Actors’ Tiny Decisions

Last year I wrote a little something about the relationship between dramatic composing and acting. I just had a great experience working with an actor, so now there’s more to say. I’m reminded that, in writing a musical theater piece, you’re never going to be “finished” until you involve actors in the process.

Every so often, a non-musical friend will hear something in a piece of mine, and say, “Oh, I like that. Was that your idea?”. Of course it was my idea! Every tiny detail is a decision. The same is true of acting, although I’m sure even fewer people realize it. Most people probably don’t really appreciate the craft of acting. You may enjoy a performance and be moved by it, but do you ever think about how they do it? It’s really hard work, and good actors make it look easy.

On Sunday we gave an informal performance of the opening song from Eros at Breakfast. I had expected it to be just a rough read-through, but it turned out to be a thoroughly thought-out performance — off book — by San Francisco actor Loren Nordlund.

Loren came to our first meeting having studied the score and analyzed the lyrics, and said, “OK. Here’s how I’d like to do it.” He immediately picked up on the sort of bizarre, Dr. Seuss-like aesthetic we’re going for, and brought a slew of interesting elements to the character, including some costume ideas that suited this particular event.

Watching Loren put this together, what struck me most was realizing how many tiny decisions he had made, particularly what he’s doing with his hands. I noticed that, more often than not, his hand gestures were consistent and specific. Whether we knew it or not, his hands were helping to tell the story. Next time you go to a movie, watch your favorite actor’s hands, and see what you think. Tiny decisions.

But most edifying was the reminder that no matter how polished my song seems on paper, it can’t really be finished until after an actor gets his hands on it. Let your actor make choices, and be flexible about your tempos and dynamics. You’ll find that they often can know more about your material than you do. Then, go back and revise.

P.S. – This particular song, “Routine”, was actually finished last summer, so I’ve had many months to grow fond of my MIDI rendering from Sibelius. It was a thrill to finally see it on its feet. I’m eager to share it. As soon as our schedules allow, we’re going to make a video which I may post here.

More From the Trunk

And now, another song from The Ghost of Wu. “The Ways of the Young” is a bit more of a comedy number, although I’m afraid it might only be funny on paper.

By early in Act II of The Ghost of Wu, Wu Chao has succeeded in becoming Empress, having removed the Emperor’s first wife from the picture. But she is not satisfied. She’s been trying to convince her husband to decree that upon his death, Wu will assume the powers of the Emperor herself, instead of their son.

Kaozong insists on checking with his Confucian advisors, whom Wu views as stuffy and out of touch. In “The Ways of the Young”, we see the Confucians from Wu’s point of view: as foolish old men with nothing useful to say, and certainly no solutions.

Between verses of the song the Confucians toss coins and consult the I Ching for guidance in this matter. The answer, it turns out, isn’t particularly helpful.”

A word about the lyrics. This song, written in 2001 or so, marks the beginning of my journey from fixing other people’s lyrics out of sheer necessity (usually for musical reasons) to actually calling myself a lyricist and taking it on myself, which is a fairly recent development. In this case, a lot of the best material is from the original given to me by my playwright collaborator Donna Kaulkin, but that version lacked formal cohesion that I needed, so I fleshed it out a bit. Mainly, I claim the final verse, which I wrote because I felt the song needed a coda. It’s pretty flawed, but I like the way it ties everything up. I’ve gotten better since then.

The lyrics and MP3 can be found on the song’s own page. Check it out here.

John Adams: A Flowering Tree

Last year I was very hard on John Adams’ opera Doctor Atomic. I wanted to like it, but, while I admired the music, I was disappointed in it as drama. Having now seen the San Francisco Symphony’s semi-staged production of Adams’ new opera A Flowering Tree, I’m very happy to say that it doesn’t share most of the problems I found in Doctor Atomic. I was an Adams early adopter, and an obsessed fan in the 80′s, so I was relieved.

This is a beautiful and admirable work, and it’s the first of John Adams’ theatrical works that actually “works”. I think the reason must be that this is the first one that has, you know, a plot. The music is rich and colorful, and chock full of delicious Adamsy goodness. The music is so effective, and yes, dramatic, that I wasn’t nearly as irritated by Peter Sellars’ staging as I would have been otherwise. Much has been made, with good reason, of Adams’ musical depiction of the main character’s transformation into a tree, which occurs four times in the opera. In each case, the context is different, and Adams paints each transformation in a different way, the final one being a literally spectacular payoff at the very end of the piece.

