Category: Fall 2019

Pam Marsden ’78 Traces Her Animation Roots to K Theatre

By Antonie Boessenkool ’99

Photo and illustrations: Sony Pictures Animation

On a chilly spring morning at a diner in Burbank, California, Pam Marsden ’78 is having her usual order of coffee, over-easy eggs and a side of tomatoes. Being originally from Michigan, she’s dressed with a Midwestern practicality, but also a Southern California flair for color—a lavender quilted vest over a stylish polka-dot blouse and a red-pink scarf, matched by her red, hexagon-shaped glasses.

Breakfast is all she has time for today. For lunch, she’ll meet with a producer to talk over new story ideas. She’ll also check on the progress of several productions in the works. Then she’ll meet with a few artists about ideas they’re developing for other projects.

Her workdays are busy. She takes phone calls during her commute and answers emails in the wee hours. Still, she says, “I’m lucky. I have generally worked to have fun. That’s my goal.”

Marsden’s job is all about creating fun. She’s head of production for Sony Pictures Animation, the studio behind Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Hotel Transylvania and The Emoji Movie. These lavishly crafted animated feature films are the ultimate in joyous escapism, in which artists and writers team with computer wizards to create fantasy worlds where hamburgers rain from the sky, it snows ice cream and there’s a luxury resort for monsters only (“No Humans Allowed!”).

Exploding with action and color, laced with sly cultural references and featuring voices provided by top actors, the films appeal to children and adults alike. They have come to be some of the biggest money-makers in cinema, generating a sizeable share of global animation industry revenues, which are projected to reach $270 billion by 2020. In recent years, Sony’s animation studio has grown apace, from about 80 employees in 2015 to around 300, and Marsden has been a key player in that expansion.

As with a successful party, the fun requires extensive behind-the-scenes preparation. Marsden manages the planning, budget and schedule for every movie on the Sony Pictures Animation slate. When she came to the studio 13 years ago, Sony Pictures Animation released one movie every 18 months or so. Now, Marsden is working on more than a dozen projects in production and development. Each can take three to four years from drawing board to theatrical release. And with long timelines and big budgets—Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs had an estimated budget of $100 million and budgets for animated features at other studios have ranged as high as $260 million—it takes a lot of planning to make sure all the moving parts work together.

At the same time, Marsden knows a good plan can be flexible. That’s a lesson she got early on.

As a student at Kalamazoo College, just down the street from her childhood home, Marsden decided on a pre-med track. That didn’t last.

She said her friend Tom Morris ’78, now director of marketing and operations for the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico, was a theatre major and “was having a lot more fun than I was, so he lured me into a theatre class. I never left.”

Nelda K. Balch, late namesake of the then-new campus theatre, was in charge of the Department of Theatre Arts. Marsden remembers Balch’s stern exterior masking her devotion to her students. She had them study and stage serious works by Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov and required that her students read The New York Times on Sundays, a habit Marsden has kept.

Marsden threw herself into Balch’s program: acting, directing and even creating costumes. During the summers, she sewed costumes for productions at the College and worked at the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre.

In the theatre she found a sense of community that continued after graduation, when she went to work at Michigan Opera Theatre in Detroit, then at the St. Nicholas Theater in Chicago. Later, Marsden worked for the International Theatre Festival of Chicago and met and married her husband, Peter Siragusa, who worked as an actor and is now a drug and alcohol counselor. They have two grown children, Cody and Jordan.

“I felt I was with like-minded people,” Marsden says of the theatre program at Kalamazoo College. “I fell into something that I just never left.”

Theatre is about working together toward a goal, she says. There are the actors and director, and also the costume-makers, stage manager, lighting operators and many others playing their parts. It was the perfect preparation for working in animation.

“Animation is a huge collaboration, and you learn to do that in theatre. And I learned to do that in theatre at Kalamazoo College,” Marsden says.

In the 1990s, Disney’s long-established animation studio was undergoing a rebirth, starting with the success of The Little Mermaid in 1989. Those at the helm had theatre backgrounds, and they reached out to other theatre people, like Marsden, to fill their growing ranks.

