SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, July 26, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — Chances are if you’ve lived in Utah for any length of time, and are familiar with the local theater scene, you’ve heard the name Brooklynn Pulver Kohler.
Pulver Kohler is an actor and director who attended Dixie State University and Utah State University, then trod the boards at locations such as Hale Centre Theatre in Sandy, Hale Center Theater Orem and Desert Star Playhouse. She then joined the national and international tour of “Hairspray,” playing Tracy Turnblad from 2006 to 2009.
More recently, as well as acting, she’s made the transition to directing, helming a production of “Spring Awakening” with Hart Theater Company in May. Now, she’s directing “Legally Blonde: The Musical,” with music and lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin and a book by Heather Hach, for West Valley Arts. The show plays at West Valley Performing Arts Center from Aug. 9 to Aug. 31; tickets are available here.
A fabulously fun award-winning musical based on the adored movie, “Legally Blonde: The Musical” follows the transformation of Elle Woods as she tackles stereotypes and scandal in pursuit of her dreams. Her life is turned upside down when her boyfriend Warner dumps her so he can attend Harvard Law. Determined to get him back, Elle ingeniously charms her way into the prestigious law school. While there, she struggles with peers, professors and her ex. With the support of some new friends, though, she quickly realizes her potential and sets out to prove herself to the world.
Pulver Kohler chatted to Gephardt Daily over the phone about subjects including her concept for “Legally Blonde,” her love of directing, her time touring with “Hairspray,” and what’s still on her bucket list.
She first told us about how directing “Legally Blonde” is going so far.
“Well, I’ve always loved the show, and a lot of the same creative team worked on ‘Hairspray,’ so there was a lot of crossover, as that show came onto Broadway while I was still touring,” she explained. “So I think I kind of immediately loved it because of some of the crossover, and I’m a sucker for big, belty, sing-out, lots of musical numbers, and it does a really good job of that. I always lovingly referred to it as Broadway’s ‘Barbie,’ and then the ‘Barbie’ movie came out, and I was like, ‘this changes everything.’ So, my concept for the show is very much a Barbie world. That’s pretty supported, just in general, by the book and by what the ‘Barbie’ movie brought us with ‘I’m Just Ken,’ or ‘I’m just Kenough.’ It really fits into that mold of [Warner Huntington III] just being the pretty boy and told what he should do, and he doesn’t necessarily think for himself. So we were able to sort of build up his role a little bit and make it a little bit more interesting than I’ve seen it played before. The cast is just fantastic, very seasoned, and we’re having so much fun.”
We asked Pulver Kohler about her journey with directing, and why she loves it.
“It’s been an interesting one,” she said. “Good or bad, since college, I was very motivated to prove myself as an actor. I think in part because I had enough influence from professors and whatnot that they really didn’t see me making it as a plus-size musical theater actress, and I was determined to prove them wrong. But I got very, very good feedback, and they were always trying to sort of posture me into the lane of direction. I took all of the directing classes that were offered at Utah State at that time and got a lot of praise on what I had done there. But I think I was so stubborn and motivated to be like, ‘I can do this too. And I am going to do this because that’s what I focused on for so long.'”
“Honestly, during the pandemic, I really struggled to find my creativity in those few years; 2020, 2021, even into 2022 started to feel a little bit more stale. And what ended up sort of being the gateway drug was writing and then doing some rewrites on scripts for the Desert Star Playhouse, and I started directing there. And I was like, I really do love this. I love the process, I love cleaning, I love making things work, I love comedy, so I knew all along that this was something I was good at. So, lots of mistakes and learning along the way, over the past several years, but the opportunity, of course, to do ‘Spring Awakening’ came out of just a dressing room conversation that was sort of, like, ‘If you could direct any show what would you want to direct?’ And I said, ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I want to direct ‘Spring Awakening,’ the right way.’ And that was sort of a manifestation in the moment that came true. And then that’s kind of led to other doors, other opportunities to do some work.
“This is by far the largest scale production I have been on the other side of the table for, and it’s super challenging. And we have an awesome team alongside of me, with music direction by Karin Gittins. I feel like we’ve just put together such a fun show that somehow has as much heart as you would want it to have, similar to how much heart the ‘Barbie’ movie had, and it’d be so easy to play it without any of that, but the grounded moments actually resonate even more so, because of how extreme some of the situational humor is within the show.”
We also asked Pulver Kohler if she is missing acting at all.
“I do miss it, because it is fun to tell just one person’s story, and I will step back on the stage to do ‘[A Christmas] Carol’ at the Hale in Sandy, which Matt [Kohler, her husband] and I have done for nearly the last decade, and we’ve had Ruby [their daughter] with us a handful of times for that, too,” she said. “So I’ll get my little moment, my annual moment, on stage, but it is so gratifying sort of putting together a concept [when she’s directing] and casting and implementing and watching them take your concept and blow it up even bigger and make it pretty and shiny. I mean it’s just so satisfying, I’m addicted.”
