Smokey Joe’s Cafe  words and Music by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. is a song and dance revue showcasing 39 pop standards, rock and roll, rhythm and blues songs including Love Potion #9, On Broadway, I’m a Woman, Yakety Yak, and more.

directed and choreographed by Matthew D. Peters

I would describe this production as a journey of friendship through music. That's how I approached this production as well. So often this show is done as basically a park and bark. Bringing in incredible singers who stand there and sing these fantastic songs. For me I really wanted to bring some more heart to the list of songs. As I went through the script I started to see this vision of a group of friends who all grew up on the same street in New York. For me the line about pictures in my scrapbook really hit me. I decide that I would start the show with the cast coming back to "the neighborhood" seeing each other again for the first time in years, and that I would end the show right back where we started with a new picture to add to the scrapbook! That's why we started and ended in the same costumes in the spot lights that we started in. From there it was easy for me to jump back in time with the characters and start there lives as kids with young blood and Fallin and Ruby Baby.

I found that the songs that were assigned to each character really leant themselves to this story I was trying to convey. It also allowed to actors to have some great motivation behind what they were singing about. The movement was inspired by the story as well starting off in young blood as goofy middle school boys trying to impress a girl to high school boys who think they can handle the neighborhood cougar in poison ivy. Then there was just a natural fosse feel for on Broadway to me so I went down that path. Finally the music had a swing feel which is where a lot of the partnering came into play. I decided to add the four dancer which allowed me to add life to some of the solo numbers.