Painting. This is what Adams is extraordinarily good at in his operas. The final tree transformation joins the hair-raising arrival of Air Force One in Nixon in China, The “gymnopedie” depicting Klinghoffer’s slow-motion descent in The Death of Klinghoffer and the final moment of Doctor Atomic as great examples of how Adams’ can create music that, when combined with staging and lighting, tells a story that words cannot.

Again, this was a “semi-staged” production. About a third of the stage in Davies Symphony Hall was dedicated to staging, with a platform cleverly placed above the orchestra for some of the action. The staging used an interesting, and sometimes very moving, convention of having a dancer shadow each of the characters. Unfortunately, there are several long orchestral and choral passages that were, I guess, unstageable. During these passages we’d have the singers standing or sitting motionless and the dancers doing very little. It’s still unclear to me what the significance of some of these passages is in terms of the storytelling.

A Flowering Tree also makes use of a narrator, which can be problematic when it comes to staging. What do the characters do while the narrator is singing? Like Doctor Atomic, whose libretto was slapped together from “found materials”, this suggests some sort of fear of having to actually write for the characters, which I find puzzling and disappointing. But in this case, Sellars handled this fairly well, I thought. I guess there was so little happening anyway, so the narrator fit in somewhat naturally.

The use of a narrator and the many how-on-Earth-do-I-stage-this moments had me thinking that this might be a better oratorio than opera, but in the second act as the story unfolded I became increasingly convinced. Whereas Doctor Atomic had no plot to speak of, and we never heard from the characters in their own words, this piece has an appropriately simple plot. We understand what the characters want, and we’re routing for them. Given this foundation for the first time, Adams shows what he can do dramatically.

Meet EROS AT BREAKFAST

In the last two posts, I alluded to the musical I’m currently working on and expect to finish within a few months. The musical adaptation of Robertson Davies’ one-act play Eros At Breakfast began almost by accident about two years ago when playwright/performer Janet Roitz mentioned the play in the course of a conversation we were having.

It turns out Janet had long been an avid fan of Davies’ work in general, and had wished for a long time to stage this play. As she described to me what it’s about, my wheels started turning almost immediately, and we both came up with the idea of adapting it.

Eros At Breakfast is a fantasy set in the solar plexus of a young man. The play envisions the various components of the human body as departments of some big bureaucracy such as the military or a big corporation. As changes seem to be on the way in this man’s otherwise unremarkable life, the various departments are affected in different ways and amusing conflicts come about.

In the preface of Four Favourite Plays, Robertson Davies describes how he got the idea for Eros At Breakfast. He remembers that at his school they used to put on what were known as “health dialogues”, which were meant to teach lessons about hygiene and good health habits.

I was impressed as a child by a health dialogue the scene of which was laid in a human stomach. Various characters appeared there, of which some were quarrelsome and harmful like Piece of Pie and Slice of Cake, and others were of a noble and uplifting nature like Fresh Vegetables and Whole-wheat Bread. The hero and heroine were handsome young Mr. Apple and Miss Glass of Milk … How delightful, I thought, to have a play going on inside somebody.

In Davies’ resulting play, the characters are Chremes and Aristophontes, the heads of the Solar Plexus and Intelligence departments, respectively, along with Parmeno, an envoy from the heart and Hepatica from the Liver. It’s a very funny play, and has just the right level of simplicity so as to lend itself to musical adaptation. Janet has written an absolutely hilarious draft adaptation. I’ll be happy if my lyrics are half as funny as Janet’s dialogue. There isn’t enough music yet for me to say much about it here, but I will discuss that soon.

“Musical” ≠ “Broadway”

I get into such trouble with this stuff: I’m a classical composer who wants to write musicals; I’m a theater composer with Uptown training whose music is weird, unpredictable and unnecessarily difficult.

In classical circles, it’s OK, actually. As far as I know, I haven’t been judged negatively because there are musicals in my bio, but in my head at least, there’s the danger of that. (You’re judging me right now, aren’t you!)

But dealing with theater people has been a tricky dance. Actors tend to like my stuff, but they look at it kind of sidewise and treat it as an oddity. They don’t complain about how difficult it is, but they do make a topic of it. In one case I was turned down by a playwright because my music wasn’t “tuneful” enough. He knew what he wanted and had a valid point, although I was baffled at the time. I think my music is very lyrical and reasonably easy. But what do I know? I can take 4-part dictation, so my idea of easy has nothing to do with it. I’m still learning on that front.

