His realized vision—A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy, which he wrote and directed—premieres at the Arts Bank this weekend. Terruso molded 30-some Kinks songs—including the likes of "You Really Got Me," "Waterloo Sunset" and "Lola"—into a narrative chronicling the romantic adventures of three couples in London, 1991, performed by a cast (plus pit band) of UArts students.

The play tells the story almost entirely through The Kinks' songs, with only about 60 lines of dialogue. But when Terruso first conceived the play, he wasn't sure if there should be a story in the first place.

Reflecting on the oeuvre of the band's frontman, Ray Davies, Terruso notes, "Although his work is inherently theatrical, it works best as vignettes: just a glimpse of a life, somewhat like Jacques Brel. When I first started doing this, that was my ambition. I said, I don't want to do a book musical. I want to do a revue, because that will best draw from his skill and his strength with vignettes."

So he workshopped the play last year in a class. "A group of students literally took a course with me on the music of Ray Davies and The Kinks." Soon, the revue's rough outline—"looking at the phases of a man's life"—became more and more solidified. "[Through] the clarity of each of those stages of life, they start becoming characters—not generic, [but] real characters." So Terruso asked his students what they wanted to do with the project. "They said, 'We want to do the storyline.'

"I asked them, 'Why is there such a resistance to the revue idea, almost a disdain.' And they said, 'It has to do with our training.' They said, 'From day one, we're taught that it's all about telling the story.' Which was the best answer they could've given me."

In adapting Davies' songs for Fantasy, Terruso wound up making subtle changes to the lyrics. In some cases, a single Kinks song is spun into a conversation between two characters. "We can't lose sight of the fact that we are working with a master lyricist, which means the text that you're working with is strong," Terruso stresses. "Yes, you may lose some of his ambiguity, but what you discover is another amazing element, which is his capacity to develop conversation, even though for him it may have been inner conversation."

In preparing the musical, Terruso made contact with Ray Davies through Konk Studios, which he and the band started up in the mid-1970s. Davies has cultivated a fairly mercurial and elusive reputation over the years. "Finding a way to contact with him through Konk Studios was far more difficult than getting his permission," Terruso says. "Once he read [the proposal] over, he told his people 'Yes' right away," Terruso says. Konk also helped Terruso track down sheet music for the songs he used, many of which were buried in music publishers' archives.

The director also discovered during workshop and rehearsals that the 18-to-22-year-olds in the cast—not exactly The Kinks' prime demographic—were developing a keen appreciation for the songs. Beforehand, "almost all of them [would] tell you that they have heard 'You Really Got Me.' Almost all of them [would] tell you they've heard 'Lola.' And then there's a drop-off." Now, he says, "I've had them come to me and say 'Nobody writes music like this.'"

In turn, Terruso hopes that, among other things, A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy's audiences will make the same discovery. "Part of my purpose here, ever since I started thinking of doing it, was maybe to sort of give the audience a little bit of that experience I had when I looked at that greatest hits album. 'They did that too?'"

A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy, Fri., April 21, 8 p.m.; Sat., April 22, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., April 23, 2 p.m.; April 27-28, 8 p.m., $8-$16, Arts Bank, Broad and South sts., 215-545-1664.