American Idiot Tickets

Green Day has come a long way since their scrappy early days as a punk band in San Francisco, and the American Idiot musical is proof. Based on their 2004 album of the same name which won Grammys for Best Rock Album, Best Record of the Year for “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” as well as seven MTV awards, the stage musical of American Idiot has also shown that the punk music genre has come a long way as well.

With Green Day, Punk Has Its Day On Broadway

In addition to the many awards Green Day have been nominated for, “American Idiot: The Musical” was nominated for two Tony awards, Best Musical, and Best Scenic Design. Green Day have sold over 65 million albums worldwide, and have also released their own Rock Band video game in 2010.

The “American Idiot” album certainly lent itself to the stage. It is a concept album, meaning all the songs revolve around a story or a theme, and the band wrote the album with the eventual intention of it being turned into a movie or a stage play, and they drew influence from The Rocky Horror Picture Show as well as West Side Story, a unique combination to say the least.

Green Day founder Billie Joe Armstrong co-wrote the playbook for American Idiot with Michael Mayer, who also directed the play. Armstrong liked Mayer’s work on the play Spring Awakening. Mayer also helmed and directed the play Every Day Rapture.

Mayer has won a Tony, a Drama Desk award, and an Outer Critics Circle award for Spring Awakening, and has also directed the film A Home at the End of the World. Mayer has also won Tonys for directing Side Man, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and A View From the Bridge.

Bringing Green Day’s Music to the Stage

American Idiot has an onstage band and includes all the songs from the American Idiot album, and closes with the band’s classic “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” American Idiot: The Musical opened at the Berkley Repertory Theater in late 2009, then went to Broadway in April 2010.

Green Day’s music was arranged and orchestrated for the stage by Tom Kitt, who also compsed music for the musical Next to Normal, for which he won two Tonys,and also composed music for High Fidelity, Everyday Rapture, Hair, Urban Cowboy, and more.

Reviews of American Idiot have hailed it “as compelling as it is abstract [and] channels the grungy spirit of punk while also plucking at the heartstrings,” and “a pulsating portrait of wasted youth that invokes all the standard genre conventions…only to transcend them through the power of its music and the artistry of its execution. The show is as invigorating and ultimately as moving as anything I’ve seen on Broadway this season."