Print Feature: The Providence Journal

“We’re telling stories not often seen on stage — racism and sexism — and we don’t know how to watch these stories. We’re used to white men triumphing through hardship.”

Erin was recently featured in The Providence Journal, talking about Miss You Like Hell . You can read the full article here.

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By Susan McDonald | Special to The Journal

The Brown University grad and former resident artist at AS220 collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara AlegrÍa Hudes on the songs for “Miss You Like Hell,” now playing at the Wilbury Theatre Group in Providence.

When she first heard from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara AlegrÍa Hudes to collaborate on a musical about a mother facing deportation, Erin McKeown was at the Arizona-Mexico border as part of her “own personal activism.”

“The deportation of undocumented people was a cause I’d already been working on for years,” McKeown says in a phone interview from her home in western Massachusetts. Hudes’ proposal intrigued the acclaimed songwriter and folk rocker.

Hudes had listened to McKeown’s 2009 album “Hundreds of Lions” and felt it had the sound she imagined for her project. She had one demand of the songwriter.

“She said she would write the dialogue, I’d write the music and we would write the lyrics together,” McKeown says. “That way, we’d develop a collaborative voice. It meant we really had to know each other.”

They launched into the work in 2011, taking one song at a time. They’d get together and toss ideas back and forth. They’d winnow the list down and develop ideas further, sending them back and forth for review. In the end, they created 22 pieces of music for the 90-minute production “Miss You like Hell,” now making its Rhode Island premiere at Wilbury Theatre Group in Providence.

“It was one of the most incredible projects I’d ever worked on,” says McKeown, a graduate of Brown University and former resident artist at AS220.

“Miss You like Hell” first opened in November 2016, two days before the election. It tells the story of a Mexican woman who has lived in the United States for two decades but is facing deportation because she is undocumented. She tries to reconcile with her 16-year-old daughter, Olivia, from whom she has been separated for four years after losing custody due to her status, on a cross-country odyssey to her immigration hearing.

The story hinges on the exclusion of those facing deportation or barred from entry into the United States, but wrapped in brotherhood, compassion and love. The music woven throughout speaks to the country’s heartbeat and its individuality through snippets of blues, rock and country music, electronic tunes and even New Orleans funeral music.

“The idea is that this musical is about America and all the people who live in it. The music reflects my personal experience as I have been traveling across the country,” says McKeown.

The pair also wanted to draw as many of the actors in “Miss You like Hell” into songs to demonstrate collaboration and unity through music.

“Music is a source of joy for many people in this country,” she says. “We see it in church. We see it at work and home. We see it at the holidays.”

While the theme of the musical seems quite timely, McKeown says the writing was completed before the “toxic rhetoric” that’s roiling the nation today. Being “topical” wasn’t their objective. They simply wanted to tell the story of undocumented people and their daily struggles. But the political climate enlightened audiences.

“There’s a scene where [the main character] has a roadside incident with a cop,” she says. “The audience was not aware of the stakes for an undocumented person then. Now they are very much aware, and that changes the whole scene.”

Because she’s always interested in an exchange of ideas, McKeown says the story of “Miss You like Hell” resonates deeply with her.

“We’re telling stories not often seen on stage — racism and sexism — and we don’t know how to watch these stories. We’re used to white men triumphing through hardship,” she says.

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