to see how she can use dance to convey the themes and stories told through the songwriting. “Dance can sometimes be overlooked as a way to tell really powerful stories, and I think she has a lot to say,” Johnson said. “And dance can say a lot too. So marrying the two will yield some really awesome creative results.” “Joni: Busy Being Free” is the first work of theater DeGregory has ever written. He said in the process, he first did extensive research into Mitchell’s life, and then mapped out the basic story based on her biography. DeGregory said that he is still finishing up writing for the production, and has mixed and changed the order of songs to suit the mood of the scenes. DeGregory said that while working on the performance, he wanted to make sure many women were involved in the process, as much of the story deals with how Mitchell grappled with her femininity and how she was treated by the media as a woman in the public eye. The media often failed to give her proper credit as a songwriter in her own right, and instead defined her through her relationships with male musicians. According to DeGregory, all of the band members, one of his producers and several key members of the production team are women. DeGregory said that working with them and the women in the cast has helped generate conversations about how Mitchell balanced her desire for love and family with her wish to be independent at a time when those were often seen as two incompatible concepts. “They speak to the topics and the experiences way better than I can,” DeGregory said. Like many other recent musicals about famous female music artists, such as “The Cher Show” and “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical,” “Busy Being Free” uses three actors to represent the different periods of Mitchell’s life. DeGregory said although he initially didn’t plan to take this approach, he realized it would be hard for one actor to embody the entire life of someone who changed as drastically as Joni Mitchell. One of the Jonis represents her from her childhood to right before she released her acclaimed album “Blue.”The second portrays her middle period, as a folk artist, while the third represents her as an older, experimental “vagabond” musician. Communication sophomore Ruby Gibson, who plays young Joni in the productim, said one of the most difficult aspects has been working to divorce popular conceptions about Joni Mitchell from her performance. Although the actors have the benefit of knowing about Mitchell’s life story, their characters don’t, I hope her personal so it’s important that they play their characters as real people living in the pursuit of freedom moment. “Finding the difference between the encourages others to three Jonis and what they discover and when, what one Joni knows that another find their own. “That's Joni doesn’t know, what one Joni can say that another doesn’t know how to say yet, really important to me.” has been really challenging, but really amazing,” Gibson said. DeGregory said he hopes in watching the presentation, the invited audience will be able to understand the pressures Mitchell faced –– and her struggles to find liberation. “I hope her personal pursuit of freedom encourages others to find their own,” DeGregory said. “That’s really important to me.”◊
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Evan Robinson-Johnson/Daily Senior Staffer