So Marsden and her family moved west in 1995. She wasn’t a stranger to Los Angeles, having worked on the Olympic Arts Festival when the 1984 Summer Olympics put the city in the international spotlight. She had managed the theatrical component of the festival, overseeing productions by more than 20 theatre companies, ranging from small shows for children to grand spectacles.

At Walt Disney Feature Animation (later renamed Walt Disney Animation Studios) and Disneytoon Studios, Marsden was a producer. She worked on Dinosaur, which mixed computer-generated imagery, or CGI, and live-action filming. (Disney started its own CGI studio after having worked with Pixar Animation Studios on the ultra-successful Toy Story, Marsden explains.)

“[Disney] wanted to make a CG dinosaur movie, and I said, ‘What’s CG?’” Marsden recalls. “In some ways, it was nuts to call on me, because I knew nothing about animation. I knew nothing about filmmaking…I really was able to get in at the beginning of CG moviemaking, and boy, that is just luck. I know that every day.”

Marsden moved to Sony Pictures Animation in 2005, and in 2017 became head of production. She’s also responsible for the studio’s overhead costs, which occasionally means weighing in on minor details like parking and installing a juice bar, she says, laughing.

“I have a very small circle, and we are responsible for the budget and schedule of all of those movies,” she says. “We’re in a really interesting and exciting phase.”

“I am very fortunate to have Pam as my partner,” Kristine Belson, president of Sony Pictures Animation, said in a statement at the time of Marsden’s promotion. “Not only has she masterfully led the dramatic growth of our operations and creative community, she’s done it all with positivity and humor which I am thankful for every day.”

There may be lots of hilarious chaos in the movies Marsden’s studio makes, but she maintains her good humor by avoiding it in real life. That means always having strong plans for the studio’s work. For such massive projects as The Emoji Movie, which had a $50 million budget, a detailed blueprint is essential. A plan is like true north, Marsden says. It’s also a way to measure progress and, ultimately, success.

“If you don’t have a plan, you can’t tell where you are,” she says.

Marsden, however, is also the type of leader who’s open to ideas, even if it means adjusting a plan. She sees her job as providing the creative space for people to stretch their imaginations. How else to produce a movie about the emojis on our phones having their own adventures in a make-believe, digital world?

So what about deviating from the blueprint?

“Sure, absolutely! There is a time at the beginning of every project where it’s really good to go off-roading, because you don’t get to do that later on,” Marsden says. Ideas can be tested and perhaps discarded, she says, but as long as they’re considered, there won’t be second-guessing about “what if?”

“The great thing about animation is that you can have anything you want. That’s also sort of the bad thing about animation,” she acknowledges. “If you can think it, you can have it in animation.”

Animation Maven: Marsden Shares Her Favorites

We asked Pam Marsden ’78 to name a few of her favorite animated movies, and it’s no surprise it was difficult for her to narrow it down to just three. Here’s what she had to say:

“Unfair question! I like so many for different reasons.

“The classics. I love Pinocchio and Dumbo and remember being transported by those stories as a kid. I think I fell in love with storytelling in those movies.

“The offbeat. The Triplets of Bellville is a favorite, and I’ve made a lot of people outside of animation watch it. There are no words, so the story must be told entirely in the visuals and sounds. It is a delightful comedy that is surprising and playful. The design is so quirky, it would never be made by a big studio. Because it is independently made, you feel the eye of the artist and a fresh and unique style.

“The must-see. I am sentimental about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. It was exciting to make a new movie in a new studio. I was happy to be part of a movie that broke away from the typical tent-pole formula for animated theatrical releases. That movie set me up for a longtime relationship to Sony Pictures Animation, which has been  a great home for me.

“But I also love Toy Story, Beauty and the Beast and Zootopia. Is that three?”

