TDF Stages

Will Aronson and Hue Park on the incredible cross-cultural journey of Maybe Happy Ending

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It's hard to write a musical, especially an original one not based on existing IP. It's even harder to write two versions of that original musical in two different languages! But for musical theatre writers Will Aronson and Hue Park, their hard work on Maybe Happy Ending, currently running at Broadway's Belasco Theatre, has paid off.

A romantic musical comedy set in the near future, the show stars Darren Criss and Helen J Shen as a pair of retired androids called Helperbots who unexpectedly fall in love. The musical's 2016 world premiere in South Korea was a hit that sparked multiple productions across Asia. Its English-language debut came in early 2020 at Alliance Theatre in Atlanta with Michael Arden directing. The Parade Tony winner also helms the new Broadway mounting, which recently opened to rapturous reviews.

Aronson, who was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and Park, who was born in South Korea, met through a mutual friend as students at NYU and have been working together for over a decade. They spoke with TDF Stages about their cross-cultural collaboration, their show's journey from Seoul to New York and why in a world of adaptations they stand out as originals.

Sarah Rebell: Maybe Happy Ending marks your Broadway debuts, which is really exciting. Can you talk about the genesis of the show?

Hue Park: About ten years ago, I was sitting in a coffee shop and there was this new song playing in the background called "Everyday Robots" [by Damon Albarn]. There was a lyric that hit me: "We are everyday robots on our phones, in the process of getting home." I thought, "I want to write an intimate story about relationships and love, but have the protagonists be androids." I pitched Will that idea, and then we started to form the story together.

Will Aronson: I'd previously been writing shows with a layer of irony, maybe in an attempt to be sophisticated. When Hue said, "Let's write a show about robots who are discovering the world," I thought, they're going to have an approach to life that's much more open, direct and heartfelt than I am with my cynical, distanced attitude. That was the appeal for me.

Rebell: What's it like to write songs in two different languages?

Aronson: Hue is the first lyricist with whom I write the music first. He was a successful K-pop lyricist and that's the general norm there. In a way, it gives the lyricist more control because he's interpreting the music and turning it into lyrics. We start by writing a complete song with Korean lyrics. When we go into English, we return to it being music first, but now with this wealth of material. A lot of the songs have the exact same first line in Korean and English, but then, because of the need to rhyme [in English], the lyrics go off in a different direction.

Park: Writing lyrics in Korean is quite different. In Korea, we tend to come up with words that sound more lyrical. English lyrics sound a lot more straightforward and are more specific with their storytelling.

Rebell: Hue, do you think your experience as a K-pop writer informed your approach to writing musicals?

Park: When I started in musical theatre in Korea, there weren't many professional lyricists working in the industry. Everyone was just directly translating the English lyrics, which often ended up sounding weird. There was so much room to bring in a more sophisticated, more contemporary lyric-writing style in Korean.

Aronson: Lyrics need to have something that makes them not just talking. In English, the fact that we have rhymes provides an artificial structure that sounds like something other than speech. Whereas in Korean, you're not using rhymes, so if you're extremely specific, it just sounds like talking.

Rebell: Could you share a bit about your journey from the world premiere in Seoul to productions across Asia to Broadway?

Park: It's been a parallel track. We actually started working on both the Korean and American versions at the same time.

Aronson: In Korea with a new show, you have a two- to three-month run. If it goes well, it comes back in subsequent seasons. Maybe Happy Ending has now had six or seven productions in Korea sequentially. Concurrent with that, a Chinese producer and a Japanese producer wanted to import it to their countries. They've had several productions over the years as well. Meanwhile in America, after [producer] Jeffrey Richards optioned the show, we met [director] Michael Arden. He got involved in early 2018 and started to develop his staging concept. We had every intention, as he did, of making this a new, original production.

Rebell: What's it like collaborating with Michael Arden? 

Aronson: Michael is really a visionary, very ambitious. He's an actor himself, so he really understands and works well with actors. And I think Michael uses projections in a different way. The video and design team are all really great, and they've worked with him to create something that interfaces with all these physical moving parts of the show.

Park: We wanted a director who would be analog, so to speak. Someone who would not immediately go for futuristic technology. Michael seemed to understand the tactile elements in theatre. Our production currently has a lot of projections, but it was very important to work with someone whose first instinct was to do theatre magic.

Rebell: What are some of the challenges of getting an original musical produced on Broadway?

Aronson: When they said we were going to do a reading in America, I gave a big lecture to everyone about how it's a very long process and maybe we could shoot for a production at a regional theatre, but even that was a long shot. Then we did our first reading and we had multiple offers for productions in New York! I don't know why that was the case. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the show was a really pure passion project.

Rebell: You've written several original musicals together. Why do you prefer that to adapting movies, plays or books?

Park: Korean musical theatre is so much younger than the Western musical theatre industry. There was a lot of great energy in the beginning, but it very quickly became too expensive to do anything, just like Broadway. They are starting to only produce famous, preexisting material. I think any form of art should invite artists to create something new.

Aronson: We've now done three originals, and we see why people recommend writing adaptations. I think Stephen Sondheim said that Oscar Hammerstein told him to just write adaptations. For us, it was more that Hue had all these ideas and we were working through them. If we were older and wiser, we probably wouldn't have taken the risk. I'm really glad that we did. There was a fearlessness that I had when I was younger, and that I have to protect and hold on to.

Rebell: Let's wrap up by returning to your collaboration. What do you appreciate most about each other as artists?

Park: It's exciting to find a friend-slash-collaborator who is from a different culture, but who shares some similarities with you and really sparks your creativity.

Aronson: Where does the culture leave off and the individual begin? Hue and I have a lot of musical tastes in common, but also wildly different tastes. I don't really perceive it as cross-cultural, but of course, it is.

Park: I think it's fun when two different cultures collide and create something new.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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