Listening is Waiting redux

I've continued to grapple with the phrase "Listening is waiting" in the show. It's so easy to see so many different possibilities in those words -- it's very Rorschach-y...

So I decided to go straight to the source -- Stew. I'm pretty good at figuring out dense, complex texts, but sometimes there are too many choices, and the simplest answer is (when possible) to ask the writer. They never seem to mind when I ask questions like this; in fact, writers are often highly complimented that we're taking their work that seriously. So I asked Stew about "Listening is waiting," and I'm just going to reprint here what he emailed back to me... He is such a cool guy!

FROM STEW:

well, at bottom, the line is pretty straightforward:
"Listening is Waiting"
means just that: yer in an expectant state that is ready to receive, conscious, alert, sensitive to what's happening around you and to what MIGHT happen or what is ABOUT to happen, like any good musician in the middle of a jam session.

listening, for me, is active.
waiting, it would seem, is passive.
but my listening is active waiting.
and it's the same for any good musician.

now if memory serves "listening is waiting" always comes before a revelation.

The essence of rock and roll, among so many other things, is revealed to him after "listening is waiting" is sung the first time.

and i think the other time it comes is before he realizes that he's going to fill the void with music for the rest of his life.

this boy, and all musicians, but especially those his age, listens to music as if it were an oracle speaking via vinyl. he listens to hendrix and the beatles not merely to nod his head and get high to it, he is waiting to receive wisdom. He is waiting for nothing less than a revelation from this music, for something real to go down, for a sound that will change his life.*

The members of the congregation do the same thing with church and with the music of the church: they come every sunday listening for...waiting for... a revelation.

The whole congregation was listening and waiting
To be released from its collective frown.

So both parties are desperate for some kind of salvation.
his of course is quite different from theirs.
they want the burden of mortgages and the racism at their new "good" jobs to be lifted...and he wants to feel like he's living life to the fullest.

Even the bad kids in the back pew were wondering...
Is something real gonna go down?

Now some said: “Lord, please read us,
Collect us, then lead us to higher ground.”
And then all asked the very same question…
Is somethin' real goin' down?

At the end of the day, I'm not a playwright (as you've no doubt noted by now!!! :) but really just a rock and roll songwriter. And so I'm sorry if some stuff kinda just comes and goes without much explanation or foundation.

let me know if you need anything else.
Happy to oblige.

/s

*we used to have a scene somewhere late in act one where Youth was listening to music on headphones and describing his journey into the music and what he got and expected from it.

You Need to Blacken Up

I knew it was gonna come up sooner or later.

I'm a white guy (one of the whitest, if you go by pigment -- you shoulda seen me as a kid), directing a black musical about a black guy struggling with the black experience, and written by a black guy about his own life. That this might occasionally be an issue was definitely a consideration when I decided to produce Passing Strange. But I figured I've directed shows about Argentine political prisoners, women murderers, Texas prostitutes, teenage spree killers, French painters, and a German transsexual, so I'm pretty good at getting inside characters and worlds that are nothing like my own life. Still, that said, this arguable liability of mine popped up at rehearsal last night. First a little backstory.

I love the original production of Passing Strange. But as I started work on the show, I realized I didn't want to approach it in exactly the same way. The original show was equal parts rock concert and theatre piece, largely because the writers and their band were a part of the original production. But as I did with Return to the Forbidden Planet, which had a similar original production, I wanted to approach this show more as a full-throated theatre piece. I knew that the incredible quality of the script and score would stand up dramatically. And though a few moments in our production will be pretty much like the original, other parts will be really different. As much as I loved the style of the original, there were a few parts that really didn't work for me, moments that yanked me out of the world of the story for an easy laugh.

