Nerds, a new musical about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, premieres in Raleigh (1671 hits)
Half a dozen nerds cross the stage at the A.J. Fletcher Theater holding their homemade computers, hoping to launch their careers and, more importantly, make friends. Behind them, a computer motherboard acts as a backdrop, with dozens of LED screens providing commentary. Director Marc Bruni stops the action: the screens are blank. “The lights aren’t talking to each other,” says a technician. Thus this rehearsal, for a new musical about the rise of the digital world, has to pause in order to fix a computer. North Carolina Theatre’s Nerds: A New Musical Comedy, running from Jan. 18 to Feb. 2 at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, is the story of Bill Gates (Stanley Bahorek) and Steve Jobs (Darren Ritchie), the two men most celebrated for the rise of personal computing.
“We thought it would be fun to watch nerds singing,” says co-writer Jordan Allen-Dutton. “In any type of musical you have to believe that someone at anytime can burst into song. And in order to do that, you need characters who are really over-the-top, bigger-than-life characters. And these two guys fit that model.”