Here’s the problem: Most people equate “musical theater” with “Broadway”. I do not. Broadway has turned into something that I’m not particularly interested in being a part of. There’s still a place for Sondheim there, because he’s Sondheim. Put someone else’s name on Passion or Sunday in the Park With George, and they’ll show you the door pretty quickly.

So where do I fit in? No really, I’m asking.

Given the nomenclature available to us now, I have two choices: it’s a “musical” or an “opera”. Eros At Breakfast doesn’t quite fit the average person’s idea of either of these. It’s clearly not an opera, because, for one thing, it’s not all sung. It’s written with actors in mind, not singers. Singing actors, yes, but actors. That’s why I call it a musical.

But the music is conceived much in the way of an opera. It’s not lead-sheet tunes to be scored for reeds, bass and drums. The accompaniment helps tell the story; the composition is often driven by counterpoint, and not by chord progressions. Some songs don’t end, because the character is interrupted, so there’s a contiguous feel similar to most contemporary operas.

So, no, this isn’t intended for Broadway, although of course I would be delighted. Maybe someday Broadway will go back to being about theater more than it’s about money. For now, I can think of numerous regional and local theater companies around the country that have done very well with this sort of thing.

(But they’ll still think it’s weird.)

Switching Gears

It seems likely there will now be some changes in the nature of this blog, at least for a while. Some readers may lose interest. I hope not, but it’s probably inevitable. Perhaps new ones will come along.

When I started blogging in August of 2005, I was in the middle of writing an orchestral piece, and that’s what was on my mind, plus related things like the whole Hungary thing. So that’s mainly what I wrote about.

I have mentioned in passing from time to time that in addition to being a “classical” composer, I also write musicals. This was my original path into composition, and what I think I’m really good at. At the moment I’m in sprint mode to finish Eros At Breakfast, a musical that’s been on my plate for what must be a couple of years now. With crazy plumbing and technology crises behind me, I’ve made rapid progress over the past month, and I can really see this thing being finished now. I’m shooting for the Spring.

So, for the time being, many of my posts will deal with what I’m working on. While wearing my musical theater hat, I also write lyrics, I’m finally ready to claim, so I may be discussing that as well to some extent. If you’re one who shrugs or winces at the thought of a “musical”, I hope you’ll keep reading anyway, or at least checking the headlines. If not, I understand.

Addressing Sondheim

Well, I just did a search, and in over a year of blogging, the name “Sondheim” has only been mentioned in passing in 7 posts. I’m not sure why this is, considering that Stephen Sondheim is by far the most influential composer upon my aesthetic and even my choice of a career.

To catch up on that, rather than create a huge mega-post that no one will read, I’ve decided to do several normal-sized posts that no one will read. This one is just a little bit of background for starters.

When I was in my teens, I was interested in music and musical theater, but not in any focused way. Hearing the score of Sweeney Todd for the first time in the early Eighties changed all that forever. That was the first score that motivated me to learn how to read music properly, because I’d never heard anything like it, and I wanted to understand what made it tick. (After over 20 years, I’m getting closer to that goal )

Having quickly moved on to get familiar with other Sondheim scores, in particular Company, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures and Merrily We Roll Along, I began to explore some of the composers who were reported to have influenced Sondheim, but whom I hadn’t heard of. Starting with Stravinsky, I checked out an album at the public library, almost at random. Turns out it was the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto along with a bunch of what I now know to be fairly obscure works.

So, skipping ahead, by the time college-pickin’ time came around I already knew I wanted to be a composer. Of course, in college I was exposed to all sorts of other things, but I never stopped wanting to be Sondheim when I grew up. All of my music is influenced by him in one way or another, however remotely in some cases.

In recent years I’ve gone in and out of periods of oversaturation with Sondheim, and I’m just coming out of one of these now. During these periods I avoid listening to his music, because I’m just so familiar with everything already, and it just becomes sort of noise. But, at the moment, I’m in the middle of reading the new book How Sondheim Found His Sound, which has gotten me interested in listening with fresh ears. More on that coming up.

