Rehearsals are going really, really well. This must be the hardest working cast in show biz right now, 'cause this is not an easy show...!
So we've blocked the whole show, and Tuesday night we ran Act I. To my great delight, everyone was mostly memorized and the act ran very smoothly. It was fun to see the actors -- especially the "kids" -- finding the physical side of their characters, now that their scripts are out of their hands. I knew the physicality would be a HUGE part of this, and it really is...
Tonight we run Act II, and I expect it will be in great shape, too.
Nick (Barfee) came over after rehearsal Tuesday and we were talking about how much we're enjoying the show. We also realized that our production does have a somewhat different tone from the original. Ours is a little more serious, a little more real. The laughs are still big and fairly continual, but the acting is less cartoony. And so the emotional moments are a lot more intense and more compelling. I can't wait to see how those moments grow and deepen over time.
The same thing happened when we did Bat Boy. There were huge laughs throughout the show, but there were also very serious, very emotional moments that had been played for laughs off Broadway. The original production had played more like sketch comedy, but ours played more like alternative theatre.
I've come to realize that my favorite kind of theatre is the kind that is both hilarious, wacky, outrageous, on the one hand; but also surprisingly serious and emotional and moving. We've found a lot of shows that operate that way -- Bat Boy, High Fidelity, Hair, Assassins, Forbidden Planet, A New Brain, March of the Falsettos, Hedwig, The Cradle Will Rock, and lots of others.
Maybe musical theatre, with its extreme emotion and its inherent artificiality, is better suited than theatre that lacks music to pull off this wild balancing act...
And maybe I like that kind of storytelling because it seems most honest. Life is continually both ridiculous and serious. Our storytelling should recognize that. Of course, some of our shows consciously focus mostly on the dark side (Kiss of the Spider Woman, for example) but there's always still some humor in there, even if it's really oppressively dark humor... :)
Spelling Bee will be such a terrific finale to this wonderful season. I love my job!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
How Wonderful It Feels
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I'm Loving Every Minute
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Two weeks down...
What an interesting piece of theatre Spelling Bee is. And not really what I expected when we went into rehearsal. Having seen the original cast and hearing the audience roaring with laughter all through the show, I made the (silly) assumption that this was a show like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Reefer Madness, Forbidden Planet... sincere but overblown. I was operating under the mantra of the Bat Boy writers, "The height of expression, the depth of sincerity." We operate under that rule quite often...
But Spelling Bee is something else. Like many of the shows we produce, this is a show like no other. It has its own rules. In fact, as we started blocking, I realized I had it backwards -- this show doesn't operate like Bat Boy. The trick to making this show work is to play the kids as real and honestly as possible, with almost no "style" layered on. I've realized the show is built so that the kids are normal people (relatively speaking) in a nightmare world. Sort of like the Jonathan Pryce character in Brazil.
I realized that if the kids are cartoony at all, that undermines the many serious moments when we go inside their heads and reveal the many complicated emotions, loneliness, frustration, and feelings of abuse or even abandonment. The world of the Bee is what's crazy; not the kids. The show makes this Bee as disorienting and confusing and overwhelming for the audience as it is for the kids. That's its genius -- to take something we all either dismiss or find merely cute, and show us what it feels like from the inside, to a terrified ten-year-old.
And that in turn reminds us that we're all still that ten-year-old, still having to audition (literally or figuratively) over and over throughout our lives, still being judged every day in one way or another, constantly finding we're the "loser" in one context or another.
And these kids show us how we deal with all that. Leaf and Marcy have found their inner Zen Masters. Marcy finally realizes that sometimes losing -- letting go -- is the real road to happiness. Leaf is the one kid who has never really cared if he wins; it's an adventure to be enjoyed as far as he's concerned, not a mountain to be conquered. Olive finds joy in the small act of being taken seriously, victory or not. On the other hand, Chip and Logainne find only unhappiness at not measuring up to Perfection. Even Barfee finds that making a new friend is as big a triumph as winning a Bee.
But for us, the audience, to register all this, the performances have to be very real, more so than one would expect from a show this outrageous. And that was a surprise to me.
What a privilege it is to work on a show this beautifully and artfully written!
Long Live the Musicals!
Scott
What an interesting piece of theatre Spelling Bee is. And not really what I expected when we went into rehearsal. Having seen the original cast and hearing the audience roaring with laughter all through the show, I made the (silly) assumption that this was a show like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Reefer Madness, Forbidden Planet... sincere but overblown. I was operating under the mantra of the Bat Boy writers, "The height of expression, the depth of sincerity." We operate under that rule quite often...
