So we blocked the first section of Act I of Forbidden Planet last night. What a relief! My ideas work and the show is every bit as funny as I hoped it would be. Even in this very early stage, it's really, really funny!
And just as wonderful is this: every actor in the show is so willing to be silly and ridiculous, to throw themselves to the floor when the ship crashes, all of them screaming and singing as they pass through the meteor storm (hence the title of this entry), all of it... It's a very physical show, and every bit as wild and wacky as Bat Boy or Urinetown. And everybody seems ready and willing to go for broke. As we like to say, it's all about "the depth of sincerity, the height of expression" -- the emotions are honest and real, the stakes are high, but the style is BIG and outrageous (like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Little Shop). It's going to be a very funny rehearsal process...
The other cool part is that I'm sure now that this was a good show to put in our season. Having never actually seen the show onstage -- and despite the many, MANY truly terrible YouTube videos of college productions -- I read it and listened to the cast album and felt that this was a really original, interesting show, something our audiences would enjoy, high energy, big laughs, a bit of seriousness underneath it all, and my favorite thing of all -- a genuine roller coaster ride.
We've only staged 17 pages, but I am so sure now that audiences are going to fall in love with this bizarre show. I can't wait to share it with them! After all, we do all this for the audience -- without them, it's not a show, it's just a run-through...
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Go Now
Such are the trials and tribulations of a small professional theatre company:
A while back I had emailed the Forbidden Planet cast with details about when rehearsals started, etc., and I had heard back from all but one of them. So last Friday, a few days before rehearsals started, I called Wayne, the one actor I hadn't heard from. But I couldn't get through -- his phone had been turned off. Luckily, another friend had a number in Colorado where Wayne (to my great surprise) was at the moment.
I talked to Wayne, who said he'd be back in St. Louis that weekend and he'd be at the first rehearsal Monday night. He said he was just in Colorado for a dance performance he was in.
Monday night, Wayne didn't show up. We tried that Colorado number, but no one answered. So after rehearsal, I sent him an email and messages on both MySpace and Facebook, asking what was up. The next morning, Wayne had uploaded pictures of himself and his friends drinking in Colorado, but he did not answer any of my messages. And then he didn't show up Tuesday night either.
Then I noticed on both his MySpace page and his Facebook page, he now listed Colorado City as his city. Huh??? I left more messages, email, voice mail, the whole shebang... And to this day, a week later, he will not respond.
I realize now Wayne has moved to Colorado to stay. (He's even offering dance lessons to people in Colorado City on his MySpace page.) And it seems pretty clear that he already knew that long before he and I talked on the phone and before he promised me he'd be back to start work on the show.
This doesn't happen often, but actors do drop out on occasion, sometimes for legitimate reasons, often not... But because we had already started rehearsals and were already learning the score, replacing Wayne was urgent. I put the word out to all my theatre friends that I needed a replacement.
Then I get a call from Nick Kelly, longtime New Liner -- actor, director, and our official fight choreographer when we need one -- he teaches acting and he knew an actor who was interested in stepping in, Mike Dowdy. I had seen Dowdy do improv (he's hilarious) and heard him sing (terrific tenor voice), so I talked to Mike about the details, and the Deal was Done. Crisis Averted.
Of course, now Mike has to do a lot of catch-up. But I think he'll be great. And I doubt he'll move to Colorado any time soon.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
A while back I had emailed the Forbidden Planet cast with details about when rehearsals started, etc., and I had heard back from all but one of them. So last Friday, a few days before rehearsals started, I called Wayne, the one actor I hadn't heard from. But I couldn't get through -- his phone had been turned off. Luckily, another friend had a number in Colorado where Wayne (to my great surprise) was at the moment.
I talked to Wayne, who said he'd be back in St. Louis that weekend and he'd be at the first rehearsal Monday night. He said he was just in Colorado for a dance performance he was in.
Monday night, Wayne didn't show up. We tried that Colorado number, but no one answered. So after rehearsal, I sent him an email and messages on both MySpace and Facebook, asking what was up. The next morning, Wayne had uploaded pictures of himself and his friends drinking in Colorado, but he did not answer any of my messages. And then he didn't show up Tuesday night either.
Then I noticed on both his MySpace page and his Facebook page, he now listed Colorado City as his city. Huh??? I left more messages, email, voice mail, the whole shebang... And to this day, a week later, he will not respond.
I realize now Wayne has moved to Colorado to stay. (He's even offering dance lessons to people in Colorado City on his MySpace page.) And it seems pretty clear that he already knew that long before he and I talked on the phone and before he promised me he'd be back to start work on the show.
This doesn't happen often, but actors do drop out on occasion, sometimes for legitimate reasons, often not... But because we had already started rehearsals and were already learning the score, replacing Wayne was urgent. I put the word out to all my theatre friends that I needed a replacement.
Then I get a call from Nick Kelly, longtime New Liner -- actor, director, and our official fight choreographer when we need one -- he teaches acting and he knew an actor who was interested in stepping in, Mike Dowdy. I had seen Dowdy do improv (he's hilarious) and heard him sing (terrific tenor voice), so I talked to Mike about the details, and the Deal was Done. Crisis Averted.
Of course, now Mike has to do a lot of catch-up. But I think he'll be great. And I doubt he'll move to Colorado any time soon.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Return to the Forbidden Planet
This is a show I had heard about for years, but it always sounded like a silly, shallow catalog musical to me. It first opened in London in the late 1980s and was a surprise hit, winning the Olivier Award (their version of the Tonys) for Best Musical, beating out Miss Saigon. It's (really loosely) based on Shakespeare's The Tempest and on the 1956 film Forbidden Planet (which itself was also based on The Tempest). But what the show's creator Bob Carlton did with the material was pure wacky genius -- he based his musical on both sources, using character names from both, using some dialogue from the original Shakespeare, and around that built a show with fake Shakespearean dialogue (we call it Fakespeare), a 1950s sci-fi acting style, and a classic rock and roll score.
For no particular reason I can remember, I got hold of the London cast album last year and listened to it for the first time. Luckily, it's a live album, so not only can you hear the hilarious dialogue leading into many of the songs, but you can also hear the audience's laughs and cheers. I realized that there was much more there there than I had originally thought. Uncharacteristically, I had judged this weird show without even hearing or reading it. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
I realized this might be a show we'd want to do. So I got hold of the script. And I just couldn't stop laughing. It's that funny. I sat alone in my living room reading it and repeatedly laughing out loud. But I also discovered that the show is really, really smart, retaining the serious themes of the two earlier versions, but also trading in the sly self-referential humor that musical theatre embraced so fully in the 1990s and still today. Return to the Forbidden Planet fits in quite nicely next to other quirky shows that came after it, like Hedwig, Urinetown, and High Fidelity, but also reaching back to the mostly subliminal social commentary of The Rocky Horror Show, Grease, and the original Star Trek.
(Hey, maybe we need a rock and roll Star Trek musical next...!)
Just like its precursors, Return to the Forbidden Planet is still about a central theme -- the idea of expanding human consciousness with technology (or Jedi-like magic in the original), unknowingly releasing the dangerous power of the human id, and thereby butting up against that timeless and universal truth, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There is serious stuff at the core of this show, but it's easy to ignore that part if you're so inclined. As the editors of Mother Jones magazine once wrote in an anniversary issue, "Better to give us thanks for knowing the importance of being un-earnest, of taking undignified chances, for having the courage to risk all, risk being wrong, risk looking foolish. If there is in fact any secret at all to our amazing longevity, that's surely near the heart of it: knowing how to act the fool like the future depends on it."
We've done that before and Lord knows we can do it again. It's sort of becoming our specialty.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Creative Genius
With this entry I embark upon treacherous and uncharted seas -- I'm about to talk about my art without the benefit of cannabis. I don't do that very often, because I believe God's Goofy Green Goodness opens up my puny human mind in ways that are uniquely worthy of the discussion of art. But this time is sorta different.
My buddy and fellow writer Sparger sent me this link to a video, a talk by author Elizabeth Glibert on the nature of art and creativity and genius -- and the unfair pressure we artists impose upon ourselves. It's about twenty minutes long, but it is soooo worth your time, I promise...
As often happens with such things, Sparger couldn't have had better timing. As I sit uncomfortably in the middle of a two-month break between shows, Ive been thinking a lot about stuff like this. I realized a while back, after reading director Anne Bogart's brilliant (and reassuring) book A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art in Theatre, that what I do is not about A Career or A Body of Work. It's not about Accomplishment or Achievement. It's just about doing good work. Just showing up and doing my job. The stakes are no longer so high for me.
I no longer believe that every piece of work I do has to be better than the one before it. I no longer have to "top" myself with each show or each book. It just has to be a serious, honest effort to say something of value in an interesting way. That's all. If it's a flop, then I'll learn some lessons from it. And if it's an incredible success, I probably won't really know why anyway...
Gilbert talks about how the ancient Greeks and Romans did not believe that genius (which really just meant creativity) resides inside a person but rather was an external divine force. I love that.
I like to think of myself as an antenna, always scanning the skies, listening to the world, being ready to receive, being ready to write down whatever fascinating things come charging into my neural circuits. I don't think of myself as the source of those things, but instead merely as the recognizer of them. And yes, that's where the pot comes in. A heaping bowl boosts the strength of my antenna, allowing it to pick up weaker signals I might otherwise miss, signals I might otherwise dismiss as just white noise. There's a lot of wonderful stuff in there! The pot rescues me from that overly judgemental internal editor that leaps to assess the value of every thought before it's fully explored.
I agree with Gilbert. It's time to free ourselves from Great Expectations and allow ourselves to be what we are at our artistic best -- a conduit, a servant. Because just being that is enough and it's more wonderful than most people will ever understand.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
My buddy and fellow writer Sparger sent me this link to a video, a talk by author Elizabeth Glibert on the nature of art and creativity and genius -- and the unfair pressure we artists impose upon ourselves. It's about twenty minutes long, but it is soooo worth your time, I promise...
As often happens with such things, Sparger couldn't have had better timing. As I sit uncomfortably in the middle of a two-month break between shows, Ive been thinking a lot about stuff like this. I realized a while back, after reading director Anne Bogart's brilliant (and reassuring) book A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art in Theatre, that what I do is not about A Career or A Body of Work. It's not about Accomplishment or Achievement. It's just about doing good work. Just showing up and doing my job. The stakes are no longer so high for me.
I no longer believe that every piece of work I do has to be better than the one before it. I no longer have to "top" myself with each show or each book. It just has to be a serious, honest effort to say something of value in an interesting way. That's all. If it's a flop, then I'll learn some lessons from it. And if it's an incredible success, I probably won't really know why anyway...
Gilbert talks about how the ancient Greeks and Romans did not believe that genius (which really just meant creativity) resides inside a person but rather was an external divine force. I love that.
I like to think of myself as an antenna, always scanning the skies, listening to the world, being ready to receive, being ready to write down whatever fascinating things come charging into my neural circuits. I don't think of myself as the source of those things, but instead merely as the recognizer of them. And yes, that's where the pot comes in. A heaping bowl boosts the strength of my antenna, allowing it to pick up weaker signals I might otherwise miss, signals I might otherwise dismiss as just white noise. There's a lot of wonderful stuff in there! The pot rescues me from that overly judgemental internal editor that leaps to assess the value of every thought before it's fully explored.
I agree with Gilbert. It's time to free ourselves from Great Expectations and allow ourselves to be what we are at our artistic best -- a conduit, a servant. Because just being that is enough and it's more wonderful than most people will ever understand.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Obama's Economic Recovery Bill and US
It's so interesting to watch the debate over President Obama's economic recovery bill. It's kinda like a Terry Gilliam movie. It's as if the Americans voters had not in fact rejected Republican economic policies both in 2006 and 2008. It's as if the election a few months ago never even happened. The Republicans are incredibly pissed off because this bill isn't exactly the same thing they've been doing for the last eight years.
Which, as we can all too clearly see, did not work, as half a million people lose their jobs each month...
One interesting aspect of the surrealistic debate going on, on Fox News, on conservative talk radio (yes, I do listen to Hannity for laughs, but I can only listen for about 10 minutes at a stretch), and on the internet, is that the definition of "pork" has completely changed. "Pork," in legislative jargon, used to mean earmarks, those pet projects that were stuck into bills without debate or vote, usually in the conference committee. Of course, the truth is that though McCain bet his entire campaign on his pledge to eliminate pork, it's really only a tiny, tiny percentage of the Federal budget, less than 1%. So McCain's quixotic quest to clean up earmarks may have had philosophic appeal, but it would have changed virtually nothing in the real world.
But "pork" isn't just earmarks anymore. These days, "pork" is anything the Rabid Right doesn't like. So even though there are zero earmarks in the recovery bill, Hannity and the other fringe lunatics are as enraged as ever over all the "pork." (Have you also noticed they're trying really hard to replace the word "Democratic" with "Democrat," as in "the Democrat Congress"... maybe someone needs to remind them about the difference between adjectives and nouns. They are not interchangeable.) One of the Republicans' biggest outrages is funding in the bill for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). "That's not stimulative!" they all shout. (Clearly, they've never seen a New Line show...)
This is mostly because they hate the NEA in principle. They are as afraid of art as they are of science and France. What they refuse to consider (among a thousand or so other things) is that the NEA gives much of its money to the state arts agencies, in our case the Missouri Arts Council. And then that money goes in large part to PAYING WORKING ARTISTS.
The screaming fringers want to keep stock brokers employed but not artists. Why? Because artists reveal the truth, and that terrifies the Right. The truth is that our country is significantly worse off than it was eight years ago. The truth is that Bush Jr. did not keep us safe -- we were attacked by Al Qaeda on his watch, well into his first term. He destroyed our economy. He almost destroyed our government. (Why do we ever elect hard-core Republicans who keep telling us that government doesn't work? If they don't think it can work, why would we hire them to run it...???)
Every civilization that survives requires art and artists. As I've said before, we are the tribe shamans. We tell our stories. We record our civilization. How many of us have ever read English history books? But lots of us have seen English history through the lens of good ol' Will Shakespeare. The artists always get the last word.
And there's nothing the Crazies fear more than that. Well, except homosexuals...
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Which, as we can all too clearly see, did not work, as half a million people lose their jobs each month...
One interesting aspect of the surrealistic debate going on, on Fox News, on conservative talk radio (yes, I do listen to Hannity for laughs, but I can only listen for about 10 minutes at a stretch), and on the internet, is that the definition of "pork" has completely changed. "Pork," in legislative jargon, used to mean earmarks, those pet projects that were stuck into bills without debate or vote, usually in the conference committee. Of course, the truth is that though McCain bet his entire campaign on his pledge to eliminate pork, it's really only a tiny, tiny percentage of the Federal budget, less than 1%. So McCain's quixotic quest to clean up earmarks may have had philosophic appeal, but it would have changed virtually nothing in the real world.
But "pork" isn't just earmarks anymore. These days, "pork" is anything the Rabid Right doesn't like. So even though there are zero earmarks in the recovery bill, Hannity and the other fringe lunatics are as enraged as ever over all the "pork." (Have you also noticed they're trying really hard to replace the word "Democratic" with "Democrat," as in "the Democrat Congress"... maybe someone needs to remind them about the difference between adjectives and nouns. They are not interchangeable.) One of the Republicans' biggest outrages is funding in the bill for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). "That's not stimulative!" they all shout. (Clearly, they've never seen a New Line show...)
This is mostly because they hate the NEA in principle. They are as afraid of art as they are of science and France. What they refuse to consider (among a thousand or so other things) is that the NEA gives much of its money to the state arts agencies, in our case the Missouri Arts Council. And then that money goes in large part to PAYING WORKING ARTISTS.
The screaming fringers want to keep stock brokers employed but not artists. Why? Because artists reveal the truth, and that terrifies the Right. The truth is that our country is significantly worse off than it was eight years ago. The truth is that Bush Jr. did not keep us safe -- we were attacked by Al Qaeda on his watch, well into his first term. He destroyed our economy. He almost destroyed our government. (Why do we ever elect hard-core Republicans who keep telling us that government doesn't work? If they don't think it can work, why would we hire them to run it...???)
Every civilization that survives requires art and artists. As I've said before, we are the tribe shamans. We tell our stories. We record our civilization. How many of us have ever read English history books? But lots of us have seen English history through the lens of good ol' Will Shakespeare. The artists always get the last word.
And there's nothing the Crazies fear more than that. Well, except homosexuals...
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Rock Trib 2
I just watched a videotape of New Line's very first show back in 1992, a revue I put together called "A Tribute to the Rock Musicals 2." Why "2," you ask? Because I had already done a "Rock Trib 1" with CenterStage Theatre Company, and so though it was New Line's first show, it was my second "Rock Trib."
What a trip to see that show again! (Shhh, don't tell anyone we videotaped it!) I remember at the time getting a lot of attention for it. We got one review, from The Riverfront Times, and it was really positive, not quite a rave, but not far off...
Now watching it 16 1/2 years later, there are a few cringey parts and a lot of brilliant parts, most notably the entire (well, almost) 17-minute Montage ("Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen") from A Chorus Line. It was fun seeing a whole bunch of people I haven't seen in years, some of them in New York, others who knows where...
The most interesting part of the show to me was seeing me stretch my conceptual muscles as a director. I had directed several shows with CenterStage, but none in which I could really experiment. So I tried a shitload of experiments in this show. So many of the tools I use now I can see myself trying them out for the first time in this show. I had never before had complete artistic freedom to do anything I wanted. Some of my experiments didn't totally work; others totally worked.
The funniest thing to me was the show itself. It was less a revue and more a lecture-demonstration. I'm not kidding, it was a lecture on the history of rock musicals. There was actually a "professor" at a podium lecturing between songs. How the hell did I get away with that? But the audience loved it. Watching the video, there's virtually no coughing, rustling, talking, etc. The audience is totally tuned in. Part of that is because the musical numbers had an incredible energy about them, a lot like our much later productions of Bat Boy, The Robber Bridegroom, March of the Falsettos, Assassins. The Riverfront Times review said the cast was "impressively – sometimes overwhelmingly – enthusiastic, talented, skilled, and well-trained."
As that review suggests, the best part of the show was the voices! Jesus, how did we get that lucky on our first show? Almost everyone in the cast had an amazing voice and real control of it. The power ballads rocked. It was one of those shows where the audience actually cheered after some of the songs. What a cool way to start a company like New Line... Sorta like a statement of purpose...
Yup, it's fun to revisit the roots.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
What a trip to see that show again! (Shhh, don't tell anyone we videotaped it!) I remember at the time getting a lot of attention for it. We got one review, from The Riverfront Times, and it was really positive, not quite a rave, but not far off...
Now watching it 16 1/2 years later, there are a few cringey parts and a lot of brilliant parts, most notably the entire (well, almost) 17-minute Montage ("Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen") from A Chorus Line. It was fun seeing a whole bunch of people I haven't seen in years, some of them in New York, others who knows where...
The most interesting part of the show to me was seeing me stretch my conceptual muscles as a director. I had directed several shows with CenterStage, but none in which I could really experiment. So I tried a shitload of experiments in this show. So many of the tools I use now I can see myself trying them out for the first time in this show. I had never before had complete artistic freedom to do anything I wanted. Some of my experiments didn't totally work; others totally worked.
The funniest thing to me was the show itself. It was less a revue and more a lecture-demonstration. I'm not kidding, it was a lecture on the history of rock musicals. There was actually a "professor" at a podium lecturing between songs. How the hell did I get away with that? But the audience loved it. Watching the video, there's virtually no coughing, rustling, talking, etc. The audience is totally tuned in. Part of that is because the musical numbers had an incredible energy about them, a lot like our much later productions of Bat Boy, The Robber Bridegroom, March of the Falsettos, Assassins. The Riverfront Times review said the cast was "impressively – sometimes overwhelmingly – enthusiastic, talented, skilled, and well-trained."
As that review suggests, the best part of the show was the voices! Jesus, how did we get that lucky on our first show? Almost everyone in the cast had an amazing voice and real control of it. The power ballads rocked. It was one of those shows where the audience actually cheered after some of the songs. What a cool way to start a company like New Line... Sorta like a statement of purpose...
Yup, it's fun to revisit the roots.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Obama and Us
This has certainly been the most active, most aggressive, most hard-working first two days I've ever seen from a new president! Not just undoing some of Dubya's more obnoxious misdeeds, but also making extremely strong statements about how his administration will operate. Today Obama signed two executive orders that were particularly relevant to what we do.
He put a freeze on senior staff salaries (in other words, no raises), and he announced really strict rules about lobbying his administration. Why? Because he thinks government should be about public service, not personal gain.
And he fuckin' means it, yo.
So why is that relevant to us? Because nonprofit theatres are different from for-profit businesses in one big way. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court decided that arts organizations could have the same nonprofit status and benefits of hospitals, schools, and other social service groups. Why? Because presenting the arts is inherently educational. It is a social service. We are here to serve our community. And too many theatres forget that.
Our primary goal is to serve, not to make money or win awards. (Although, in all fairness, we do have to make enough money to keep the doors open. Still, that is not the primary goal.) We are, by legal definition, a social service organization. That means we always have to be thinking about if we're serving our community, how well we're serving the community, and most of all, how we can better serve our community. That means being aware of racial diversity, onstage, backstage, in the office, and on our board -- so that our company looks like our community. It means doing everything we can to keep ticket prices as low as possible, so that we don't exclude the folks who make minimum wage. It means making it clear to our audiences how our shows relate to events and issues in their real lives, and showing them how powerfully live theatre can address social and political issues. And it also means serving and developing younger audiences.
Obama is trying to make Service to the Community cool again. And here at New Line, we love that. We created the New Line Free Seats last season. We just announced our first college scholarship to be offered. We're working on developing closer relationships with local schools. We're working on making people of color feel more welcome in our casts and audiences. Our board of directors is 28% African American and 14% Asian American, but we're still working on that too.
And we ask our audiences and our supporters to help us with all this. Help us bring in audiences of color. Help us get actors of color to audition for us. Help us reach out to young people. Help us serve our community. And tell us when we fall short. Help us make our corner of the world a little bit better.
We're not just singing and dancing, folks. We're trying to make a difference.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
He put a freeze on senior staff salaries (in other words, no raises), and he announced really strict rules about lobbying his administration. Why? Because he thinks government should be about public service, not personal gain.
And he fuckin' means it, yo.
So why is that relevant to us? Because nonprofit theatres are different from for-profit businesses in one big way. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court decided that arts organizations could have the same nonprofit status and benefits of hospitals, schools, and other social service groups. Why? Because presenting the arts is inherently educational. It is a social service. We are here to serve our community. And too many theatres forget that.
Our primary goal is to serve, not to make money or win awards. (Although, in all fairness, we do have to make enough money to keep the doors open. Still, that is not the primary goal.) We are, by legal definition, a social service organization. That means we always have to be thinking about if we're serving our community, how well we're serving the community, and most of all, how we can better serve our community. That means being aware of racial diversity, onstage, backstage, in the office, and on our board -- so that our company looks like our community. It means doing everything we can to keep ticket prices as low as possible, so that we don't exclude the folks who make minimum wage. It means making it clear to our audiences how our shows relate to events and issues in their real lives, and showing them how powerfully live theatre can address social and political issues. And it also means serving and developing younger audiences.
Obama is trying to make Service to the Community cool again. And here at New Line, we love that. We created the New Line Free Seats last season. We just announced our first college scholarship to be offered. We're working on developing closer relationships with local schools. We're working on making people of color feel more welcome in our casts and audiences. Our board of directors is 28% African American and 14% Asian American, but we're still working on that too.
And we ask our audiences and our supporters to help us with all this. Help us bring in audiences of color. Help us get actors of color to audition for us. Help us reach out to young people. Help us serve our community. And tell us when we fall short. Help us make our corner of the world a little bit better.
We're not just singing and dancing, folks. We're trying to make a difference.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
The Check
This week I begin a long and lonely stretch of seven weeks before I'm back in rehearsal. I haven't had this much time between shows since college. (You know, back when we wrote our papers on typewriters.) The calendar at our new space is really different, but it's a small price to pay for the use of the space.
So I spent the day today uploading production photos to our Facebook page, pretending to myself that was productive in some small way because surely some folks find us by browsing around Facebook and so our Facebook page should be as nice as possible, right...?
Then around 5:00 p.m. I realized I hadn't yet eaten. So I headed out to pick up some Subway, and on my way out I checked the mail. I thumbed through it and, to my great surprise, found a little treasure.
A check to New Line for $10,000.
It happens once a year. Anonymously. And always at exactly the right time. Sounds like a musical, doesn't it?
This has happened several times before, but this was the first time I realized that it means something more than "support" of New Line. It means that this person believes that the work we do matters, that it is important, and that this person trusts us to use their money wisely and effectively to share our art with the community. Writing fundraising letters all the time, I forget what "support" really means. It's not just a compliment. It's a vote of confidence and a vote of trust.
And we have to remember that when we create our work. We owe all those people everything we can give, to make smart, exciting, surprising, provocative, engaging, relevant, emotional theatre. We theatre people sometimes joke about what a shame it is that the days of royal patronage of artists is over. But it's not over; it's just democratized. Now it's public "patronage" of artists. That's the whole point of legal nonprofit status -- the idea that arts organizations are inherently educational and beneficial to the public and therefore should be relieved of tax obligations, so that money can be spent directly on serving the public. The public (though tax policy) pays us to serve them. And we owe them something for their money.
That's my New Year's Resolution: to keep the contributors and audience foremost in my mind all the time. I love my work more than I could ever explain, but we do theatre for the audience, not for us. Without an audience, it's not a performance; it's just a run-through.
Happy New Year!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
So I spent the day today uploading production photos to our Facebook page, pretending to myself that was productive in some small way because surely some folks find us by browsing around Facebook and so our Facebook page should be as nice as possible, right...?
Then around 5:00 p.m. I realized I hadn't yet eaten. So I headed out to pick up some Subway, and on my way out I checked the mail. I thumbed through it and, to my great surprise, found a little treasure.
A check to New Line for $10,000.
It happens once a year. Anonymously. And always at exactly the right time. Sounds like a musical, doesn't it?
This has happened several times before, but this was the first time I realized that it means something more than "support" of New Line. It means that this person believes that the work we do matters, that it is important, and that this person trusts us to use their money wisely and effectively to share our art with the community. Writing fundraising letters all the time, I forget what "support" really means. It's not just a compliment. It's a vote of confidence and a vote of trust.
And we have to remember that when we create our work. We owe all those people everything we can give, to make smart, exciting, surprising, provocative, engaging, relevant, emotional theatre. We theatre people sometimes joke about what a shame it is that the days of royal patronage of artists is over. But it's not over; it's just democratized. Now it's public "patronage" of artists. That's the whole point of legal nonprofit status -- the idea that arts organizations are inherently educational and beneficial to the public and therefore should be relieved of tax obligations, so that money can be spent directly on serving the public. The public (though tax policy) pays us to serve them. And we owe them something for their money.
That's my New Year's Resolution: to keep the contributors and audience foremost in my mind all the time. I love my work more than I could ever explain, but we do theatre for the audience, not for us. Without an audience, it's not a performance; it's just a run-through.
Happy New Year!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
They're ALIVE!
Our revels now have ended. Tonight was our second and final performance of Night of the Living Show Tunes. Both nights went phenomenally well. This was our fourth show at the Sheldon and we're used to getting 100-150 people a night. But this time we got 258 the first night and 225 the second! And what audiences! We could not have asked for better crowds. They listened, they laughed, the cheered -- quite often, in fact. They were so tuned in. I included several story songs this time ("A Trip to the Library," "Fathers and Sons." "And They're Off," "Madeleine," "The World Was Dancing") and the audience just sat riveted. They caught everything, every laugh, every surprise. It was very cool.
Judy Newmark even gave us a mini-review on the Post Dispatch website, singling out several performers and songs for praise. I believe we'll also be getting a review on the KDHX website in a day or so.
I think this was the best of our four outings at the Sheldon so far. I think I'm getting better at putting the song list together, we did the most interesting (and most difficult) material we've ever done in a concert, we had sixteen really talented performers, and there was some wonderful alchemy among this cast. I won't start talking about particular songs or performances because that'd take all night, but it really was amazing.
The part the audience doesn't know is that both nights there were tons of tiny little mistakes, from pretty much everyone, including me on the piano. It kind of freaked some of the newbies last night -- they were beating themselves up over little mistakes. But that's the nature of this particular beast. We put together about thirty songs, including quite a few very challenging group pieces, in a very short period of time. I asked some of our veterans if this material was harder than in years past -- they all said yes. Loudly. Emphatically even.
Hey, I never claimed to make performers comfortable.
Well, it's time to get this tired old body stoned, but let me conclude thusly: It is a genuine big-ass joy to work on material that rich, to perform in a hall that magnificent, with a cast that talented, and to share it all with audiences that warm and receptive. You heard me, a big-ass joy!
Now I'm high on two things! Thank you, cast! You ROCK!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Judy Newmark even gave us a mini-review on the Post Dispatch website, singling out several performers and songs for praise. I believe we'll also be getting a review on the KDHX website in a day or so.
I think this was the best of our four outings at the Sheldon so far. I think I'm getting better at putting the song list together, we did the most interesting (and most difficult) material we've ever done in a concert, we had sixteen really talented performers, and there was some wonderful alchemy among this cast. I won't start talking about particular songs or performances because that'd take all night, but it really was amazing.
The part the audience doesn't know is that both nights there were tons of tiny little mistakes, from pretty much everyone, including me on the piano. It kind of freaked some of the newbies last night -- they were beating themselves up over little mistakes. But that's the nature of this particular beast. We put together about thirty songs, including quite a few very challenging group pieces, in a very short period of time. I asked some of our veterans if this material was harder than in years past -- they all said yes. Loudly. Emphatically even.
Hey, I never claimed to make performers comfortable.
Well, it's time to get this tired old body stoned, but let me conclude thusly: It is a genuine big-ass joy to work on material that rich, to perform in a hall that magnificent, with a cast that talented, and to share it all with audiences that warm and receptive. You heard me, a big-ass joy!
Now I'm high on two things! Thank you, cast! You ROCK!
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Merry Christmas!
I sit here listening to "Turkey Lurkey Time," a truly bizarre but awesome Christmas(-ish) song from Promises, Promises. (Whaddya think I listen to Christmas carols or something??) I think back over 2008 and I see two things. Personally, it was a rough year for me, with all the bullshit at the Ivory, scrambling to find a new theatre, and other ridiculous, difficult things I suffered through. But artistically, it could not have been a better year.
I feel like we really hit three Home Runs in 2008. Assassins was one of those perfect shows for me. I got to pick my dream cast, we got to work on brilliant, ballsy material, and I felt like I did some of my very best work. This was our third time doing this show (and that sort of became an accidental theme for the year...), and it was clearly the best of the three excellent productions we've done -- the smartest, the most interesting, the most daring, the funniest, and the most shattering. What a joy to work on a show like that with people like that. Despite the bullshit with the Ivory, I'm crazy proud of that one.
And then there was one of the great thrills of my life, working on the brilliant, deeply emotional, painfully truthful High Fidelity. This was a show I think every one of us was so grateful to work on. Talk about a labor of love! To be the first people to do this show after Broadway (and arguably the first people to do it RIGHT) was awesome, but even awesomer was the show's lyricist flying in to see us and loving it! This will be one of those shows I'll never forget. It surely ranks as one of the most wonderful experiences I've ever had in the theatre. And once again, I am eternally grateful to that wonderful, playful, wildly talented cast, especially Jeff Wright, who brought such warmth and honesty to the proceedings. We kicked some fuckin' ass and the best part is everybody who saw it just fell in love with it. We actually sold out on the Fourth of July!! Who could ask for more than that?
And then there's Hair, another show we did for the third time this year. I was proud of our first two productions of Hair, but this one really was the strongest of the three. I certainly understood this crazy show this time better than I did the other times, but we also had a great cast and incredible leads in Todd Schaefer and John Sparger. And again, what a joy to work on material that good with people that good and share it with audiences who fell madly in love with it. People came back time after time -- one guy saw it ten times, others saw it four, five, six times.
Hair always reminds me the reason we make theatre -- to connect to people, to say something of value to them, and hopefully to send them out of the theatre a little wiser, a little more thoughtful, a little less confused and alone than when they came in. Hair certainly did that every night -- and to produce the show in the middle of this history-making political season was a genuine thrill. I'll never forget after the show one night early in the run, when one audience member yelled out as he was leaving, "Vote Obama! Don't let this happen again!"
Wow, huh?
It's not a metaphor, it's the truth -- the theatre is my church. It's where we go to touch God, where we celebrate the wonder of being human, where we come together in ancient rituals to make sense of our world and to connect to each other. Every day of my life I count myself lucky -- we are the tribe shamans, the tellers of stories, the revealers of Great Truths, the intermediaries between the spirit world and the physical world. And I ask you -- what could be cooler than that??? :)
Merry Christmas and thanks to all the New Liners for being part of all this joy and beauty.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
I feel like we really hit three Home Runs in 2008. Assassins was one of those perfect shows for me. I got to pick my dream cast, we got to work on brilliant, ballsy material, and I felt like I did some of my very best work. This was our third time doing this show (and that sort of became an accidental theme for the year...), and it was clearly the best of the three excellent productions we've done -- the smartest, the most interesting, the most daring, the funniest, and the most shattering. What a joy to work on a show like that with people like that. Despite the bullshit with the Ivory, I'm crazy proud of that one.
And then there was one of the great thrills of my life, working on the brilliant, deeply emotional, painfully truthful High Fidelity. This was a show I think every one of us was so grateful to work on. Talk about a labor of love! To be the first people to do this show after Broadway (and arguably the first people to do it RIGHT) was awesome, but even awesomer was the show's lyricist flying in to see us and loving it! This will be one of those shows I'll never forget. It surely ranks as one of the most wonderful experiences I've ever had in the theatre. And once again, I am eternally grateful to that wonderful, playful, wildly talented cast, especially Jeff Wright, who brought such warmth and honesty to the proceedings. We kicked some fuckin' ass and the best part is everybody who saw it just fell in love with it. We actually sold out on the Fourth of July!! Who could ask for more than that?
And then there's Hair, another show we did for the third time this year. I was proud of our first two productions of Hair, but this one really was the strongest of the three. I certainly understood this crazy show this time better than I did the other times, but we also had a great cast and incredible leads in Todd Schaefer and John Sparger. And again, what a joy to work on material that good with people that good and share it with audiences who fell madly in love with it. People came back time after time -- one guy saw it ten times, others saw it four, five, six times.
Hair always reminds me the reason we make theatre -- to connect to people, to say something of value to them, and hopefully to send them out of the theatre a little wiser, a little more thoughtful, a little less confused and alone than when they came in. Hair certainly did that every night -- and to produce the show in the middle of this history-making political season was a genuine thrill. I'll never forget after the show one night early in the run, when one audience member yelled out as he was leaving, "Vote Obama! Don't let this happen again!"
Wow, huh?
It's not a metaphor, it's the truth -- the theatre is my church. It's where we go to touch God, where we celebrate the wonder of being human, where we come together in ancient rituals to make sense of our world and to connect to each other. Every day of my life I count myself lucky -- we are the tribe shamans, the tellers of stories, the revealers of Great Truths, the intermediaries between the spirit world and the physical world. And I ask you -- what could be cooler than that??? :)
Merry Christmas and thanks to all the New Liners for being part of all this joy and beauty.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
Night of the Living Show Tunes
On January 5 and 6, for two nights only, we will return to the amazing Sheldon Concert Hall for our triennial concert of show tunes, this time titled, A New Line Cabaret, Episode IV: Night of the Living Show Tunes. Catchy, huh?
This follows A New Line Cabaret in 2000, A New Line Cabaret, Episode II: Attack of the Show Tunes in 2003, and A New Line Cabaret, Episode III: When Musicals Attack in 2006. Why the smartass titles? Mostly just because they amuse me. But also because we want to make it clear that these concerts do not feature songs like "Edelweiss" or "What I Did for Love." These are not show tunes you'll hear on the stages of The Muny or Stages (well, maybe with a couple exceptions); these are show tunes that challenge, surprise, and on occasion, offend. (Probably not this time, though.)
The cast for the concert -- what I call the New Line All-Stars -- includes Mara Bollini, Nikki Glenn, Joel Hackbarth, Amy Kelly, Nicholas Kelly, Khnemu Menu-Ra, Katie Nestor, Talichia Noah, Jeffrey Pruett, John Rhine, Todd Schaefer, Deborah Sharn, Kimi Short, Margeau Steinau, Scott Tripp, and Jeffrey M. Wright. Many of these folks have performed with New Line for a long time (Deborah was in the very first New Line show in 1992), but some of them are almost brand new to us (Talichia and Margeau have each done only one show with us, and Nikki and Amy have each done only two shows with us). And then are those who we've been trying to get rid of for a while, but they just keep coming back, so what're ya gonna do...?
The song list (which still might change slightly) this time includes:
ACT I
"Our Prayer” from Brian Wilson’s Smile
“Spanish Sailing Ship” from Songs for a New World
“I Don’t Remember You” from The Happy Time
“Sometimes a Day Goes By” from Woman of the Year
“Look Over There” from La Cage aux Folles
“A Trip to the Library” from She Loves Me
“Somewhere That’s Green” from Little Shop of Horrors
“Sara Lee” from And the World Goes ‘Round
“Madeleine” from Jacques Brel
“Ready to Settle” from High Fidelity
“I Love You” from Little Me
“The Stuff” from Reefer Madness
“And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls
“Don’t Know Where You Leave Off” from Sweet Smell of Success
“Getting Married Today” from Company
ACT II
“Four Jews in a Room Bitching” from March of the Falsettos
“And They’re Off” from A New Brain
“Fathers and Sons” from Working
“The World Was Dancing” from Songs for a New World
“There’s a Fine, Fine Line” from Avenue Q
“Poor Child” from The Wild Party
“Baby, Dream Your Dream from Sweet Charity
“Unrequited Love” from Promenade
“I’m Going Home” from The Rocky Horror Show
“Vacation” / “No Holds Barred” from Pump Boys and Dinettes
“I Believe” from Spring Awakening
“Hear My Song” from Songs for a New World
“Hills of Tomorrow” from Merrily We Roll Along
Not a bad song list, huh? Having created our controversial revue last season, Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll, I'm better now at connecting songs in revues. I learned a long time ago about "routining" a revue, creating waves of up-tempo songs and ballads, company numbers and solos, etc., in other words, giving the show variety without randomness. But now I also look at thematic and emotional arcs, something most revues ignore. After an invocation ("Our Prayer") and a thematic statement of purpose ("Spanish Sailing Ship"), Act I is largely about fucked up romantic relationships, and Act II is about fucked up family relationships. But by the end, we find healing in music and in the optimism that musical theatre specializes in.
We started rehearsals last week. I can't wait to share this with an audience!
And here's a little insider info -- we're working with the Post-Dispatch to create a theatre scholarship for high school seniors planning to study theatre in college, using part of the income from the Sheldon concert. No done deal or details yet, but it looks promising...
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
This follows A New Line Cabaret in 2000, A New Line Cabaret, Episode II: Attack of the Show Tunes in 2003, and A New Line Cabaret, Episode III: When Musicals Attack in 2006. Why the smartass titles? Mostly just because they amuse me. But also because we want to make it clear that these concerts do not feature songs like "Edelweiss" or "What I Did for Love." These are not show tunes you'll hear on the stages of The Muny or Stages (well, maybe with a couple exceptions); these are show tunes that challenge, surprise, and on occasion, offend. (Probably not this time, though.)
The cast for the concert -- what I call the New Line All-Stars -- includes Mara Bollini, Nikki Glenn, Joel Hackbarth, Amy Kelly, Nicholas Kelly, Khnemu Menu-Ra, Katie Nestor, Talichia Noah, Jeffrey Pruett, John Rhine, Todd Schaefer, Deborah Sharn, Kimi Short, Margeau Steinau, Scott Tripp, and Jeffrey M. Wright. Many of these folks have performed with New Line for a long time (Deborah was in the very first New Line show in 1992), but some of them are almost brand new to us (Talichia and Margeau have each done only one show with us, and Nikki and Amy have each done only two shows with us). And then are those who we've been trying to get rid of for a while, but they just keep coming back, so what're ya gonna do...?
The song list (which still might change slightly) this time includes:
ACT I
"Our Prayer” from Brian Wilson’s Smile
“Spanish Sailing Ship” from Songs for a New World
“I Don’t Remember You” from The Happy Time
“Sometimes a Day Goes By” from Woman of the Year
“Look Over There” from La Cage aux Folles
“A Trip to the Library” from She Loves Me
“Somewhere That’s Green” from Little Shop of Horrors
“Sara Lee” from And the World Goes ‘Round
“Madeleine” from Jacques Brel
“Ready to Settle” from High Fidelity
“I Love You” from Little Me
“The Stuff” from Reefer Madness
“And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls
“Don’t Know Where You Leave Off” from Sweet Smell of Success
“Getting Married Today” from Company
ACT II
“Four Jews in a Room Bitching” from March of the Falsettos
“And They’re Off” from A New Brain
“Fathers and Sons” from Working
“The World Was Dancing” from Songs for a New World
“There’s a Fine, Fine Line” from Avenue Q
“Poor Child” from The Wild Party
“Baby, Dream Your Dream from Sweet Charity
“Unrequited Love” from Promenade
“I’m Going Home” from The Rocky Horror Show
“Vacation” / “No Holds Barred” from Pump Boys and Dinettes
“I Believe” from Spring Awakening
“Hear My Song” from Songs for a New World
“Hills of Tomorrow” from Merrily We Roll Along
Not a bad song list, huh? Having created our controversial revue last season, Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll, I'm better now at connecting songs in revues. I learned a long time ago about "routining" a revue, creating waves of up-tempo songs and ballads, company numbers and solos, etc., in other words, giving the show variety without randomness. But now I also look at thematic and emotional arcs, something most revues ignore. After an invocation ("Our Prayer") and a thematic statement of purpose ("Spanish Sailing Ship"), Act I is largely about fucked up romantic relationships, and Act II is about fucked up family relationships. But by the end, we find healing in music and in the optimism that musical theatre specializes in.
We started rehearsals last week. I can't wait to share this with an audience!
And here's a little insider info -- we're working with the Post-Dispatch to create a theatre scholarship for high school seniors planning to study theatre in college, using part of the income from the Sheldon concert. No done deal or details yet, but it looks promising...
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
President-Elect Barack Obama
Ohhhhh, now we've gone and done it!
Now everything's going to be different.
Holy shit.
ON WITH THE GROOVY REVOLUTION!
Scott
Now everything's going to be different.
Holy shit.
ON WITH THE GROOVY REVOLUTION!
Scott
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