March 1, 2025
The Meet The Artist series highlights talented performing arts professionals from diverse backgrounds. We’re back with this month’s featured artist. We encourage you to read these interviews with an open mind, and to remember that starting a relationship with an artist can be something smaller than a mainstage show such as inviting them to lead a workshop, sit on a panel, or collaborate with another artist.
This month, Ksenija Spasic interviewed Kevin Y Wong, a musical theatre composer-lyricist, singer/musician, and dramaturg.
I would love to share a recap of your education and career so far, with a focus on the places you’ve worked and the kinds of music-making you’ve done.
I’ve been a singer-songwriter since I was about 13 years old.
After quitting the practice of law to go into musical theatre full-time in 2013, my first song cycle, Recurring John, debuted in concert at SummerWorks in 2014, which caught the attention of Mitchell Marcus at The Musical Stage Company (back then, Acting Up Stage Company). This started one of the longest and most fruitful collaborative relationships of my life. I am one of the “Crescendo artists” at the company, meaning I am a writer-in residence there with two commissioned works (In Real Life, Soft Magical Tofu Boys) that will go to production via the company. I have also been Associate Artistic Director at the company for a number of years, working in arts admin to support the training of theatre artists and the development of new musical works.
I have been Creative Lead, Arranger, and Music Supervisor on the Musical Stage Company’s UnCovered concert series from 2023 to the present, and in March 2025, the most recent concert, UnCovered: U2 & The Rolling Stones, will be released to streaming services as a live recording and will include my performance of “Ruby Tuesday” by the Rolling Stones.
I also have a number of solo-recordings: Songs from the Weekend (LP, 2012), Emotional Homework (EP, 2019), Small Ways to Move (EP, 2020), and Covers (EP, 2021).
Could we look at some highlights of those past projects - memorable, important moments that have stayed with you?
One of the most impactful moments was when I first sang on the Koerner Hall stage in the 2022 UnCovered concert. I wasn’t actually supposed to be on that year; but one of our cast members, the phenomenally talented Gavin Hope, had taken ill unexpectedly. In particular, it was the experience of singing Gavin’s beautiful arrangement (created by Reza) of “Take a Chance On Me” in the second act that made an impact. The acoustics of the hall, the warmth and kindness of my castmates, and the poignance of it being Creative Lead Reza Jacobs’s final year made for a truly memorable evening. Reza had been the musical mind behind UnCovered since he and Mitchell originally co-conceived it in 2007 as a fundraiser concert. He always led the room with care, grace, collaborative spirit, and created stunning, evocative arrangements. So his departure after 15 years was definitely bittersweet.
I also remember the elation of the cast and creative teams at many of MSC’s opening nights. Fun Home, Life After, Onegin, Passing Strange all live in my fond memories. There was a palpable joy in the room on those nights that only comes when a group of artists knows with certainty that they are on the same page, telling the same story, working to reach an audience with a unified purpose. I imagine it’s what a sports team feels after a big championship win, but this is purely hypothetical as I have never played team sports.
Could you talk about the different places you’ve worked and performed, in Ontario, in Canada, globally? How have those places shaped the experience of creating?
In addition to Koerner Hall at the Royal Conservatory and a number of other concert halls in Toronto, I will highlight the Jazz Bistro, Burdock Brewery, and Tallulah’s Cabaret at Buddies in Bad Times as intimate but magical spaces to perform in.
Outside of Canada, I recently workshopped my musical Soft Magical Tofu Boys at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Centre in Waterford, CT, as part of the O’Neill’s 2024 National Musical Theatre Conference, and had an incredible time. Working in an environment entirely devoted to the writers’ process, discovery, and honing of their work while also giving them a full cast, support team (including score and script coordinators), and the opportunity to hear their piece multiple times in front of an audience with working and rehearsal days in between audience presentations, allowed me to develop my musical with a clarity and rigour unlike anywhere else. This has really helped me figure out how to articulate my own needs as a writer in development processes, as well as how to ascertain what those needs are when I’m working in support of other writers’ processes.
Are there any mentors or collaborators who have had an impact on you? How?
Working with Mitchell Marcus (founder and first Artistic Director of The Musical Stage Company) changed my perspective on what it means to be an arts leader. Mitchell’s imagination, drive, faith in artists, and pragmatism helped me to figure out how huge dreams can be walked forward one incremental step at a time, project by project, budget by budget, song by song.
As a writer, Britta Johnson has been an inspiration. Watching Britta work, I learned how new musical development requires deep collaboration, care, commitment, and above all, rigour. It requires its writer to stay vulnerable, courageous, and endlessly curious. Thanks to Britta’s work ethic and creative spirit, I’ve watched Life After transform more into itself with each process. She fearlessly takes it to the heights and depths of what she means to communicate. Characters get richer, narrative gets clearer and more surprising, music gets even more emotionally resonant.
Let’s look at the present moment. What work are you doing now? What are you enjoying or struggling with in your current artistic pursuits?
My musical with Nick Green, In Real Life (young teens in a totalitarian dystopian future), has been workshopped steadily through the pandemic and is now ready for a developmental production.
My musical Soft Magical Tofu Boy(s) (three Asian brothers growing up in a suburb in the 90s trying to hide their whimsical, magical abilities), has an April workshop coming up and then will also be ready for a developmental production.
I am going to be working on the second half of my musical with Ali Joy Richardson, Believers (a young woman in a Catholic Youth Group searching for her connection to the Divine discovers her queerness at the same time), later this year.
And I have a new musical that I just workshopped in Fall 2024 at St. Lawrence College, that’s now got about 60 minutes of material written, called Take Me Back, co-written with Amir Haidar (every five years, a lottery is drawn that allows one lucky winner to send their mind back in time to change one decision they made, and hijinks ensue).
And then we’ll be starting early preparation for the yet-to-be-announced UnCovered: ?? and ?? for November of 2025! Stay tuned to the @musicalstageco social media accounts for that announcement in the next few months.
The amount of simultaneous creation you are doing is incredible! Your brief encapsulations of these projects sound very enticing. They suggest lightness and weight at once.
Looking out of the busy present, could you talk a bit about the future – your goals, your hopes and maybe end on the kinds of support a venue can give an artist to help make art that engages an audience and satisfies the self?
I hope for a future of musical theatre development in Toronto, Ontario, and Canada, where new musicals are able to find developmental homes with companies that are willing to take risks and nurture them much in the way many companies nurture and take pride in the new plays they develop.
The hits are fantastic, of course. I love that many companies program existing musical works to bring in audiences and revenue - that inspires love for the form, and should absolutely continue. But alongside that, I hope we’re able to inspire audiences with how thrilling new musical work can be.
Canadian musical theatre writers have so much to contribute to the canon. They deserve the opportunity to develop their works and ultimately to bring those works to audiences and the world.