But Spelling Bee is something else. Like many of the shows we produce, this is a show like no other. It has its own rules. In fact, as we started blocking, I realized I had it backwards -- this show doesn't operate like Bat Boy. The trick to making this show work is to play the kids as real and honestly as possible, with almost no "style" layered on. I've realized the show is built so that the kids are normal people (relatively speaking) in a nightmare world. Sort of like the Jonathan Pryce character in Brazil.
I realized that if the kids are cartoony at all, that undermines the many serious moments when we go inside their heads and reveal the many complicated emotions, loneliness, frustration, and feelings of abuse or even abandonment. The world of the Bee is what's crazy; not the kids. The show makes this Bee as disorienting and confusing and overwhelming for the audience as it is for the kids. That's its genius -- to take something we all either dismiss or find merely cute, and show us what it feels like from the inside, to a terrified ten-year-old.
And that in turn reminds us that we're all still that ten-year-old, still having to audition (literally or figuratively) over and over throughout our lives, still being judged every day in one way or another, constantly finding we're the "loser" in one context or another.
And these kids show us how we deal with all that. Leaf and Marcy have found their inner Zen Masters. Marcy finally realizes that sometimes losing -- letting go -- is the real road to happiness. Leaf is the one kid who has never really cared if he wins; it's an adventure to be enjoyed as far as he's concerned, not a mountain to be conquered. Olive finds joy in the small act of being taken seriously, victory or not. On the other hand, Chip and Logainne find only unhappiness at not measuring up to Perfection. Even Barfee finds that making a new friend is as big a triumph as winning a Bee.
But for us, the audience, to register all this, the performances have to be very real, more so than one would expect from a show this outrageous. And that was a surprise to me.
What a privilege it is to work on a show this beautifully and artfully written!
Long Live the Musicals!
Scott
It's a Very Big Undertaking
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I've spent the weekend thinking about the show and working out a lot of the blocking. I think our production is going to be more Brechtian than the original, with a clearer distinction between the "real" world and the interior world. The more comfortable and adventurous I get as a director, the more Brechtian my work gets. I think it's just my natural state.
For those who don't generally throw around esoteric theatre terms, "Brechtian" is a style that comes from the German director/playwright Bertolt Brecht (Threepenny Opera), a style that admits the artificiality of the theatre. Brecht's idea was not to let the audience get too emotionally involved in the narrative, to constantly yank them out of the "reality" of the story by continually reminding them that this is just theatre, just actors on a stage telling a story. The really funny part is that Brecht's theories don't really work the way he thought, so good Brechtian theatre often lets you get emotionally involved and engages you intellectually.
There are lots of ways to make Brechtian theatre. In many cases, it's about the actors speaking directly to the audience rather than pretending they're not there. (Spelling Bee does this, but then again, we're at a spelling bee, so of course there's an audience!) But a show like Forbidden Planet does it by using extremely artificial devices -- Shakespearean dialogue and classic rock and roll songs. When Miranda breaks into "Teenager in Love," it pulls the audience out of the story and reminds them of the real world -- while commenting on both the show itself and on the real world context of the song. Instead of feeling sorry for her, you're thinking how funny it is that she's singing this song you know, how strangely perfect the song is for this moment...
Last night I watched a bootleg video (don't tell anyone!) of the new rock musical Next to Normal (with music by Tom Kitt, who also composed High Fidelity). It's an amazing piece of theatre -- powerful, ballsy, darkly funny, incredibly emotional, smart, complex. And a lot of the show is spent with the actors talking directly to the audience. I realize that musical theatre is becoming more and more Brechtian, going back to the mid-90s with shows like Hedwig, Bat Boy, Urinetown, etc. Maybe that's because the conventions of musical theatre are so inherently artificial, that acknowledging that artificiality seems more honest, more authentic somehow, especially in this ironic, self-aware culture of ours. The more a musical admits its artifice, the less the audience feels like it has to "accept" the profound unreality -- the "lie" -- of the musical form.
It's like we're saying to them, "Hey, we know its extremely unnatural to break into song (and harmony and dance numbers), but that's the storytelling language we're gonna use tonight, so go on the ride with us and we promise not to bullshit you."
Spelling Bee is a very complex piece. So silly on the surface, so dark and emotionally messy underneath. It's really going to be fun to stage this and to watch it find its footing over the next few weeks. Luckily, we have a kick-ass cast, and all but two of them have worked with me before, so I know they'll trust me and go down whatever road I lay before us. We have in this cast veterans of New Line's A New Brain, Bat Boy, Urinetown, Johnny Appleweed, Reefer Madness, Rocky Horror, and Forbidden Planet.
