Helen J Shen Is Having A Whirlwind Year, Then Broadway Came Calling With MAYBE HAPPY ENDING

Fall Preview 2024

Helen J Shen

By
Joey Sims
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on
September 30, 2024 4:25 PM
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Features

In just two years of professional work, rising star Helen Shen has racked up an impressively varied set of credits. They originated the scene-stealing role of JJ in the Los Angeles premiere of The Lonely Few at Geffen Playhouse. Shen appeared in Man Of God, a new play which premiered at Williamstown Theatre Festival. And she slayed (literally) in the ensemble of new musical Teeth at Playwrights Horizons – at least until Shen had to depart early to reprise the role of JJ for The Lonely Few’s New York premiere at MCC. 

How did Shen get so busy so fast? For anyone who has seen them perform, it’s no surprise: Shen is an endlessly appealing performer, charming yet prickly and boasting a heavenly voice. It was never going to take long for Broadway to come calling.

Now that moment has arrived with Maybe Happy Ending, an offbeat new musical arriving at the Belasco Theatre this October following a celebrated run at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. Shen will portray Claire, an obsolete Helper-Bot 5 living next door to Oliver (Glee star Darren Criss) in Seoul, South Korea. Both cast aside by their former owners, the two robots form a connection which will reshape their remaining lifespans. 

Theatrely sat down with Shen to discuss her breakout success, robot love, and supporting original musicals.

Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Theatrely: In so many robot stories, the central tragedy of artificial existence is living forever as humans die off. But in Maybe Happy Ending, the Helper-Bots have a set shelf life, right? Tell me more about them. 

Shen: Helper-Bots are human-like robots designed to help humanity out in any way that they can. Darren and I play different versions of Helper-Bots. His character, Oliver, is a Helper-Bot version 3; mine is a version 5. 

They have a shelf life, like you said – but they also have to deal with being discarded and left in these Helper-Bot yards. They’re not powered down, so they still perceive time, and they perceive being abandoned. Whether or not they feel upset about it depends on what they’ve learned [over their lifespan]. Which has been so interesting to explore. It is a very human story about purpose and what to do with the time you have left. 

So the Helper-Bots’ understanding of death, and of time being a finite thing, comes from the humans they’ve served? 

Totally. There’s all sorts of encyclopedic knowledge in these robots, but we’re watching them figure out feelings in real time. Which is a really fun acting challenge.

Right now, we’re working on a scene where they perceive grief for the first time. It allows me to look at these questions with fresh eyes. Knowing about grief vs. understanding it on an emotional level are two different things. 

A huge question that we delve into in the show is “Why love?” Why do you continue to love when you know that it could be painful on the other side, when you know there is loss on the other side, and that even robots have a timeline? Why do you still open yourself up to connection? 

Do Claire and Oliver have differing views on the value of connection? 

Right at the top, they have different philosophies. Claire has spent like ten years in these yards, and she’s kinda like [mimes a long drag on a cigarette] “I know how these things go, I’m not upset about it.”

Oliver has a more optimistic, slightly naive perspective on the world. So you see them at odds from the get go. Which is great, because they have a long way to travel by the end and a lot to learn from each other.

The music is not what I expected, at least based on the tracks released so far – it is very emotional, very jazzy, sometimes achingly sad.

The music is so different from anything I’ve heard in a really long time. We have a 10 piece orchestra. The orchestrations are very lush and sweeping. Jazz is a huge influence on the score, because one character is a jazz singer from the ‘50s. 

In the couple of years that I’ve been working professionally, I’ve been doing more pop-rock style scores. A lot of new musical theater is trending towards belting and pop stylings. And this is so not that. I have to perform this score in a more nuanced way, which is a wonderful challenge. 

You’ve been booked and busy in the two years you’ve started working professionally. Has it all felt like a whirlwind? 

I’ve just felt very lucky and grateful. I’ve learned very different lessons on each show, and they’ve all been so vastly different in their subject matter and the skills needed to perform them. All of those experiences have led me to this, and I feel far more equipped than I was two years ago.

What else is important to know about Maybe Happy Ending?

We want to garner interest in something that hasn’t ever been seen before. It’s not based on any IP. The story is so intimate, and emotional, and human, on top of having really cutting edge technology to bolster the storytelling. We have technology that has never graced a Broadway stage before. And that can feel scary, but also just so exhilarating—because it’s all in service of the storytelling. 

Maybe Happy Ending begins previews on Broadway on October 16, 2024. For tickets and more information, visit here

Theatrely’s 2024 Fall Preview is sponsored by The Broadway Cruise 3, setting sail to Cozumel, Mexico this March. To learn more, visit here.

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Joey Sims

Joey Sims has written at The Brooklyn Rail, TheaterMania, American Theatre Magazine, Culturebot, Exeunt NYC, New York Theatre Guide, No Proscenium, Broadway’s Best Shows, and Extended Play. He was previously Social Media Editor at Exeunt, and a freelance web producer at TodayTix Group. Joey is an alumnus of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute, and a script reader for The O’Neill and New Dramatists. He runs a theater substack called Transitions.