♪ Sign on the street says “You Dont Own Me” ♪ ♪ Sign on the porch says “Threes A Crowd” ♪ “Girl from the North Country” is set in 1934 in Minnesota, at a time of great hardship for people.

And the story takes place in a guest house where there's a family who run the guesthouse.

And then there's all thes people who are drifting through the room looking for somewhere to exist whil they figure out their next move.

And so we tell the story of all these people's lives over a period of about a week, right?

Thanksgiving in 1934.

♪ May God bless and keep you always.

♪ ♪ May your wishes all come true.

♪ ♪ May you always do for others ♪ ♪ And let others do for you ♪ I had an idea that perhaps there was something very spiritual and mystica about Bob Dylan's songs, which tied in perhaps with my Catholic upbringing.

And I guess I saw it almost like stories from the Bible.

It was like parables that were happening with this kind of hymns that Bob Dylan was providing.

So allowing the the music to just come in and create the atmosphere and the inner life of characters, too.

♪ Youre the one Ive been looking for ♪ ♪ Youre the one whos got the key ♪ Pairing up songs with characters or elements.

A story was something which was pretty instinctive because Bob's songs tend not to be that literal.

The most literal instance in the show would be where the character of Joe Scott, who's a boxer, looking for a comeback and who has been accused of somethin he didn't do, killed them all.

♪ Killed them all ♪ He sings “Hurricane,” which i pretty much right on the money in terms of people who would know that song and what it's about.

And that was probably one of my earliest ideas.

And it stayed right through the process.

♪ Champion of the world ♪ Yes.

Working with Simon Hale, our musical arranger, was a wonderful pleasure as Simon's musical facility is really vast and he's very talented.

He wrote the script and the play, of course, and chose where the songs would happen, and then I would help him create tone and color.

That's how the music is portrayed.

So that for me that was a lot to think about.

Where is the place set?

What is the mood of the music?

What is the tone of the world and all that kind of things.

So the music, sound is representative of that period in America.

♪ Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted ♪ ♪ Cant help but wonder whats happenin to my companions ♪ So with some of the songs, we just think How can we do this differently?

What can we do that's suiting the lyric that perhaps not even the entire lyric.

Uh, and just to do with the play ♪ Slow train comin ♪ Would you like some breakfast?

Look what's under the Christmas tree.

- I see it.

We dont have songs that end with a big button for applause, for example, which is a fairly common thing in musicals but not all the time, of course.

But we don't ever do that.

It's always bang straight into the next thing, straight into the next scene.

So the music is use more like a play or like a film in a funny kind of way.

Yeah, it was such a joy bringing the 1930s to lif in the bodies of the characters.

Again, one of the great thing that Lucy was able to bring to the mix was that she was very alive to the way normal people move in everyday life and the way our performers move in their everyday lives.

And to incorporate that into the piece as opposed to trying to get everybody locked into some uniform way of movement.

We firstly started with the sensibility of the time.

We talked about etiquette, we talked about the way the clothes would fit.

We talked about the contrast of living in a time where people had very little, especially these characters, and how the exhaustion and the pressure and the sadness of the time would have sat in a weight and their bodies.

♪♪ We also talked and learned all of the 1930s dances of the time, so we learned Foxtrot and waltzing as wel as some of the hangover dances from the twenties, like the Animal dances and the Charleston.

And this was their way of socially interacting, but at the same time they would be themselves doing that.

So that's a really nice language of movement in the show, which brings the kind of poetry of everyda life to to the way people move.

It's a type of show that even though it's a musical, it's kind of got its own rules, and the conventions of musical theater are quite different in this show, but they're always incredibly truthful and they're alway about driving the story forward.

♪ Well the pressures down ♪ ♪ The boss aint here He went North, he aint around ♪ I think the way that we tell the story in “Girl from the North Country,” I think it leaves a lot of room for interpretation and it allows the audience to come through it and see it through their own eyes and decide for themselves what's important in all of these stories.

♪ ♪ It's full of love and passion and intrigue.

It's incredibly uplifting.

It's incredibly hopeful.

And also it' got this incredible soundtrack running through it that jus connects directly to our heart and this beautiful balance of Conors writing and Bob Dylan's music.

He just couldn't hope for a better pairing.

♪ Shedding off one more layer of skin ♪ And this play drives straight to the heart o what is important in the world, what matters.

And that right no I can't think of anything more relevant for people to see.

♪ Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune ♪ ♪ Bird fly high by the light of the moon ♪ ♪ Woah, woah, woah, woah ♪