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Screaming a song at the top of your lungs always feels a little punk rock—even when the song in your throat just happens to be a show tune. That's what Broadway Does Punk creator Matt Copley discovered in 2020, when he graduated from the prestigious University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music with a BFA in musical theater. The end of his CCM studies came right as the COVID pandemic hit; suddenly, the industry he had been training for since fourth grade, when he played the parrot Iago in Aladdin Jr., was shut down indefinitely. So Copley moved back to his home state of Michigan and turned to his other love, pop punk, founding the band Unwell with a high school pal.
As they worked on original material, Copley decided to combine both of his passions on his personal TikTok, releasing an excerpt of his emo arrangement of "Defying Gravity" from Wicked on a lark in July 2021. The clip proved popular, racking up more than three million streams and inspiring him to record a Broadway Does Punk EP that also featured headbanging takes on Hamilton’s "Wait for It,” The Greatest Showman’s "The Greatest Show" and the title tune from The Phantom of the Opera. Since then, even as Copley focused mainly on his band, his online fans have lobbied for a live performance. Now he has finally yielded to their wish: On October 2 and 3, he is bringing Broadway Does Punk to the stage for three performances at the Lower East Side’s Abrons Arts Center.
"I launched it years ago, but this past February is when I really dove headfirst into the deep end," Copley says. "It's been a blast, and I'm glad it's resonating with people."
This isn't the first time that Broadway and punk have made beautiful music together. Copley says that seeing the national tour of the Green Day musical American Idiot when he was in middle school was a formative experience for him. Meanwhile, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson leaned into emo while Hedwig and the Angry Inch was sometimes raw in both subject and song. (Hedwig cocreator/star John Cameron Mitchell recently teased that he's working on a theater project with My Chemical Romance, the alt-rock icons who once used Liza Minnelli on a track.) And Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider brought an intense heavy-metal edge to his 2012 album Dee Does Broadway.
But Copley is among the first to punk out traditional Broadway material—and he's a perfectionist about it, trying to honor the original songs underneath his aggressive stylings. "Each little 30-second clip I post online takes me, like, eight hours of work," he says. "I give each song its own special treatment, and there are some that, for the life of me, I can't figure out. People keep telling me to do Newsies, and I've tried so many times, but I've never felt good enough about what I've done to post it. I don't want to put anything out there that's half-assed."
He feels the same way about his upcoming stage show. Copley did a one-night acoustic concert of Broadway Does Punk at 54 Below in 2022, but the upcoming Abrons run represents a fuller vision of the project. "It's a full band, a crazy light show and LED video walls,” he says. “I want people singing along the entire time if they're really vibing with the music. I don't want them stiff and silent in their seats. It's a rock concert, just with Broadway music."
He has also assembled a kick-ass lineup of special guests, including American Idol alum turned Rock of Ages star Constantine Maroulis; erstwhile Six queens Samantha Pauly and Jasmine Forsberg; and Keaton Whittaker, who played Fredrika Armfeldt in the 2009 revival of A Little Night Music but is better known as half of the alt-pop duo Daisy Grenade (who opened for Fall Out Boy on tour). "It's a really fun group," Copley says. "They're incredible performers and they have very powerful voices."
So does Copley. Broadway Does Punk and Unwell fans may not realize that he's a classically trained singer with serious pipes: Just check him out in his college's senior showcase, belting Parade’s "The Old Red Hills of Home” (28:40) and Bonnie and Clyde’s "Raise a Little Hell" (46:55). But while performing on the Main Stem is still on his bucket list, as is writing an original musical—his song "Coffee in the Morning!" was one of the winners of the 2020 Write Out Loud contest and has been recorded by Jeremy Jordan—Broadway Does Punk currently occupies most of his time.
"My dream is to take this on tour across the nation," he says. "As big and commercially successful as some of these musicals are, I'm introducing new audiences to these songs; they'll hear my covers and that might prompt them to listen to a musical. And vice versa: A lot of Broadway fans are getting introduced to this harder rock style of music and discovering other artists in that lane. It's cool to see that crossover."