cast notes

CAST NOTES Footlight Features

MARY BRIDGET DAVIES 32 MARY BRIDGET DAVIES 32 MARY BRIDGET DAVIES 32 MARY BRIDGET DAVIES 32

Living the Broadway Dream

BOBBY STEGGERT 5 BOBBY STEGGERT 5 BOBBY STEGGERT 5 BOBBY STEGGERT 5

Working With No Expectations

TONY SHELDON 38TONY SHELDON 38TONY SHELDON 38TONY SHELDON 38

The Boy From Oz

Lagniappe

BROADWAYBROADWAYBROADWAYBROADWAY----BOUND 48BOUND 48BOUND 48BOUND 48

Beautiful: the Carole King

Musical

INTERNATIONAL 58 INTERNATIONAL 58 INTERNATIONAL 58 INTERNATIONAL 58

Australia:

King Kong the Musical

VOICE 44 VOICE 44 VOICE 44 VOICE 44

Melissa Cross:

The Zen of Screaming

MASTER CLASS 8MASTER CLASS 8MASTER CLASS 8MASTER CLASS 8

Sheri Sanders:

How to Rock the Audition

ON THE COVER:ON THE COVER:ON THE COVER:ON THE COVER:

Photo by

Monica Simoes

Backstage at the

Broadway rock

musical hit

Rock of Ages

www.MTMag.co

Creative Spotlights

KEVIN ADAMS 26KEVIN ADAMS 26KEVIN ADAMS 26KEVIN ADAMS 26

Lighting as Sculpture

ANDY BLANKENBUEHLER 14 ANDY BLANKENBUEHLER 14 ANDY BLANKENBUEHLER 14 ANDY BLANKENBUEHLER 14

A Lesson in Line and Form

JOEJOEJOEJOE DiPIETRO 54DiPIETRO 54DiPIETRO 54DiPIETRO 54

A Student of Life

REVIEW 22REVIEW 22REVIEW 22REVIEW 22

Lizze the Musical:

Is Lizzie the Sweeney for

Women?

BROADWAY’S VOICELESS 52BROADWAY’S VOICELESS 52BROADWAY’S VOICELESS 52BROADWAY’S VOICELESS 52

Broadway Pros Raise

Awareness for Animals

THE STATE OF THE ARTS 68THE STATE OF THE ARTS 68THE STATE OF THE ARTS 68THE STATE OF THE ARTS 68

So, Politics, Society, and

Religion Walk Into an Audition

DEAR TRISH 51DEAR TRISH 51DEAR TRISH 51DEAR TRISH 51

QUOTE OF THE MONTH 71QUOTE OF THE MONTH 71QUOTE OF THE MONTH 71QUOTE OF THE MONTH 71

Musical Theatre MagazineMusical Theatre MagazineMusical Theatre MagazineMusical Theatre Magazine Vol. 1, no. 2 November 2013

ISSN applied for.

www.MTMag.co

EditorEditorEditorEditor----inininin----Chief:Chief:Chief:Chief: Trish Causey. Layout design:Layout design:Layout design:Layout design:

Trish Causey. ContriContriContriContributing Writer:buting Writer:buting Writer:buting Writer: Trish

Causey.

SpecialSpecialSpecialSpecial thanks:thanks:thanks:thanks: to all the press reps, & the

MT pros who shared their time and wisdom.

All content © 2013 by Trish Causey unless

otherwise noted. Photos are attributed

unless thought to be in the public domain.

No infringement is intended.

Editor’s Note: What a wild month this has been! Since launching Musical Theatre Magazine last month, the response has

been tremendous. MTMag has welcomed subscribers from all over the world, including the USA, Canada,

Brazil, Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and more. Incredible! Thank you!

Issues will be released between the 10th and 15th of the month, barring any unforeseen circumstances. If you

don’t see your email with your link by then, check your spam folder first, and if it’s not there, feel free to contact

me: [email protected].

I have received several queries about MTMag as a gift to young teens (12-13 years old). MTMag reports about

life upon the wicked show business as it is. The real world of making it in the theatre is not a cartoon. It is

tough. All subscribers are 18+ and should read every article before sharing the issue with a young teen.

On the subject of sharing, MTMag is a subscription-based periodical NOT for mass consumption. Do not "give away" your issues or post

them online. Instead, please share the website address: www.MTMag.co so others can subscribe as well. If you have students who want

to subscribe, please contact me about a student's discount.

This month's issue, it is Rated 17+ because of the subject matter of rock musicals. So dive right in ... if you're 17+. Enjoy!

Praise for the Premiere Issue of Musical Theatre Magazine!Praise for the Premiere Issue of Musical Theatre Magazine!Praise for the Premiere Issue of Musical Theatre Magazine!Praise for the Premiere Issue of Musical Theatre Magazine!

November 2013 � MTMag.co

Bobby Steggert



Popular Broadway star and Tony Award-

nominated actor-singer, Bobby Steggert

can be seen on the Great White Way in

Andrew Lippa’s new musical Big Fish. I

only had a few minutes to speak with him,

so I picked his brain with quick precision.

T: Hey, Bobby! Thanks so much for doing this interview.

I know you’re busy with Big Fish. I focus on the ‘Art and

Craft’ of Musical Theatre, rather than the celebrity

aspect of it. I prefer the behind the scenes, the

everyday journey of the artist. B: I like talking about that much more. T: So, how did you get into musicals? B: I was in school choirs, which led to me being in professional choirs — I was very young. Then actually, the first thing I ever did was an opera. It was Amahl and the Night Visitors, which is a Menotti Christmas opera. I found that I loved being on stage and portraying a character more than I did [just] singing, so that led me towards studying acting at NYU, and the rest is history. T: You’re not just a pretty voice. You were

valedictorian of your high school class. You could have

chosen a career that was more stable than the

bohemian life of the struggling artist. B: I blame my parents at lot for being as supportive as they are. They’re incredibly supportive, and they wanted me to pursue anything I was passionate about. That standard, for me, was really valuable. They told me to follow passion far before they told me to follow financial gain or traditional success. T: You do a lot of new music and cabaret from

emerging composers. Do you prefer new music over

established shows? B: They’re just different processes. My first experience on Broadway was 110 in the Shade. I also did Ragtime. These are revivals, and your job in that case is to reinterpret [the role]. What I’m finding as I get older and more experienced is that to create a new role in a new musical is a more complex responsibility. You’re creating with the writers. The composers don’t quite know what the piece is yet. Often times, their writing the score on your voice, so you’re helping them discover the score. It’s a more multi-faceted process, so I tend to like it more because it uses more brain power and a little more creativity. T: A few years ago, I interviewed a few of the lead cast

from Yank! the Musical, but I didn’t get a chance to

speak with you then. What was it like doing a show that

dealt with LGBT issues during World War II? B: It was a really, really important experience for me, not only to learn how to lead a musical because up until then I’d been a character actor playing supporting roles. But it was a special show because it followed the grand traditions of Musical Theatre in the way that even The Book of Mormon does, but it is a very intimate,

very personal, almost heart-wrenching tale of this young man [dealing with] the shame of being gay in a time and an event — World War II — that was impossible to be himself. So to play someone with that big of a journey and play someone who was able to come out on the other end with so much strength, and self-knowledge, and self-awareness was an inspiration, honestly. That character taught me a lot on how to live my life.

To play someone who was able to come out on the other end

with so much strength… That character taught

me a lot on how to live my life.

T: You sing such different styles. How do you vary your

approach vocally? B: I’m not as confident a singer as you might think I am. There are much better singers out there. But I always find the character’s voice through my focus on being an actor. If I can find the resonance, the way in which they express [themselves], then often times, the musicality comes second. I always know I’ve figured out a character when the singing becomes easy. I always start learning a score, and I’m shaky on it. When the breath connects and when the vocal expression becomes second nature, I know I’ve found a really key element to the character.

T: You’re currently in Big Fish with Norbert Leo Butz and

Kate Baldwin. Did you feel any pressure being on stage

with them? B: Oh, god, no. They’re both amazing people, and the three of us are very similar, actually. We’re all journeymen theatre actors. None of it is ‘fancy’ because we’ve been on a million TV shows or done a lot of movies. We’re just real theatre actors. Kate and I are


very close; she and I played mother and son in Giant at the Public last year. So we’ve already explored the very specific relationship of mother and son — they were different characters, but there are elements we are definitely taking from that performance. Norbert is just a true gentleman and also an incredibly gifted performer. He’s sort of a wild beast — I mean that in the best way! He takes the stage unlike anyone. It’s an honor to be working with them, for sure. We’re really tight-knit — we’re a real family, and I think that definitely shows. T: Life on Broadway — any advice for newbies? B: It’s a hard life. It’s hard to get work — that’s the first thing. And it’s hard to sustain a career — that’s the second. The biggest advice I always give is to have no expectations for any of the external things you can’t control. That’s easy for me to say because I’ve had a lot of luck, but if I’d gone into this expecting a Tony nomination, expecting Broadway stardom, expecting to see my name on a marquee, I don’t think I would have gotten there. I really am focused on telling a story, and giving an honest performance, and being a team player. I’m not trying to toot my own horn, I just think it’s a necessity if you want to be happy in the business, if you want to be successful.

Of course, there’s pressure, but it’s better than sitting on your ass.

