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"Merrily" is a pretty bad play I think, and I don't think it's ever worked on stage. But some of those songs are pretty incredible. I had a gigantic phase where I was really into "Merrily" when I was like 15. The original cast recording is great -- apparently they were all pissed because their show had been panned and closed so fast, and they recorded it the day after closing. So they put all their energy into KILLING the cast recording, and you can tell.
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Oct 28, 2009 19:18
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I could go into a lot of detail (since at one point I knew pretty much everything about that show) but the main issue is pretty much that Frank is an rear end in a top hat when you meet him, so it takes until halfway through the show until you sympathize with him or understand where he's coming from. (For those who are unfamiliar, the show runs backwards in time). Also, the plot lines are rather thin and have never been satisfactorily addressed -- basically it consists of "Frank is a sellout!" "No I'm not!" "But you said you'd never give up your dreams!" It gets preachy at times, when it's coherent at all. Really great score though -- "Opening Doors," "Our Time," "Franklin Shepard Inc.," "Not A Day Goes By." Really good overture too, if you like that sort of thing. Here, here is a "Merrily" present for you:  The problem with most Sondheim shows is they get dominated by him because he IS a great songwriter, and he was such a force of nature in his heyday (70s-80s). So the shows end up being all about the great Sondheim songs, and not so much about the SHOW being a good piece of theater. Even something as good as "A Little Night Music" has a very flimsy book -- particularly Henrik and Anne are pretty badly written. (Charlotte is terrific, though). "Sweeney Todd" is really well constructed and definitely the best of his shows, and even the other FANTASTIC shows of his that I adore ("Sunday...", "Into The Woods," "Company," and "Follies") have flaws. I'm also actually a "Pacific Overtures" fan, but it's very weird and sort of bad in certain ways. I actually liked the Roundabout revival, too.
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Oct 31, 2009 06:16
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Hello, theater thread! I don't mean to crosspost too intensely but I finally posted the ask/tell thread that I have been thinking about for a while: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3425068 I have worked on a few Broadway shows and a bunch of other regional/tour type stuff, especially musicals. If any theater fans or students or other curious types have any questions about Broadway or anything, I'll try to answer. And if there are any other theater professional goons, drop me a line or join in the question-answering!
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Jul 15, 2011 03:30
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Magic Hate Ball posted:. It is a very good play, but it was a MAGNIFICENT production. The second act in particular was basically perfect. It doesn't feel particularly melodramatic in the theater, at least until the third act, and by then it's earned it. It was 3 and a half hours. I saw it three times.
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Aug 7, 2011 07:04
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RebBrownies posted:Some Good Grad Programs : Yale, Julliard, Emerson, Boston Conservatory, Ithaca... Juilliard doesn't have a graduate acting program. Also, as a general rule, I don't know why anyone would care about GPA when applying to a theater grad program. If you're getting an MFA degree and they're accepting you based on the fact that you got a couple of Bs instead of a couple of Cs in undergrad classes rather than some belief by the person/people who run the program in you as a creative individual and artist, I'd say there is a big problem. (Unless you have bad grades and it's symptomatic of being a bad student and not being able to actually do well in a decent MFA program, which I suppose would be a legitimate concern) Alaemon posted:I don't have first-hand knowledge of either of these, but I heard both in undergrad. They're both West Side Story anecdotes, but I don't know if it's the same production or what. There are dozens of anecdotes about that moment in West Side Story, most of them probably made up, but all of them hilarious. My favorite is the story of when the actor playing Chino forgets the gun, but doesn't realize until he's onstage with Tony. So, in the moment, he decides to run over and strangle Tony to death. Tony dies violently and gruesomely. Then, when Maria is giving her final speech, of course she can't refer to the unused gun. So she yells at the crowd of Jets and Sharks... "How many fingers, Chino? Enough for YOU? Enough for YOU??" Rashomon fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Aug 27, 2011 |
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Aug 27, 2011 05:55
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rantmo posted:I hate stories like this for two reasons. The first being the level of unprofessionalism displayed. Forgetting a loving prop, especially one that you should have had safety-checked and test fired earlier in the evening is about the sort of thing that should keep you from getting hired anywhere. Secondly, any sort of improvised violence is incredibly dangerous. There are so many things that could go wrong and could lead to permanent injury. Never, ever do that at a show, rehearsal or an audition.  Presumably these stories (which are incidentally about 99% likely to be total fiction) are happening at high schools or community theaters. No need to rage at imaginary 15 year olds.
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Aug 28, 2011 05:28
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Golden Bee posted:Play got purchased AGAIN, this time by an Australian theater. I am officially an international playwright. This owns, congrats! Named Ashamed posted:Anyone have any suggestions on good summer programs or internships for Playwriting (primary interest) or Direction (close second)? Or, any really solid internships in general for theatre? The best directing summer program is probably Williamstown. I don't speak from personal experience, just reputation.