One of those moments was when we meet Edwin Williams, "teenage goddess." The way they played her in the original production was very cartoony. And it was funny, no question. But that moment -- which is key to beginning the Youth's journey -- lost the weight it should have had as an instigating incident. There are three incidents early on in which the Youth is at odds with his world in a fundamental way. The first is in church when he has a meaningful epiphany and is slapped by his mother for it. The second is when he meets Edwina and she demands a conforming, middle-class future from him. The third is when his garage band breaks up. These three experiences send him off on his journey.

Two of those three moments were treated seriously in the original production. Edwina wasn't. She was an outrageous cartoon. Like I said, it was funny, but the scene became a joke instead of a turning point for our hero. So when we started blocking that scene, I asked Andrea, who's playing Edwina, to not play her as a cartoon. I know that's always hard for an actor, when I ask them to go in a completely different direction than they expected, but god bless her, she was totally open to it. I think she wasn't sure exactly how to accomplish that but she was willing to try.

Tonight we ran Act I, and afterward, I was giving some general notes, explaining some things, stuff like that. And Andrea asked me about Edwina. She had played her much more subtle and real tonight. I told her I liked the direction she was going but I needed more aggressiveness and more control-freak from her. And she told me she was having problems bringing the character down from cartoon into something that felt right to her. And that started a long and really interesting conversation...

The black women in the room were telling me that there really are women like the more exaggerated Edwina, and that bringing her down was making her less real. I admitted, not being part of the black community, that they knew this world far better than I do. In fact, that's part of why I felt I could take this show on -- I could contribute what I know about theatre and our all-black cast would contribute what they know about living the black experience in America. I told Andrea she could go in any of a dozen directions with Edwina, whatever she thought made sense, as long as she wasn't a caricature.

At one point, I don't think we were making sense to each other. The women in the room were essentially trying to tell me that some black women like Edwina really are caricatures. And that's when I realized it was as much a language problem as a conceptual problem. When I use the word caricature I mean something that exaggerates or distorts something to emphasize one feature or trait and diminish the others. Caricatures don't really work in the theatre because the distortion keeps the audience from identifying with them and believing in them (which is why I think shows like Silence! fail as theatre). Caricature is by definition not truthful, since it distorts in order to choose one element over another. But I think what the women meant by caricature is just someone who's much bigger and more expressive than normal. And that take on Edwina makes sense to me.

So I made the admittedly subtle distinction -- but one that I think is at the core of the show's story -- between, on the one hand, a person who "performs" their life, who wears a mask of sorts in front of others, who doesn't show the world their true self (many celebrities and politicians are like that, which is why people are surprised when they meet celebrities or politicians who don't do that and they "seem so real"); versus, on the other hand, an actor giving a cartoony, untruthful performance on stage. If part of a character's personality is that they "perform" their life (as many characters in this show do, including everyone at the Nowhaus and arguably also Edwina), then the actor has to portray truthfully that real person who "performs" for the world, but they also have to portray that act of performing, as well as what's underneath that this character needs to hide behind their performance, when that character might drop the performance, whether that performance is obvious or invisible to the rest of the world, etc. That's a tall order for Edwina, since she lives on stage for only about one page. Still I think it's a goal worth pursuing.

As I write this, I realize that we see actors walk this artistic tightrope really effectively in the movie Pleasantville. The tension in town is between those who continue the facade, who continue to perform their lives (in black and white), versus those who have dropped the performance, the pretense, to become more fully authentic people (in color). In a way, it's almost like the residents of Pleasantville morph from characters into people as the story progresses. The story offers up commentary on the way America changed from the 1950s, when a facade was normal, even expected, to the 1960s, when a facade was considered phony. I think this goes to why conservatives and liberals react so differently to Sarah Palin -- she's all performance, all mask, all facade. But conservatives see that as normal -- "real" -- while liberals see it as phony.