Adam Guettel on NewMusicBox

How’s this for a sentence:

From Floyd Collins, where Southern string band music, contemporary folk song, and Feldman-esque introspection seamlessly blend with a dramatic sensibility totally informed by the tradition of the musical, to the quasi-operatic and completely infectious The Light in the Piazza, Guettel has shown himself to be a musical omnivore for whom the whole world is a stage.

Ahem.

Anyway, now on NewMusicBox.org there’s an interesting interview with theater composer Adam Guettel, whose latest musical The Light in the Piazza was recently televised on PBS, and is now making the rounds in a national tour.

I’ve been Guettel-curious for many years, but didn’t really start paying attention until a few months ago when I saw Piazza on television. Years ago I bought the cast album of Floyd Collins and listened to it exactly once. It wasn’t that it was bad, just that the style it was in (sort of a country, bluegrass thing) made it hard for me to appreciate. Also, it’s a total downer. I intend to listen to it again with fresh ears.

Piazza on the other hand is captivating from the opening harp glisses in the Overture to the final double bar. To me it sounds a lot like Sondheim, so I’m immediately attracted to it, for sentimental reasons alone.

Much has been made of how this piece resembles opera, and a variety of reasons have been offered for making this assertion, including the style of singing and the difficulty of the score. For me, it all comes down to one key component: a lot of the storytelling is coming out of the orchestra pit, which I’d say is the most important difference between what we call “musicals” and what we call “operas”. The accompaniments are contrapuntal, and by that I don’t mean they’re necessarily “busy”, but that the composer is thinking horizontally instead of vertically. In other words, the harmonic language is driven by inner and outer voices moving independently, whereas in a typical pop-oriented musical, it’s just a lot of block chords, really, and some filigree; a limited toolkit for storytelling.

As a disillusioned theater composer myself, I’m encouraged by some of the things Guettel has to say about this era, which I can only think of as “post-Broadway”. For starters, I hadn’t known this, but it’s mentioned that Guettel has relocated from New York to Seattle, which may signal a loosening of New York’s grip on the field.

Guettel:

I want to have an opportunity to develop things that are safer both in terms of the critics and economically, where the risks aren’t as high, which will allow me to stay fluid and take risks. There’s a guerilla spontaneity that you get from that. And theatre used to be produced like that.

So, now the future for “non-commercial” musicals seems to be in regional theaters, which is all right with me, and Guettel’s remarks seem to help legitimize that notion. This is good news for those of us composers for whom Broadway is no longer a “thing”.

Read the interview conducted by the American Music Center’s always-astute Frank Oteri.

Dramatic Composing and Acting

Just came down from doing a bit of bedtime reading to my son. Tonight’s selection was a little on the long side compared to the usual fare, so found myself looking for ways to make it more interesting for myself as well as my son.

I thought it would be fun to see if I could make good decisions on the fly about which words to emphasize, where and for how long to pause, what to do with pitch and tone, etc. Eventually, I realized what it was I was doing:

Acting.

Not that I was any good at it. I’ve never acted before; in fact, ever since school I’ve gone to great lengths to avoid any form of public speaking. But having been involved with theater for many years, the craft of acting is something I’ve thought about a lot, and I admire people who do it well. It’s harder than most people think.

Meanwhile, during all this I was also thinking about how much fun it would be to do a little semi-staged duet based on this particular book. My “acting” choices were merging into composition choices.

Here’s the thing: to write good dramatic music you need to use the same bone in your head that actors use when they’re doing what they do. Especially in opera, where the performer doesn’t have a lot of room for interpretation, you’re the one making the acting choices.

In a straight play, an actor can trial-and-error dozens of different line readings until he or she finds the “right” one. It can even change from night to night. But, if it’s sung, the composer has already made that decision for the actor, and there usually isn’t much latitude for reinterpretation.

(Hopefully, the composer has given it some thought.)

On the Forehead of a Legend

Now I’m convinced: Hal Prince‘s glasses are actually glued to his forehead.

I’m not quite interested enough in the Tony Awards anymore to actually sit through them, but I just happened to catch Mr. Prince accepting his (well deserved) Lifetime Achievement Award, remotely from Las Vegas.

Even here, on this rather special occasion, his giant glasses were pushed up onto his forehead, making him look like a bit of a meshugener as he delivered a brief message. It seems he is rarely photographed without the odd appendage.

All that aside, congratulations to the legendary Broadway producer and director who brought us the three best musicals of the past 50-or-so years: West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof and Sweeney Todd.