food. And there was chair next to
her. So I tapped her on the shoul-
der and said, ‘Excuse me, is this
seat taken?’ And she said …
Lisa: ‘You! It’s you again’ (all
laugh).
Franke: We went for a walk on
the beach. And then she had to
go on. Before she started to sing,
she started ingratiating the audi-
ence. And I was like, ‘Man, if she’s
any good, she’s got ’em.’ She got
four standing ovations. I said, ‘I
gotta find out where her next gig
is.’ I wanted to know where else
she was playing so I could see
how she could fit into what I was
trying to do.
Lisa: I already was doing a pro-
duction called ‘Songbird.’ I already
had done ‘Songbird’ twice at the
Algonquin and the Count Basie.
The Basie said, ‘I want you to come
back, but I want you to think of a
different title for the show, a dif-
ferent production. Nobody knows
who you are in this. You need
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 55
something a little more catchy.’
And I thought of ‘Decades of Di-
vas’ because in ‘Songbird,’ I was
doing all these different genres of
artists. I told Franke this, and a light
bulb went off in his head.
Franke: I said to her, ‘What’s the
production of the show?’ And
she said, ‘Well, I’ll get three of my
girlfriends. We do all these differ-
ent divas who influenced us over
the years to become the singers
we are.’ And I said, ‘Think about
you’re in a night club, and there’s a
night club owner, and you have a
bar set up on stage, and you have
tables and chairs set up on stage
of the audience. Bring them up
on stage.’ Each girl had a differ-
ent diva that they would do. And I
would put on these projections of
each diva they were celebrating.
And then there was a little story
about each girl.
I tried to trademark ‘Decades of
Divas,’ but there was a band called
Divas through the Decades, so it
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