T: Do you have your sights on a dream role? B: It’s that whole expectation thing. I’m not reaching anywhere. I’m really not. I’m just trying to be present in the circumstance. My dreams are more focused around working with other performers — there are people I dream of playing with. I dreamed, in the past, to work with Audra McDonald, and I got to do that. It’s the really great performers that I dream to just be on stage with. T: Do you look ahead to the next job while you’re

working on the current job? The reality is even well

known actors have to pay rent and buy groceries. B: I’m in a specific circumstance right now, in that I have about a year to not have to think about that. But you know, life is very fickle, so if the job looks like it won’t last, of course, I’ll start thinking about the next step. But as I get older, I try not to look much further than a couple months down the line. It’s a much healthier way to live. T: Can you breathe and relax when you’re in a

successful show? Can you enjoy the show? B: Yes and no. I’m around a lot of people I trust. I have no control over ticket-buyers, but I do have control over trusting my collaborators. Susan Stroman is just remarkable, so I put my trust in her. I put my trust in Andrew [Lippa] who has written me the most beautiful new song. And of course, there’s pressure and there’s a big risk, but it’s better than sitting on your ass.

Catch Bobby Steggert in Big Fish through December 29th. Get

tickets on the website: http://www.bigfishthemusical.com

MTM



Photo by Dirty Sugar Photography



Anyone who has auditioned for a show knows the process can be nerve-wracking. It can be a horrible experience especially if you don’t feel prepared for the genre. For some of us, auditioning for a rock musical is tantamount to getting a root canal without anesthesia. To make the process easier, Sheri Sanders teaches a workshop and training method she calls “Rock the Audition”. Sitting down for an interview with Sanders is like hanging out with an old friend, and there’s no telling what topics will enter the conversation when talking about rock musicals.

A firecracker rock-and-roll chick, Sanders is quick to point out her legit musical background. “I was a Musical Theatre performer — tried-and-true, legit Musical Theatre. Some of my biggest successes were doing legit Musical Theatre like Urinetown on tour and The Screams of Kitty Genovese, which was an opera, actually. But I did always listen to pop music, and somehow they began to meld together. I would say that Maltby and Shire were big influences on me when I was a young person, and that to me was pop Musical Theatre. Even though Les Mis is not rock-and-roll, all the instruments are rock instruments. I just started [catching] on to whatever that was for Musical Theatre — Les Mis wanted a common person sound rather than a proper sound. And since I loved popular music, it was very easy for me to cross over as a performer and then eventually as a teacher.”

It is about sex.

It’s about intimacy.

It’s about vulnerability. Rock music and sexuality go hand in hand. This was something I learned the first time I interviewed Sanders on my radio show. As musicals have ventured into modern music to tell stories that are relevant to modern audiences, the days of alluding to sex are long gone. Sex is out of the Musical Theatre closet. “I love that you mention that,” Sanders remarks, “And I don’t speak on that as much as I would like to, so I’m glad you asked me about that. It is about sex. It’s about intimacy. It’s about

vulnerability. It’s about expressing yourself in a free-spirited way like you would if you were being sexual with somebody. It’s about being an impulsive, wild, private, sensitive, expressive you that you would want to be if you were being sexually intimate with another person. As opposed to what you would be normally with legit Musical Theatre, which is, ‘I’m in a situation with another person, and I have to handle the situation in a specific way to get what I need.’ Sure, that happens in rock musicals, but for rock musicals it’s, ‘How do I gotta be to get this guy hot for me?’ So it does exist, but we’re pushing the envelope a little bit more. ‘How do I have to express myself physically in order for them to notice me in a sexual way?’ That does happen in some rock songs, and we do have to feel like we have that impulsivity and freedom of self-expression that comes with being a healthy sexual person.”

The rock music vibe displays a sense of freedom and joy that is not always obvious in other musical styles. One of the hallmarks of rock music is living in the moment and living with abandon, to which Sanders adds, “And letting the music affect you. ‘What does this music do to me? And can I live in what the music does to me in front of you?’ As opposed to trying to control it.” Allowing the music to take precedence, even over the singer, can be humbling for a singer who wants to shine as the star. “It’s what the music does to you that’s the star.”

At this point in the conversation, I feel completely at ease relating an experience I had a couple of years back while working on the Carole King song, “I Feel the Earth Move”. I explain to Sanders that I was not connecting to the song while I was trying to


sing it; like many singers, I fell into the trap of being more concerned with the notes. After some time away from the song, I felt impelled to give it another go, but I started with the lyrics first. As I read the lyrics — without hearing the music, I realized the song was about orgasm. The earth-shattering power of female orgasm. I remember being stunned that I had thoroughly missed this concept when I was focused on hitting the notes. This is when my earlier interview with Sanders, when she said rock music is all about sex, really hit home.

We have that

impulsivity and

freedom of self-

expression that comes

with being a healthy

sexual person.

Sanders offers her input on my experience with Carole King’s song. “I think what you’re saying is so valuable because, one, it was written in a time when she was using her poetic nature to express something that was happening — which was women really were for the first time going, ‘I’m supposed to enjoy this, right? Because I’ve been having sex to make children. I’m allowed to have pleasure?’ This was such a huge thing at the time when she wrote it. It’s a liberation. And it’s so wonderful that you found that once you looked at what the song is about and not the technical [aspects]: where do I place this, how do I sing it, where does my vibrato go? Instead, you looked at what the song was about, and it became a different experience. I venture to say that a lot of people don’t even know that’s what it’s about. But you’ve interpreted it based on your understanding about you, your sexuality, and what the songwriter may have meant.”

Sanders makes an important point. “Knowing what the song means does not guarantee that I sing it well, but it does change my perspective of how I want to sing the song.” Then she takes it one step further, “It’s knowing the song’s place in society and what it intended based upon how you live your life. And that’s pretty beautiful. I love that that happened to you.”

What has happened to me is that I no longer know exactly where I fit in with Musical Theatre shows. At my age, I am having to rediscover my place in an artform that is still growing and expanding its own identity as well. “That really is a great place to be, actually,” Sanders reassures me. “You can find out who you are, and what your feelings are, and where you belong by listening to music and letting music affect you. I’ve identified myself as a human being and created a consciousness and an understanding about myself and other people by the singers I listen to. I feel like you found a piece of yourself and an understanding of yourself from listening to a Carole King song. Think of all the other things we can find out about ourselves and where we belong in the world if we really listen to all the different artists that influence us.”

Sanders’ book and workshops, which she calls “Rock the Audition”, helps students prepare for living out their garage-band dreams on a theatrical stage. For singers who are accustomed to the Rodgers and Hammerstein, Sondheim, and Kander and Ebb musicals, Sanders has tips for transitioning to the in-your-face,



boisterous rock musical genre. “This is my favorite, best kept secret in the universe!” she

says, unable (and unwilling) to contain her excitement. “It really has changed the lives of all of my students, and it doesn’t cost any money, which is my favorite part. So many people study legit Musical Theatre and classical music in college, and they can’t survive in the current marketplace because they’ve spent all their money paying off their student loans. I don’t blame the teachers because they were not trained it, so they don’t know to teach it. Now, they’re starting to get trained in it because I’m here,” laughs Sanders. “For those who are trained in legit Musical Theatre and not in pop Musical Theatre, the only way really you can find out which singers’ voices live in your voice is by listening to music.”

Finding those singers’ voices is easy with a little research and know-how. “For example, a legit Musical Theatre performer who’s a soprano — who are the folky, rangey singers that you can tap into? Joni Mitchell, she has a vibrato and a lot of range. That’s a great place to start. Make a Joni Mitchell station on Spotify and start studying the style of folk rock singers in the ‘70’s. Because Joni Mitchell is a way in to somebody you can [identify] with. I don’t have a Janis Joplin voice, but I do have Joni Mitchell’s [type of] voice, so that’s a way in to the time period. We want to go back to the late ‘60’s, early ‘70’s and start listening to style. How do the folk rock singers style their music? They are a little bit less rowdy than somebody like Janis Joplin; and legit [soprano] Musical Theatre performers, who are considered ingénues, are less rowdy. So let’s go in where you are. Start studying the ‘70’s folk rock singers: who are the singers, what are they expressing emotionally, how is the emotion traveling on their voices? When you start listening to these people and say, ‘Wow, I really love these songs,’ you can look this person up on YouTube for free.”

So many people study

legit Musical Theatre

and classical music in

college, and they

can’t survive in the

current marketplace.

The voices are not the only part of the singers to study. “Watch videos of them performing: how do they express themselves emotionally? How do they use their bodies? Where are they? Are they at the Monterey Pops Festival? Are they at Woodstock? What was Woodstock? Go online and research Woodstock and the Viet Nam era by finding out what was going on in the world, finding videos, and listening to the music. Now, I’m thinking, ‘If I were there, if I were Trish, standing on stage at Woodstock singing this song, what would this song do to me, and how can I use this song to serve what’s happening politically, socially, and emotionally to the people around me?”

Bringing up the political aspect of rock music and rock musicals, Sanders brings up a topic near and dear to my heart: activism. I have said numerous times on my radio show that a thread of social awareness winds its way through the Musical Theatre canon, from Show Boat, South Pacific, and West Side Story, to Hair, Cabaret, Rent, and now Kinky Boots. With rock

music, and ergo rock musicals, the influence of the tumultuous rights movements of the 1960’s — civil rights, women’s rights, the American Indian Movement, the Black Panthers, et al — is evident in the unabashed rock anthems of freedom, free love, and social justice. “It’s exciting! And it’s healing, and it’s changing things,” Sanders states enthusiastically. “To be able to say, ‘I am going to bring the history of what this world was like into the way I feel this music,’ that’s what creates character, point of view, and texture on the sound. As opposed to saying, ‘I have the libretto and the soundtrack to the musical.’