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Sep 20, 2011 04:13
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Opening the show I'm the associate director of tomorrow...my hand aches from writing cards for everyone! Pray that we don't get panned.
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Dec 11, 2011 07:13
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Ksrugi posted:I just had my first audition in New York. No matter how many you go through, you always get those nerves. In my case, I get that thought, "That sucked, I sucked, oh God why am I doing this to myself?" right after. It's exactly like "Climbing Uphill" from The Last Five Years. But after all that settled, my first audition wasn't a bad one. Just gotta kick back and wish for the best for now. If by "kick back and wish for the best" you mean "go to about 300 more auditions" then you are on the right track!
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Dec 17, 2011 18:38
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In The Bushes posted:Are any of you half decent directors? Do you know any looking for paid work? If there's a chance you can fly me in from NYC, I'll send you my resume. What's the play and what's the theater company?
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Apr 30, 2012 02:03
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T-Bone posted:thing Since you asked, it seems to me like a boring Writing 101 assignment, or maybe what passes for "artsy" for a midnight show at a medium sized state university. We learn nothing about the main two characters, they exist in a writerly void in a generic black wash of blandness. Theater is about human beings in conflict with each other, but there isn't really any conflict here, until the prostitute tries to get her payment, and even that results in the guy has no money at all; he exists alone in a sea of nothing. The opening speech is terrible, overblown, and most of all boring. The "John" and "Jane" scene looks like a desperate attempt to make the play deep through large gestures that make no sense and are totally unearned. (LOVE! SEX! DEATH!!!!!) Same with the other thing where a "narrator" shows up; it seems like it's just trying to be 'edgy' cause OH MAN TALKING ABOUT SPERM! I don't mean to be an rear end in a top hat but this really isn't the kind of tree you should be barking up if you want to write plays. You're not Caryl Churchill or Samuel Beckett [yet]; You're not good enough [yet] to throw arbitrary formal gestures or symbols out and have them work. Write five plays that use a conventional one- or two-act structure. Give them characters that want things from each other but can't get them. There's even a good germ of an idea here; a play about a playwright who hires a prostitute to read his plays is potentially interesting! But we have to actually know things like, why does he hire the prostitute (he has no friends? he is embarrassed about his writing? he is in France and doesn't know anyone else who speaks English?), what kind of world is he in (is it modern? Is it 19th century Europe? Is it a fantasy world? If so, what are the qualities of this fantasy world that affect his behavior vis-a-vis what he wants?), etc. If you want some inspiration, some goon was distributing "The Whale" earlier on this page; it's a brilliant play and probably the best one I've come across in 3-4 years ("Circle Mirror Transformation" being the next most recent brilliant play I've read or seen). Read it.
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Jul 14, 2012 00:54
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T-Bone posted:Thank you. I had an (apparently bad) reaction to the Pacific Playwrights Festival, which featured many lifeless, cookie cutter plays written by MFAs that ascribe to the type of conventions (not saying those conventions are bad in and of themselves) you're talking about, and which prompted me to try something wildly different. By all means, defend your play if you like! All I'm doing is offering an opinion. ("I wouldn't ask you to change a single word. Who am I? Some vain Broadway LEGEND!") The truth is, the bones of theater are ALWAYS in interpersonal interaction. It's humans living out aesthetically shaped relationships right in front of us. Without getting too fussy about it, that's the aesthetics of what theater IS. So you have to have some baseline of human experience changing over time due to interaction with other humans -- some struggle for a person to get what they want. Otherwise it's unrecognizable as a theatrical experience, and more importantly, it's boring as gently caress to watch. So no matter what you're writing -- whether it's the Orestia or "Waiting For Godot" or "The Rivals" or "America Hurrah", it has to have that as the basis. For what it's worth, I love formal and subject-matter experiments. I'm a big fan of Samuel Beckett's bizarre, short plays like "Play" and "What Where". They're really brilliant and very powerful. Or, take the greatest play of at least the last 30 or so years, "Angels In America". It strolls along being relatively realistic (people meeting in dreams notwithstanding) and suddenly at the end of the first play A GODDAMN ANGEL CRASHES THROUGH THE CEILING. Like, that is literally what happens. And then a good chunk of the second play is spent with the main character literally in heaven (a place that looks a lot like San Francisco) arguing with the Angels that represent the continents of the world about God and humanity. It's really bizarre as gently caress. Or Caryl Churchill as I mentioned, who often has strange alternate personalities, characters written to be performed by actors of mismatched gender and race, crossing time and space in non-literal ways to suit her whims. But she's really absurdly gifted, so her plays are first rate. I don't know if you saw "August: Osage County", but its success was that it did what it did (a big old fashioned American family play) really well, while hitting pretty deep [melo]drama as well as very hilarious comedy at the same time. And it helped that it had a really magnificent and exquisitely directed and performed Broadway production. Also, I just want to throw out there my personal recommendation that you should ABSOLUTELY read about aesthetics if you are interested in