Anyway, I finally told Andrea that she knows who Edwina is better than I ever will, and that I won't impose on her any details about what Edwina should sound or act like. But what I ask for is truthfulness. Whatever the truth is about who she is, that's what I want on stage. I felt like the actor in the original production was commenting on the character with her performance, like the actor felt superior to Edwina. I'd rather we get out of the way of this wonderful, rich, truthful character who only lasts a page in the script but helps set everything in motion.

Andrea's been awesome to work with -- and her Marianna is already very cool, very interesting -- so I know what she arrives at with Edwina will be wonderful. But it did remind me that this is different from other shows for me, in that I can't really research this world, but my actors know it well. And we've got really great actors in this show. They're going to find so many wonderful little truthful moments.

Hopefully, I've been clearer now and Andrea will have an easier road ahead. We block Act II next week, then put the pieces together and start sculpting it...

I so love this show.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Real is a Construct

This is one of the densest shows I've ever worked on, so packed with meaning and metaphor, and so often in the form of gorgeous, rich -- but very dense -- poetry. I don't think I've worked so hard on a text since we did Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris back in 1997. I think there's something to be said for the idea that audiences will take from this show what they need, maybe something different for each person, depending on where they are in their own life's journey, their own personal, life-long Hero Myth.

But as a company, we have to agree on what these passages mean. We all have to be on the same page, telling the same story, to create a compelling piece of art.

The Real is a construct.

That phrase is the latest puzzle for me. And I guess it starts with asking what is The Real? I think The Real represents some essential truth that the Youth is searching for. It's what Eastern philosophies would call Enlightenment, a fundamental understanding of the nature and purpose of Life. This is the central journey of our story. In The Wizard of Oz (one of the most famous Hero Myths), Dorothy Gale's essential truth is that "there's no place like home;" in other words, the search for enlightenment doesn't require physically leaving home, but it does require leaving behind the assumptions of home. The Hero's journey is really an interior one in today's world. We've conquered the Wild West, we've explored all the physical space there is to explore. As our lives continually become physically easier and easier, we have more time and consciousness to focus on our interior lives.

From an African American perspective, that interior journey was largely a luxury when most Black folks were slaves. Though there were some early exceptions, the exploration of the African American interior journey began in earnest with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, led by (among others) James Baldwin, a figure referenced several times in Passing Strange, along with his novel Giovanni's Room, about a Black man living in Paris, (which is one of the ways Mr. Franklin knows about Europe in Act I).

Stew tells us in the show that the Youth's journey is primarily about finding The Real, but he does not explicitly define it for us. He does tell us that "The Real is a construct," but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. After all, construct means a product of ideology, history, or social circumstances. Civilization is a construct and so is time, but they both exist. And our lives are a construct. We create them. We build them over time, moment by moment. We fashion them as we live, as a product of ideology, personal history, and social circumstances. And when we realize that The Real is a construct, that necessarily means that your Real will always be different from my Real, because each of us has a different ideology, history, and social circumstance. Before he learns this, our hero keeps getting trapped in other people's version of The Real -- the Buppies in L.A., the hippies in Amsterdam, the Nowhausers in Berlin. They've all found The Real for themselves, but when they try to impose their Real on the Youth, it doesn't fit.

In L.A., they find The Real in religion; in Amsterdam, they find The Real in free love and hedonism; and in Berlin, they find The Real in politics. But the Youth has to find his own Real.

'Cuz The Real is a construct...
It's the raw nerve's private zone...
It's a personal sunset
You drive off into alone.

Is that related to this passage in Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George?

Anything you do,
Let it come from you,
Then it will be new.
Give us more to see.

Strangely enough, the Youth discovers The Real isn't literally real. It's more abstract, more ethereal. The Real is a state of being. It's a way of living, a path, it's the Tao. According to Wikipedia, "In all its uses, Tao is considered to have ineffable qualities that prevent it from being defined or expressed in words. It can, however, be known or experienced, and its principles (which can be discerned by observing Nature) can be followed or practiced." In other words, The Real isn't real. Except that it sort of is...

