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Anyone know anything about The Exonerated? I'm supposed to be crewing it in a couple months. Also, apparently Sondheim's started writing his two-volume autobiography.
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Jan 27, 2010 21:09
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Anyone know anything about The Exonerated? I'm supposed to be crewing it in a couple months. It's one of those boring-rear end staged-reading plays. Unless your production makes a lot of changes it's probably the easiest thing to crew ever.
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Jan 28, 2010 17:35
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Magic Hate Ball posted:'night Mother comes to mind, but that's a two-female no-male play. Miss Julie (ooh do that one) is two females, one male. I guess you could sexually invert Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice. Here's a list, here's one of all-female casts, here's one with the limit of one male and any female (so you'll get a lot of one-man shows)...the Dramatists Play Service playfinder is a good place to start. Oh, I love 'night Mother. I regret missing a chance to direct it at a small local theater. A good choice for female cast. For a much larger ensemble, The Trojan Women is almost entirely female in the main cast. There are also ensemble roles for soldiers and attendants of Menelaus, but that can always be played with. Had an English teacher tell me an all female cast did the best version of Richard III she'd ever seen. Was an RSC production, but still, a good idea if it can be pulled off. Poor Miserable Gurgi fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jan 28, 2010 |
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Jan 28, 2010 22:31
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Slashie posted:It's one of those boring-rear end staged-reading plays. Unless your production makes a lot of changes it's probably the easiest thing to crew ever. So I'm crewing it now, and it's pretty dull to listen to over and over. I'm working the flies, and since there's only two real moves (scrim out at the beginning, then a few things bunched together [all in one call, which I didn't know the first time we ran through it and caused a commotion]) I do basically nothing for almost ninety minutes. But the flying makes up for the boredom, and I've been reading plays off of the theater shelf (there are a good four, five hundred). Read Amadeus today, gave it an A+. But they don't have Merrily...
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Mar 3, 2010 10:08
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  Sondheim is pretty drat smug, with good reason.
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Mar 3, 2010 19:22
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Buggerlugs posted:On a non-musical note (see what I did there?), does anyone know of a decent play (full length) that would accomodate a mostly (as in only one guy) female cast, and isn't called Steel Magnolias? How big is your cast? You could try The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman. It's a fantastic play about two teachers at an all girls school. I want to say it's 8f 1m or something like that. A handful of the roles are for the girls at the school who I believe are aroune 10-12 or so, but it's just a fantastic play nonetheless. The movie is pretty good too. Personally, I did theatre throughout highschool and loved it. I got to student direct the senior musical, and it was a great experience. Recently I also got a job as a senior theatre technician at the local civic center, and it's a fantastic experience.
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Mar 4, 2010 00:12
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So, since Jan 5th, I've been available every Monday and Wednesday from 1-4pm for set and costume construction. Had to come in over Spring Break and finish up the set (which looks relatively nice, and my arms look muscly again!). Then I talked to the costume designer. Who wants all the costumes made. And hadn't talked to me whatsoever. She still wants everything done by hand. By Sunday. She gave me the patterns today. After two whole months. It's days like this when I hate theatre. Please tell me non-college theatre is better than this bullshit.
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Mar 7, 2010 10:19
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So far I've actually managed to read about one play per performance. Amadeus: The film is different enough to be a completely different entity. Shaffer's play is funny, sad, and totally, utterly captivating. In the opening blurb it mentions that people were lining up around the block at six in the morning to try to get whatever same-day tickets they could for it a couple weeks after the London premiere, and it's really easy to see why. Amadeus is one of the most marvellosly crafted, titillating, and scandalous plays I've read in a while. Salieri's fate is impossibly, gorgeously ironic, Mozart's degeneration is twice as heartbreaking, and the show is written to run together, which it does, like a weird, unpleasant dream. I gave it an A+ and that's why. California Suite: I'm really not sure how I feel about Neil Simon. The Odd Couple was pretty funny, I liked The Out-Of-Towners, and his humor has a certain edge, but it always feels almost too "airy", like he's pumping up the situation with a lot of words. In California Suite we get a divorced couple arguing about their unseen daughter, a businessman who finds himself in bed with a drunkenly passed-out woman (and his wife is in the elevator), an agitated British actress who is up for an Oscar for a lovely comedy and her gay husband, and a fight between two vacationing couples. A lot of it is terribly funny (and I really got a kick out of the big deal everyone makes about California, reminded me of the Los Angeles segment of Annie Hall), but it feels like there's not much behind the comedy. You laugh, you go home, you go to sleep, you make coffee, oh yeah you saw a play what was it about I dunno pass the pepper. B Equus: Another Shaffer, not quite as good as Amadeus this time but quite close. My issue with it is that it occasionally feels sort of ham-handed, the "playwright who doesn't know anything about psychiatry writes a play about psychiatry" feel. I don't know if Shaffer does, or if it's just outdated in general (the field of psychiatry has shifted a hell of a lot in the last thirty years), but its handling bugged me. Of course, Shaffer knew next to nothing about the real case, and most of the play is really, really, really good, and he went on to write a confabulatory play about Salieri killing Mozart, but those little bumps do damage. A- Don't Drink The Water: Woody Allen writes a farce. For the most part it feels like it could have been written by just about anyone, and Allen's touches are pretty sparse. It's funny in places, and I'm sure with good actors and quick timing it'd be hysterical on-stage, but it feels outdated (it's about the Cold War, and the structure is a by-the-numbers 60s farce that sometimes is above-average) and kind of flat. B- Deathtrap: Like Sleuth, but more self-referential. It is interesting how it parallels itself through most of the play, but this gimmick doesn't quite save it from feeling like every other twisty 70s murder-thriller (I didn't like Sleuth, either). I will admit that I couldn't put it down, and I'm sure that seeing it live enhances the suspense (and occasional comedy), but it just doesn't quite work for me. Of course, reading a thriller play isn't quite the same as seeing one ("He is interrupted by a hand strangling his neck" just doesn't pack much of a punch) so it gets a nice little... B It's fun reading plays.
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Mar 7, 2010 11:19
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Four more performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream and it's over. It's my first time as a stage manager (I've ASMed before) and it's been a long god drat show. We had to take a break after our first week for SETC, so I got back from Lexington and then hey it's time for a speedthrough, really early 7am call school matinees, and loving photo call. This show's given me C's in all my classes, but I'll have one hell of a cued script for the next SETC job fair.
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Mar 11, 2010 05:08
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Black Comedy: Peter Shaffer's British class-system farce. It's a really vicious play, with nasty characters and awful things happening, and a properly unpleasant ending. Things get hosed up, and it's great. What makes it work is probably the nastiness of the characters. None of these people are people you'd want to spend ten minutes with, probably. The main character is a backstabbing cheat, his fiancee says things like "sexipegs" and talks about "daddy", her "daddy" is a crazy military man, the neighbor across the hall turns out to be halfway to looney-land, so on and so forth. The play's gimmick is that it takes place during a blackout, but the stage lights are up full blast when the lights are "out", which means we get to watch the characters stumble around blindly. This, of course, is where the "class-system" part comes in, as the characters desperately try to remain civil, polite, and in their place; at one point three characters awkwardly carry on a cocktail conversation, each pointed in the wrong direction. It's pretty good. However, it's also terribly dated, and frankly I couldn't imagine this being played as anything but a 60s period piece. But that's fine. It's a very funny 60s period piece, and it works in that restriction. The bigger problem, I think, is the same problem that I have with 70s twisty mysteries, and that's simply that the "farce" genre has been exhausted. Everyone is familiar with the booby traps that snare the characters in Black Comedy. There is nothing in this play that hasn't shown up in, say, Friends or Three's Company. It seems to depend entirely on the actors' ability to play physical comedy, which is a good and bad thing: with great actors, I can only imagine that Black Comedy is gut-bustingly hysterical, but with bad actors it can only crumble. B+/A-
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Mar 11, 2010 09:09
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So, my university might put on "The Laramie Project" next semester (read that to mean I'll be directing it or designing it). And we might also be doing "Noises Off!". Now I know what both are, kind of, and I'm waiting for them in the mail so I can read them. Just wondering what opinions were, if you guys had done either show and had stories, advice, and general knowledge?
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Mar 11, 2010 15:57
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The Pillowman posted:So, my university might put on "The Laramie Project" next semester (read that to mean I'll be directing it or designing it). And we might also be doing "Noises Off!". Now I know what both are, kind of, and I'm waiting for them in the mail so I can read them. Just wondering what opinions were, if you guys had done either show and had stories, advice, and general knowledge? I was in Noises Off once in summer stock. It's bland and pleasant enough. It can actually be pretty funny if you have a good cast. If you've never directed or designed a farce before, you're going to need to do some research on that. Farces live and die by the set, and the acting style generally needs to be a little more pantomime than modern actors try for. Also, I read Black Comedy when I was hanging out in a theater reading through their stack of old plays as a youth. Memories...
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Mar 11, 2010 17:11
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Slashie posted:I was in Noises Off once in summer stock. It's bland and pleasant enough. It can actually be pretty funny if you have a good cast. If you've never directed or designed a farce before, you're going to need to do some research on that. Farces live and die by the set, and the acting style generally needs to be a little more pantomime than modern actors try for. For Noises Off! I'll definitely be costume designing. With the Laramie Project, I'll either be directing (and designing, because it's really hard for me not to do both) or just designing it while a friend of mine directs. The nice thing about Noises Off! is that its for the Theatre Department, so it means that we'll have a professional director. The Laramie Project is being put on by the Queers and Allies group next semester as a fundraiser type deal.
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Mar 11, 2010 18:50
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I wish I'd been around at my school when they did Noises Off. It's vanilla and fun, if you get the timing exactly right. But that's true of all farces. The thing about this play that was drilled into my head by my professor is that the set has to be exactly right, with the doors just so, or the whole thing won't work. The film is good, and great as an adaptation. Has a tacked on 'happy' ending, though. Like the reviews, Magic Hate Ball. Was in Amadeus recently, and definitely agree with the review. It's too bad the production was overwrought in a few places, and didn't quite get the flow of the script down as it should have. The writing really speeds along in that one. Equus is another favorite, too. Just love Shaffer in general. Had to do Don't Drink the Water a few years ago. I don't think the director was familiar at all with Allen's comedy, or the concept of subtlety in general. Good lord, that was a painful production.
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Mar 17, 2010 03:34
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Three last plays (The Exonerated is over): Plaza Suite: Far better than California. Simon has a really interesting way with words, the idea being that people tend to talk a lot without saying much, and then he puts characters in situations where they have to communicate (or they don't and everything collapses), and when he's really good his writing has a pretty sharp edge that elevates it above your normal wordy farce. California fails because the humor is bland and the characters are limp, but Plaza succeeds because the characters really pop out and the humor stings. I can't remember who said it but there's a great quote about Company that goes something like "We wanted people to laugh their heads off for two hours then go home and not be able to sleep", and two of the three short plays here hit that pretty hard. The one that misses is the final (shortest) play, which suffers from a worn-out plot (parents fret about soon-to-be-wed offspring's cold feet) and a too-neat punchline that doesn't really fit in with the rest of the show, but the slapstick is pretty good and much of the writing is really excellent. It seems like an odd arrangement, but I'm sure it pleases the audience. A-/B+ Nine: Meh. Wandering music, iffy plot. I guess it could be fun live, and certainly the videos I've seen of the original production are spirited, but it lacks cohesion. I haven't seen the recent film adaptation (yet), but Ebert describes the songs as "boilerplate", which is really fitting. Occasionally there are flashes of inspiration, mostly when the music takes an Italian bent, but for the most part it sounds like just about any subpar musical out there. The text is okay, usually serving to get to the next song and making a framework of references to Fellini's film. There are some good ideas, though, mostly in presentation; the white-tile spa setting with a blue sky background, the orchestra of women (this show could make a great use of a revolve), white-on-black. It's just too airy. The book expects the music to bear the brunt of the show and vice versa. Maybe I'm spoiled by Sondheim. C The Royal Hunt Of The Sun: I'll preface this by saying that it took me two full performances to read this and I don't think I've even begun to scratch the surface. It's similar to Amadeus and Equus in that the subject matter is fairly extraordinary (the Spanish rape of the Inca empire), and that he loads the play up with all kinds of issues. Shaffer manages to cover life, death, wealth, happiness, socialism (and I guess you could read it as communism), evil, greed, religion, it's insane. It's extraordinary. I loved every word of it. The Incas are set up as this mystical empire, and when we finally get there every word of it is true. They really do have gold coming out of their ears. There's a fantastic passage describing a golden garden, made of gold. Trees of gold, fruit of gold, golden butterflies hanging on silver threads. A golden family of llamas. The Spaniards whisk it all away, but suffer greatly for it. Like Amadeus and Equus, we're lead by the narrator from the future, though the temporal play isn't as inventive as it is in Amadeus (where elderly Salieri tells the audience, from his own time, how the audience will eventually, after waiting in the netherworld and eventually being born, know the joys of Mozart), but it is necessary as a framing device. There's also some really great staging with a huge golden sun that opens up to reveal the royal court (the petals are eventually ripped off and melted down, leaving a dead black metal frame) and a curtain of blood that signifies the massacre of a thousand. The Royal Hunt Of The Sun is a solid gold cornucopia of arresting concepts and intriguing ideas, a bombastic fable, and a generally all-around stunning piece of art. A+
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Mar 17, 2010 05:17
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I'd recommend seeing Nine only for Marion Cotillard. The plot is just as jumbled and Daniel Day-Lewis isn't likeable enough to pull the show together. Costumes as always are beautiful. I'm seeing 39 Steps on Thursday at the Alley Theater. They usually do good stuff, and even if the the play sucks, the designs of everything is good enough to keep me entertained.
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Mar 17, 2010 06:36
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Practical Demon posted:Like the reviews, Magic Hate Ball. Was in Amadeus recently, and definitely agree with the review. It's too bad the production was overwrought in a few places, and didn't quite get the flow of the script down as it should have. The writing really speeds along in that one. The "lightbox" was a really interesting idea. I think it'd be hard to manage Amadeus without believably ostentatious period clothes and furniture. What kind of problems, specifically, did the production have? The Pillowman posted:I'd recommend seeing Nine only for Marion Cotillard. The plot is just as jumbled and Daniel Day-Lewis isn't likeable enough to pull the show together. Costumes as always are beautiful. Rob Marshall's an interesting director, and I guess it's nice to have someone bringing Broadway to the cinema. I've got a major interest in film, so whenever I read/see a play I've always got that background noise of "how could this play out on screen", and Nine definitely seems like it'd make a spectacle. There are some musicals that just wouldn't translate, I think, including several of Sondheim's (Company, especially, as it relies on being sort of amorphous in presentation). It's odd that they've never done a film of Les Miserables.
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Mar 17, 2010 08:53
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We had a great set and rather good rented costumes mixed with some period dresses the university already had. Pretty good in all. My main problem was the director and that his focus seemed to drift and settle on areas that didn't seem at all important. Our Mozart decided to imitate Tom Hulce's laugh, and the director actually encouraged this. Salieri was also split in two, 'old' and 'young'. The director played the old version and barely learned his lines. The monologus were subject to change at every performance. Young Salieri was a friend and a great actor. I saw him struggle a long time with the monologue about Salieri's betrayal by God and accepting his fate as God's enemy. Then, one night it clicked and I saw something beautiful. The director's notes were "make it bigger and more over the top menacing". Then he had the sound people stick in bell chimes and thunder crashes. What could have been the best moment in the play was ruined. Still miffed about that.
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Mar 17, 2010 15:12
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The Pillowman posted:I'd recommend seeing Nine only for Marion Cotillard. The plot is just as jumbled and Daniel Day-Lewis isn't likeable enough to pull the show together. Costumes as always are beautiful. 39 Steps is a great comedy but I just wanted to say your username is one of my favorite plays of all time.
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Mar 19, 2010 04:05
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Slashie posted:It's one of those boring-rear end staged-reading plays. Unless your production makes a lot of changes it's probably the easiest thing to crew ever. I know this was a little while ago, but I found out recently that our production did make a lot of changes. It wasn't a hard show to crew, at least backstage (we had 334 cues, most of them lights) but there was quite a bit going on and it was actually very active, which I hear is quite different from how it was originally staged (reading from music stands). Actually, it got a little hectic for me backstage towards the end when I had like six really heavy things to fly in and out really, really slowly. Edit: A production photo from Merrily We Roll Along that would be boring and completely forgettable if it were not for the fact that that's Jason Alexander on the right:  ...apparently Jason Alexander was a stud. I had no idea. Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Apr 11, 2010 |
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Apr 11, 2010 05:07
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There's not a tune you can hum. There's not a tune you go bum-bum-bum-di-dum. You need a tune you can bum-bum-bum-di-dum — Give me a melody! Why can't you throw 'em a crumb? What's wrong with letting 'em tap their toes a bit? I'll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit — Give me some melody! It really is one of Sondheim's best musicals, it's a shame it "flopped". The ironic thing is that he set out to write a more accessible score, which I think he succeeded in. Unfortunately I think the quasi-autobiographical subject matter was too indulgent. The audiences can get past the backwards narrative, but the story about the struggling artist probably isn't accessible enough to a mass audience.
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Apr 11, 2010 16:50
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I still haven't been able to actually read or see it so I have to go off of what other people tell me and vague summaries. It seems like if someone were to take it and give it an overhaul it could really work, though you're right about the basic subject matter (apparently the book was particularly bad). That's what they were trying to overcome in their casting young adults and doing a "high school" set (literally, it was made up to look like a high school gymnasium) which is kind of a good idea but not quite, though it might have worked if they hadn't been so literal about it (it looked like crap). Of course, the stupid thing's seen like four makeovers so maybe it's just a bad show but I'm a romanticist. There's just something about the music that says "I'm awesome", particularly the orchestrations (that gnawing electric keyboard in Franklin Shepard Inc., the way Rich And Happy explodes in the final quarter, the arrangements surrounding the last performance of The Hills Of Tomorrow). It's too drat good to be a curious flop. Sondheim's music always has the best orchestrations, at least on the original cast recordings when the orchestra was huge because you get all these wonderful things that pop up and out at you when you least expect them. That's what, to me, separates Sondheim's music from the music of so many other Broadway composers. There's nothing simplistic about it whatsoever, the vocal melody and the score are always working together to form counterpoints and harmonies and there's always so much buried in what, in too many other shows, is just the background noise for the singer. Basically what I'm saying is "omg stephen sondheim". Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 11, 2010 |
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Apr 11, 2010 17:41
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I'm in the same boat as you, Magic Hate Ball; my knowledge of the show comes from cast recordings and summaries. It seems to me that part of the problem is that the show just tells the audience "this is what happened," but doesn't do anything with it. Having the show end with "Our Time" strikes me as a poor decision because, while it's a great song, it doesn't really serve any other purpose in that context than to be ironic. It's a downer ending where it isn't needed (I have nothing against downer endings when they're used properly; this just doesn't feel like a show that should have one.) In my mind, the show is basically an extended flashback from the perspective of Older Frank; he remembers how he "got there from here." At the start of the show, Frank is bitter and resentful because his life has gone to crap. The story unfolds as he tries to figure out just what went wrong. "Our Time" is the moment where he finally realizes that he let down both his friends and himself. That's why it's crucial to return to Older Frank at the end: it completes the story. While Younger Frank moves backward, Older Frank moves forward. Older Frank not only needs to realize what went wrong, but also to have changed. On the Original Broadway Cast Recording, during the "Hills of Tomorrow" reprise at the end, he pays credit to Charley, showing (to me) that he was finally taking steps to improve himself and his situation.
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Apr 11, 2010 19:44
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I think that that's a good point, and would give the show a huge boost. From what I know, by the way, that's Young Frank crediting Charley during the Hills reprise. If we were to return to the present to properly acknowledge that Frank regrets what he's done, then there would not only be a conclusion but a rounder, more sympathetic main character. Our Time could certainly serve as a vehicle to return to the present: Young Frank is replaced by Old Frank and he comes downstage alone singing Our Time, and watches the Hills reprise from the side of the stage. Or something, I'm just freely hypothesizing but you have a really good point.
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Apr 11, 2010 21:59
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I'm awfully fond of Into the Woods since I used to watch it every day when I was a little kid. Also, the original cast recordings with the whole orchestra are great, but the 2006 version of Sweeney Todd with Patty LuPone and Michel Cerveris that had the actors playing all the instruments as well was incredible and I much prefer that version to the Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury one. Is anyone here familiar with The Pitchfork Disney by Philip Ridley? A friend asked me to stage manage it, which means that I'll be designing the set as well as calling cues because that's what stage managers do at my company. I can't for the life of me find a copy of it for sale anywhere (except in a very expensive anthology of Ridley's work) but it looks great.
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Apr 11, 2010 23:04
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Magic Hate Ball posted:
I suppose you would have to give some credit to Jonathan Tunick then, as he has orchestrated most of Sondheim's work since Company. Sondheim is indeed in a league of his own, though. I can't think of another genre of art where one person basically dominated the field, the way Sondheim did for the 20 or so years between Company and Into the Woods. Another recent example, that is.
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Apr 11, 2010 23:19
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Magic Hate Ball posted:I think that that's a good point, and would give the show a huge boost. From what I know, by the way, that's Young Frank crediting Charley during the Hills reprise. If we were to return to the present to properly acknowledge that Frank regrets what he's done, then there would not only be a conclusion but a rounder, more sympathetic main character. Our Time could certainly serve as a vehicle to return to the present: Young Frank is replaced by Old Frank and he comes downstage alone singing Our Time, and watches the Hills reprise from the side of the stage. Or something, I'm just freely hypothesizing but you have a really good point. Listening to it now, both Franks credit Charley, although only Young Frank continues after saying his name.
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Apr 11, 2010 23:24
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Well I am a tech anyone else here like to build em or light em?
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Apr 19, 2010 21:12
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antiloquax posted:Essentially, you want to be doing this: Improv geeks, represent.. I perform in and work admin for a improv company in NZ. Also studying theatre at uni, primarily to support my improvising. This here (above) is a pretty hard and fast rule for an art that really has very few hard and fast rules  IMO, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre and Impro for Story tellers (both by Keith Johnstone) are the best things to read first, the former for theory and the latter for actual practical games and exercises. Another good book for someone starting out, or someone looking to teach, would be be the Improv Handbook by Tom Salinsky and Deborah Francis-White, who are a couple who run the Spontaneity Shop out of London. It's really good for easing you into it all. The thing about the rules of improv are that as soon as you know them and know how to play within them.. you don't have to any more. The best set of 'rules' I was given were: Be Postive. Say 'yes'. Say 'yes, and...' Be normal. Establish platform - if you don't know where/who you are or why, how will you know where the scene goes? To refer back to the method you mentioned above, making a strong choice before you go on can be helpful if you're struggling to create strong characters. But if you walk on as a demented pirate and your partner endows you as a dentist, then you got to change Maybe we should have an improv thread...
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Apr 21, 2010 12:59
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MerylNZ posted:But if you walk on as a demented pirate and your partner endows you as a dentist, then you got to change I would just play a demented pirate who happened to be a dentist if that happened, and then I'd never work with that partner again because they're a poo poo head. It happens a LOT in auditions, though. Not just for fledgling improv troupes, either - Second City auditions and things like that. You get people trying to tell their partner what they are/what they're after, and that's that, everyone on stage is hosed. I have a friend who lost out on a decent part because the other actor decided that he (as in my friend) was a paedophile. A thread about audition horror stories might be fairly interesting, actually.
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Apr 21, 2010 15:46
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Ah I should have clarified, I meant if you go on thinking 'right I'll be a pirate' and right before you get into the improv your partner says 'So doctor what do you think of this abcess in my jaw' - then you are now a dentist. If you've already established that you're a pirate, then by all means they should be listening! But if they don't, what's better for the scene - you insisting that your reality is the correct one and making it into an argument between the actors, or you switching gears, accepting their offer, and letting the scene continue? If you can find the game in "oh I'm sorry you've mistaken me for a dentist" then cool beans, but if not then it's really a case of being the bigger improvisor and helping the scene There's a game loosely called 'Good Improvisor/Bad Improvisor' where one person accepts everything and the other blocks everything. If the person accepting really and honestly says 'yes and' to everything you can't even tell that they're being blocked. I do know that Second City and the iO operate with a slightly different style and approach to those that work with the Loose Moose philosophy, which means I'm probably comparing completely different approaches... I also have never had to audition for a troupe, the one I work in is a community based group that caters to beginners and up so if you're doing good you move up and if you need more work there are classes you can keep taking.
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Apr 22, 2010 00:50
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You just switch your energy a little. Take on the fact that you're a dentist, or whatever, but don't drop the choice you've made. It's a compromise, but it can lead to some funny scenes. If you make a choice stepping forward, like "Ok, I'm going to limp and have a lisp, and be really angry," and your partner made a reference to you being a doctor, you would be a doctor, but you would be an angry doctor with a speech impediment. If you decide you're going to be a mean mother in law, you would still be a mean mother in law, you'd just be a doctor, too. And so on. I've heard it said that the scene doesn't really start until the second line, which is something to think about.
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Apr 22, 2010 01:21
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I made these for the iconized album art thread:    They're so cute. 
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May 4, 2010 09:09
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Speaking of Into the Woods, has the pumpkin carraige ever been staged? Like, ever? I can't imagine a TD in his or her right mind who would waste time and money on such an elaborate set unit that gets two seconds of stage time. And I think it was you who turned me onto Pacific Overtures, Magic Hate Ball. I watched the recording on Youtube and it's now my favorite Sondheim show. Thanks. On a more egotistical front, I get to do sound design for our Children's Theatre production (The King of Ireland's Son). What I have in mind right now is working in Whiskey in a Jar wherever I can, into a completely ambient soundtrack. We used to have a Wildlife Biologist grad student hang out with us and he'd play that all the time. We're getting a ten-channel soundboard next semester and I'm hoping to get my own laptop and MIDI controller this summer to run it on. I already have Ableton Live and I've been playing with it some and I want to get our flute player to record the melody of some Irish folk tunes. I'm so excited about this show.
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May 31, 2010 20:41
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I've always favored the "skeleton" pumpkin, though that probably wouldn't fly in some productions. Depends on how the overall show is done. Also yeah, Pacific Overtures is totally awesome. I blind-bought it from a 50-cent bin at the local record store, it had a full-sized lyrics book with pictures and a plot outline. It was the first time I'd actually sat down and done nothing but listen to a record. Blew me the gently caress away. It's nice that it's at least on tape, too, even if it's not in great condition. poo poo, I've never even seen a proper picture of the original Company set.
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Jun 1, 2010 02:20
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What area you work in, Hate Ball?
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Jun 1, 2010 21:01
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I took 12 years off from doing theater for various reasons and got sucked back in last year. I ended up playing Charlie Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown for my community theater, got talked into getting on the board for the group, and am directing Little Shop of Horrors for them this summer. I'm looking at having to go job hunting this summer after 10 years being miserable in a call center and am seriously considering going back to school to get into performing professionally since its become quite clear that whether I make money at it or not, I need to be on stage to be healthy. Another thing to love about Sondheim: He doesn't write for bizarre voices. All of his shows I've heard have been scored for definite ranges, but there are no bizarre high A's out of nowhere or anything. Someone like Andrew Lloyd Weber would take a song like, say Into the Woods' "Agony" and pop parts of it up an octave for no real reason. If there's a super high note in a Sondheim show its because it has to be there. It isn't because he's boinking some chick who can belt out a high C and wants to write a part around her. Sunday in the Park With George is basically my dream show. I'm laying a groundwork now to make it possible for us to do it a few years from now. Selfish? Possibly. Do I care? No.
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Jun 1, 2010 21:14
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That's a good point about Sondheim, that he writes for the show. I love the OBCs, too, because he was working very directly with the show and so you get vocal choices that fit the role. I hate when a song is all about how great some chick can belt, just as much as I hate when a show has scenery that's just scenery (Wicked gets a hit from both categories), and if you listen to the OBCs you'll get a lot of character, but without the great-voice-pop-star front. I mean, most of Pacific Overtures is like that, as well as Follies, and with A Little Night Music you get stylized old-fashioned accents, or the genuine-sounding dirty old men who populate A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. It's fantastic, but it's lost in a lot of the revivals (the recent Night Music has some absurd singing). Then again Sondheim approves of the revivals, so either he's getting on or it was someone else's influence in the first place. And Sunday is just an incredible show in every respect. Why selfish? Franz is at least half wrong... Edit: I will say that the recent revival of Night Music uses its small orchestra really well in some places, becoming a quintet or a music box, but then you get to songs like A Weekend In The Country and it's just crushed not only under the company's voices but the song itself. Wolfgang Pauli posted:What area you work in, Hate Ball? Just going to community college, so the pumpkin thing is theoretical. I hate it when they try to make a cardboard pumpkin, because that means they're going the wrong way with the wrong materials. A production with no money would probably be better off suggesting things, which is where the pumpkin "skeleton" comes in. Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Jun 1, 2010 |
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Jun 1, 2010 21:29
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I don't like using cardboard. It has its uses, but I can usually find something that works better and doesn't require as much work. Cardboard warps like a motherfucker the second it touches paint or Kilz and you can always see it. For a wagon like the pumpkin, I don't see it working. You could probably do the facade thing with a flat on wheels with a fixed jack for support, but really it'd just be a waste of lumber and lauan. I wish Sondheim, and music theatre composers altogether, would vary ranges more than they do. I have a friend who pretty much can't get a leading role for another twenty years because the only leads in her range require a woman at least in her forties.
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Jun 2, 2010 03:30
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 10:38 |
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:I wish Sondheim, and music theatre composers altogether, would vary ranges more than they do. I have a friend who pretty much can't get a leading role for another twenty years because the only leads in her range require a woman at least in her forties. Speaking as someone who likes to write musicals as a hobby, I have to say that writing songs for women can be excruciatingly difficult, although that may owe in part to my very limited knowledge of the capabilities of the female voice. What is your friend's range? On the subject of writing for voices in general, I tend to write (and prefer to write) the leads for actors who can sing, while the supporting roles are for singers who can act.
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Jun 5, 2010 05:01
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