Theater preview: Relative Space 

• Courtesy Photo

Anyone familiar with musical theater knows the concept of the "jukebox musical"—shows that build a narrative around pre-existing hits by artists like ABBA (Mamma Mia!) or Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (Jersey Boys). But what do you call it when you've got a show, like the new Relative Space, where those pre-existing songs are the largely-unknown work of a 16-year-old singer-songwriter?

In the words of Relative Space's book-writer, Utah playwright Melissa Leilani Larson, "It's like a jukebox musical, but as the artist is on her way up."

That artist is Kjersti Long, whose family relocated to Utah from the New York metropolitan area in 2022, and who wrote many of the songs that became part of Relative Space when she was in her early teens. Kjersti already has a record contract, and some of her music is scheduled for release as singles. But for others, it wasn't clear what their best home might be until Kjersti's father, Jeremy, introduced them to family friend—and Tony Award-nominated Broadway producer—Van Dean.

"[Dean] said, 'This is such a cool story. ... You need to tell it through theater,'" Kjersti says. "I thought, 'Wait, these are 10 really separate songs. [And] we're in the pop/rock scene, we're not going to tell this through a Broadway play.'"

"What [Dean] know is, my whole family is in theater here in Utah," adds Jeremy, who serves with Dean as one of the show's producers. "I've been around it, I know what good theater is. We just never really thought we'd go down that road."

Once the idea was in place, Jeremy reached out to Larson, who developed a story involving the mothers and daughters in a family, across generations, dealing with mental-health issues and the associated challenges and stigmas. But there was still the question of building that story around Kjersti's songs. "These songs go together, but how do they go together," Larson says. "We have these hits, and we want to put them in an order, so how do you assign dramaturgically how these events happen? ... How do you do this [subject matter] on stage without it being preachy or didactic?"

On top of the unique structure of building Relative Space around these songs, there's another distinctive component to the show compared to most musicals: Kjersti herself performs the songs live, rather than the actors playing the characters. Though she's quite experienced and comfortable as a performer, she says that the experience of Relative Space does require a different approach than playing a concert.

"Usually, I like to run back and forth on stage," Kjersti says, "but I don't have that much space, so I won't move as much. [Also,] theater people care a lot about their diction. In the rock world, no one is listening for that."

Kjersti also discovered that, as much as she didn't think about these songs when writing them as part of a narrative, the process of incorporating them into Relative Space opened up layers of interpretation that she hadn't previously considered herself. "There's one song in there, 'Burn It Down,' that was written as a relationship break-up song. [Larson] put it in the play in an area where it's actually a fight between a mother and a daughter. And if you listen to the lyrics, it fits. It can fit in any kind of context where there's a fight."

Multi-layered songs are an accomplishment for an artist of any age, and Kjersti understands the temptation—as a marketing hook or as a way to shape a media story—to focus on her being a "teen prodigy." But if it helps get the work out there, she has no problem with it; "As long as they're listening to the music and it's impacting them, awesome, think about my age. It doesn't matter much," she says.

And that emphasis on simply getting the songs and their message out into the world extends to the prospect of Relative Space becoming enough of a success that, someday, it could be performed somewhere without her as the singer of the songs. "My goal is to get my music out there so that people can enjoy it," Kjersti says. "Whether that's me or someone else singing it, awesome."

That prospect, though, does depend on Relative Space connecting in its initial incarnation. Jeremy Long believes that the audience for musical theater has expanded in recent years to reach younger people, and it's possible that as Kjersti's own musical career blossoms, her involvement could attract interest. But this is a different kind of show, one that had a different kind of development process, and tries different things on stage.

"It is a gamble," Larson says. "But I feel like, though, with every show, there's a level of that. You just have to try the whole thing, and see if it works. There's a theatrical dance component—does the choreography work? Does it work to have a musical where the actors don't sing? We just have to try it and see."