“The soundtrack to the musical is the life of the music during that era, which is so vast in this particular time period, as they all are because eras and genres are not cut and dry. There are always styles changing inside of them. From the British invasion and rock-and-roll coming in, to the folk movement, and Motown passing through the Viet Nam War and making people more raw, and sexual, and gritty, and that turning into disco. Disco is Motown, but it’s sexier, and grittier, and freer, and looser — because they’ve been through the Viet Nam War, and they’ve gone through all that change emotionally. Motown grew funkier,” she laughs. “So it’s about researching the time — go through a singer that sounds like you, so you can find a way in. Then be influenced in terms of the textures on your voice by all the other people in that era. Then explore the next era — explore disco; it’s the next era in time. Why did the drugs go from LSD to blow? Why were people up dancing, and partying all night, and being dangerous sexually? It’s because the Viet Nam War was too hard; there was too much loss, and fighting the fight became exhausting. To know that when you sing a disco song, it’s all about feeling better: ‘I don’t wanna feel crappy anymore. I wanna feel better, and this music is gonna lift me and make me feel good.’ So if you’re a legit soprano, you want to listen to Anita Ward who sings ‘Ring My Bell’ because she has vibrato on her voice, as opposed to singing ‘Funky Town’. It’s about figuring out who the singers are, going in through them, and not just singing a song they sing, but really learning about the life they were in, and then putting yourself in that life.”

Speaking of the overlap of genres, I tell Sanders about a definition of disco I once heard that said disco is a ballad sung over an upbeat rhythm. In looking at the sheet music for a few disco songs, I had noticed that rhythm was actually “eight to the bar”. I mention to Sanders that “eight to the bar” is the same rhythm of “Boogie Woogie” and similar songs in the 1940’s that were meant to lift people’s spirits during World War II. Sanders replies, “I’d never heard that, but it is the same thing! It serves the same purpose” of lifting people’s spirits.

Since Sanders’ specialty is rock auditions, I inquire as to what are the worst mistakes singers make, and Sanders sighs, “There are so many of them. I’m the only person telling people what to do and what not to do. There are some great teachers out there who have some consciousness of rock and pop. Some of them are here in the city with me, and there are some teachers at universities who are adept at history and understanding these things.” But clearly, academia has a long way to go.

Sanders lists the most common audition mistakes from least to greatest. “In terms of big mistakes, the first one is not listening to popular musical and choosing a rangey tune that you’re not connected to because you’ve heard other girls or boys sing it. So bringing in a song like ‘Somebody to Love’ or ‘Gravity’ by Sarah Bareilles, or ‘Alone’ by Heart, or ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ — it’s rangey.” Worse yet, the performance is completely off. “When you don’t listen to popular music, your voice sounds like a Musical Theatre voice.” This will prove fatal for any singer hoping to crossover into commercial music theatrical productions.

Sanders’ experience behind the audition table proves invaluable when she says unapologetically, “So what they’re hearing is, you picked a song that everybody sings and they don’t


want to hear anymore, and then you’re singing it in a way they don’t want to hear it.” Metaphorical mic-drop aside, she explains the reason for the disconnect, “You didn’t choose it because it moved you emotionally. You chose it because it was rangey,” a common pitfall in legit music styles in which singers want to show off high notes and vocal acrobatics. “In rock music, they don’t give a crap. They’re just like, ‘Who are you? Can I see who you are? Who are you as a human being? And if I want to hear your range after, I will go over to the piano and warm you up, and see what notes you have. I’ll ask you to belt something — I’ll ask for it. But please connect first.”

You picked a song

that everybody sings

and they don’t want

to hear anymore, and

then you’re singing it in

a way they don’t want

to hear it.

This connection isn’t limited to the singer and the song but must also be established between the singer and the accompanist. “People don’t know how to communicate ‘feel’ to a piano player as opposed to tempo. When Adele sings, she has her feelings; then when I listen to her feelings, I have my feelings. So when you’re at the piano, explain to the piano player, ‘This is how the song feels, this is what feeling the song invokes in me. When you can translate that — instead of, ‘This is what the tempo of the song is’ — if you can give the feel the song, then you can have your feelings because the piano player is then having their feelings because you told them what the song feels like so they get to feel it; then the people behind the table get to have their feelings. What happens when you don’t give the feel of the song, you don’t get to have your feelings, the piano player doesn’t have their feelings, and the people behind the table don’t have their feelings. If you do, then everybody has their feelings, and everybody wins. Because that is what popular music is about — it’s about feelings.

“Adele is not ‘acting’ her rock song — as in, ‘The role of Adele will be played by a plus-bodied woman with vocal issues and relationship issues.’ No, Adele is having her feelings about her life, and when you listen to her and sing her music, you have feelings about yours. And when you sing it, the people behind the table have feelings about their lives. It’s very much like the radio, but people don’t understand that. They try to act rock songs like they’re Musical Theatre songs, and they’re not. You just have to feel it in front of people. You have to live the song in front of people, not ‘act’ the song and explain the song.”

A big part of knowing how to feel a song is knowing the impetus behind the song itself, the style of music and what influenced the writers to pen the song in the first place. “My biggest pet peeve is when somebody doesn’t do the research,” Sanders reiterates. Not doing extensive homework into the show’s time and place can backfire on a performer. Sanders says a singer will be lost in the material “if you don’t study the time period, if you don’t find out what the life was like, and if you don’t think,

‘What would I wear? How would I move? What would I sound like if I were a recording artist during that time period? What was happening in the world? Then bring it back to, ‘What show am I auditioning for?’” She uses Jersey Boys as an example. “So I have to feel like I’m in a rock band, and I’m feeling and grooving this song; I love singing, and I’m performing in front of a live audience. That’s how I have to take my Motown song or my song from the ‘50’s or ‘60’s and live it in the era and the aesthetic that Jersey Boys is. Because we’re going to want a different aesthetic if you’re auditioning for Hairspray. Hairspray is a very character-driven musical. In Jersey Boys, they’re not acting in the music; they’re performing in a live band on stage. Hairspray people are acting in the songs. So you have to not only live in the world of the time period but know what show you’re auditioning for and know what that world wants.”

Sanders comments that she does not personally know the casting director of Jersey Boys, but she has seen a number of people who have auditioned for the show; and they were given the following advice by the casting director: “‘Please don’t act out this material. Stand there like you’re singing into a hairbrush at home. Don’t act it.’ They walk away and go, ‘I don’t know what that means.’ And what she’s saying is absolutely correct. You can’t act that Motown song, but you can feel it and live it like a person who is in that world in that time, and live like a recording artist performing live on stage. That’s what she wants, but you don’t know that when you walk in to her. She has to tell you because people don’t know. So then people come to me, and I fix it,” jokes Sanders. “I have four students in Jersey Boys right now. I teach people how to do what [casting] people are asking for. Ideally, it’s a combination of know what world you’re living in, in terms of era; sing a song that feels like it’s in that time period, live it like it’s in that time period, and be aware of the shows that fall under that time period. And please acknowledge the show you’re auditioning for, and if you’ve never seen it, look it up!” To make her point, Sanders queries, “Is there any information on it? Has there been a production of it at the Poo-Poo Playhouse that you can see a YouTube video of? To give you some sense of something because you want to come in there like you know what you’re doing.”

Listening to music is

the only way you’re

going to grow in that

way to get the things

that you want.

Recalling her early years as an auditioner, Sanders remembers the way auditions and callbacks used to be an exploration of a singer’s abilities. “I would sing something, and the people would be like, ‘Sheri, you’re awesome. Come back tomorrow and try this new style; I’d be curious to see what you can do with this.’ Now, because of the American Idol-ization of Musical Theatre, people want you to give the result when you walk in the door. There’s very little time to nurture talent or see what people have. You have to come in and go, ‘It’s this.’ If you don’t do that, you really don’t get callbacks. We’re not all Adam Lambert. We do not all have this epic, gigantic rock voice. We have other kinds of voices that were trained in legit, and we have got to get ourselves with the program.”


Stop placing! Janis

Joplin did not ‘place’.

Pink does not ‘place’.

They train, but they’re

not thinking about

placement.

