KU students rehearse The

Mark Hollmann finally quit his day job.

A Broadway smash and a Tony Award will allow a man certain privileges.

That’s a good thing. And maybe, it brings a little bit of pressure.

“It doesn’t make you suddenly the world’s greatest writer,” he says. “It gives you something to live up to.”

Hollmann wrote the music and lyrics to “Urinetown,” one of the biggest Broadway hits of the 2000s. At 44, with plenty of theater writing and one golden hit under his belt, he’s just now finding out what it’s like to be a full-time professional music writer.

Despite his newfound success, Hollmann has selected a low-key opening for his latest work, “The Girl, the Grouch and the Goat: A Modern Fable.” It will make its way to the stage for the first time beginning Tuesday at the University Theatre of Kansas University.

It could be the start of another Broadway hit.

“I’m not sure what its fate is,” Hollmann says. “I thought ‘Urinetown’ would never be on Broadway, so I’ve been wrong about this before.”

New show

Hollmann, a native of Chicago, was back in the Midwest earlier this month to work with University Theatre cast members on the piece, seeing it for the first time with a set and props and hearing it for the first time with orchestration. (He’ll be back for the opening.)

“It was so nerve-wracking,” says Meghan Puhr, a junior from Olathe who plays the title “girl.” “Mark Hollmann, a Tony Award-winning composer, is there listening to a 20-year-old girl sing.”

That’s a strange situation for Hollmann to be in.

Hollmann worked for years writing plays and musicals in Chicago, with some success. His career also included playing piano for the popular Second City comedy troupe.

During much of that time, he was working with Jack Helbig, a playwright, journalist and teacher living near Chicago, on a musical based on the Greek fable “Dyskolos,” the Greek word for “grouch.”

The musical is set in a farming village in the grip of drought. A grouchy man owns the only working well and charges high prices for water. A strong-willed widow looks to free the town from the water stronghold.

When the grouch’s daughter and the widow’s son fall in love, their romance is put through many trials until most of those involved find themselves at the bottom of the well.

Helbig and Hollmann liked the all-ages musical but never found a home – or financial backing – for it. Eventually, convinced geography mattered as much as talent for Broadway writers, Hollmann moved to New York City.

Now, with his name known nationally, finding a home for a long-lost musical has become a bit easier.

Finally, success

That name recognition came thanks to “Urinetown,” which won three Tony Awards in 2002, including best book, best original score and best direction.

The musical is about the Urine Good Company, which controls the toilets in its small community. It is, in part, a parody of other musicals.

Hollmann wrote the show with Greg Kotis, another University of Chicago alumnus. It ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2004.

Suddenly, Hollmann could quit his day job as a word processor for an investment bank. He even met Carol Burnett, his idol, backstage after a show.

And, most importantly, producers started calling to have him write for their shows, which meant Hollmann had to start cranking out work. It had taken he and Kotis five years to write “Urinetown.”

(“Urinetown,” incidentally, was performed by Free State High School in fall 2007.)

“‘Urinetown’ is the work of an amateur. I did not have the work habits of a professional,” Hollmann says. “(Afterward), I was being paid to write like that. I’d never done that before.”

He eventually lost two of the three shows he was commissioned for after “Urinetown” – one because he didn’t fit the producers’ wishes, the other because the producers couldn’t get enough financial backing.

The one that remains is a musical version of the 1936 film “My Man Godfrey,” written by Rupert Holmes, who is best known for writing “The Pina Colada Song” in the 1970s. Hollmann is hoping that, too, may someday make a run on Broadway.

Musical’s future

Meanwhile, Hollmann is hoping “The Girl, the Grouch and the Goat” might have some legs as well.

He was convinced to let KU have the world premiere after John Staniunas, who directs University Theatre, directed a staged reading of the musical last summer at the Kansas City Festival of New Musicals.

“John Staniunas did a tremendous job,” Hollmann says. “We were enchanted with what he did.”

Staniunas, in turn, says the writer has remained humble despite his sudden success.

“That’s the nature of our business,” Staniunas says. “You work for a long time, and suddenly something hits – one great movie, one great musical. All the sudden, you’re the one being asked to do things.”

Staniunas hopes this show is a success in Lawrence to launch it to new venues.

“They can say, ‘I was the first to see it,'” he says of Lawrence audiences.

Meanwhile, Hollmann is hoping he can continue to live up to the hype created by “Urinetown,” even with a relatively small-town audience.

“Everyone thinks you’re great because of ‘Urinetown,'” he says. “That’s what is still hard to grasp for me. I still feel like the person who was never going to get there. I was humble enough to think I might never get a Broadway show.”