In SeaWife, audiences are transported to a 19th century tavern where they attend the tale of the brave Percy, who following in the footsteps of his father decides to conquer ocean’s most enigmatic creature: the leviathan. We follow the hero during his highs and lows and see him conquer the love of a woman he refers to as the “sea wife” because of her powerful connection to nature and the ocean. The show features a rousing score and lyrics by The Lobbyists, the indie band that has stormed New York’s folk scene by surprise, the members of the band also play all the characters, with founding members Tommy Crawford and Will Turner both playing Percy and Eloïse Eonnet playing the title character. Think of the show as a concert on board the Pequod and you’re only halfway into envisioning its uniqueness.

We had the opportunity to talk to Crawford, Turner and Eonnet about bringing the show to life, The Lobbyists’ history and how doing a musical is unlike anything they’ve done before.

What came first, the show or the songs?

Tommy: Actually everything happened together, technically Seth Moore had written a short radio play, it wasn’t Sea Wife but it was a nautical story with a main character named Percy, although he was a completely different person. We had been officially The Lobbyists for about a year, but we all wanted to do something, we are all actors, so we wanted to be able to be a band and also act together. We wanted to do a nautical ghost story and so I was at a party talking to our costume designer Lauren Shaw about the idea and she mentioned Seth’s play, so he sent it along, we all gravitated towards it. We started developing it, we wrote songs, Seth wrote a script and then we worked together in tandem so the script influenced the songs and vice versa.

How did the South Street Sea Port Museum become involved?

Will: I believe they became involved when we were looking for a place to do a benefit concert to raise money for the show in November. We felt the Sea Port lent itself to the theme of the show and when we saw the Melville Gallery we fell in love with it, the Museum gave us the space for the concert and it went so well that they also gave us the space to do the show.

Can you talk about how the show came together visually? I loved how inventive it is especially when trying to convey the sea creatures.

Eloïse: We’re an extremely collaborative team so we all helped create this world. The huge story was challenging, for example when we were thinking about the leviathan we wondered how to show this creature in a small space. We tried many different versions during rehearsal, at one point we built part of the whale with crates, but none of them worked emotionally until we found the imagery of the eye. Our design team is amazing, they helped us shape this world and their work has also affected the music, we wanted all the elements to come together in a very evocative way.

Can you talk about how the band began?

Tommy: Will and I went to college together in Yale, so the original Lobbyists, me, Will, Eloise, Alex and Tony, we were all working together in a play in downtown New York. Will and I were also the assistant music directors of the play, the director asked us to play music in the lobby before the patrons came for the show. We were doing a five hour marathon of Greek tragedy, so the director’s concept was to make it socially immersive, so that the actors would become very engaged with the audience during the intermission and dinner. When people came into the lobby Will and I were playing music, we did folk and cover songs, then Alex came up to us one day carrying a mandolin and asked if he could play with us, his counter tenor also made a beautiful harmony with what we were doing. Eloise and I had been friends and we had talked about doing a band, so she came in when we did an arrangement for a French song, then Tony came in and took the percussion end. The show ran for two plus months, during which we played every day which helped us find our style. This allowed us to coalesce as a band.

What’s the creative process like when you have all the members of the band trying to contribute something?

Will: A lot of our work tends to be somebody bringing a theme or a completed song and we usually improvise around it. People have an instinct to improvise on something when they think it can add a different texture and we refine it from there. We collaborate the same way with the rest of the team, rather than discussion and brainstorming, actually having something to bring in is the best way to jumpstart the creative process. People bring something they wrote at home and the strongest songs found their way into the story.

How is it different as a band to do a musical as opposed to a regular concert?

Eloïse: I find it extremely different, I’m glad that you asked that because I was just thinking of this, watching videos of performances that we did at 54 Below and I find that our music has completely transformed since we put it at the service of a story. I find that each song, at least for the lead singer, acquires a new meaning. We have different versions of the songs too and they feel different in theatre, there’s also a different energy with the lights and sets, and also the emotional journey we have to take with each song. I’m curious to see how we’re going to play these songs now that we’ve done the show. The audience energy is different as well, there’s an availability to the audience who see the show that’s not always as intimate in concerts.

Will, since you and Tommy have known each other the longest, and you both play Percy, can you talk about what elements of yourselves you brought to the part?