One of the recurring themes I keep hearing is performers need to be the perfect product at the audition because there is no time or money for exploring or experimenting with the performers’ potential. Once you get to the audition for a Broadway show, a performer is practically expected to be the “it girl” or “it guy” when they walk in the door. Sanders sums it up: “The thing that helps you be ‘it’ is the research and the practice. Really listening to the music, watching the videos, practicing, intuiting, interpreting, and really growing. Listening to music is the only way you’re going to grow in that way to get the things that you want. You can study with me if you want — of course, that’s wonderful, but at the end of the day, listening to music, growing from listening to music, and having the different influences [matters]. Every different kind of music that I listen to shows up on my voice, and I use it like a paint palette. I call upon all these qualities I have on my voice to shape my material. So when you sing, the people behind the table can hear [the influences]. These are the things that step you up from being an ordinary person who is a Musical Theatre performer to being somebody who excels in a genre where there’s no support.” For warm-ups for her singers, Sanders has some sage advice. To achieve an edgy rock sound, she explains her process. “When I tap into something emotional, that’s what affects my voice,” to give it that edgy sound. Keeping emotion at bay is the usual tactic for legit performers so as not to elicit physiological

reactions in the larynx, thereby affecting the quality of the voice, but in rock music, that is exactly what you want — an edgy sound filled with emotion. An over-thought approach to singing is a hazard amongst legit singers, and Sanders invariably tells legit performers, “Stop placing! Janis Joplin did not ‘place’. Pink does not ‘place’. They train, but they’re not thinking about placement. They’re thinking about what’s happening emotionally, and the voice that they need to say that in is they voice they sing it in. If you can think about putting energy behind music, as opposed to belting, then you put juice or emotional fire under it; it gives the sound fire. To me, the exercises I would encourage singers to do would be to find a song that makes them emotional and sing the song from different places emotionally: filled with joy, or wrecked emotionally, or like it’s the last song you’ll ever sing. Come from different emotional places, and it’s going to start playing with your sound and quality and give you textures.”

Sanders hits the nail on the proverbial legit singers’ head when she states, “It’s letting go of control. You’re a vessel, and it’s coming through you. The body will do exactly what it needs to do, and you don’t have to worry about placing, gripping, holding, controlling — the body will offer you where everything needs to be; your voice will be properly handled — if you just allow the feeling to come through and not try to force it or control it.”

Even if a singer never actually auditions for or sings in a rock musical, experimenting with the freedom and exploration of emotion while singing can improve the vocal performance in the style the singer usually sings. Sanders reassures all of us, “It completely crosses over to legit.” Hmmm, I feel the earth moving already.

MTM

Get Sheri Sanders’ book:

http://amzn.to/1byxBqV

And check out her website: www.Rock-the-Audition.com

Photo by David Wells



Being an all-around inquisitive person, I’m fascinated by

people’s names, and I often ask my guests the origins of their name if it is unique. When interviewing Tony Award-winning choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, I could not resist delving into his nomenclature.

“I’ve asked around, but I’ve gotten conflicting answers.” Blankenbuehler confesses, “I was going to change my name, but I couldn’t think of anything to change it to. So I kept it, and it’s actually worked out okay. I couldn’t spell it until I was in the third grade, but my son is in kindergarten, and he can already spell it. It’s amazing.”

Like many Musical Theatre artists, Blankebuehler started in the performing arts at a young age. “I come from a very artistic family. I grew up in Cincinnati, and I have two older sisters. I took classes at the art school, and they took dance class. It was just like Mike’s story from A Chorus Line — my mother would sit in the waiting room and do her crochet,” he laughs. “I started when I was three, and they eventually dropped out, and I stayed. I danced all through my childhood, but I was never really passionate about it. I have a pretty mathematic brain, so I was pretty good with form and remembering the structure of things. But I didn’t love it until I was in high school and I did a couple musicals, and that really gave me ‘the bug’. So I started dancing really hard when I realized that, amongst the theatre people, I was so much better of a dancer than everyone else — they weren’t dancers; they were people who just loved doing theatre. So I found a niche and felt special — the same thing all adolescents go through about needing to find themselves through something.”

For those of us coming of age in the 1980’s, the dance world was dominated by Russians who had defected to the United States. At this time, ballet dancers and choreographers were major

celebrities in popular culture, and Blankenbuehler was in awe of the raw athleticism and technical abilities of the male dancers. “I saw the Bolshoi once, and I marveled at the men’s jumps; and as a teenager, I completely idolized Baryshnikov. Something in me said I could never possibly do that; it was such a gargantuan achievement that I thought even if I worked all the time and I was really good, could I ever be a superstar? No. In my head, I only saw the end result; I didn’t see all the other possibilities that there could be if I weren’t a Baryshnikov.”

I have always liked linear

storytelling; and I’ve always

liked commercial theatre —

things that have big emotional

swells, and plotlines, and

characters you recognize and

grab onto.

“The bottom line was, the storytelling of the concert [dance] world never really thrilled me, and the modern world of concert dance confused me, actually. I studied modern a little bit when I was a dance major in college, but it wasn’t interesting to me. I have always liked linear storytelling; and I’ve always liked commercial theatre, commercial art — things that have big emotional swells, and plotlines, and characters you recognize and


grab onto. Now I have an appreciation for concert dance because there are intricacies and emotional storytelling that are complex, and you can reinterpret them in many different ways. But I think, for most of my life, I didn’t necessarily want to interpret things in many different ways; I wanted to know what story I was on, and then I wanted to cherish it in my own way. I didn’t need to interpret in my own way; I just needed to feel independently about it. I found that in theatre. “In high school, it was a social thing. I went to an all-guys school, and I felt like I hadn’t found my stride. I was good at everything, but I wasn’t great at anything. I went to a dance school where I was always the only boy; so even though it was great being the only boy around all these girls, it didn’t feel cool or hip, and it didn’t feel like I was making a difference. Then I did Godspell my sophomore year of high school, and I loved being around the social setting. I loved where everyone loved it and had a common vision, and there was a momentum about it that was intoxicating. I loved the social aspect of it, making new friends; I started dating someone in the show. It was cliché high school theatre, like ‘Glee’,” he jokes. “I started dancing more, but I dropped all my other extracurricular interests. We did Joseph…, and I choreographed the whole show; so it was the very first thing I ever choreographed. And coincidentally, I’m directing and choreographing a huge national tour this year of Joseph…, so it’s full circle.”

Following high school, Blankenbuehler was accepted into universities for architecture and design, but he had a change of heart. “I backpedaled my senior year and said, ‘No, I have to dance.’ So I reapplied to schools after the deadlines happened, and I was accepted into FMU, which is a great school.” Attending college as a dance major on a full scholarship, Blankenbuehler was no longer the only guy in the dance classes. “I grew tremendously because of it. It was the first time I was around other men in class and being challenged in any way. I have to say, I didn’t love the concert dance aspect of it — it was a concert department — because I was theatrical to the core. Whenever we’d do student showcases, I’d pull out tap pieces and doing theatrical things. I was definitely the black sheep in the department.” The next summer, he got work at a major theme park in Orlando. “I loved it. It was like slave labor, it was five shows a day in the sun, for literally no money, and I totally loved it. “It was a big learning moment for me because I started to process how cartoons are drawn with outlines. If you have an animated character, there’s a tiny black line around them. Whatever that style of cartooning is mirrored a style of theatricality — different boldness of cartoon-iness, the show business, or the subtlety of non-show business things. I started to learn about the impact that your performance can have on stage. It was like a college course in choreography.” His work at the theme park got him noticed, and he was offered a position at their Tokyo theme park, where he worked for a year. “After that, I moved to New York City and entered the rat race,” and supported himself with money had saved while in Tokyo. “That was a really big deal in my career because most performers move here right after college, and they’re waiting tables and babysitting, and their careers slip away in their first year here. They get out of shape; they stop training. They can’t go to auditions; they can’t prepare for auditions. And I didn’t have that hurdle. I’ve never taken a job that wasn’t in show business.” Blankenbuehler’s preparation artistically and financially before he arrived in New York paid off once he was in the city. “That first year, all I did was take class and audition for anything and everything. After four months in New York City, I got offered the first major regional production of A Chorus Line after it had closed on Broadway, which Robbie Marshall directed and Kathleen [Marshall] assisted on. I got my Equity card there, and it was my

first big show that I booked here. It started a path that was instrumental because from there, Robbie and Kathleen put me in another Equity project, and I went on and did another project with Kathleen and Scott Ellis. From there, I did a project with Scott Ellis and Susan Stroman. Literally, one person led me to another person, and then 10 years later, I’ve had a very exciting Broadway career.” Like everyone, Blankenbuehler had some trials along the way. “I had injuries that really taught me a lot. And a lot of bad timing — I’ve made a career out of bad timing. But maybe that bad timing was on purpose because I started choreographing probably sooner than I ever would have because of things that weren’t going the way I wanted them to go in my performing career. But I was very lucky to have an exhausted performing career, so I didn’t start a choreography career wishing I could have had something else.”

A theatrical dancer to his core, Blankenbuehler grew up

on movie musicals that spanned the genre from the Golden Age of Hollywood to the 1980’s dance flicks. “All I knew was Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Gregory Hines, Baryshnikov, the movie musicals — that’s all I knew.” Speaking of Gregory Hines and Baryshnikov, I mention to Blankenbuehler that White Nights was one of my favorite films growing up, to which he replies, “I’m not exaggerating, when I won my Tony Award, I went backstage and they have a webcam where you can thank everybody that you didn’t get to thank. And I thanked White Nights. It was huge in my career. Then when I did Heights Off-Broadway, we did it in Baryshnikov’s space, and word came back to me that, in his words, that he thought the choreography was amazing. I lost it! And when I was 18 years old, Gregory Hines called me once, and I met him in person, and it was a crazy event for me.”