Vice President for Advancement Al DeSimone • Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communication Kate Worster • Editor Sarah Frink • Creative Director Lisa Darling • Project Manager Lynnette Pryor • Design and Animation Craig Simpson

by: Vinay Sharma ’12

photography: Keith Mumma

DAY 0 First Year, 2008. C6

LandSea is an optional 18-day outdoor trip for Kalamazoo College students that occurs just before first-year orientation. In its 45-year history, more than 2,000 students have participated in this wilderness adventure. For students who embark on LandSea as first-years or as leaders, the skills and knowledge that are learned on trail can last a lifetime. For Vinay Sharma ’12, these lessons have guided him from his first LandSea patrol at age 18 to his post-graduate medical research fellowship in Rwanda. This is his story.  

DAY 6 Sophomore Year, 2009. E9

Six days into the trip, I did not regret my decision to be back on LandSea, this time as a leader. I met my circle of friends on LandSea the year before and cherished the thought of sharing campus life with the incoming class. Furthermore, I had a fascinating experience with Leaders’ Retreat, learning a variety of soft and hard skills, exploring topics from emotional intelligence to making a stretcher out of a backpack and paddles.

E9 had a stormy beginning in The Park. The rain woke us at 4:30 a.m., the tarp pressed against our faces from the pooled water. We all hoped the rain would abate during the drive to the trailhead, but as we received our canoes, the rising crests of the waves signaled Day One of LandSea would be windy and wet. We overcame these initial hurdles and the group slowly came together. As a sophomore leader, I found myself relying on my senior co-leader for advice. We both appreciated the idea of “lead from behind” and tried to take every opportunity to give control to our participants. Today marked a turning point in our trip as we let two of the participants be leaders for the whole day, and we took a more reserved role. The participants made decisions about everything: when to rise, whether to turn left or right, who would set up camp and more. Throughout the hike my co-leader and I diverted nearly all questions back to the participants, which caused some frustration, but the group made it to the campsite—not exactly at the predicted time, but safely and successfully nonetheless! My co-leader and I felt good, and more importantly, the group relished in their accomplishment. My co-leader and I made dinner for the group as we all relaxed after a great Day 6.

DAY 12 Junior Year, 2010. D7

We lost the whole D7 patrol on Day 12. Just kidding, but the risk had crossed my mind after my co-leader and I felt confident enough to let the patrol self-guide the entire day on their own. We dropped back about 200 meters, out of sight but within emergency whistle distance. This gave the participants a chance to develop trust with each other and build their own self-confidence. In the meantime, my co-leader and I had a chance to discuss the trip and further bond as a team. We trusted the group to make it to the camp, where they agreed to do everything (including cooking dinner for the leaders) which made us quite happy. Day 12 proved to be a successful day. At this point in the journey, the group had mastered many skills and we leaders did not need to do much. We just observed in the background as the participants steered the rest of the trip.

Senior Year, 2011. C5 DAY 16

From the beginning of Leaders’ Retreat, I unfairly held onto the romantic notion that this year—2011, my third year as a leader, senior year, my last year—would be smooth. The repetition of learning the soft skills during Leaders’ Retreat was positively impacting my life in the front country. I felt more confident approaching and handling conflict and it became easier for me to talk about things on my mind, to forego judgement and hesitation, and simply express myself. I knew my technical skills were strong, and even though we were entering into a new Park, I felt there was little left to be learned on LandSea.

But this patrol, C5, what happened!?

Early in the trip a participant refused to portage; at one point our patrol slept on the trail, and we fell behind and did not see our sister patrol C6 for four days. The challenges of the route impacted group morale and at one point I felt an unwanted me-versus-them air among the group that I did not understand.

Unlike previous trips, where I sensed the growth of the group throughout the trip, the tremendous positives of leading C5 only became apparent as the trip came to its close. The one participant who refused to portage always offered to carry canoe paddles and by Day 8 of the trip he completed a 300-meter portage! Slowly the group came together and took on more responsibility. In the moment, however, I doubted my leadership skills, often overlooking “leading from behind,” and this cast a cloud of ennui over my eyes which blinded me to the small and meaningful gains that happen every day on LandSea. I felt guilty for the experience I was providing to the future class of 2015. Would I have changed things during the trip? For sure, but while my hindsight was 20/20, my foresight was 20/70, despite wearing glasses.

Day 16 marked the end of the trip. The participants headed back to K on the orange and black bus, while we leaders spent one last night in The Park. I spoke with a leader of my sister patrol as the stars twinkled in the sky. We shared our roses and thorns: What happened? Did you see any animals? Any problems with participants? How was your leading experience? Being seniors, our time with LandSea ended on Day 16 of 2011. Our conversation lasted long and late, eventually concluding with one question: “What is next for us?” The next morning we drove out of The Park.

Medical School, 2018. C5 DAY 263

The scheduled phone interview with the doctor about a medical research fellowship in Kigali, Rwanda, greatly excited me. Since graduation, my life traveled in many directions—via a brewery, into orthopedic research, through graphic design, to a medical clinic in Guatemala—eventually ending up in medical school. As I waited for the phone call, I paced between the kitchen and the living room. Interviews did not bother me, despite my nervous habits, but I really wanted this global health opportunity. In some way, it validated all my earlier work experiences and more so, it could be an opportunity to blend all of them together.

In the living room I paused and looked at the framed map of The Park hanging on the wall. My roommate and I had both led trips on LandSea for three years, the last one being seven years ago. I retraced routes on the map which brought back memories of Gatorade-blue lakes, losing and finding a participant, and that last enlightening 2011 LandSea trip. Lessons learned from the backcountry guided me in the front country to this day, and I often think about the struggles of my final trip. I attribute many of those woes to an inability to adapt to spontaneous changes. So what if we fell behind or a participant did not want to portage? These were the cards handed to me and instead of initially becoming frustrated I could have listened and learned to make a better experience.

The phone suddenly rang, jolting me out of nostalgia and back into reality. It was the doctor. We exchanged formalities and he provided some details about the program in Rwanda—a research position focused on enhancing clinical research capacity among emergency medicine residents. I had little experience with sub-Saharan Africa and this trip stirred up simultaneous nervousness and excitement. The doctor then proceeded to ask two interview questions. The first inquired about my ongoing research project. No problem, I thought. I had just written an introduction for the manuscript and knew the project inside and out. Then the doctor introduced the second question, which had an air of “this-is-more-abstract-let’s-see-how-you-answer-it.” I thought to myself, okay, this is the question that will separate me from the other candidates.

And then I heard it: What does the concept “lead from behind” mean to you?

I could not help but chuckle. How do I summarize four years in four minutes?

 “Leading from behind is about building a community where people, participants and staff, can work together, contribute, trust and problem-solve together,” I said. “It is about building capacity and confidence amongst a group of novice learners and recognizing that the journey may be arduous. Each person in the group has potential and learns their own way. More importantly, the leader is present but remains in the background, only entering when asked or if a serious mistake will ensue. When it falls apart, when it does not work, the leader needs to reassess—is there a different approach, could I do something better, do we need to discuss a better plan? Learning takes time and teaching takes patience. Finally, it is a good model for education; it places the emphasis on the student and when effectively carried out, people learn so much, both passively through observing and actively by doing.”

Three months later I found myself walking out of Kigali International Airport and into a new park.

Vice President for Advancement Al DeSimone • Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communication Kate Worster • Editor Sarah Frink • Creative Director Lisa Darling • Project Manager Lynnette Pryor • Design and Animation Craig Simpson

Story and photos by Randall Schau

For Alexis Leverenz ’97, a stint in pastry school and a subsequent stumbling block led to an entrepreneurial idea that was anything but half-baked.

It’s said that inside of every problem is an opportunity. For Alexis (Frankfort) Leverenz ’97, a challenge she faced led to a solution that has since benefited hundreds of Chicago-area small businesses.

In 2004, as a recent graduate from The French Pastry School in Chicago, Leverenz wanted to open a business making pastries. The city’s health code prohibited her from making them in her own kitchen, and as a small start-up, she couldn’t afford to buy and equip her own commercial kitchen. What she needed was a commercial kitchen she could use for a few hours a week. To her surprise, she couldn’t find one.