They know Brechtian.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
For those who don't generally throw around esoteric theatre terms, "Brechtian" is a style that comes from the German director/playwright Bertolt Brecht (Threepenny Opera), a style that admits the artificiality of the theatre. Brecht's idea was not to let the audience get too emotionally involved in the narrative, to constantly yank them out of the "reality" of the story by continually reminding them that this is just theatre, just actors on a stage telling a story. The really funny part is that Brecht's theories don't really work the way he thought, so good Brechtian theatre often lets you get emotionally involved and engages you intellectually.
There are lots of ways to make Brechtian theatre. In many cases, it's about the actors speaking directly to the audience rather than pretending they're not there. (Spelling Bee does this, but then again, we're at a spelling bee, so of course there's an audience!) But a show like Forbidden Planet does it by using extremely artificial devices -- Shakespearean dialogue and classic rock and roll songs. When Miranda breaks into "Teenager in Love," it pulls the audience out of the story and reminds them of the real world -- while commenting on both the show itself and on the real world context of the song. Instead of feeling sorry for her, you're thinking how funny it is that she's singing this song you know, how strangely perfect the song is for this moment...
Last night I watched a bootleg video (don't tell anyone!) of the new rock musical Next to Normal (with music by Tom Kitt, who also composed High Fidelity). It's an amazing piece of theatre -- powerful, ballsy, darkly funny, incredibly emotional, smart, complex. And a lot of the show is spent with the actors talking directly to the audience. I realize that musical theatre is becoming more and more Brechtian, going back to the mid-90s with shows like Hedwig, Bat Boy, Urinetown, etc. Maybe that's because the conventions of musical theatre are so inherently artificial, that acknowledging that artificiality seems more honest, more authentic somehow, especially in this ironic, self-aware culture of ours. The more a musical admits its artifice, the less the audience feels like it has to "accept" the profound unreality -- the "lie" -- of the musical form.
It's like we're saying to them, "Hey, we know its extremely unnatural to break into song (and harmony and dance numbers), but that's the storytelling language we're gonna use tonight, so go on the ride with us and we promise not to bullshit you."
Spelling Bee is a very complex piece. So silly on the surface, so dark and emotionally messy underneath. It's really going to be fun to stage this and to watch it find its footing over the next few weeks. Luckily, we have a kick-ass cast, and all but two of them have worked with me before, so I know they'll trust me and go down whatever road I lay before us. We have in this cast veterans of New Line's A New Brain, Bat Boy, Urinetown, Johnny Appleweed, Reefer Madness, Rocky Horror, and Forbidden Planet.
They know Brechtian.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Woe is Me!
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Well, we've had a week of music rehearsals and we're almost done learning the score. But Jesus Christ, this is hard music! After working on the extremely easy scores for Hair and Forbidden Planet, I think my music director muscles were getting soft. I had forgotten how hard the other Bill Finn scores were (March of the Falsettos, A New Brain). Our intrepid actors are charging ahead undaunted, but I can tell how hard they're working.
With some shows, I teach the music and it sounds great right away. Those are the shows with easy scores. With other shows -- the really fucking hard shows -- I teach the music, the actors all furrow their brows, the veins stand out in their foreheads, they say shit! a lot, they shake their heads, they frantically operate their digital recorders... and I know (and they know) they'll be doing lots of work outside of rehearsal getting comfortable with the music. Most of these songs have group singing in them, so there's a lot to learn. We start blocking Tuesday, so they have to be in control of their music by then.
But I'm not worried -- these are very talented people -- and luckily, most of the show will have fairly minimal staging (it's a spelling bee, after all!) so the crazy hard music can take up more of their brains for a while...
But I have to give a big shout-out to the cast for all their hard work. It's such a pleasure to be working on material this rich with people this talented and hard-working.
Don't worry, y'all. If the other Finn shows are any indicator, all the music will click soon and it will feel so absolutely right that you'll never forget it.
The adventure continues...
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
With some shows, I teach the music and it sounds great right away. Those are the shows with easy scores. With other shows -- the really fucking hard shows -- I teach the music, the actors all furrow their brows, the veins stand out in their foreheads, they say shit! a lot, they shake their heads, they frantically operate their digital recorders... and I know (and they know) they'll be doing lots of work outside of rehearsal getting comfortable with the music. Most of these songs have group singing in them, so there's a lot to learn. We start blocking Tuesday, so they have to be in control of their music by then.
But I'm not worried -- these are very talented people -- and luckily, most of the show will have fairly minimal staging (it's a spelling bee, after all!) so the crazy hard music can take up more of their brains for a while...
But I have to give a big shout-out to the cast for all their hard work. It's such a pleasure to be working on material this rich with people this talented and hard-working.
Don't worry, y'all. If the other Finn shows are any indicator, all the music will click soon and it will feel so absolutely right that you'll never forget it.
The adventure continues...
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
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