14 DAY TRIAL // Actor Sean Dugan will be playing Bill Gates in "Nerds," a satirical musical based freely on the lives of the Microsoft founder and his counterpart, Apple's Steve Jobs.
The atypical production, scheduled for a run at the approaching New York Musical Theater Festival, basically makes fun of the software giants and their longstanding rivalry, but it also underlines their standing as cultural icons, especially for younger people.
The musical "sings" the story of Gates and Jobs with such songs as "A Revolution Starts With One," "Let's Merge," "I've Gotta Lotta Money" and "Stroll Through the PARC" -- a reference to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. One of the songs is the "Windows Rap," in which Dugan, as Gates, raps: I could buy the whole world now with only just a third Of my fortune, I'm cool now, haven't you heard? This Microsoft Office is no longer for a nerd My Outlook Excels me to my PowerPoint -- Word!
Supporting characters include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Myrtle Wengert, a fictional character which impersonates Gates love interest meant to symbolize Netscape, the browser company whose real-world fall led to antitrust allegations against Microsoft.
There have been countless books and even a television drama about Gates and Jobs, so it might seem weird to think of them and their companies as the subjects of a full-length theater production. But Allen-Dutton and Weiner have high expectations on the full-length theater production., as they hope to turn the show into something more permanent and even dream of Broadway.
The writers haven't talked with Microsoft officials about the musical. But that shouldn't be an unpleasant surprise for Mr. Gates, if we are to trust Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos, who said it at least sounded like something people there might like. He also pointed out that Microsoft often spoofs itself in mocking videos starring executives and employees shown at internal events.
"A lot of it we remembered firsthand -- our first computer, whether it was a Macintosh, or the first time we used DOS," said Jordan Allen-Dutton, who wrote the musical with fellow 28-year-old Erik Weiner. "A lot of this stuff we have memories of from being kids, but then we filled that in doing a lot of research."
Allen-Dutton and Weiner both graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and gained recognition as the co-authors of "The Bomb-itty of Errors," a rap-based Off-Broadway take-off on Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors."
That's something to watch for sure, and I'm looking forward to see if the project will manage to stir some Microsoft and Apple egos. I'll keep you posted!
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