“I talked to other small food businesses looking for ideas and asked if they knew of some shared kitchen I could use,” she recalled. “They all said, ‘No, and we wish there was one out there, because we need one, too!’”

A catering operation that was going out of business provided Leverenz with an opportunity to provide such a kitchen. She leased its building and bought all of its equipment—ovens, stoves, refrigerators and cooking equipment—then made the space available on a pay-by-the-hour basis to whomever wanted to use it.

First there was cleaning to do. Lots of it. “I was covered in grease every day for two months,” she said. Once it was made bright, Kitchen Chicago became a shining example of “build it and they will come.”

“About the only advertising I did was the website my husband made, and going around putting up little notes on the bulletin boards of businesses in the area. That’s all I had to do,” said Leverenz. “Within two months I had 70 customers and was breaking even. Within a year I’d outgrown my space.”

Many of her first customers made things—cookies, scones, granola—that they would then sell at farmers markets. Several made products to sell from their food trucks during the downtown lunch hour.

For a short time, Leverenz used some of her space to run her own small cafe, where her clients could sell their products on consignment.

“I did that for about a year. Then my air conditioner died. That was an excuse for Jeff [whom she married in 2007] and me to pause and reconsider what we were doing. I asked him, ‘Do you really want to keep doing this, running a cafe?’ He didn’t, and neither did I. So we decided I’d just focus on the shared kitchen business.”  

 Early on, though, Leverenz had to deal with another headache—City of Chicago bureaucrats. “The City was not our friend at first,” she remembers. “They didn’t know how to license both me and the folks who wanted to use our space all under one address, so the City shut us down. The health department came in and threw away everyone’s food, then poured bleach over it. It was horrible!”

A writer for the Chicago Tribune heard about Leverenz’s plight and wrote a story. That got a lot of attention—and sympathy—which led to a radio interview, which led to a local television appearance.

Eventually, the Chicago Department of Public Health asked Leverenz to share her experience with the department to improve the process for future shared kitchen space users. “All of that exposure gave our situation enough attention that Chicago created a new type of license that worked for a shared kitchen.”

In 2009 Leverenz moved her operation to another building with much more space. She sold all of her old equipment and bought new. “I’d run the first kitchen for five years, so I knew exactly what I needed at my new place.”

Kitchen Chicago now offers five separate kitchens, each a bit different from the others, and about 20 businesses rent space on a nearly daily basis. These include food preparation for Grub Hub and Uber Eats. Other customers rent on a less frequent basis, a few on a one-time basis.

When Leverenz first started renting her current location, a portion wasn’t needed for the kitchens. Rather than have it go unused, she had new wooden floors installed, then rented the area for events, especially wedding receptions. Demand was high, so Leverenz recently leased another large area in her building, one floor below her kitchens. It will be able to host up to 250 people, more than double her other space.

When asked what it was about her background that gave her the confidence to become an entrepreneur, Leverenz smiles and pauses. Like many K grads, her journey took many turns.

“At K I was an Econ major with a minor in Chinese. That led me to getting a job selling bonds, and I found I wasn’t cut out for that. I was expected to make 100 cold calls a day, mostly to banks and credit unions. Eventually I quit and got a job at Merrill Lynch here in Chicago where I was a portfolio manager.

“That job was better, but I wanted something more fulfilling. I decided I’d either go to pastry school or grad school. I polled my friends about which I should do and they were unanimous: ‘Go to pastry school!’ So I did. While I didn’t go on to make pastries commercially, my training exposed me to a lot of things that led to Kitchen Chicago.”

While only a few of her classes at K had direct application to running her business, Leverenz thinks her liberal arts education guided her to where she is today. “At K I learned a little about a lot of subjects,” she said. “That’s helped broaden me, because here at the Kitchen I wear about 14 different hats.”

She also credits her study abroad in China with expanding her horizons.

