Category: theatre

Two things

Posted on by Dale

I worked further on this last section of IV. Lento, fleshing out all those hellish triplets for the strings, building up the discordance and sense of panic over the agitato theme in the trumpet. I got it completed, all the way to a very nice stuttering stop by the strings, but I’ve since made some notes in my waste book:

keep going, descending keys underneath countermelody of descending chromatics, ending with the pickup phrase for the G major theme.

So I’ll work on this section a little longer before posting an mp3 of the results.

In other news, we went to see The Drowsy Chaperone at the Fox. What a complete and utter delight!

The premise is that the Man in the Chair, who is feeling a little blue in his drab apartment, offers to share with us the old recording he has of a fictitious 1920s musical, “The Drowsy Chaperone.” Although he’s never seen it, the show springs from his imagination, bursting from his closets and refrigerator and slowly efflorescing and covering his reality with its own, even while he continues to narrate and comment.

It was enormously witty, gorgeously designed, and played with surgical precision by the entire cast. I laughed at some numbers until I cried, especially “Monkey on a Pedestal.” (The MITC sets it up by telling us it’s a lovely song… but please don’t listen to the words. They are accordingly awful and screamingly funny.)

It’s a glass of champagne from start to finish, and I highly recommend it. Oddly, I just went back to see what the Times had said about it, and it was not altogether positive. Somehow Ben Brantley (and others in the comments section) seemed to think that the weaknesses of “The Drowsy Chaperone”, and what does one expect from a 1920s musical?, were the weaknesses of the show itself. No, children, this was meta-theatre and the best I’ve ever seen.

Attend the tale

Posted on by Dale

I know Turff gave us until Jan. 12 to see Sweeney Todd, but since Jeff has started butchering it (har!) in other comments, I thought I’d go ahead and post for all of us to pile on.

Nearly all the reviews of which I am aware have hailed it as a masterpiece. Eh, not so much. Mostly effective, and the music is superb. But directorially, I think Burton is repeating himself. I was not surprised or impressed by any of it. (Pleased and entertained quite a bit, actually, but not impressed.)

Ms. Bonham Carter in particular is spectacularly miscast. Mr. Depp is, as Jeff has said otherwheres, simply repeating his Edward Scissorhands/Jack Sparrow shtick, although it is adequate to the task. Ms. Bonham Carter, on the other hand, I just wanted to smack. I wanted to yell, “Cut!” and ask her, “Sweetie, can you give me some decision-making during this song? I mean, Ed’s only ten, so I can cut him some slack, but Helena, you’re putting me to sleep! Johnny’s doing the catatonic thing, let’s you and I figure out something else, OK?”

I find the decision to leave out the chorus altogether not as offensive as leaving out the humor. Yes, Sondheim’s music will bear the weight of a tragedy, but the original piece is a satirical commentary on human passions, both emotional, physical, and economic. I really missed the counterpoint between Sweeney Todd’s monomania and Mrs. Lovett’s greed.

The Grand Guignol blood was a good choice. At least it provided some color. (I found the limited palette forced and uninteresting.)

All in all, a good movie, barring Helena Bonham Carter, but not quite the masterpiece the professionals are raving about.

Nostalgia for the Motherland

Posted on by Dale

In Chapter 6 of Part II (we’re talking War & Peace here), we see Kutuzov and the Russian army falling back towards Vienna. (Kutuzov does a lot of falling back in this novel.) It’s October 23 (!), and the army is crossing the Enns River at Enns.

The day was warm, autumnal, and rainy. The vast prospect that opened out from the height where the Russian batteries stood, defending the bridge, was now suddenly covered by a muslin curtain of slanting rain, then suddenly widened out, and in the sunlight objects became visible and clear in the distance, as if freshly varnished. At one’s feet one could see the little town with its white houses and red roofs, the cathedral, and the bridge, on both sides of which streamed crowding masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube one could see boats and an island, and a castle with a park, surrounded by the waters of the Enns falling into the Danube; one could see the left bank of the Danube, rocky and covered with pine forest, with a mysterious distance of green treetops and bluish gorges. One could see the towers of a convent looming up from the pine forest with its wild and untouched look…

This is, of course, the southernmost corner of Hofvonstein.

It was almost exactly at this time that Carl IV died under the usual Hofvonsteinian circumstances. Evidence points to Queen Mother Therese, Carl’s stepmother and lover, as being somehow responsible. His half-brother Georg took the throne as Georg II.