learning about why art works the way it does, but particularly where plays are concerned be very careful of being misled because a lot of it is dumb. When I was in drama school I saw plenty of bad productions that happened because people had read something by someone important that they took as gospel. "Poetics" is neat and obviously seminal, but a lot of it is just wrong. And Brecht is really dangerous because Brecht had sort of silly and bad ideas about how audience members experience theater (most of all his idea that people can't think and feel emotions at the same time). Brecht is important because he wrote a bunch of really good plays, not because of his theory (as much as people just LOVE to talk about alienation/Verfremdung etc. in drama school cause it's just so edgy). You'd learn more about plays by reading Sophocles and Euripides and Brecht than studying theory, I think. I say this as someone who has read a lot of aesthetics, mostly for fun. The best writer on aesthetics in the last ~50 years is probably Susanne Langer. She predates postmodernism mostly, but if you want a solid way to think about what art IS she's a wonderful writer, and pretty easy to read. "Feeling and Form" is excellent. (And Wolfgang is right, learning a poo poo ton about how plays have been structured over the last two or three thousand years is an amazing tool because you can't run until you walk, and you can't break the rules in an effective way unless you have a really deep understanding of what they are and how they got to be that way) I agree that a lot of "realistic" plays can err towards the boring and mediocre, and I applaud you for erring in the direction of the interesting. The point is, though, they are both errors. I guess my question is, what is it about the guy-and-the-prostitute story that just screams "this doesn't need to be in a conventional and easily understandable storytelling structure"? Usually, except in rare cases of the best writers like Tony Kushner, Edward Albee, Caryl Churchill, many of the absurdists, etc., weird structural poo poo is code for "this story isn't interesting if it's told conventionally, but maybe if I tell it in a REALLY SUPER COOL NEW WAY I can trick people into thinking it's good!" I am not accusing you of being in that category, but I have seen things that really do approach it that way. "Play" is a sort of a good example of this (and what I imagine that form-obsessed writers are going for), except it's an amazing play due to a few things: Beckett's sheer force of will and almost absurd faculty with language; the truth of the really simple and disturbing image of putting the three characters inside urns (  ), the fact that the relationships are simple and there's not a lot of complexity or facts we need to understand, and the play mostly expounds in a visceral way about the experience of their relationships. In other words, Beckett transcends these issues with this kind of writing by JUST BEING THAT loving GOOD. It's something we can all aspire to.Fun theater effort posting ITT!
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Jul 16, 2012 06:46
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Also, remember that "realism" doesn't really mean what we've been saying in this context -- in the theater, "realism" was a really specific movement in the late 19th/early 20th century. And part of why that theory was rejected is because it just doesn't hold up. No matter how hard you try, dialogue in a play is always shaped by an authorial voice (among other things). So, congrats -- there is no more reality necessarily in "realism" than in the strangest nonsensical play. Characters that exist without context can certainly be effective (see: Vladimir and Estragon) but you sure as hell have to make sure what they're doing right in front of us is compelling and active in a way that we don't care about what we don't know and are still interested in the future. In a way, past events ARE unimportant to a play, except insofar as they are an engine to drive the action FORWARD. Another thing I just remembered: probably the best book I've read on dramatic structure is Backwards and Forwards. It's really smart and amazingly concise (like, 100 pages). I highly recommend it.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:02
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If there are any New Yorkers thinking about seeing something in FringeNYC this year but overwhelmed by the 200 options, I directed a play that's opening this weekend. PM me if you want info!
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Aug 9, 2012 00:37
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Read stuff by English guys named Peter such as Peter Hall's book "Exposed by the Mask" and "The Empty Space" by Peter Brook. And read their other books if you have time. Also read the David Ball book that I mentioned earlier on this page, "Backwards and Forwards." Read "Towards a Poor Theater." If you like Viewpoints or want to learn about them, read Tina Landau/Anne Bogart's book, it's one of the few real "schools" of creating work that has a style and method of training that directors actually learn. (I'm not into it myself, but a lot of people are). That's good for a start.
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Sep 10, 2012 00:42
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If he had never worked in the theater before I'd agree with you, but he says he's acted before as well as "etc." so I assume this isn't his first time to the dance and he knows in general what goes into making a play. "Towards a Poor Theater" is the most complicated of the things I listed but it's very episodic so I don't think most people would have trouble understanding it, since it comes in pretty small bites. I'm not aware of any "basic directing 101" books that have any value, but if you remember the one you are thinking of definitely post it, I'd love to check it out. Directing is mostly taught through oral tradition ("this is what people do"), mentorship, and on-the-job training. The reason I listed the Viewpoints book is because that is an actual school of "here is a full method of how to create work" that people actually subscribe to, as opposed to most other books on directing which is just directors saying "this is what I like to do".