“Never in a million years would I have gone there on my own; K made it easy. Being in China was incredibly interesting. This was in the mid-90s and people from the West were still a bit of a novelty. I remember jogging around a track and the men in the middle started to applaud. To this day I have no idea why they did that, but I became really comfortable with navigating the unexpected while on study abroad. It helped me grow as a person and got me out of my comfort zone.”

Leverenz has fond memories of K. “My years there were fabulous—just amazing. It was the perfect fit for me. I made such good friends. I’d like to go back and spend another four years there, to see how things have changed and gotten better.”

When asked about the 14 hats she now wears, Leverenz takes a deep breath, then rattles off a seemingly endless list of duties.

“Well, I schedule users and manage storage space, which there’s never enough of. I resolve conflicts between my users, like when one person goes past their end time and into the time of the next guy. And I’m always making sure the place is kept really clean, even if that means I have to grab a mop myself.”

Leverenz thinks a moment and adds, “Oh, I also fix things, like the garbage disposals. They’re always getting jammed so I’ve gotten really good at fixing them!”

Manager, scheduler, custodian, accountant, maintenance staff…Leverenz does it all, yet the aspect of Kitchen Chicago that clearly gives her the most satisfaction is nurturing small businesses and seeing them prosper.

“I love to help small start-ups,” she says. “I’m almost like their personal assistant. I know it’s a strange business model but I actually want them to outgrow us and move on to their own space. Our goal is for that to happen in two or three years.”

Leverenz offers two examples of such successes. One involved three men from Argentina who used Kitchen Chicago to make empanadas. Their business boomed, and they now have five stores in three states. Another business made salads for vending machines; it did well enough that it now has its own kitchen.

Leverenz acknowledges that not every operation prospers, and that’s just the nature of the business. “Sometimes a person thinks they want to start their own business, say, making cookies. They rent one of my kitchens and give it a go. Eventually, they realize that turning their dream into a profitable business is harder than they thought and they move on to something else. At least they gave it a try.”

And when businesses do well, Leverenz says, “I feel like a proud parent.”

In real life, she’s exactly that. She and her husband have two daughters, Eloise, 9, and Henrietta, 5, both of whom enjoy a residual benefit of their mother having gone to pastry school.

“I make my kids really great birthday cakes!” she says with a laugh.

Vice President for Advancement Al DeSimone • Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communication Kate Worster • Editor Sarah Frink • Creative Director Lisa Darling • Project Manager Lynnette Pryor • Design and Animation Craig Simpson

by Emily Haines Lloyd

It’s late morning, and Joe Tracz ’04 is taking a call with producers to go over notes on his current project—an adaptation of the Wayward Children book series for the SyFy Channel.

Wayward Children imagines what would happen if children who had found portals to fairytale worlds were unceremoniously dumped back into their original lives as young adults. How would they mourn the loss of their magical lives and how would they adjust to the “real world”? For Tracz, the painful adventure of growing up and discovering one’s identity is a theme that first emerged as a K student and budding playwright, and it’s followed him throughout his blossoming career as a writer for stage and screen.

Like many students, when Tracz came to K, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do in life. He loved theatre and writing, so the English major kept one foot in the theatre program while he sharpened his writing skills. It was his study abroad experience in the U.K. that brought playwriting to the forefront and started Tracz on his future career path.

“I was at Goldsmiths, University of London,” remembers Tracz. “I was seeing a ton of theatre, and playwrights came out for Q&A sessions. Playwrights were suddenly less Shakespeare and more living, breathing writers. I thought maybe I could be one, too.”

The timing couldn’t have been better. As Tracz returned from London, the then head of the theatre department, Professor Ed Menta, was looking to expand the playwriting program. Suddenly, Tracz had access to courses and opportunities to cultivate his craft.

His senior year, Tracz had a conversation with Menta that sparked what would become his senior individualized project (SIP), Alison Shields. Menta had read a story about a woman who had continued to attend high school long after when she would have graduated. Based on this strange-yet-true premise, Tracz created a story that was a mystery, a memory play, a high school romance and a coming-of-age story about a young woman unable—or unwilling—to grow up.

