*Fox will have a studio audience on hand for its presentation of “Grease: Live!,” which will take place Sunday (Jan. 31) across multiple soundstages and outdoor sets during its one-take broadcast.
“Not just a live audience will be present, but the audience is actually designed into the set, and there are many, many sets. So they may be characters,” explained executive producer Marc Platt at the TCA Winter Press Tour earlier this month.
This means Aaron Tveit as Danny Zuko, Julianne Hough as Sandy, Vanessa Hudgens as Rizzo, Keke Palmer as Marty, Carly Rae Jepsen as Frenchy, Kether Donahue as Jan, Carlos PenaVega as Kenickie and David Del Rio as Putzie will be dancing and singing and hand-jiving around folks off the street.
“If you are in a gymnasium and there are bleachers in a gym, if you look, you will see audience members in those bleachers. It’s just one of the ideas we are doing to sort of burst open the genre of a live television musical,” said Platt.
Co-executive producer Thomas Kail added: “We’ll have an audience of about 700 or so that are in various places. Some of them will move. Some of them will be dedicated there. And the audience that doesn’t have something directly in front of them live will have a screen as if you were watching a sitcom on a swing stage or how ‘SNL’ does. So we’ll be able to have their participation, no matter where the scene is playing.”
Another non-traditional element of the live production will be the existence of an interactive “second screen,” which allows fans to dip backstage throughout the production.
“We’ll show you what’s really happening behind the scenes, and at the same time, we are going to deliver what ‘Grease’ is – exuberant, energy, music, dance, and joy,” said Platt.
Palmer says it didn’t take long for the cast to realize their involvement in “something that was truly innovative,” thanks to the creativity of Platt and Kail.
Listen below:
Below, Jessie J.’s full cover of “Grease” for “Grease: Live”:
