Interview with Billy Recce and Danny Salles, Lyricists of “Vape! The Grease Parody”

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By Jack Quinn, Publisher

On a bright November afternoon in Tribeca, Billy Recce and Danny Salles arrived with a kind of kinetic charge, the particular electricity you see when two artists have been marinating in the same jokes, the same lyrics, the same structural puzzles for months. They didn’t enter like interview subjects — they entered like collaborators still mid-process, jackets half off, momentum still running.

There’s a rhythm between them that’s noticeable within seconds. Recce — prolific, verbal, leaning back in his chair as though calibrating the room’s comedic frequency. Salles — composed, measured, a director’s brain visible in the neat way he positions his hands as he speaks. Their rapport isn’t performative; it’s the natural shorthand of two people who have genuinely built something together.

That “something” is VAPE! The Grease Parody, now in a 10-week Off Broadway run at Theater 555. A festival of satire built on one of the most iconic musicals in the American canon, it’s a show loaded with jokes, but also with surprising craftsmanship — the kind of writing that demands respect for the original material even as it punctures it.

What emerged in our conversation was a portrait of two artists who don’t treat parody as a throwaway form, but as a discipline. A structure. A way to tell the truth sideways.

ACT I — THE SPARK

“You two have an instant rhythm,” I began. “Did someone set you up, or did this just… happen?”

Salles laughed. “We were working on another project. And I’d seen that the folks at Sketchworks — the Atlanta group that won the parody lawsuit — were putting up the show in New York. They didn’t really have a lyricist. Chase at Visceral Entertainment said, ‘Why don’t you have Danny give it a go?’”

Salles went to Recce immediately.

“I just knew Billy would vibe with this,” he said. “I told him, ‘I think this is ours.’ And he said yes — instantly.”

Recce nodded. “I think we were already circling each other creatively. This just gave us the excuse.”

The first thing they wrote together was Green Lightning, the show’s now-infamous Prius-powered answer to Greased Lightning.

“It was the first thing that made us both laugh,” Salles said. “Sketchworks had the seed of it, but not the structure. We took that spark and just… ran.”

That early electricity cemented their working relationship. What Salles brings — from his years directing The Middle, producing Joan Rivers and Kathy Griffin, and shaping comedy beats frame by frame — is timing, precision, and the kind of structural confidence that comes from television’s unforgiving deadlines. What Recce brings — the Billboard-charting composer and playwright behind FOWL PLAY, Little Black Book, A Musical About Star Wars, and FIVE — is speed, instinct, and a library’s worth of musical vocabulary ready to deploy.

“What’s Danny’s superpower?” I asked Recce.

“He builds long jokes with real payoff,” Recce said. “My favorite is his lyric in ‘Summer Not’ — Tooker bowling at the arcade:

‘I never played. Placed her fingers in each hole. Only wish he taught me to bowl.’

It’s filthy but it doesn’t announce itself. It sneaks up. That’s Danny.”

“And Billy?” I asked Salles.

Salles smiled. “Relentless creativity. Most writers cling to a joke. Billy throws out ten more. He’s fearless. That’s rare.”

The admiration is mutual and unforced — not PR polish, but genuine creative compatibility.

ACT II — “GREEN LIGHTNING”: THE ENGINE OF THE SHOW

You can’t talk about VAPE! without talking about Green Lightning. It’s the show’s big swing — a macho, swaggering number transformed into a hybrid-brag anthem about a Prius.

“You’ve taken one of musical theatre’s most testosterone-soaked songs and turned it into an eco-bro fever dream,” I said. “Was it always a Prius?”

Danny shook his head. “The original idea from Sketchworks was basically: what if it’s not a hot rod? But what Billy and I asked was: why would these guys suddenly care about hybrids? The answer was obvious — to impress girls who care about the environment.”

Recce broke in. “They’re still horny teenagers. They’ve just rebranded the horniness.”

The escalation — Danny topping Kenickie, Kenickie topping Danny — was mostly built into the draft, but the physical comedy grew in rehearsal. The moment Putzie gets shrink-wrapped in cellophane is already becoming a legend.

“I suggested it in rehearsal,” Salles said. “I was AD’ing at the time. I said, ‘What if he wraps Putzie instead of himself?’ Jack Plotnick loved the madness of it.”

“But it’s also a love letter,” Recce added. “You can’t parody a musical you don’t love. The internal rhymes, the cadence, the melodic logic — we kept all of that intact. It’s not sloppy parody. It’s crafted.”

They treat the original score with near-religious respect.

“Those lyrics from Grease?” Salles said. “Better than 90% of what gets written today.”

In other words: the silliness works because the scaffolding is serious.

ACT III — IDENTITY: WHO THEY ARE AS ARTISTS

Around this point in the interview, the pace slows. Jokes give way to something more reflective.

“Billy,” I asked, “you’ve been writing musicals since Balloon Boy, and you have a distinct voice — big melody, rebellious heart. What’s the pitch if you’re in an elevator with your dream producer?”

Recce thought for a beat. “I like stories that play with genre and then crack it open at the end. Characters we think we’re laughing at who turn out to have bigger emotional architecture than we expected. Musical theatre is empathy in motion. That’s what I chase.”

“And irony?” I asked.

“There’s a time and place for it,” he said. “But some stories — like Ragtime, which I saw last night — have no irony at all. Just truth.”

To Danny:

“Your satire is warm,” I told him. “TV is a timing medium. What did you have to unlearn coming to theatre?”

“Control,” he answered. “Television lets you adjust everything — the frame, the cut, the music cue. Theatre breathes with the audience. You have to trust the room.”

He described his early lyric writing at Princeton Triangle Club, his work in reality TV, writing a parody musical about the Trump family, and always, always working live.

“And in the end,” he said, “I’d love to write big emotional stories. Real arcs. Things you can’t cut to a close-up to make work.”

Their reflections on each other are equally grounded.

Salles: “Billy gives me bravery. He’s not precious. If a joke dies, he tosses it and writes a new one.”

Recce: “Danny gives me clarity. He knows where the story is.”

ACT IV — THE META-HEART: “LOOK AT ME IN AGONY”

If Green Lightning is the show’s engine, Look at Me in Agony is its exposed nerve.

“You took ‘Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee’ and turned it into a self-roast,” I said. “Wigs, critics, the lawsuit — was there pushback?”

“We worried,” Danny admitted. “The original version made fun of Sandy, but it wasn’t a parody joke. We realized the better angle was breaking the fourth wall — let Rizzo step forward and say the things actors actually think.”

Recce added: “As someone who’s written a lot of parody — sometimes begrudgingly — it was cathartic to write a song about parody.”

They both agreed the song would land better two-thirds through the show, but Grease’s architecture is immutable: the sleepover happens where it happens.

“It’s the one number you could drop into any cabaret,” Danny said. “And it would still work.”

ACT V — THE AUDIENCE, THE VIRAL WORLD & THE FUTURE OF PARODY

Given the moment we live in, I had to ask about TikTok.

“What does live parody give an audience that digital satire can’t?” I asked.

Billy answered immediately. “A communal laugh. You can’t bottle that. Viral videos give you numbers. Live theatre gives you connection.”

Danny added, “Sometimes laughter rolls so far it steps on the next joke. But that rhythm — that collective breath — that’s the show.”

Then we turned to legitimacy.

“How do you make sure VAPE! gets treated like real theatre and not a novelty?” I asked.

Billy was unequivocal. “By writing it like real theatre. Parody doesn’t mean lazy. It means the opposite. Every song still needs a beginning, middle, and end. It needs reversals. It needs a surprise. It needs craft.”

Danny supplemented, “The audience should never be ahead of the joke. If they are, you’ve lost them.”

Then — the question that landed deepest:

“Ten years from now, could VAPE! be a time capsule the way Grease is now?”

Danny smiled. “We didn’t write to the minute. If a joke becomes dated — that’s the joke.”

Unexpectedly, that led us into the moment that stayed with me longest.

They spoke about Jan, played as lesbian in their version, and how the actor asked for a small moment — a sweet beat with Marty during the finale. Just a simple kiss on the cheek.

“We make jokes at Jan’s expense,” Danny said. “But she’s a person. Why not give her a romantic win?”

It’s the smallest gesture — and the clearest illustration of their integrity.

THE LANDING — HONESTY & CHARACTER

So I asked them the last question of the day:

“If Green Lightning parodies the world, and Look At Me in Agony parodies yourselves — what did you learn about where humor and honesty meet?”

Danny answered first.

“If you want people to belly laugh, the joke has to come from honesty. From recognition. Why is Frenchie’s burnt face funny? Because everyone remembers the movie moment. It’s absurdity grounded in truth.”

Billy followed.

“Jokes that come from character land deeper than jokes that come from writers.”

And that, in the simplest terms, is the secret sauce of VAPE!.

It’s outrageous but not hollow.
Filthy but never lazy.
A spoof, but not cynical.
A parody, but also — unexpectedly — a human story.

Because every joke rests on something real:
a memory,
a movie frame,
a character beat,
an emotional truth.

That’s why the audience roars.
That’s why the room vibrates.
That’s why VAPE! feels like both a love letter and an autopsy, both modern and retro, both gleefully stupid and weirdly… sincere.

Parody, at its best, isn’t a cartoon.
It’s a mirror — tilted, cracked, but unmistakably reflective.

THE EXIT — TWO ARTISTS, ONE VISION

As we wrapped, the energy shifted again — not down, just settled. Recce packed his notebook. Salles straightened his jacket. Both were still spinning in creative orbit.

Two artists from different worlds — Broadway satire and television comedy — meeting at exactly the right moment to build something that shouldn’t work, and yet works spectacularly.

And that’s the essence of VAPE!:
the wigs are cheap,
the jokes are dirty,
the Prius is still a punchline,
but the craft is undeniable.

Underneath the glitter, the filth, and the eco-bro swagger, there’s a heartbeat — fueled by empathy, structure, timing, trust, and two writers who know that parody isn’t about mocking culture.

It’s about understanding it well enough to make it laugh at itself.

And in VAPE!, that understanding is everywhere.

Because the muse really is on their shoulders.
You can hear it in the score.
You can feel it in the room.
And if you listen closely — beneath the laughter —
you can even hear the truth humming underneath.

VAPE! The Grease Parody is now running at Theater 555 West 42nd Street, New York

Trust me: this is the parody you want.