When guitarist and singer-songwriter Tom Morello was growing up in the Chicago suburbs, his mom took him to A Christmas Carol at the Goodman Theatre. Now, Revolution(s), a politically-driven play featuring his music, hits the stage of that Tony-winning institution through November 9. “I can’t even say it’s a dream come true, because I never would have dreamed, when I was a kid going to the Goodman, to have my own show here,” says Morello, known for his bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, as well as his political activism.
Utterly apt—what with ICE agents at work in cities across the outcry—Revolution(s) was envisioned, says Morello, as a “punk rock, heavy metal, hip hop, illegal rave, radical theatre event, a show that should feel like an edgy underground event that might earn our guests a spot on a government list.”
The show got its start during the COVID-19 pandemic, when writer and Northwestern University professor, Zayd Ayers Dohrn, was listening to Morello’s 22-album catalogue and decided to write a Chicago-oriented musical using songs like “Hold the Line” (Nobody said it happens overnight/But if you’re looking for a sign/Remember everybody that stood up before you/Oh, they hold the line). Morello is friends with Dohrn’s parents, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, retired professors and one-time leaders of the radical 1960s organization Weather Underground, so he gladly gave permission.
Morello, who didn’t learn to play guitar until he was 17, started his artistic life in theatre. His first role was as Chief Sitting Bull in a middle-school production of Annie Get Your Gun. Later, he was active in plays at Libertyville High School, with roles that included Oberon in A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Morello says he considered theatre kids his “tribe,” who made him feel at home in his conservative town. When Morello went to Harvard University to study political science, he kept up his interest in acting, appearing in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. He also worked summers performing at the Bristol Renaissance Faire in Wisconsin. But he was also having fun playing guitar in a cover band, “shredding Ozzy Osborne solos.”
“I was at a literal crossroads, where I had to choose rock 'n' roll or theatre, and I chose rock and roll,” says Morello, who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. “But it eventually, and ironically, brought me back to the theatre.”
Revolution(s) is about two brothers—a musician and a soldier. Their parents were political activists and their father, who had also been in the military, has spent decades in prison. Returning home from Afghanistan, the soldier brother gets into a confrontation with police that spirals out of control, making him a symbol of the country’s problems. “It’s about the way that history echoes across generations and the way that different people today might respond to the burdens and responsibilities of that history,” says Dohrn, whose mother was once on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
Morello is convinced that the show (directed by Steve H. Broadnax III) is unlike any musical audiences have seen before. “It is punk rock in that it is irreverent toward the musical theatre forms and norms you’ve come to expect. It dispenses with musical theatre stereotypes. It is authentic, it is loud, it is defiant. It has a rebellious point of view you haven’t heard in the theatre. The idea is not to put on a play—it’s to rock the joint to the ground.” The musician doesn’t perform in the show himself, but has been on hand to encourage the cast, whom he says have been deputized as crimefighters, “against the crime of racism, against the crime of fascism and intolerance of immigrants. As artists in this time, that’s our place.”
The score includes existing material, such as “Let’s Get This Party Started,” “Stray Bullets,” and “The War Inside,” plus new work, including “Untethered”, a song about having to cut ties to society because of revolutionary activity. Dorhn describes Revolution(s)” as “more of a mix tape musical than a juke box musical,” since some songs are merged, cut apart, and stitched back together, with some lyrics rewritten to fit the action.
In the current political situation, Morello said he feels an urgency to help bring change. “It really does feel like that we’re in the shadow of Vesuvius and the only ship out of town right now is the Titanic. All we can do is express ourselves in what we do. There’s no one coming to save us but us. History is not something that happens, but something that we make, right? The world is not going to change itself, that is up to you and everyone reading this
right now.”