We also asked her about her time with “Hairspray,” with which she toured for three years, performing nearly 1,000 shows.
“I mean, it was a pipe dream for sure,” she said. “Although I was trying, I was so aware of how many people were told no, and how often, that I think it just felt like this thing that I had to try to do. But I didn’t necessarily have too much expectation of doing it. That being said, the last time I went in for a callback, I kind of felt like I was aging out; I was 26 at the time, and I’d been in the final callback for Broadway standby, Broadway replacement, Las Vegas casino version, the cast for the cruise ship. I had gone through and been looked at and been in the final two or three every single time. And I’m like, I’m 26 years old, she’s 15. How long are we going to do this? But at the time, I’d been playing a role that played very young, so it was kind of in my body in a different way.
“And I decided, this was it, this was the last time I come to a callback, I’m giving it everything; I’ve been so close so many times, and I’m not getting any younger. And it’s interesting because Matt Lenz, who was the director of the tour and was Jack O’Brien’s associate director, said: ‘You were just different that day. You were different; the way you carried yourself, the way you spoke, the way it was obvious that you were just: it’s all or nothing.’ And a couple of weeks later, I got a call from Network offering me the role. I was at work when I got the call and was just so overwhelmed and couldn’t even believe it, like nope, so many people go through life never being given an opportunity that was just so golden, and I did the show for three years. And that was all touring; Canada, we played in Japan for two different summers, and actually for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, we opened the Cultural Olympics.
“So it was just opportunity after opportunity, after opportunity, after opportunity. I did nearly 1,000 shows. And ultimately, that fourth year of touring, that contract came around and, at the time, I was starting to get more tired. The schedule was really, really difficult. Lots of one-nighters, nothing international, so a lot of cities that we played previously. Not to say that going back to some of the same wouldn’t be fun, but there just wasn’t a whole lot that was new. And they kept saying, ‘We’re trying to get Salt Lake put back on,’ and I said, ‘If you get my hometown put on this schedule, I’ll do the whole leg of the tour just to be able to perform at home, for my home state, at the Eccles.’ And unfortunately, the booking agents dropped it, so it just wasn’t on there.
“I just had to take that as a sign from the universe that like, leave while you still love it, and you could still do it. And don’t leave sick of it. And I really never was sick of it. So I just think it was the right timing. It was sad to leave. And playing Tracy will be forever… sorry, I’m getting a little emotional… something that felt like a unicorn. She [Tracy] is just so strong, and we need more people like Tracy, that’s all.”
We also asked her what’s coming up for her for the rest of this year.
“Not for this year, but next season [in June], West Valley Arts, I am directing ‘Alice by Heart,’ which is another musical that had a short Off-Broadway run, and then ran on the West End. And there’s not a whole lot of source material; it’s very eclectic. And so it’ll be a fun challenge, because it’s one I’ve never seen live. So it’ll be one that’s truly built in the imagination, where there’s not a whole lot of context around what other choices were made and how the story’s told.”
We also asked her what other shows are on her bucket list, both to direct and act in.
“One that I would love to be in or direct is ‘Something Rotten,’ so clever, and so funny, and so bawdy, and all of those things that I love,” she said. “And it’s just, it can be as random as you want it to be. I love that style of humor, where lots of different choices can live in the world. Something a little bit more… like I would love to direct a play and there are probably several, but I would love to do something that feels a little bit more like a classic and a little bit more about women, and I would love to direct ‘Steel Magnolias.’ I grew up on that movie. There’s just so many aspects now as an adult, and as a mother, and as you know, it’s in the suburbs. They’re just things that resonate differently for me than they did when I did the show; that could potentially be a very interesting project. But yeah, directing-wise, I just can’t wait until ‘Hadestown’ is available. I would love to be any part of the production team for that, although they probably do not want me as a choreographer or a music director, but it’s fine.
“Bucket list roles; you probably won’t be surprised by some of these. I’d love to play Miss Hannigan; I do love a good villain role. There’s just something very, very fun about that. I think part of what has sort of opened the box to creativity has been writing and just continuing… it’s sort of like one of the things energetically where energy creates energy, and creative energy creates more creative energy, and I think the more ways that you can be creative, the more open you are to ideas kind of popping in your head. It all just kind of steamrolls a little, and what’s been nice about now having a teenager as opposed to a younger child or a baby is that there’s a little more freedom to do lots of different things. And Ruby’s very creative also. She likes to see what we’re creating and what we’re doing and going through.”
For more information about “Legally Blonde” and for tickets, click here.