This is a rather obscure portion of our nation’s history, but perhaps my readers will remember Georg II’s son, Maximilian II. It was Maximilian’s assassination in 1879 that set off his son Leopold III’s liberal reformist tendencies, as well as his grandson Maximilian’s reactionary ones, culminating in that awful night in Vienna, December 31, 1899.

The castle in the Enns, in fact, was property of Karl Magnus von Ludwighof, Leopold’s prime minister and eventually king himself.

I know that there are still some who thrill at hearing this.

Day 365

Posted on by Dale

Well, here we are. The end of the experiment. Was I able to be creative every single day for an entire year?

Short answer: of course not, if by creative we mean “producing something new.” Many was the day I had no time, nor the energy, nor the ideas even to commit failure to paper. I knew that going in, needless to say.

At one point in the year I know I expressed envy of those on the web who were doing similar kinds of projects, producing a drawing or watercolor or small oil or photograph every day. I don’t know that I would have overcome my reasons for not producing every day if I had been producing a concrete thing rather than music (my focus for the most part), but it seemed to me at the time that they had an advantage over me. (So why didn’t I just whip out a watercolor those days?)

Would I able to claim that I was creative every day if we don’t mean “producing something new”? Perhaps. As I read Out of Our Minds and skimmed back through some other books like Fearless Creating and Twyla Tharp’s Creative Habit, I was reminded of what I already knew going in, that creativity is not production. It is a process that must include plenty of incubation as well as consumption of material. However, I think I claimed those days.

Mostly what I have found is that I do best when I’m a) on a schedule; and b) on a deadline. If I set aside Sunday mornings and then two evenings a week to compose, then I actually do compose, or at least fail at it. And the days in between, I am thinking about the stuff I’m working on.

The schedule also means I have the time to get in the groove. It takes me about twenty minutes to warm up, so to speak, and to get ideas flowing out of my head. At least that’s the case with composing. Writing, I can do on the fly (witness my dog-walking lyrics) if I’ve set myself a framework. I can spew some music while walking, but it’s all guesswork, since I have not yet achieved my goal of being able to transcribe what’s in my head.

Having learned all of this, I think I’m able now to set up the conditions under which I will be most productive. I may be able to, in the future, modify those conditions, but for now, I know what works for me.

So what did I accomplish this year?

First and foremost, of course, was the completion of William Blake’s Inn. A project that has occupied me off and on for twenty-five years, I was on the last leg of the journey when I started this project: finishing Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way. It took me over a month to do that.

Next it was orchestrating the entire work. (I think I may have started orchestrating some of the pieces in order to distract from Milky Way.) This project is not quite finished, of course. I have not yet officially orchestrated The Man in the Marmalade Hat Arrives and Blake Tells the Tiger the Tale of the Tailor. They’re quasi-scored using various instrumental sounds in the piano score, but I don’t have actual orchestral scores for them yet. Unless someone in Newnan, GA, steps up to organize the production, my widget says we have 447 days until opening night, those two items will remain on the back burner.

At the same time, I started the “Highway 341” poem. I used that as a fallback item on days when I didn’t/couldn’t compose, but I haven’t worked on it since shortly before finishing Milky Way. I guess at that point the Inn took over. Well, it’s still a pretty good start, and I can return to it in the coming year. I would have to go back and do some deep thinking, of course, because I’ve gotten it to a point where I would actually have to start writing about the feelings that inspired it to begin with. And those were never very clear.

I also began, last August, noodling around on my symphony. Needless to say, I haven’t given that any thought since September either, but that is going to be my major project this fall and winter: Stephen Czarkowski has asked for it for next summer’s orchestra. Not exactly a commission, but hey, a request is as good as, right?

Also accomplished this year: Lacuna’s workshopping of the William Blake pieces. Very nice, lots of fun, and very very creative. I like working this way. I don’t like working without a permanent home: my van looked like one of those crazy people with all their prized possessions stacked inside. For months. But the give and take of the workshop sessions was invigorating. If the world premiere gets a green light, then I truly look forward to developing the entire scenario in this way.

I learned how to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) on websites, and that has been a very good thing.

I adumbrated and fleshed out the 100 Book Club at school. By the end of the year, we were up and running, but not at full speed. I’m looking forward to figuring out how to ramp that up this year. If it works, I will truly have something amazing to share with the educational community: a reading program that challenges our best readers to read thoughtfully and deeply and then to write about their experience.