Will: It’s been so interesting having done so many versions of the show, so the characters have changed quite a bit. If you were to look at some of our first readings, Tommy’s Percy had  amore ebullient personality, in the first act he was very funny, and then in the second act - where I play him - he transitioned very abruptly to kind of a non-emotive, coldblooded kind of person, I’m not saying that’s who I am (laughs). As we’ve worked on the show some of the characters’ natural darkness has appeared in the first act as well, there’s been a bleed over from both directions to make the characters more balanced.

Will, I’m sorry but I need to ask you if people ever come up to you after the show and bring up that you share a name with Orlando Bloom’s character in Pirates of the Caribbean?

Will: (Laughs) That happened almost all the time when the first movies came out and I still get it from time to time. I grew up in Tampa, Florida which has an actual annual Pirate Parade, so piracy has always been in my life.

Wasn’t Tom Sawyer the character that made you realize you wanted to become a performer too?

Will: Yeah! The junior version of Tom Sawyer: The Musical which I did in fourth grade, I had just transferred to a new school and was having toruble finding my place, but I did not feel selfconscious onstage, which has continued to be the case.

Tommy, can you talk about the Antigone adaptation you did as a folk musical. Especially when it comes to the similarities between the myths in ancient Greek culture and Americana.

Tommy: I think that Greek myth is an underlying source for a lot of our folk tales and art. It pervades a lot of Western art, I think there are stories that constantly resurface, especifically with Americana, I’d have to think about that for a bit...but for me the idea of a tragic hero is in SeaWife. Percy is the archetypal hero with his downfall and journey.

Tommy, you’re a jack of all trades too, you act, direct, sing, write...is there one thing you like doing more than the other?

Tommy: That’s very hard to say, I love all the things I do. The projects I get most excited about are the ones where I can combine acting, writing, singing, so this show is really exciting because I get to wear all these hats. Of course this has its own challenges, sometimes it’s nice to just be an actor or just be a musician. I’m currently working on a project about the myth of Cain and Abel, through the lens of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim tradition. I keep coming back to all these old stories.

Eloïse, the world of sailors is usually thought of as very masculine, can you talk about how it was to bring your strong female voice to this show?

Eloïse: It’s been fascinating, trying to find a place for my character within this world was very difficult, at first she wasn’t very present but there’s a driving force we wanted to instill, a counterpoint to this harsh, somewhat male, notion of devouring, taking and “being a mouth”. In the latin languages words used to describe the ocean are feminine which gives it a balance, we have a ship full of men above the water, floating on something very feminine, in French “the ocean” is “la mer”. The great thing about my character is that she takes things from the earth to create beauty for others.

Will, I read in your bio that you love learning useless facts, so what’s the most useless fact you’ve ever learned?

Will: Oh man, let me go through the giant library of those in my head...I think my favorite useless fact is about the Mantis shrimp - I like animal facts a lot - that can close its claws so fast that it creates this super heated bubble that’s as hot as the surface of the sun for like a millisecond. The shrimp uses that to stun its prey.

OK, one last question, pick one classic musical starring The Lobbyists, what would it be and who would you play?

Tommy: That’s such an interesting question. It’s funny but when I think about The Lobbyists and our music, our ethos, it’s very much not your traditional musical theatre music. We’re writing in our style and we’re trying to do plays that aren’t traditional musicals, with SeaWife we wanted to break away from traditional theatre tropes, songs don’t advance the plot in ways you’d expect, and different people play different actors. But, if we had to play music that other people wrote in a musical I’d pick something off the beaten path...something totally unexpected that we’d rearrange the music to make it sound nothing like the original.

Eloïse: Oh my goodness, this is tough! We’re not musical theatre actors, I’d never been in a musical before. I was trained classically as an opera singer and it wasn’t until I started playing with the guys that I embraced this folksy part of my voice, so I have to confess I don’t have a lot of musical theatre knowledge, so let me do a play I can write music to instead (laughs)...in that case this might be strange but the very first play that comes to mind is Jerusalem, there was something so raw and amazing about that play that would be fun to deconstruct and rebuild again.

Will: I actually have a profound love for Rodgers and Hammerstein, I did Carousel once a long time ago and I’d love to revisit it. Perhaps it’s on my mind because I’ve just seen similar New England coastal town settings, but I think we could do an interesting version of that. The music is absolutely gorgeous and obviously I’d like to play the central character (laughs) although I played Mr. Bascombe when I did it the first time and I’d be happy to play that again, I have a good beard right now and some pretty epic facial hair so it wouldn’t be a hard transition.

SeaWife is running through July 26. For tickets and more click here.