Rose Mallare doesn’t just play the cello—she attacks it like it owes her money.
If you saw her in “American Idiot” at American Stage—at the time, the company’s highest-selling mainstage show since the pandemic—you already know. She was the musician who made the cello feel like a punk instrument. “I’ve always wanted to be in a band that rocks,” she says. “And this one rocks.”
Now she’s back in “Hundred Days,” a folk-rock musical that’s more like an indie concert with feelings than a traditional theatre show. The band doesn’t hide in a pit; they live on stage, tangled in the love story at its core.
“It’s about two people who fall in love in New York City,” Mallare explains. “And it’s also about what happens when you realize time isn’t guaranteed. You’ve got one hundred days. What do you do with them?”
The show, by real-life songwriting couple Abigail and Shaun Bengson, first hit New York Theatre Workshop in 2017 before making a stop at The Straz Center a few years later. Critics called it “a folk-punk ode to living loudly before the lights go out.”
At American Stage, it’s being done on a smaller, riskier scale—stripped of spectacle, driven by musicians who double as storytellers.
“It’s not your usual proscenium musical,” she says. “It’s immersive. You could come back three times and have a totally different experience.”
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Playing off the page
Mallare’s cello is her passport between worlds. Classically trained but uncontainable, she can flip from Bach to a bassline in a heartbeat.
“There’s the conservatory cellists who play what’s written—beautifully,” she says. “But there’s also the ones who go off the page. Who improvise. Who take what they know and throw it into a new genre.”
That’s where she lives—somewhere between the staff lines.In “Hundred Days,” she uses a looper pedal to layer sound live, building a small electric universe around herself.
“Sometimes it’ll feel like there’s more of me than you can see,” she says, grinning. “That’s the electricity.”
It’s the kind of creative risk that mirrors the show itself: a small cast, no safety net, and music that lives or dies by the chemistry between players.
Underproduced—in the best way
If Broadway musicals are glossy postcards, “Hundred Days” is a handwritten letter.The lights are close, the instruments are visible, and the sound bleeds into the story. Every creak, every breath, every string buzz is part of the experience.
“In a few short weeks, these strangers became a family,” Mallare says. “You see everything—how we transition, how we prep, how we mess with sound between songs. There’s nowhere to hide, and that’s what I love.”
Living like the clock is ticking
At the heart of “Hundred Days” is a dare: What would you do if you only had a hundred days left with the person you love? For Mallare—who’s spent her career moving between classical halls, rock venues, and black-box theatres—the answer is simple: you’d make something beautiful and true, even if it vanishes after the final note.
“I love theater that makes people think,” she says. “You have to be willing to think outside the box, too. I’m not gonna drag people by their hair into the seats—but if I can get you to come and talk afterward, that’s the magic.”
Before she hangs up, she adds one last thing—the kind of thing you can’t fake:
“I love coming to the theater every day. I know this is exactly where I need to be.”
Hundred Days
Time Wednesdays, Thursdays, 7 p.m., Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m., Saturdays, 2 p.m., Sundays, 2 p.m., Wed., Nov. 5, 10:30 a.m., Thu., Nov. 6, 10:30 a.m. and Thu., Nov. 13, 10:30 a.m. Continues through Nov. 16 2025
Location American Stage Theatre Company, 163 3rd St N., St. Petersburg
This post first appeared at TB Arts Passport, which is part of the Tampa Bay Journalism Project (TBJP), a nascent Creative Loafing Tampa Bay effort supported by grants and a coalition of donors who make specific contributions via the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation.
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This article appears in Oct. 30 – Nov. 5, 2025.