I wrote The Invocation, which still stands up as valid. In a similar vein, we established the phase successive approximation as our mantra.

I began work on songs for A Day in the Moonlight, sketching out three so far. Once I get school started and am able to establish a schedule for myself, I could finish that by Christmas. Warning: I’m not orchestrating this baby. I’m just providing vocal/piano scores.

I rediscovered my Stars on Snow album of new age music and began to play with some of those files in Logic Express, Apple’s sound sequencer, which I began to learn how to use this summer.

I got inspired and wrote “Dance for double bass duo and marimba” which not only was greeted warmly by everyone concerned but which was premiered at the final GHP concert. I have a recording, but they were playing from the back of Whitehead Auditorium. I’m going to play around with it in Logic and see if I can beef it up a bit.

As a sidelight of “Dance” and the readthrough of Milky Way, I found myself suddenly in demand as a composer. Other than the Symphony, I have two requests for pieces. One of them is a serious request and I’ll work on it this fall. This is a very strange place for me to be in. I’m still sorting through that.

And I made a mug.

Something else got accomplished this year: a very small community of very smart readers helped me out. I’ve been checking out the posts, it’s taking me a very long time to write this, and I come across posts like this one. The post itself is very good, I think, but it’s the comments that blow me away: literate, thoughtful, witty. I like writing for you guys.

Next? I will finish the songs for Day in the Moonlight, and I will write my Symphony No. 1 in G major. That’s enough to be going on with. Of course, if a project coordinator materializes for William Blake’s Inn, then I’ll be back at work on that.

Will I keep blogging? I’m sure I will, although I may not blog every day. We’ll see. Don’t expect anything for a few days, anyway. My study is still unclean from GHP.

Checking back, I noticed that I started this project on August 1. Shouldn’t I have finished on July 31? How did I lose four days? Oh well. I knew that was bound to happen as well.

Day 364

Posted on by Dale

One day to go, but before we get serious, a response to yesterday’s post on copyright and the flux of the Commons, from Jeffrey R. (for “Raline,” we think) Bishop: listen to this. Some of us have way too much time on our hands. As I said yesterday, I’m thrilled that the planet is mashing up William Blake’s Inn. However, if he starts getting rich off of it, I’m going to sue his ass off for an unauthorized derivative work.

Tonight, Kevin McInturff called to chat about a couple of things, but one thing he asked me in particular: do I think that having blogged about my 365 days of creativity has made me more creative?

Yes, I do, actually. It made me more conscious of wasting time, and even though there were plenty of days tagged “not” (39 to be precise, 11% of the year), usually those were days when real life simply left me no time to do any work. The days I actually goofed off were pretty few.

Though my audience was small, you guys were an audience. I was highly aware that you read what I wrote and followed my ups and downs, and that made me determined at least to write every day, whether I had accomplished anything or not. Kevin suggests that those days were often more interesting than the ones where I gloated about my triumphs.

Will I continue doing this? Let’s see tomorrow.

And then nothing (Day 323/365)

Posted on by Dale

Alas, with the family in town, I use all my spare time being with them and not working on anything creative at all.

However, we did go to see the Peach State Summer Theatre’s production of Cabaret, starring our good friend Bailee DesRocher as Sally Bowles. None of us had actually ever seen the stage production, only the film, and I must say I was surprised at its structure. It’s just a musical comedy, and it was chock full of songs that are totally not memorable.

The performances were good; the voices were very good. I was kept interested in what was going on, and I did not squirm in embarrassment. Bailee, it goes without saying, was riveting as Sally.

I think where the production left me unthrilled was in its execution of that “musical comedy” problem. We (as a society) are long past the point where you might tilt a production of Cabaret into the warm cuddly area of Sound of Music. The Emcee, played by a talented, but to my mind miscast or misdirected, Matthew McGee, is not your friend. The bonhomie of his welcome cannot be sincere or untainted by poison. If we accept his invitation, we must, like Cliff, be in over our heads, and that danger must be present in some way in his beckoning arms, and it must be deliberate on his part. A smirk is no longer enough; it must be a leer.

It was that kind of subtext that I thought was missing from the show. It may be that this is part of producing such a louche piece in south Georgia, but you know my philosophy: if you can’t honor the author’s intent, pick another show. Might I recommend Good News instead? It’s a valid, fun piece of theatre, you can reuse the costumes from Thoroughly Modern Millie, and you won’t have to worry about whether the KitKat girls should clutch their breasts or their clavicles.

