{"id":2242334,"date":"2026-01-20T15:54:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2242334"},"modified":"2026-01-20T15:54:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:54:50","slug":"atcs-aint-misbehavin-brings-jazzman-fats-waller-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/atcs-aint-misbehavin-brings-jazzman-fats-waller-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"ATC’s ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ brings jazzman Fats Waller to life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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For some, Arizona Theatre Company’<\/a>s production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” will play out like a concert of the iconic 20th century jazzman Fats Waller’s greatest hits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But Director\/Choreographer Dell Howlett<\/a> thinks you’ll get far more than that when the show opens on Sunday, Jan. 25; it continues through Feb. 14 as part of the 2026 Tucson Desert Song Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You will walk away knowing his side of the Harlem Renaissance, his connection to family and his role at the vanguard of the conversation of Harlem Renaissance and the human element of that,” said Howlett, who was the assistant director under Kent Gash when ATC last presented<\/a> “Ain’t Misbehavin'” in 2009.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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People are also reading\u2026<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n
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“Ain’t Misbehavin'” is not a jukebox musical; it’s a revue that turns Waller’s music into a roadmap to his life in early 20th century America. We experience his wit, captivating charm and indelible rhythm that defined the Harlem Renaissance through\u00a0his songs \u2014 “The Ladies Who Sing With the Band,” “Spreadin’ Rhythm Around,” “Black and Blue,”\u00a0“Fat and Greasy,” and, of course, the seminal “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Arizona Theatre Company opens the Fats Waller revue show “Ain’t Misbehavin'” on Sunday. From left, cast members Anthony Murphy, Aerie Williams, Wilkie Ferguson III and Taylor Colleton rehearse with Director Dell Howlett.<\/p>\n

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The musical debuted on Broadway in 1978 and earned three Tony Awards, including the coveted Best Musical.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the ATC production under Howlett’s direction, “the relationship between the music, the audience and the actor takes us to a couple of different places,\u201d said Music Director Abdul Hamid Royal,<\/a> whose credits include the Tony-nominated Broadway musical “Five Guys Named Moe,” “Sophisticated Ladies,” “Ain’t Misbehavin'” and “Jelly’s Last Jam.”\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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From left, Taylor Colleton, Aerie Williams and Keirsten Hodgens confer with Director\/Choreographer Dell Howlett during a rehearsal of Arizona Theatre Company’s production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”<\/p>\n

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“There is something for everyone; those who want to just listen to the music or to learn about Fats and his prophetic voice, and then there’s another door that Dell has created for the thinker to pull back the veil,\u201d said Royal, making his Arizona Theatre Company debut.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Behind the veil takes the audience to the reality of Fats Waller’s life once the house lights came up.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSongs like ‘Black and Blue,’ an extraordinary song that happens in Act 2, really pulls the curtain back on what took place once the curtain raised,” Howlett said. “Fats was still living in White America, experiencing Jim Crow laws. That\u2019s all in the music and that is an experience that we approach each utterance of the show.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Howlett and Royal said most of the Broadway musical-tested cast \u2014 Taylor Colleton (“Water for Elephants, “Hadestown”); Keirsten Hodgens (“SIX the Musical”); Wilkie Ferguson III (original Broadway cast of “Porgy and Bess”); Anthony Murphy (“The Wiz”); and Aerie Williams (Off-Broadway’s “Trevor: The Musical”)\u00a0\u2014 are experiencing Waller for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“To see them understand it intuitively, on a DNA level, it tells me that Waller is still speaking to us,” Howlett said.\u00a0“There hasn’t been an artist able to do the things that Waller was able to do. We haven’t seen that level of genius, and not just genius in terms of composition, but genius in terms of performance, being able to, in the moment, translate comedy, pain, musicality, passion, all the things in that one moment of kind of alchemy. … I think young artists, especially young Black artists, as they’re building their relationship to Waller, I think he continues to open the door to possibility about what music can do, what we can be inside of music, and he points to something beyond the era that he’s in.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Waller’s music lives in the same sort of pantheon of ideas and creativity,” added Royal, a classically trained pianist who will be on stage throughout the play, recreating Waller’s Harlem stride piano style that inspired Thelonious Monk, Count Basie and others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“He also helps us to feel whatever else it is that we’re feeling like in ‘Black and Blue,’ like in ‘Mean to Me,’ like “Find Out What They Like.’ … Fats was able to communicate who he was, where he lived, how he felt, and to also send out the kind of resonating energy that draws us today, and that’s what makes this music iconic.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Arizona Theatre Company opens its season with “Deceived,” an adaptation of the 1938 thriller \u201cGas Light.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com<\/a>. On Bluesky @Starburch<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Stay up-to-date on what’s happening<\/h2>\n

Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source tucson.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For some, Arizona Theatre Company’s production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” will play out like a concert of the iconic 20th century jazzman Fats Waller’s greatest hits. But Director\/Choreographer Dell Howlett thinks you’ll get far more than that when the show opens on Sunday, Jan. 25; it continues through Feb. 14 as part of the 2026 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2242335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[434054,21800],"class_list":["post-2242334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-art-theater","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ATCs-Aint-Misbehavin-brings-jazzman-Fats-Waller-to-life.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2242334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2242336,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242334\/revisions\/2242336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2242335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2242334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2242334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2242334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}