Friends to Fringe: ‘48 North: A New Musical’
Over the past few years of the Theatre Kingston Fringe Festival I have noticed a trend; there always seems to be one new musical brought to the festival that ends up being one of those shows I hear people discussing in the lobby for other performances at this unique and intimate Fringe. In 2023 it was Surely, Sherlock, last year it was The Cape As Red As Blood, and this year the frontrunner for that spot seems to be 48 North: A New Musical from Left Foot Theatre. Originally written as a song cycle by Jack Oliver Kotanen and produced in both Thunder Bay and New York City, it is receiving new life in this year’s Fringe, being transformed into a musical with a book by Katelyn Luoma. I recently had the chance to chat with Kotanen and Luoma about how they have found the process of collaborating on creating this brand new show.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is 48 North about?
JOK: It’s about these four friends sharing their last weekend together at the end of summer after graduating high school before going off to the rest of their lives. It goes between present day (which is their final weekend) and various points in the future. The reason it’s called 48 North is because it takes place over the course of 48 hours in the present for their weekend, and also 48 North is the geographical coordinate of where it’s set.
KL: When people ask me what it’s about I’ve been saying the tagline on the poster is: “growing up, moving forward, and everything in between.” So it is about friendship, where you’re from, and how those people and that place shape you. Then your relationship with that place and those people after you’ve left it.
How did you two meet?
JOK: We found each other 15 years ago. We were doing a production of Romeo and Juliet, we became friends, started doing more shows together, went to high school together, and then kind of went our separate ways but kept in touch as friends. I had these songs for a song cycle that I had written loosely based on the place where we grew up and some of the people that we know: so I asked Katelyn to write the book for the musical because she had been writing plays and I had been writing music. I was like, “Well, wouldn’t this be nice?”
How have you approached writing this as a duo?
KL: I’ve never written for a musical before, and I’ve only really worked with collaborators in a dramaturgical sense. So it’s been interesting and challenging writing a book for music that was already written.
JOK: I think we both know each other very well and work well together so we were able to have a very open line of communication about what we thought worked and what maybe needed to change.
KL: We also have had to make a lot of sad cuts to the show; even before I started writing anything there were like five songs from the song cycle that couldn’t make it because, for the fringe, the show can’t exceed an hour. Even now we’re dealing with that: “Are we ditching words or are we ditching music?”
Luoma, once you got involved what were the first steps at approaching book-writing for a musical?
KL: We met quite a few times throughout. I had a lot of questions for [Kotanen] because this was my first time doing this kind of playwriting: creating a book from music that’s already been written. So I had a lot of questions about what throughlines [Kotanen] already saw. We also worked together on which songs could be sung by the same people to create characters (because in the concert versions a lot of the songs were sung by different people). A big thing was deciding how many characters there would be and what songs fit each person. The show is not a “well-made play” [a dramatic structure pioneered in the 19th century by Eugène Scribe], it doesn’t follow the unity of time, we bounce back and forth between different timelines, like future/present. Another thing we talked a lot about was “what order do we want to see things in?”
Some of your past writings have been produced before in Kingston, but if I’m not mistaken this is your first time being located in a completely different city for the entirety of the process. How has your experience been being a bit more hands-off?
KL: It’s been interesting and challenging, especially because I’m also acting as the producer of the show. So just last night we had a run-through that I watched on Zoom, and our director [Victoria Marmulak] also was watching on Zoom. We have a very unique situation where me, [Kotanen], and [Marmulak] are not physically in Kingston, but the majority of our team and all of our cast members are on the ground. It is hard to be in a different time and space than what is happening, but I am going to make some trips closer to the run to get things ready.
In a similar vein, Kotanen, you’ve already put on the song cycle twice. What’s it like taking a step back and watching the piece grow?
JOK: I think an important part of any work is knowing whether or not it can be understood without you having to explain it. So it’s been really informative seeing how people take certain things and what their interpretations of things are. Sometimes it’s just not what was intended, and sometimes it’s better. I wish I could be more there and involved, but your hope as a writer is that more and more people put on your shows; you’re obviously not always going to be involved in them, so to be able to have your work come across without you being there is very important.
Are there any aspirations for the show’s life following the Fringe?
KL: There definitely is hope for productions beyond this. We’ve been talking about a lot of the cuts we’ve had to make and songs from the song cycle that we weren’t able to include. There’s a lot of things we hope to include in future versions that can be longer than 60 minutes. We hope that eventually this is a full scale musical that got its first footing in a Fringe.
Jack is a proud trans actor/composer/musician who has been working in NYC/Canada since graduating from AMDA NY. Upcoming/current: ‘The Secret Garden’ (Colin-FAST). Previous: ‘Sweeney Todd’ (Tobias Ragg-Dir. Miles Sternfeld), ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (Benvolio/Paris-Magnus Theatre). IG: @jack.kotanen
Originally from Thunder Bay, Katelyn Luoma is a playwright, producer, director, production manager, educator, and theatre administrator currently based in Ottawa after graduating from The DAN School of Drama and Music. Past writing credits include ‘Knowing Riley’ (TK Fringe 2024) and ‘Losing a…Hubcap’ (TK Theo Fringe 2023).
‘48 North: A New Musical’ produced by Left Foot Theatre will be presented by TK Fringe as part of The Kick & Push Festival from August 7 to 16, 2025. More information about the Fringe can be found here, and tickets to ‘48 North: A New Musical’ can be found here.