For the Youth, The Real is artistic expression. Like Stew says "Some people feel like art is more real than life... And that really gives you something to think about." The song "Work the Wound" is about his acceptance that creating art is his path. The Narrator sings, "Every day I build a mask up to the task, another song, you see. I live behind the rhyme and verse. I lift my voice till I lift the curse; it's all rehearsed you see. This music always rescues me; there's a melody for every malady, prescription song, you see..."

Every character in the show lives behind a mask. They all "perform" their lives in some way. That's what the song "Baptist Fashion Show" is all about. That's what the character of Mr. Franklin and the jokes about the Mother's "Negro dialect" are about. But while the others aren't conscious of their mask wearing, the Youth/Narrator is. He chooses to be the storyteller. His masks have a purpose beyond hiding. This is his road. One of the most powerful moments in the show for me is when the Mother tells the Narrator (her son), "Don't be sad about your chosen path, and where it's taken you so thus far. 'Cuz this is what you did, and that is who you are. And it's alright." In other words, yes, he has made mistakes; yes, he has hurt and lost people; but this is his path. It accomplishes nothing to regret the past or to question the road he's on. It's his road.

In Berlin, Desi sings to him, "So come down now, remove your mask..." -- she's telling him to come down off the metaphorical stage he lives on, to stop performing his life (even though she does the same thing). But performing is his road. She's asking him to give up what is most essential in him, just as Edwina and Marianna did. And he can't do that.

But while finding The Real is the primary action of our story, Stew wants us to learn that though the search for meaning is important to life, it's not life itself. They say the unexamined life is not worth living. And while I believe that's true, Stew is telling us something deeper -- that the un-lived life is not worth examining. The pursuit of The Real shouldn't prevent us from living a full life engaged with the world. After all, as the Narrator sings, "Love is more than real."

Ultimately, Stew has offered up a fable for us with Passing Strange, sharing with us what he has learned in his life, as all great artists must, and this beautiful work of art takes it place beside similar works, including Federico Fellini's 8 1/2; Woody Allen's Stardust Memories; Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, and Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. Notably, every one of these autobiographical statements of philosophy toys with the idea of reality...

Stew's message to us in the end is that life is not a Hero Myth. Our lives are much more complicated than that. While storytelling can teach us important truths, it's just a story. There are things we can learn from art, but we can't live in art; we must live in the world to live fully.

With every show, I work to find the one sentence that sums up the central point of the story. Finding this sentence is the foundation for all the other work. In other words, what story are we telling here? We all have to know this if we're gonna do our job well. As examples... The point of Fiddler on the Roof is that traditions are important but they must adapt to a changing world. The point of Cabaret is that doing nothing is also a political act. The point of Rent is that there is always life to be found and celebrated, even in the midst of death. The point of Next to Normal is that some journeys must be taken alone.

I'm still thinking about all this, but I believe the point of Passing Strange is that life is a journey and we each have to find our own path and our own personal truth, but we can't let that search for enlightenment keep us from living life. It doesn't help us to understand life if we're not fully living it. In the song "Come Down Now," a female voice sings, "Now you are knee deep in your head's footnotes." Is this the inner voice of Desi or is it the voice of Stew the writer of Passing Strange, which would mean it's also the voice of the Youth, since he and the Narrator are the same person? The message here is that you can't live life inside your head.

If I'm right, if that is Stew's central statement, then we have to make sure every single moment in the show is working toward that idea. That's what gives a show unity and it's what gives a story power. As we work, I'll test my hypothesis, and if I find things in the show that don't point toward that, I'll adjust my hypothesis.

The work continues.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Listening is Waiting

Listening is waiting.

We hear these words early in Passing Strange in the church scene. As a female voice sings the hypnotic melody, the narrator speaks over it, "The whole congregation was listening and waiting to be released from its collective frowns. Even the bad kids in the back pew were wondering, Is something real gonna go down?"

