter, and Mike is a jingle guy who writes great hooks, so they’re a great pair. Neither have any Broadway experience. I’m not going to the Broadway world for this.”

He took a sip of espresso and continued: “The story is a mix of boy meets girl and big business takes over small business. A little mom-and-pop coffee shop is going to go under, or explode,” he said. “It’s driven by Dennis, the café owner. Dennis has issues with change. He longs for the old days in N.Y.C. where second-hand smoke and fuel-guzzling vehicles ruled the day. There are characters of all types, including a barista who aspires to be an R. & B. singer, the lovable old baby-boomer regular who steals brown sugar and sets up his ‘office’ at the café, and the overly poetic host of the open mike.” Listen to that host’s number, “Hot Black Stuff,” sung here by Mary Birdsong:

“We’re going to do things differently,” he said as he took another sip of his coffee. “We’re building a cupping, a taste, into the show, at intermission.” He plans to serve coffee from a sponsor, but he doesn’t have one yet. “Intelligentsia, Dunkin Donuts. Small guy to big guy. We’ll see who is interested.” And he has other ideas. “We’ll offer barista champions a walk-on roll in the show. And we’ll do frequent drinker tickets.” Though he thinks that these gimmicks may not be needed: “I’ve worked a lot in theatre. The thing that’s different about this project is that I don’t have to think too hard about getting an audience. The audience is built in.”

Although Galinsky may be writing a musical about coffee, when it comes to drinking it, he’s no Balzac. “I don’t drink regular coffee. It makes me miserable.” He elaborated: “I’m a father, and I find if I drink it I have no patience.” Instead, he drinks three cups of espresso a day. He put down his cup and continued. “I came to New York City in 1988 to be a writer and an actor. I quickly realized it’s better to make your own stuff. I didn’t like going around pounding on doors, asking ‘Can I be in your show?’ ” He paused for a moment. “I’m rambling now, that’s what one espresso does.”

Photograph by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum.