By SHARON EBERSON
Daina Michelle Griffith has memories of Working dating back to her college days, when her friend was performing in a Theatre Factory production of the musical.
“I went out to see it and loved it,” recalls Griffith, who will direct the musical to lead off Front Porch Theatricals’ 2026 season. “And I was like, ‘It’s a song cycle.’ I didn’t remember any monologues. I just remembered [the song] ‘Mason,’ and I remembered ‘Millwork,’ and I remembered ‘Brother Trucker,’ and ‘It’s An Art’ …”
When she got the call, she also remembered that Pittsburgher Lenora Nemetz was on that CD of the 1974 Broadway cast album. “And so then,” Griffith continues, “when I met Lenora the next year, and she became my mentor at that time, I was just in awe, because I’m like, ‘This is the woman [in Working]! This is her!’ ”
Griffith is the woman of the moment. The 2013 Post-Gazette Performer of the Year, who continues to shine in local shows, will now direct back-to-back productions: Working, May 15-24, 2026, and barebones’ Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, June 12-28, 2026.
When she agreed to direct the Front Porch show, she thought she knew exactly what she was getting into — until it was explained that they were using the 2012 revised version.
A LITTLE ‘WORKING’ HISTORY
For his 1974 nonfiction book, Studs Terkel practically shouted his premise. “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do” is a broad study of workaday Americans such as stone masons, factory workers, farmhands, and waitresses.
For the 1978 musical adaptation, conceived by Wicked and Pippin songwriter Stephen Schwartz, the title was trimmed to simply Working, earning him Tony nominations for Best Book and Score of a Musical.
To capture the concept that work is the sum of purpose plus fulfillment — or just as often, not, when weighed against the American dream — Schwartz partnered with Craig Carnelia, Micki Grant, Mary Rodgers, James Taylor, and Susan Birkenhead, with each contributing songs such as Schwartz’s “All the Livelong Day” and “Fathers and Sons,” and Taylor’s “Millwork” and “Brother Trucker.”
Pittsburgher Nemetz, having worked on Broadway in Cabaret and Chicago (she was a standby for Gwen Verdon), went on to play three roles in Working: a supermarket checker, a stewardess, and a waitress. Among her costars was Patti LuPone.
In 2012, a revised version updated the musical, losing songs and gaining a couple by Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose “Delivery,” about a UPS driver, replaced Schwartz’s “Neat to Be a Newsboy.” Another is LMM’s “A Very Good Day,” often sung by a caregiver character.
Schwartz had begun updates on the musical several years earlier, to make the show more relevant to the 21st-century, as the modern workforce and advances in technology continued to make the original production seem dated.
In the Front Porch production, said Griffith, “This cast is very multiracial, and so we will all be able to see ourselves in those people, and also our friends, or where we came from before we started [careers], when we worked at McDonald’s or those types of things.”
The cast of Working is listed as Woman 1, 2 and 3, Cadee Velasquez, Melessie Clark, and Vanessa Reseland, and Man 1, 2 and 3, Matty Thornton, Dylan Pal, and Stefan Lingenfelter, with each representing a variety of jobs, frustrations, and hopes for the future.
“Every single person that we offered a spot to, they all said yes, which was fantastic, and they’re all so good, ” Griffith says.
Of the changes from the 1970s to the 2000s, there are songs that she admits to missing, but adds, “[The replacements] are so touching and so entertaining. I mean, Lin-Manuel, these songs that he wrote, immediately you’ll be like, ‘Oh, that’s a Lin Manwell song.’ It’s so brilliant. … They’ve created this kind of new Working in my brain because it was something for so long, that is now morphed into this new fresh thing, yet it is completely nostalgic, because things like ‘Brother Trucker,’ and ‘Fathers and Sons,’ and those things are in there.”
Griffith had already committed to the barebones play when the Working job came along. She felt she could make it all work, but first, she needed to see how the musical had changed from the song cycle she remembered.
“I read it, and it’s just so real,” she said. “I come from a family of workers who worked for the water company, and worked for Amtrak, and were mechanics. I have no lawyers or doctors in my family. We were all factory workers, and I kind of broke that mold in being an artist. So yeah, after reading it, I was like, ‘Oh, I have to do this.’ ”
If Schwartz & Co. choose to update the show again, perhaps they may consider hard-working data analysts, AI wranglers, or better yet, theater artists.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Front Porch Theatricals’ production of Working is at the New Hazlett Theater, North Side, May 15-25, 2026. Tickets: https://www.frontporchpgh.com/
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