Some thoughts (Day 284/365)

Posted on by Dale

Here’s a quote from a recent article:

“Any show, however classic,” Mr. Warchus said, “is just a document of where the creators got to in the time they had , after which the process stopped, they crossed their fingers and waited for the reviews. If the response was good, that was it. If not, the process continued. As here.”

Mr. Warchus, unfortunately, is the director of The Lord of the Rings, the musical, which flopped in Toronto for $25 million, and is now in previews in London, for another $25 million. Bless his heart.

Still, his point is valid. In my recent post about what we did and did not accomplish for the backers audition, that was my main point: we ran out of time and assistance. We didn’t finish, we just stopped.

And I know that’s the truth no matter what. It won’t be any different even with the fabulously funded world premiere version. At some point we will simply run out of time to accomplish our ideas, even if they were fundamental to the vision.

The difference between us and Mr. Warchus is that none of us are going to lose $50 million and be revealed as ludicrous visionaries to the theatre world.

81 days to go.

Workshop, 5/8 (Day 278/365)

Posted on by Dale

We met to debrief the backers audition, congratulate ourselves, and prepare for the next phase.

We discussed whether to call the production A Visit to William Blake’s Inn or, as I had printed out in various fonts on the wall, William Blake’s Inn. I pointed out that we were talking three separate works here: Nancy’s book, my song cycle (both entitled A Visit...), and the stage show, the title of which was up for grabs. There was something to be said for separating the stage show from the other two.

Also, I pointed out that it’s nearly impossible to get the entire title balanced typographically. I know, since I’ve had to do it on flyers, post cards, posters, all kinds of things. There’s just no way.

However, Marc suggested making the logo such that William Blake’s Inn was the major visual component, with A Visit to not as noticeable above it. His point was that he hated to lose the idea of “a visit” in the title. We agreed with that. We also thought perhaps a professional graphic artist might have more flexible ideas.

I filled everyone in on what I knew about the Cultural Arts Commission’s role at this point, which is not much. We have a volunteer to head up the project, although whether she has volunteered to be über-producer or just the Scotland coordinator, even I am not clear. The Commission meets tomorrow, so we’ll know more then.

We defined what our role was going to be in this venture: we propose the budget; we workshop the piece and develop the script and visual materials; we work with the designer(s); we cast the show; we rehearse the show; we produce the educational materials for schools (book studies/music).

The organizing committee’s roles: produce the show; find space and resources; organize volunteers; raise money; pay bills; publicize the show; handle the Scotland connection; handle the Willard exhibit;

We think we really need to hire a technical director (TD) to supervise (and perhaps design) the sets and costume construction. We will need to pay the musical director. We should pay the director, though I blush to say it. We will need a real lighting designer and a sound engineer.

I’ve already defined the next three phases somewhere, but I’ll restate them here. During Phase 1 (Aug. 2007-May 2008), Lacuna will workshop the show and propose the budget; the Organizing Committee (WBOC) will begin organizing, raising money, lining up space and resources. During Phase 2 (Jan. 2008-Oct. 2008), Lacuna will design the educational materials and assist with the construction of costumes, etc.; WBOC will continue to raise money, begin to publicize, line up the Scotland and Willard things, start the construction process. During Phase 3 (Aug. 2008-Oct. 2008), Lacuna will audition and rehearse the show; WBOC will publicize and organize whatever needs to be done leading up to opening night.

All of this is a grand, fuzzy outline which we’ll have to clarify in many, many conversations with the WBOC. So off into Limbo we go!

88 days to go.

Still regrouping (Day 277/365)

Posted on by Dale

Now that last week has settled down, although it’s not completely, still, I’m finding it difficult to stop and think about what we did and did not accomplish.

Clearly, we accomplished our main goal, which was to interest someone, anyone, on the Cultural Arts Commission in heading up the organizing committee. And several people told me that they now understood what the possibilities were in creating a stage work from my song cycle.

On a personal level, I was able to impress quite a lot of people with my music. That’s not unimportant. When we set out on this journey, Marc wondered whether my pushing William Blake’s Inn as I was doing would be indelicate. Previously in my life, I would have agreed with him. (Yes, I was actually quite insecure about my music, and we could politely call it modesty.)