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Sep 10, 2012 00:57
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"Towards a Poor Theater" is seriously not that hard to read, folks. The hardest part is trying to figure out how you should pronounce "Jerzy Grotowski".
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Sep 11, 2012 23:49
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Sack of Orphans posted:making a can of spray paint that could actually spray onto costumes and not damage them I did a show where one actor had to spray the shirt of another every night. We used tinted hairspray. The color shows up really well (depending on the surface) and it's washable.
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Sep 23, 2012 20:26
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Having a career in the theater is almost impossible. Most actors everywhere make most of their money from other jobs (waiting tables, babysitting, office jobs, temping, etc). Everyone tells you it's going to be hard but it's going to be HARD. Even very successful actors have to have other jobs sometimes. This was summed up by a brilliant tweet by the actor Daisy Eagan: "I have a job interview tomorrow for a temp job packaging human breast milk. I also have a Tony award." Your mileage may vary of course. If you are especially talented, especially lucky, especially tenacious, or especially well-connected, you have a better shot at having a real career. If this sounds like I am trying to be discouraging, I am. If you read this and say "nah, I'm gonna get out there and DO THIS anyway" then congrats, you've passed step 1. Only 9,999 other challenges to your ego and psyche await you before you feel like a real actor (and then your good job finishes, and you have to go through 10,000 more).
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Sep 25, 2012 20:57
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MockingQuantum posted:Mamet's career is pretty pockmarked with this sort of thing. You'd think there'd be more oversight on productions he's involved with, especially as a playwright who's pretty much infamous for creating hard-to-tackle material. Oversight? What do you mean? Broadway productions of a new play by a "big name" playwright like David Mamet have the playwright himself involved in every step, as well as the director. Mamet directed "The Anarchist" himself, which I didn't see, and when he's not directing his own plays he has a top tier big name directing. And of course his producers who have been producing his plays for years and are veterans of dozens of productions. Unless you just mean that he shouldn't be directing his own work, which seems to be the case based on how The Anarchist went.
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Dec 18, 2012 00:31
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r0ff13c0p73r posted:A lot of people just don't get Brecht. He liked to use comedy because he felt people connected better with it (the better to alienate them later of course). This is pretty much right, and also most of Brecht's theory is pretty dumb and/or obvious if you spend any time thinking about it, so when people get super-obsessed with Verfremdung and all that it ends up being bad. I had a fellow-director in a class I took years ago do a production of "Threepenny Opera" that was the results of months of slavish research on Brechtian theory, and was faithfully staged the way Brecht said it should be, and was also awful. The reason Brecht is important is because he wrote a bunch of really good plays, was popular, and had some excellent collaborators. A lot of his writing about "how to do theater" doesn't really stand up outside of his own personal zeitgeist.
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Dec 18, 2012 00:35
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Sweet_Joke_Nectar posted:I'm about to finish a six-week summer intensive acting program at the William Esper Studios in New York City. I've been doing well enough that I believe I will be invited back for their two-year acting program. I'm stressing out about the decision. I've made a pros and cons list, I'd love to hear what people have to say. William Esper is one of the best/most respected acting teachers in NY. If you really want some serious acting study for two years and don't care about getting a degree out of it (and the money isn't an issue) then, it's a pretty solid option. Where's your training from, if you don't mind me asking? (Are you a dancer? You must be if you were in callbacks for Sleep No More) On the other hand, keep in mind that you can be in acting class AND audition/work as an actor. Not necessarily with William Esper (I don't know how they organize classes outside of their big certificate program) but with SOMEONE. If you're not sure about committing two years of your life, I'd say don't, and in a year you can always decide you HAVE TO do it and do it then. edit: oops, I didn't see this Sweet_Joke_Nectar posted:Well, I was accepted to the 2 year. I have a week to decide. looking at the courseload and what it would entail, I'd only be in class 13 hours a week. That would mean I'd have enough time to audition, work outside of class, wait tables etc. We will see. I think I'm probably going to jump onboard. 13 hrs a week is not much if the money is no object. On the other hand find out how it interacts with working professionally during the program -- it's probably something every student asks, so be up front about what you want.
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Aug 2, 2013 21:56
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Sweet_Joke_Nectar posted:poo poo is nuts. Cool! I've worked with William/Suzanne's son and he's one of the best actors in the world so it worked out that he lived up to the family name.  It's a highly regarded studio (along with Michael Howard probably one of only a handful of places where it still means something that you studied with them) and I know they produce very skilled actors. It sounds like this could be great for you. Good luck!
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Aug 3, 2013 03:37
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