By now, it may be fairly well known that the Broadway musical “Titaníque” began as a wild idea from co-book writer and star Constantine Rousouli. After all, the Tony Award-nominated book-writing trio of Rousouli, Tye Blue and Marla Mindelle (the latter of whom also stars in the show) has been everywhere from “Access Hollywood” to “The Daily Show” talking about their musical. But as Rousouli told Broadway News, “We were doing movie-to-musical parodies at this place in L.A. called Rockwell Table and Stage, so we were doing ‘Scream.’ I was basically like, ‘We need to just write something for ourselves because the script that we were currently doing was so bad.”
“I was two martinis deep and I just said, ‘Wait, what if we just did ‘Titanic’ as the next one with all Celine Dion music? And Marla, you’ll be Celine. I’ll be Jack,’” Rousouli continued. “And Tye was there and I was like, ‘Well you’re going to direct and we need to do this.’”
Rousouli suggested the group go to Palm Springs or Ojai to write it. “In my head, I was like, ‘I’m absolutely not going to Ojai with these people,’” Mindelle recalled. “I also remember the moment when we were in the bar and Connie was like, ‘Okay, so the first scene everyone’s in the Titanic museum, but Celine Dion is going to be in a witch costume, and she’s going to host the whole thing.’ And I remember being like, ‘That is the f*cking most batsh*t idea. This will never, ever happen.’”
Never say never.
That idea became “Titaníque,” which premiered in New York in a smash Off-Off-Broadway run, transferred to a multi-year Off-Broadway run, opened an Oliver Award-winning London mounting and is now on Broadway. But back in 2014, no one could predict the future. Or could they?
Rousouli went home that night in 2014 and wrote an outline. “I’d never written anything in my life,” Rousouli confided. “I’m surprised I even had a computer at that time because I’d had no computer for six years.” Yet, even with his enthusiasm, Rousouli sat on the idea and the outline for two years. Then, in November of 2016, Blue texted his compatriots: “We need to do something to make us laugh right now. We’re starting this. We’re doing it.”
“To me, it was a genius concept from the jump,” Blue told Broadway News. “Was I thinking this will be a great Broadway musical? No. Was I thinking this will be the best thing that we’ve ever done at this venue in L.A.? Yes.”
And despite those humble goals, Blue, Mindelle and Rousouli attacked writing “Titaníque” with rigor.
They divided the show into three sections, each taking one. “We watched the movie and we were like, ‘These are the iconic parts of the movie. Now let’s each take this section of the script and write our viewpoint on what happened,’” Mindelle remembered. “Once we did that and started collaborating and going to writer’s retreats and really throwing in jokes that made each other laugh, it [became] this beautiful amalgamation of something true to the movie, for sure, but it’s actually more true to ourselves and our brand of humor.”