“Right away, Joe knew what to do with it. It was his to write from the moment he heard the story,” said Menta. “He had a fire from day one.”

After graduation, Tracz took that fire and moved to Chicago. There he worked as a literary department intern at Chicago Dramatists and the Goodman Theatre, as well as teaching in the youth education program at Steppenwolf.

“Chicago is a great place to explore theatre,” said Tracz. “It’s easier to put up new material because it’s much cheaper to rent space and there’s an all-hands-on-deck mentality, so you get to be involved in every aspect.” To that end, Tracz immersed himself in what the city had to offer, working as a dramaturg, assistant director, light board operator—everything but an actual playwright.

Tracz missed writing and in 2007 he left Chicago to attend New York University Tisch School of the Arts, digging into a variety of classes in theatre, film and television writing. After receiving his Master of Fine Arts from Tisch, Tracz developed work at the Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova, Roundabout and Second Stage.

In 2011, while juggling multiple projects, an opportunity came up that would send Tracz on a nonconventional journey to the mecca of New York theatre: Broadway. Tracz’s agent set him up on a professional blind date with veteran composer and lyricist, Joe Iconis, and handed them a book. It was Ned Vizzini’s popular young adult novel, Be More Chill.

The book tells the story of a socially awkward teenager, Jeremy, who is just trying to survive high school and get the girl—with a sci-fi twist. In a Faustian bargain, Jeremy swallows a pill containing a supercomputer known as the SQUIP (Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor). The SQUIP, which implants in his brain and tells him what to say and do, assures Jeremy that it will teach him how to be popular. Teenage antics, campy humor and valuable lessons ensue.

The story spoke to Tracz and Iconis, and they set to work turning it into a musical. The show opened at the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, and had a four-week run. Local super-fans—mostly teenagers and college students—went back night after night. To preserve the show, the theatre helped produce a cast album.

The earworm album got a new life through music streaming channels, fan-made YouTube videos and online chatter. When the show eventually found itself off-Broadway, the cast album had been streamed more than 150 million times. In the spring of 2019, it hit the big time at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, breaking the house record for a single week of ticket sales.

“We thought the show was over, and then the internet completely disrupted the normal production chain,” said Tracz. “It was beautiful to see this original show find an original way to Broadway.”

As Be More Chill was finding a new life, Tracz was finding new work—this time in L.A. as a writer and producer for all three seasons of Netflix’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, another story of young people (the Baudelaire orphans) realizing their strengths and talents while battling real and fantastical situations. As both a writer and producer, Tracz had an opportunity to be involved in all aspects of production.

“It was like being back in Chicago, having a hand in all areas,” said Tracz. “It also meant a lot, because I was helping to write these beloved characters to their conclusion.”

The series has been lauded for its fantastic sense of pacing and fun wordplay, earning numerous award nominations, including a 2019 Writers Guild Award nomination for an episode penned by Tracz.

He was also hard at work on the book for The Lightening Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, an adaptation of the best-selling young adult novel by Rick Riordan. The musical, which started its national tour in January 2019, earned Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk Award nominations in 2017. It tells the tale of a teenager who discovers he’s the son of the Greek god Poseidon and goes on an epic quest.

It’s a familiar theme for Tracz, and he’s always hungry to find a new angle on what it means for people to find their places in the world. Whether it’s a woman attending high school long after graduation, a relatable loser swallowing a supercomputer to be more popular or a trio of orphans transitioning from the innocence of childhood to the moral complexity of the adult world, his characters have come of age through the lens of fantasy and with the modern twist of technology.

“I’m a part of that last generation that aren’t digital natives,” said Tracz with a laugh. “I mean, I had AOL Messenger in college, but it wasn’t the social media world we’re in now. Still, the internet has always been a place to try on different identities, to start discovering and honing who you are. And that’s a story that has always spoken to me.”

Vice President for Advancement Al DeSimone • Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communication Kate Worster • Editor Sarah Frink • Creative Director Lisa Darling • Project Manager Lynnette Pryor • Design and Animation Craig Simpson