As we ran this scene tonight at rehearsal, I stopped the scene and asked what that means -- Listening is waiting. Active (listening, as opposed to hearing) is passive (waiting). Which led to a really fun conversation about all the various things it could mean. But I quickly came to understand that we couldn't just assign our favorite interpretation to the phrase. It seems central to the core of the show. Stew used those words intentionally. It means something. This musical moment leads directly to the first big incident of the show, as our hero, the Youth, has his first religious experience -- only to be slapped and scolded by his mother for his inappropriate revelation. This struggle with organized religion is the first step on the Youth's hero myth journey.

"Listening is waiting" returns again late in the show, just before the Youth leaves his girlfriend Desi in Berlin. This time, as the female voice sings the phrase, Desi says to the Youth, "You came here to be real . . . but you're not. How can I love you if I don't even know you? Let me see your pain. Let me know the geography of your Hell." (She's German.) As the song segues into a new section, she makes him a commitment as she sings, "So come down now. Remove your mask. See, all you gotta do is ask me; I'll give you all the love life allows. All you gotta do is ask me, all you gotta do is ask me..." And then he leaves her. This is the last step on the Youth's hero journey before he finds that which he is in search of.

So what does the phrase mean? Listening is waiting. Both scenes seem to me to present a moment where the Youth has a choice. He can either be the person others tell him to be and live the life others tell him to live, or he can take his own journey and find his own answers. He can live safely and uneventfully in his "big, two-story, black, middle-class" house in L.A., or in the hippie family in Amsterdam, or the artists' commune in Berlin, his choices made for him either by others or by convention. Or he can find his own way, his own path. He will take missteps but they will teach him. He will lose people but gain wisdom.

He can listen to his culture and community, but that means not going on -- or at least postponing -- his hero's adventure. Likewise, Luke Skywalker can listen to his aunt and uncle and stay to work the farm on Tatooine, but then he can't leave with Ben Kenobi and discover his true nature. Listening is waiting. And waiting is passive. It is Not Doing.

The point of the Hero's Adventure is to gain true enlightenment, or as the Youth calls it, The Real. He thinks he finds The Real in all three cities, but in all three cases, he finds that it's someone else's truth, not his own. What he finds ultimately is that he is an artist, the tribe shaman, and only through artistic expression can he discover his true Jedi nature. Passing Strange is Stew's autobiography and he is both the narrator and the Youth, here to guide his younger self and to tell his story. The narrator is the Obi Wan to the Youth's Luke, the wise wizard figure, Glinda, Merlin, Tony's psychiatrist on The Sopranos... Within this piece of art, Stew has become his own wise wizard figure.

For Stew, The Real is found ultimately in the creation and sharing of Passing Strange, his true artistic expression of his self and the only way for him to truly know himself. As a friend told him after seeing the show, "The Real is a construct. The real is a creation. The Real is artificial. The kid in your play is looking for something in life that can only be found in art." Yeah, exactly.

It makes me think about Sunday in the Park with George, and the brilliant song, "Move On," when Dot sings to the artist George, "Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new. Give us more to see." Likewise, at the end of Passing Strange, the narrator sings, "The universe is a toy in the mind of a boy, and life is a movie, too, starring you. Your whole family's the cast and crew. That's a little secret between God and you."

In many stories, love conquers all. Here it's art that does it. Listening is waiting. Making art is acting.

Still thinking about this...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Suddenly There is Meaning

I have of late been looking back at the artistic influences on me throughout my life (in this blog post, among others). As I work on the extremely challenging, complicated shows we've been producing lately, I can see how those past influences have prepared me for my current work. Particularly with Passing Strange. This is a show that uses so many styles and devices to tell its story, from old-school musical comedy (albeit with a postmodern edge) to musical drama, to concept musical, to rock opera, from moments of high hilarity to moments of deep, subtle, complicated emotion, from totally naturalistic scenes to scenes of highly stylized theatrics.

Luckily, I've developed as a director over time to the point that I now have an incredibly versatile tool belt at my disposal. I really know musical theatre in all its forms. And part of that is due to my years at the Muny. I was browsing the Muny's website the other day, and it occurred to me visit some "old friends." I was an usher at the Muny the summers of 1980 through 1987. And I noticed a while back that the Muny finally put up on their site a list of all their shows going back to 1919. So I took a stroll back through the shows I saw as an usher, and I can trace a direct line from seeing and learning those shows straight through to the work I'm doing today, in The Wild Party, Forbidden Planet, Two Gents, bare, Passing Strange, and other shows.

The best thing about that Muny job was that the extremely cool usher captains realized quickly how desperately I loved musical theatre, so most nights they stationed me down in front, on one side or the other of the stage, where there are steps leading up onto the stage. My angle was a bit weird, but I was only a few yards from the actors. And the captains made sure I saw every show from both sides. It was amazing.

Although I knew a lot of the most famous musicals before that point, it was at the Muny that I really learned the literature of my art form. Not every production was perfect -- Joe Namath and Misty Rowe were literally tone deaf in the leading roles in Li'l Abner -- but most of the shows were really enjoyable. I got to see classic shows I might have never otherwise been able to see, gems like High Button Shoes, Pal Joey, They're Playing Our Song, Little Me, Funny Girl, Where's Charley?, Annie Get Your Gun, Carnival, I Do! I Do!, Shenandoah, Can-Can, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Apple Tree, the list goes on and on... and they all taught me something valuable about making musicals.

So here is that list of shows I saw during my ushering years... Envy me, my friends.

1980
Al Jolson, Tonight!
Bye Bye Birdie
Carnival!
Cinderella
The Debbie Reynolds Show
Li’l Abner
Little Me
The Merry Widow
Richard Rodgers in Concert
South Pacific
Sugar Babies

1981
Annie Get Your Gun
Camelot
A Chorus Line
Flower Drum Song
George M!
A Grand Night for Singing
Hans Christian Andersen
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Kiss Me, Kate
The Mitzi Gaynor Show
Show Boat

1982
Anything Goes
A Chorus Line
Fiddler on the Roof
Gigi
Grease
The Sound of Music
They’re Playing Our Song
Unsinkable Molly Brown
West Side Story
Where’s Charley?
The Wiz

1983
Annie
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Camelot
Can-Can
High Button Shoes
I Do! I Do!
The King and I
Man of La Mancha
Pal Joey
The Pirates of Penzance
Promises, Promises

1984
Dream Street
Funny Girl
The Music Man
Oklahoma!
The Red Skelton Show
Sleeping Beauty
Sugar Babies

1985
42nd Street
A Chorus Line
Bob Fosse's Dancin’
Evita
Festival on Ice
Jesus Christ Superstar
My Fair Lady

1986
42nd Street
The Apple Tree
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
La Cage aux Folles
Pippin
Shenandoah
Show Boat
Singin’ in the Rain
Swan Lake: The Musical

1987
Around the World in 80 Days
Big River
Cats
Fiddler on the Roof
My One and Only
Peter Pan
The Sound of Music

I learned how to tell a really dark story in an entertaining way from Carnival, Big River, Shenandoah, Pal Joey, Evita, and others. I learned how to make a concept musical work, from Pippin, Cats, and Al Jolson Tonight. I learned how to deal with really big, outsized style from Li'l Abner, How to Succeed, Where's Charley?, 42nd Street, and High Button Shoes. I learned the rules of old-school musical comedy from Bye Bye Birdie, Annie Get Your Gun, My One and Only, La Cage, and The Music Man. I even learned how operetta works from The Merry Widow and The Pirates of Penzance. In fact, I probably learned more about my art form during those eight years than at any other time in my life.

Aren't I a lucky bastard?

Long Live the Musical!
Scott