But I have come to the realization that self-promotion is what artists do, if they’re smart. All kinds of examples spring to mind: Beethoven’s mammoth concert in which he premiered his 5th and 6th Symphonies and the 5th Piano Concerto; or Schubert a few years later, finally putting some of his stuff into a concert after friends exhorted him to, but not daring to attend the concert himself; or, God help us, Wagner, terrorizing everyone in a 500-mile radius into doing his music exactly as he wanted it. “Art isn’t easy,” Sondheim reminds us in exactly this context.

So one accomplishment is a healthy self-confidence on my part. (It helps when your singers are complaining a week later that they can’t get the music out of their heads. Of course, the same complaint could be made about “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” or “At the Copacabana.”)

A very interesting thing I learned about our process, and I don’t know that this is an accomplishment or a failure, is how wasteful it can be. We wanted eight Toast Heads (three banners, two pennants, and three band members); we built six (ditching the pennants, the fabric for which had been bought); we used three. We made the band instruments, but didn’t get them finished and didn’t use them, or didn’t use them and so didn’t finish them. We replaced the wooden poles at the last minute because of their weight. The angel’s gown went unused, although we worked with it several ways. The turtle lights didn’t really work, and might have if I had thought of the much cheaper battery-powered tealights rather than the Radio Shack-inspired lights/wires/switches.

Have we learned enough in doing this to control more tightly the expenditures associated with the experimentation? Or is this something we just need to build into the budget?

Another thing I learned was that we have to decide how to handle the actual design and construction process. We brainstormed very well, and we came up with all kinds of visual prompts. But when it comes time to build everything, we will have to hand over to someone working drawings, costume plates, blueprints, all those things which will allow someone else to build our vision.

Do we have designers take our visual prompts and turn them into the drawings for the tech crew? Do we do it ourselves? Or is it going to be more fluid than that?

Those are all the thoughts I can force to the front of my head at the moment. I’m sure I’ll come back to this forum soon with more.

88 days to go.

The backers audition (Day 273/365)

Posted on by Dale

tThings went well. I’ll post a full report Saturday night after I get through Relay for Life.

update: It’s Sunday morning and my brain is just now emerging from the sludge. Later.

Finally posted Monday night!

First of all, the backers audition tonight was a success. I thought the chorus sounded as good in parts as they’ve ever done, and I think they’d agree with me that we just fell apart on some spots, especially the first number. I have come to hate computerized accompaniment.

Solos were all spot on, mostly because we could follow the accompaniment by ourselves. Coordinating the whole gang was more of an issue.

I thought Denise and Marc set a wonderful tone with A Rabbit Reveals My Room. Marc’s Bear was wonderfully comfortable.

Our staging for The Man in the Marmalade Hat Arrives worked, although I would love to see it on video. We had a lot of pieces to move around and I’d like to see if it looked cluttered or if it looked intriguing. From the still photos I have, I think it looked as if we knew what we were doing. And of course, the hedgehogs were adorable.

The King of Cats Orders an Early Breakfast and The King of Cats Sends a Postcard to His Wife were solid hits. I was actually accused of enjoying myself a little too much, but the songs are incredibly fun to sing, and present plenty of opportunities for characterization.

Anne’s voice is such an incredible instrument. I’ve told her that every time I write a soprano solo, I’m thinking of her. The Wise Cow Enjoys a Cloud and The Wise Cow Makes Way, Room, and Believe show her off to perfection.

Two Sunflowers Move into the Yellow Room was a huge hit. First of all, the song is quite lovely in and of itself, and I think our staging astonished everyone. Melissa and Denise sounded quite lovely together. The sunflowers themselves were a clever idea, and the sunflower waltz was a wicked combination of parody of and homage to classical ballet.

All the comments I’ve gotten indicate that Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way is the crowd favorite. It’s a gorgeous piece, of course, but I’m sort of surprised: it’s nearly seven minutes long, with long sections where there’s no singing. Formally, it’s in modified sonata form, but that’s not going to register with 98% of the listeners. I can’t explain its appeal, other than people just thrill to its ultra-romantic stylings.

The rest of the work went well: Malcolm’s Marmalade Man, Mary Frances’s Tiger, and Marc’s Tailor, all hit the mark.

Most importantly, the performance impressed an awful lot of people and opened their eyes to what we’ve been talking about. We have a coordinator from the Cultural Arts Commission who’s willing to take on the project, more about which later. That was our major goal in staging the evening, so whatever weaknesses qua weaknesses were evident, they are completely irrelevant.

92 days to go.