Contemporary theatre takes

the pressure off any rules, so

people think I’m a

contemporary choreographer,

but I’m not. Blankenbuehler is honest about himself. “I’m a very driven person. I wanted to do things my own way. I wanted to do


things on my own. I probably could have skipped a lot of bad lessons if I would have done things like assistant choreographer.” One person who helped shape Blankenbuehler’s line-driven aesthetic was choreographer Chris Chadman, who assisted Bob Fosse and choreographed the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls, which was Blankenbuehler’s Broadway debut. “The choreography was unbelievable; it was very much of that [animation] thing of being outlined and specific. It was all very clean. You could see the music. You could literally see the punctuation of the dynamics in the music. So I quickly learned that what spoke to me and what I was good at was staccato movement. I am not a lyrical dancer. Even when I dance lyrically, there’s always a staccato attack to things. I dance fast and then create pauses. In the pause, hopefully I’ve captured successful storytelling and body language. I feel like In the Heights was the thesis of that idea. It was based on creating form that has storytelling in it, but it was an exercise in holding positions. We were always hitting these shapes quickly and then pausing, sometimes going into slow motion. It wasn’t the slow motion of the show that was important, it was the filmic quality of how you can create a close-up without a camera. “In the Heights was successful in continuing that idea for me, but in projects since then, I’ve been slightly successful and slightly unsuccessful in learning how to adapt that theory to different styles of movement and different styles of music. With contemporary material, it’s easy because there are no rules. Contemporary theatre takes the pressure off any rules, so people think I’m a contemporary choreographer, but I’m not. I’m a traditional choreographer. I just haven’t had the right show to show that. Also it’s easier to choreograph a contemporary show because the rules are much more liberal, and that’s a very freeing thing.”

Blankenbuehler uses In the Heights as an example of traditional technique masked within the modern dance moves. “The girls had to do a lot of partnering, so if they didn’t have ballet technique, they weren’t going to be in the show. Even though when you watch the show, you don’t really see ballet technique; but when the girl spins around the guy’s head and all of a sudden is down in the dip, that’s ballet technique. The way you see technique is completely dependent on the emotional story you’re telling. So if you’re telling a hard-hitting story that takes place on the pavement in New York City, there are going be hard edges to things and a rawness of things. So everybody has to have good technical training, whether that technical training is jazz-based — because that is a technical artform, it’s just parallel, or if it’s ballet. But if you’re a wonderfully trained dancer in ballet technique, but you’re not versatile, you’re never gonna work in the theatre. Very rarely are we allowed to look like a dancer on the stage. We have to look like a street kid or a sailor. Hardly ever, except for a show like 42nd Street, are we supposed to look like a dancer. To do that, you have to learn to mask your technique, and that is dependent on good choreography and the ability to capture a character in a situation.”

Capturing a character can be difficult for the creatives as well as the performers. Blankenbuehler shares one experience with “choreographer’s block” and the unexpected inspiration that cleared the way to be able to work. “I had a very difficult time starting 9 to 5. I was doing prep for weeks and weeks and weeks. It was really time to start making up steps, and I could not start the opening number. Four days of eight-hour days, walking in circles, I couldn’t choreograph four counts. I was sitting where I am right now, in my studio overlooking 8th Avenue, and there was an ant


farm of people walking down the street, and I’m like, ‘I’m going to Starbucks. So I went across the street to Starbucks, and I’m in line, and I’m pissed off because some tourists in front of me don’t know the difference between a tall and a small coffee. I’m getting really agitated, and I realize I’m leaning forward: same arm, same leg. And I look out the window, and people are pushing past each other sideways; a lot of the people were walking same arm, same leg because they were actually turning sideways to fit through people. All of a sudden, I walked away from Starbucks; and I walked upstairs and choreographed the opening number.

“The choreography became about the shift of the shoulders to fit past somebody. In the city, on a busy commute, we don’t make eye contact; we’re just like ants — [we] go on our way. Until I realized what the moment was, no choreography was going to come to me. It was going to look like dancing as opposed to it looking like real people. I think the show was successful in that, when people were in an office, they looked like people who had deadlines in an office; when they were grumpy commuters, they looked like that.”

Show business is hard. Making

a Broadway musical is hard.

You always run out of time; you

always run out of money. Using art as an example, he elaborates on the creative process. “If you’re going to have a beautiful drawing, you have to have a sharp pencil. You can’t have a three-inch wide piece of charcoal and think you’re going to do a fine-line sketch. That’s exactly what technique is. We’re going to end up looking like a raw drawing, but you have to do it with a well-sharpened pencil. Without that technique, you won’t be able to do it. So for shows like Heights and Bring It On!, the final product looks raw, but it takes a lot of versatility and a lot of intellect. The versatility and the technique have to become assumptions. We have to assume that anybody who wants to be on the ‘big stage’ is going to have that. And it takes somebody with the brain power to understand the differences.

“I was lucky when I was performing because the people I was working with, like Stroman, saw my brain was turned on. They gave me opportunities and responsibility because they knew I was going to take what they gave me and process it in a smart way. So those are the kinds of performers I look for. Show business is hard. Making a Broadway musical is hard. You always run out of time; you always run out of money. I need people who can pick up the slack and who are going to take my thought and run with it. That’s just the way it works.” Injuries are common in dance, but perhaps more so from the strenuous amount of dancing required of Broadway dancers. I just had to ask Blankenbuehler’s perspective on how to create choreography that is danceable eight shows per week but also thrilling for the audience. “That’s a big part of my mission statement, actually,” he replies. “Part of the reason I started choreographing so young was because I was a little discontented on stage. I felt as an ensemble dancer, which I loved being — I didn’t want to be the principle; I wanted to be in the ensemble — that we weren’t often enough asked to be integral in the storytelling. My mission became how can movement but also the ensemble’s participation be integral in the show. “Part of my problem has been that, for the first part of my choreography career, when I make a big mistake, it’s because I’m

thinking ensemble first instead of story first. I still want to treat the ensemble well. I want to give them material they’re proud of. I want to give them material that, at the end of the day, they feel like they contributed to the show. Though, sometimes, I shoot myself in the foot by making that the story, when the story almost always comes through the principal. So that’s my own thing I have to work through.

“I’m not a chair choreographer,” he states emphatically. “I’m still in the trenches. I still take care of my body, and I still dance everyday. I try to dance everything in the studio. But there are lots of things I can’t do anymore and ways of movement I can understand and experiment with but I can’t really nail. So I’m dependent on my assistants, and I’ll say, ‘How does this turn feel to go from here down to the floor.’ And they figure out the ins and outs of its, and they’ll say, ‘That’s fine.’ Sometimes, obviously it’s labored, and I know that’s not going to happen eight times a week. It’s a big deal for me to not have injured dancers in my shows. I quit my career injured. It’s going to be hard, but that’s fine. I don’t want repetitious movement where everybody in my show has to have hip surgery. “Bring It On! was a little different because that was volatility — like broken fingers from catching girls. In some projects, it’s like a sporting event, and you can’t get around [injuries]. But I’m proud that in most of my shows there have never been chronic injuries or volatility that’s ended dancers’ careers. That’s a big deal for me. But that’s because I love dancing. I’m still in it.”

You’re flying all the time.

Now, that comes with

dysfunction, problems, injuries

… it comes with so many

restrictions; but for a year of

your life, you weren’t human.

On the subject of dance injuries, I’m reminded of one of Bob Fosse’s most difficult shows, Dancin’. I mention to Blankenbuehler that I had heard it ranked as the Broadway show with the most reported injuries, and he remembers dancing that same choreography in the tribute show Fosse. “We did all that movement in Fosse, and we did it with more than twice as many people. I believe they had 14; we had 30 people in Fosse. We were doing half as much [dancing], in theory. They were non-stop. In a way, it was exciting because they were on the edge. They were Olympians. There was a recklessness about being in the heat of the moment that people can sustain. Movin’ Out was a tough show. The only sad element in my performing career is that I never did Movin’ Out. I felt like I finished on the wrong show, and I always regretted not being able to do that show. When I looked at everybody in the show, they were burning it out. To me, that’s the pinnacle of accomplishment: when you burn your gas tanks out; you’re flying all the time. Now, that comes with dysfunction, problems, injuries, every morning being in ballet class, having to sleep, not being able to do this, not being able to do that, it comes with so many restrictions; but for a year of your life, you weren’t human. Masculinity and the stigma about boys or men taking dance was a huge factor as to why there were rarely any boys in my ballet classes as a kid. According to Blankenbuehler, “I would



“Bring It On!”


have to say that stigma is almost entirely gone. I’m sure there are still situations [like that]. For boys dancing, there’s always going to be some pain in the ass kid who is close-minded and give them a hard time. But that’s no different than somebody might be a little on the nerdy side who plays on the chess team. There’s such visibility now, like the hip-hop movies, ‘So You Think You Can Dance?’ Most people look at those accomplishments and think, ‘Oh my god, that kid’s flying like a basketball pro.’ Twenty-five years ago, when you said dance and men, people were like, ‘Oh, you wear tights?’ No one knew what tango was, there was no hip-hop, crumping, even swing dancing had been forgotten. The finger got pointed to the tights. ‘O, you dance. You dance with a bunch of girls.’ But now, when you hear dance, you think Jay Z, Justin Timberlake, you think these guys that are bad-ass. And so, I have straight friends who say, ‘If I could come back, I’ll come back as a male dancer,’ because you’re the coolest guy, you walk with confidence, you’re around beautiful women, there’s energy that’s exhilarating. And I think that’s changed [the perception] a lot.”

For boys dancing, there’s

always going to be some pain

in the ass kid who is close-

minded and give them a hard

time.

Blankenbuehler points out that television dance competitions have their good aspects and their bad, but he is quick to point out the benefits of dance having such a wide-reaching forum for exposure. “In the educating of the public, I think it’s definitely good. It’s not only about the stigma of men dancing, it’s also the education of what dance accomplishes. To see a two-step, to see a tango, to see all these dances — no one knew what these dances were. Ten years ago, the general regional audience had no idea what these forms were. Now, there’s a brand new appreciate for craft, and that’s really exciting.

As a voice teacher, I have had people ask me if rap is actual music, to which I reply, “Yes,” so I could not resist asking Blankenbuehler if hip-hop has officially entered the Broadway musical as a legit dance style. “I’m working on a new piece called ‘Only Gold’, and every style in the world is in this show. Somebody said to me, ‘What style is it?’ I said, ‘It’s not. It’s whatever the music says.’ If the moment is lyrical, the movement is lyrical. If the moment is staccato and angry, it may be a little hip-hop-y. Hip-hop musical language is an amazing storytelling device: there’s a guttural expression of lyric; it’s lyric matching rhythm, which in the theatre is key. It’s based out of the African drum, swing dancing, and all those things that are at the core emotional. With African drumming, if somebody doesn’t understand death, they play a drum groove that helps them mourn. That’s become part of our culture, so when you hear that kind of a groove, you feel the weight of mourning; it’s built into our subconscious. Hip-hop music is an extension of that. Hip-hop music, and thus the rhythm that the lyrics follow, captures something that is deep-seated in our emotional core. It’s not presentational. It’s really guttural. It’s a great storytelling advice.”

Blankenhuehler then speaks of fellow Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer of In the Heights. “I’ve had an amazing time working with Lin-Manuel, who’s an amazing writer of theatre, and he just loves hip-hop. I’ve learned that it’s easy to do storytelling to music of that energy. Thus, I believe in

the theatre, in many cases, you’re supposed to see what you’re hearing and what you’re feeling. It’s all a cohesive picture. So if I’m hearing a guttural expression of life, I expect to see it.” To illustrate the point, he shares how he was inspired by a couple of kids when he was working on In the Heights. “I came out of the grocery store, and there were two kids. One was sitting on the mailbox, and the other kid is on the street, rapping about what happened that day. He was free-styling, just talking about his day in rhythm, dancing to it. Cars were honking; taxis were beeping. Literally, he was talking to the beat of the city in a way that was rhyming. I thought, ‘That’s the city. That’s life.’ That’s what you expect to see when you hear an emotional telling that is accurate, the audience is put at ease when they’re seeing what they’re hearing. They don’t process it consciously; when they’re asked to process it consciously, they’re actually not moved by it emotionally, I think. The long answer to your question is I’m glad hip-hop is here, and I hope people take it seriously because I think it is really inspiring. Hip-hop doesn’t need to be abrasive; that’s what people often need to understand. It’s like when people say, ‘Oh, I didn’t think I’d like rap!’ Well, rap’s not always about breaking windows and spray-painting walls. Sometimes it’s an expression of simple things, easy things, light things. Whatever the moment is, you express it.”

What happened with Annie is

… we found our way too late.

There’s an old show biz axiom that goes, “Never work with kids or animals,” but Blankenbuehler did both with the current Broadway revival of Annie the Musical. This particular show proved to have plenty of growing pains for him as a choreographer. “I’ve worked with kids a lot, and I have kids,” he says. I think I’m good at creating momentum and a great environment. I can be strict at work. But something happened in Annie that I realized too late was that — I knew this — but it reminded me that they’re not capable of the same interpretation as an adult. I’ll be honest, I learned it too late, so it’s not in the show the way I wanted it in the show. You must choreograph geometrically and rhythmically in a way that the story comes out no matter what their mood is. No matter if they’re full-out or not full-out, or if they’re so advanced as kids that they can interpret a lyric, you have to make it work in a fool-proof way. You have to set it, and you have to drill it. Because they haven’t been doing it forever.

“If I’m doing an adult show, I can make a change on a preview rehearsal, and they’ll do it that night, and it’s going to be good. It’s not going to happen that way with kids. They’re going to have to drill it for many days, and then you can decide if it works or not. What happened with Annie is, we did that too late. We found our way too late. So for me, my contribution wasn’t vibrant enough because I didn’t get it to a point where I could drill it early enough. I did another production with kids called Fly, which is a Peter Pan adaptation. All the Lost Boys are between 9 and 12. From day one, I was like, ‘This is the way it is.’ Every time the choreography was interpretive, I cut the piece of choreography. I made it linear, a clearer physical storytelling, so that even if they were completely off their game on a certain day, you would still see the idea. So I had to take the brunt of the storytelling on my shoulders and not think they were going to make it better than what I’m giving them. I also set the choreography and drilled it. Instead of experimenting for several weeks, I just laid it out there with them, and it was a big improvement. It allowed their vocabulary to be much more detailed and their contribution to the show, inevitably, more successful.” “Bring It On!”


I learned a lot of lessons last

year. I’m not going to college

to learn how to choreograph a

number for kids. This is my

college course, it just happens

to be a Broadway musical. Having worked with children myself, I had wondered

how kids process information — why are they so different to teach when they look like small versions of adults? Research has proven that the child brain is very different from the teenage or the adult brain; the child brain is more adept at processing concrete concepts and has difficulty with abstract and spatial concepts until the hormonal changes that begin with the onset of puberty. Working with children is completely different than working with adults.

“I knew that, but I didn’t really take it in when I did Annie,” admits Blankenbuehler. “I have hundreds of hours of video of me where the steps are really fun and interesting, and every time I did it, I’d have to throw it away. Nothing worked. I’ll be honest, I had a hard time last year. I learned a lot of lessons last year. With what I do for a living, I have to learn on a huge platform. I’m not going to college to learn how to choreograph a number for kids. This is my college course, it just happens to be a Broadway musical.”

Broadway is also huge business, and with that comes critics. “I’m thrilled to be getting opportunities, but people come after you. People came after me critically. I’m still growing and learning; I’m wanting to take chances and be better. But sometimes when we’re on our way to being better, we make mistakes in front of thousands and thousands of people. “Bring It On! was the first show I directed. I thought the show was very successful, but it was completely unsuccessful in business. I got a Tony nomination for the show; the show got a Tony nomination; and I’m at the Tony Awards for a show that closed six months earlier. Emotionally, it was difficult because I did that one right! And it’s not around,” he says with a half-laugh. “The business is emotional. It’s a grueling thing we’re in, in show business…. There’s a tremendous pressure in making something out of nothing…. In some ways, it feels like there’s a right and wrong answer, then in some ways, it feels like there are a million possibilities.”

I didn’t have enough time or

focus to be the performer I

wanted to be or be the

choreographer I wanted to be,

so I had to pick one.

One decision that many dancers contend with is when to hang up the shoes of being a professional dancer and transition into teaching or choreography. “It’s different for everybody, but you’re a choreographer, or you’re not a choreographer,” Blankenbuehler states flatly. “I don’t believe you can say, ‘Oh, I’m done dancing now, should I be a choreographer?’ I’ve been choreographing since I was a teenager, whether it’s on my own in my bedroom, or a show in high school, or seeing a Broadway show as a 25-year old

and being critical, or seeing Jerome Robbins’ Broadway and it changed my life — not just as a dancer; choreographically, it unsettled me. So feeling like that, I’m a choreographer.

“A lot of dancers went the route of assisting, so they find a camp that feels right for them. In many ways, I regret not doing that. What ends up happening is they grow bigger: they become a director/choreographer, then they do a movie. They move up… from somebody saying, ‘I’m not available, but you should look at my associate.’ It’s a graduating process.” Blankenbuehler moved up the ladder his own way, one show at a time, burning the candle at both ends. “About halfway through my Broadway [dancing] career, I started doing double-duty, and it was exhausting. By the time I opened Fosse in New York, I was teaching at Broadway Dancer Center several days a week, so I had free studio space because I was teaching there. So I’d do the show at night, then get up way too early in the morning, and I’d dance for two hours at Broadway Dance Center to prepare my choreography for class. I was flying away on my days off to set dance pieces at dance schools to make extra money and also to work on my choreography. I did that for 10 years. I realized I didn’t have enough time or focus to be the performer I wanted to be or be the choreographer I wanted to be, so I had to pick one. For me, I was plagued with injuries, but I could have still danced for many years. I made the decision to shift gears. One thing that’s important in life, and in show business, especially, is parlaying momentum. If you fall out of favor and then you try to reinvent yourself, that’s going to be a lot of work. But if you’re at a height and you say, but I also can do this, they’ll look at you.

“If you’re in a hit Broadway show, as a dancer, and you audition for a new show Broadway show, they’re going to be like, ‘Let’s hire that person; they’re in the hit Broadway show!’ But if you stay in the Broadway show for five years and you’re not auditioning, and you go up for the new Broadway show, you’re just in the chorus call. You’re not special. A lot of people let their career end, and then they think they can start a new career. I don’t think that really works.”

You can’t use dance just

as a recreational exercise if

you want it as a career. You

have to train the things

you don’t enjoy. Blankenbuehler offers some tips on training for young dancers who want to tackle Broadway. “For all dancers, and for men especially, remind yourself that you can’t just have fun. When you’re in your teens and twenties, you can’t use dance just as a recreational exercise if you want it as a career. You have to train the things you don’t enjoy. You have to take ballet class. Even if you want to be a hip-hop dancer, you need to do all these other things. Will you ever be able to pay your rent as a hip-hop dancer? You may have to take a movie job, you may have to do this, or do that. The idea of getting jobs is different from the idea of having a career. A career is about longevity and versatility. When dancers are young, they have to train, train, train, train. They have to take tap class. They have to take voice class. They have to do everything to get as many skills as they can. Once they’re in the door, then they excel because of what they’re good at. But you have to get in the door first.” He also has a few pieces of helpful advice for men on how to maintain their masculinity as a dancer, to help avoid the

November 2013 � MTMag.co November 2013 � MTMag.co

stigma of male dancers. “Young men have to be reminded that they’re going to be playing parts. If you’re in West Side Story and you’re the tough kid in the gang, take hip-hop, or karate, or lift weights to form you into [these] things; that’s part of the gig. It doesn’t mean denying who you are, it’s understanding that sometimes you play a part. You morph your body into something else. You’re acting.” Being, as he says, a traditional choreographer, certainly Blankenbuehler has a dream show, right? Not exactly. “West Side Story…. I don’t know that that’s my favorite movie or my favorite musical, but it is momentous to me in its accomplishment. I loved the idea of Singin’ in the Rain as a kid, but I don’t actually love the movie or the musical, but my career probably happened because of it. I was never the kind of person to worship one thing; I worshiped moments.” With a flash of inspiration, he says, “You know what movie musical I loved? That’s Entertainment. Because it was all those moments put together. When I saw those men dance in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, I was beside myself. It pushed me to accomplish things, and maybe that movie is why I was good in Guys and Dolls. I think that’s the way our world works — little kernels that inspire us and we hold on to them for a very long time.” Blankenbuehler then remembers an experience he had while attending an opening of a show in Los Angeles. “I met somebody who was in Seven Brides… and somebody who was in the movie Guys and Dolls. And I said, ‘You don’t know me, but you’re the reason I’m here.’” For the record, his favorite movies just happen to be non-musicals: Shawshank Redemption and Cinema Paradiso. “I’m a sentimentalist,” confesses Blankenbuehler. “It’s all about heart for me. I’m a romantic, and those really inspire me.”

But back to what might be his dream show to direct or choreograph, it seems the stroll down memory lane has reminded him of one show in particular. “I’d like to take a stab at Guys and Dolls. I don’t think there’s any revival that I could say is my ‘dream’ because the ones I love were done so well. It’s a strange sense of bravado to say I could do West Side Story better because I don’t think I could do West Side Story better.”

Looking to the past is not where Blankenbuehler gets his inspiration, however. “I’m really into new theatre and exploring how integrated movement can be with singing and speaking. My dream for the past 20 years has been to create something absolutely from scratch — write it, contribute to the design, direct it, choreograph it. That’s where my focus is these days. Even though I’m paying for my life and my family’s life by choreographing shows — which I love, the end-all-be-all for me is if I could retire and die having done five or six amazing musicals that I conceived. That’s my dream. That doesn’t mean I’m credited as the bookwriter; it means that I had an idea that was a great musical and smart people came on board to help me do it. I’m doing my first one right now, and hopefully it makes a difference.” He hopes to inspire dancers, “One day, 25 years from now, somebody will say, instead of White Nights, it was that show Andy Blankenbuehler made.”

MTM

www.coresinging.org

http://amzn.to/1gSaNGt

Note: When listening to a cast album for review, I

only go by the information offered in the music

itself and in the liner notes of the booklet. My

review is based on what I experience while

listening to the album straight through.

Rock music and power vocals collide in this new take on an old tale. According to the liner notes for the concept album of Lizzie the Musical, Lizzie Borden was a “Victorian punk rock rebel”. The purpose of the album seems to be to introduce aspects of the infamous double murder case that are not in common knowledge. With only four singers, the two-act musical pulses thanks to the hard rock score that presents Lizzie as audiences have never heard her.

Lizzie’s music is full-throttle electric guitar-driven rock, grunge, punk, and metal geared toward stage theatricality and balanced by quiet piano and acoustic guitar ballads, exposing the secret thoughts swirling inside the fractured mind of this most infamous 19th century media sensation, Lizzie Borden.

Similar to Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, the writers used rock music to lift the historical Lizzie Borden from the confines of the stuffy Victorian age and resuscitate the story in the form of a palpitating score with unapologetically strong roles for women. Similar to Spring Awakening and American Idiot, the score pulls no punches in regard to use of colorful language or touchy subject matter unsuitable for polite society.

The subject matter as well as some of the language makes the album unsuitable for listeners under the age of 15. The score explores the rumors of Lizzie’s father’s incestuous tendencies toward her and how it affected her mentally and emotionally. The murders on that summer day in 1892 are described in graphic detail, and the third song in Act II is titled, “What the Fuck Now, Lizzie?!”, utilizing liberal use of the popular curse word and clearly placing the show in

21st century storytelling style. With a complicated credit listing of who wrote

what, the score was created by Steven Cheslik-de-Meyer, Alan Stevens Hewitt, and Tim Maner. The show was presented at the National Alliance for Theatre’s 2010 festival and further developed at Village Theatre in Issaquah, Washington. The concept album is released by Broadway Records.

What is widely known about the Lizzie Borden murder case is summed up in the children’s rhyme:

Lizzie Borden took an axe Gave her mother forty whacks, And when she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one.

Yet, the liner notes of the album point out that she “gave her mother 20 and her father got 10, maybe 11.” With only an hour of jury deliberation, Lizzie was acquitted of the charges and set free.


The story is told through the voices of four characters: Lizzie Borden sung by Carrie Manolakos, her sister Emma Borden sung by Storm Large, Bridget Sullivan who acts as an “angel/devil in Lizzie’s ear” as sung by Carrie Cimma, and “muse” Alice Russell sung by Ryah Nixon.

As a concept album, we, the listener, do not have all the information we would have if we were seeing the show on stage. This concept album would benefit with a scene breakdown and a bit of direction at the beginning of each song, as it is not always clear what the backstory is for each song or to whom the character is singing. Complicating matters, the liner notes indicate that the writers created some characters for a theatrical purpose and changed the names of others. I can only go by what I hear on the album and what I read in the liner notes, and I’m sure that if I had access to the dialogue of the script some of the confusion would be cleared up. I, for one, wish more information about the characters and the plotline were in the liner notes since we are getting information with which we are not familiar. Act II has more recitative narrative written into the actual songs, so they are recorded; however, they were not printed out to be read in the booklet. A similar narrative treatment would have been helpful in Act I in setting up the characters and the plotline.

Perhaps Lizzie’s entire emotional upheaval is summed up in the sixth song, “The Soul of the White Bird”,

when she sings, “Oh, that I had wings, like a dove / I would fly away and be at rest.”

What clearly comes across is the Borden sisters’ loathing of their stepmother, the woman who married their father after their mother died. An already tense situation, matters are brought to the brink when their stepmother convinces their father to change his will. Later, in the song “Why Are All These Heads Off?”, Lizzie is informed that her father has killed all her pet birds, decapitating each of them with an axe. She laments, “The taste for blood is on my tongue and has been rising up for years.” This sets the stage for the murders we have all come to know and that still shock and fascinate people to this day.

“This Is Not Love” is one example of Lizzie’s turmoil in the Borden household. The role of Lizzie is expressively sung by Carrie Manolakos, building into a powerful belt emoting the inner scream of a girl being sexually abused by her father and pushed aside by her stepmother. Coming across a Book of Household Poisons, Lizzie wonders if the book can offer a perfect recipe for a “perfect little death” for Mrs. Borden.

Several of the 28 songs could be stand-alone rock showstoppers, and there is enough variation in musical styles to keep the score interesting yet maintain its definite hard rock genre. The lyrics are not as deftly spun as in a Sondheim musical, but they serve the purpose. The instrumentation ranges from electric guitar, bass, and


synthesizer to piano, cello, harmonium, music box, djembe, and percussion.

When listening to the album, influences from several rock music styles plus Musical Theatre are easily picked out. For instance, songs such as “Sweet Little Sister” have a strong rock arrangement fronted by clear, kick-ass, powerful female vocals you would expect from the Wilson sisters’ iconic rock duo, Heart, or Pat Benatar.

The primary value of Lizzie the Musical is that it provides strong and compelling roles for four women, each of whom gets to shine either as a power rock belter or as a character singer/actor. In this way, the Lizzie concept album is a winner thanks to the amazing voices of its all-female cast, who offer both crystal clear power vocal acrobatics as well as soft, tender emotional delivery when needed.

It will be interesting to see how this dynamic changes if the show moves to a prominent stage in which the writers may be tempted to add other characters, particularly male characters. When transferring to a main stage for a full production, I can only hope that the show takes a cue from the Greeks and leaves the blood and gore offstage, or as in Sweeney Todd, keep it to a minimum. Keep the show focused on why Lizzie did what she did. (Side note: After listening to the whole album and taking in what I felt from it, I did do a quick search on the old Google and discovered that Lizzie has had several concert staged readings in 2013.)

I am by no means a metal or punk rock aficionado, and I do not usually listen to music such as this. However, enough of the rock music interpretations are familiar to my ears and pique my Musical Theatre sensibilities that I could listen to the Lizzie album a couple of times through. The tumultuous upheaval of Lizzie’s psyche could only be realized through the explosive nature of rock music set upon

the “anything goes” platform of Musical Theatre. The Musical Theatre genre needs more musicals that feature full-throated singing from strong female belters and character singers. Having an all-female cast is just icing on the rock musical cake.

If you love rock musicals, add Lizzie to your playlist. It will sit perfectly between American Idiot and Sweeney Todd.

Support Musical Theatre. Get this album on Amazon: http://amzn.to/HVhnx6

MTM



Born in Texas, mild-mannered Tony Award-winning

lighting designer Kevin Adams talks with a breathy smoothness where a drawl might once have been, hinting to his Southern upbringing. “I left when I was 21,” he sighs, “but I was born there and raised there.” He sighs a lot, whether for dramatic effect (or comedic), but his intelligent, dry wit shines through.

Lighting was not Adams’ entrée into theatre, in fact, he says, “I came to lighting quite late in my life, actually. In high school, I really wanted to be in plays, and I was in plays, but I couldn’t be in every play. But I had this very nice, gentle drama teacher, who gently guided me out of acting and into set design. I liked architecture and the idea of constructing things for shows, so I took to it very quickly. I started designing sets for plays in high school. Then I went to the University of Texas and studied set design. I had no interest in lighting — it was not on my radar at all. I was a serious, dedicated set designer. Then I went to the California Institute of the Arts and got my Masters in set design and production design for film. I moved to Hollywood and worked as a set designer and production designer for years.” An avid art lover, Adams often found inspiration in the visual arts. “I always went to galleries and museums, and I started seeing a lot of work by space and light artists from the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. I saw their work in museums in Los Angeles.

So I started lighting my own sets for theatre using the strategies of these light and space artists. People whose work I greatly admired — directors and solo performance artists, started calling me and saying, ‘That thing you’re doing with light in that show, that’s how I see my show. You have to come light my show.’ I’d say, ‘I’m a trained theatre designer, but I’m not really a lighting designer. I’m figuring this out on my own and I don’t know what I’m doing.’ And they were so generous, they’d say, ‘That’s okay, just come try this, and if it doesn’t work, that’s okay.’ So I started lighting other people’s sets.” One thing led to another, and Adams became an in-demand designer on several fronts. “In the late ‘80’s, early ‘90’s, I lit a lot of performance art,” says Adams. “There was quite a performance art scene in this country at that time. So I learned by doing, actually, by trying all kinds of things. Then I finally moved to New York in ’96 just to be a lighting designer, and the city was very kind to me and very welcoming. It turned out very well.” With such an eclectic lighting design résumé on top of his academic set design skills, I asked Adams which is better: going to college for lighting or getting on-the-job-training? “Before every college in this country was training people to do that, that’s what people did.” The apprentice route to mastering a craft is an age-old tradition in the arts. Adams uses an

by Trish Causey


example, “They started out as dancers — or guys went over to the theatre department because that’s where all the girls were. People who are a generation old than me did not go to school to be designers. A lot of them fell into it from other [jobs] like stage manager. Now everyone is so predetermined in what they’re going to be; everyone is so trained,” he sighs.

I’m interested in the technical side of lighting and how lighting can be used to create emotion. As soon as I ask, Adams rattles off information; his previous sitting-on-the-porch façade vaporizes as he begins to talk shop. “Through cueing and atmosphere. Color and effects can make an emotional landscape that the performers exist in through scale and picture-making.”

What I’m known for is

using found equipment

… or using traditional

theatrical equipment in

a sculptural way so that

it acts as scenery.

Adams continues, sounding like a professor teaching a class, and I struggle to keep up with my note-taking. “The performer exists in a big picture; and the big picture is usually framed by the proscenium, so everything inside that frame is a picture. With lighting, you’re always picking out what inside that picture is seen and what isn’t seen. You’re composing pictures through light with all the elements that are there. When the performers are a part of that, you light all these things

around the performer to make different scales of picture — you can make all that go away and make the performer isolated in darkness or you can have a big complicated picture that the performer exists in. A lot of what I just told you is influenced greatly by set design. Also, what I’m known for is using found equipment like light bulbs and florescent tubes and neon, or using traditional theatrical equipment in a sculptural way so that it acts as scenery, like in Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, and Passing Strange. There’s a lot of use of light bulbs and florescent tubes or neon that are always present, so whether they’re on or not on, they’re acting as a sculptural element or scenery.”

Speaking of the different types of lighting, I inquire if part of the cool factor of lighting design is the groovy toys he gets to play with. Adams sinks back into his laissez-faire breathiness, now that the lesson is over. “There’s so much coming out every week now — so many lighting companies around the world, and so much new energy efficient technology — a lot of it we haven’t even seen in New York yet. It’s still filtering down to theatre.” He perks up again, “There are a lot of new LED products that are really cool, and some really cool flat-panel technology that’s like an iPad that produces a huge amount of light that can be different colors.”

New advancements in technology is always fun to play with, but is it really better than old-school lighting? “I’m not much of a tech person,” replies Adams. “Ultimately, it depends on how good your idea is, how clear and strong your idea is, and how you then use equipment to back that idea up. If that idea involves tons of new technology, then it’s great; if it doesn’t involve any, that’s great. When you’re getting into spectacles for rock-and-roll and pop music, then that [lighting] is exciting.” Then I ask what is his favorite part of lighting a show, and he sighs, “It’s all kind of a drag — it’s all kind of hard,” he chuckles. “It all makes me nervous, frankly, because when you finally get into the theatre, you have a limited amount of time to


create something. That’s the most interesting time — teching a show. I always like the first time the doors open and people see the show everyone’s made, and you get a sense of what things work and what things don’t work, especially in commercial theatre. In subscriber theatre, people buy tickets to a show, and they’re not sure what they’re going to see. But in commercial theatre, people buy tickets to things they want to see. It always interests me to see who’s showing up to this experiment you’re making and their reaction to it.

Whether lighting a rock musical or lighting a Rodgers and Hammerstein show, the goal is universal. “It’s all the same problem-solving. There’s a much larger leeway in pop/rock work because more spectacle is expected or can exist with that kind of music. That kind of active, assertive music can support a larger spectacle. Every show is basically the same problem-solving just in different scales. Whatever the [show] can support is what you give it.” Even a one-person show in which he is lighting Tony Award winner Patti LuPone follows that same basic rule. “Again, it’s all the same kind of problem-solving. You’re making an environment that supports the emotional world of that performer, and scale. You give that show whatever it can support.”

You help each other

get to the end of it all.

It’s a collaboration. Adams keeps his skills sharp by constantly learning and absorbing information. “I’m always going to galleries and museums and reading about artists and artists’ lives and how to make it work, how to live with a creative person, to live daily with making things, and how artists handle that in various ways. I like to look at photographers’ work, new and old, and architects’ work, all kinds of work that involves image-making.” Ironically, he is not as influenced by theatre as one might expect from a theatre professional, and he has a very good reason for that. “I don’t see a lot of theatre because it’s so expensive, and I’m always so tired,” he jokes, sighing. “I’m influenced by theatre in that I do it and I work with people who do it, but photographers and artists are things I look at everyday.” A busy designer who works in opera as well as theatre and performance art, I couldn’t help but wonder if Adams has every disagreed with a director or had a bad experience on a show. “I’ve been very lucky not to have those situations,” he replies. “Usually, directors will have really strong ideas when I don’t have an idea, and so I’m thrilled when they have an idea; and I’m glad to take it!” he says proudly. “The directors I work with are smart and they usually see if their or my idea is working, then you go from there. I’m thrilled to have anyone’s idea.”

Sharing ideas reinforces the collaborative aspect of working in Musical Theatre: getting input from others is part of the job. “If you’re lucky, you understand about 85 percent of your task. That’s a good day when you can figure out that much. Particularly on a new musical where there are so many things to figure out, you need people around you to help you get



to 100 percent. There were things in Spring Awakening — a couple of scenes, I did not know how to light, and Michael Mayer, the director, helped me figure it out. I figured out 85 to 90 percent of the show, but I’m only human. Now, it’s the same for him. There was one scene he did not know how to stage. I watched him stage it every way he could figure out, and I said, ‘Why don’t we try this….’ And it immediately worked. You help each other out. You help each other get to the end of it all. It’s a collaboration.”

Frankly, I’d rather be in

Jesus Christ Superstar

than design it. With such an extensive career in both set design and lighting design, could he possibly have a dream show he’s always wanted to work on? Adams’ dry wit once again comes into play. “I used to have a dream show, and every time I’d say it, someone else did it, and I wasn’t involved. So I don’t say it anymore.” He continues with a laugh, “I think all my dream shows are the ones you’re interested in as a kid, but now I’m too tired to explore those shows.” He quickly switches gears from his chronic Madeline Kahn tiredness as he reveals a secret love for one show in particular. “Frankly, I’d rather be in Jesus Christ Superstar than design it. I’d play any fucking part in that show. Honestly, I’m ready to go on stage right now, I know that show so well.”

Adams has worked on several projects this year including the Blue Man Group, a Broadway play, and a major production of Rigoletto. “I always wanted to work in the Metropolitan Opera, and I did that this year, and that was pretty cool.” Looking ahead to 2014, Adams is back to work on rock musicals. “I’m doing Hedwig and the Angry Inch [on Broadway] in the Spring, and we’re sending the American Idiot tour back out.” He adds, “I’m looking at other things outside of New York and going to Tokyo next year. I’m extremely selective about what I do, and I’m looking at things outside of New York now.” So what makes him say yes to a project? “I have such drag queen tastes,” he coos unapologetically. “If it’s a weird idea for a show — and I know it’s not going to be a good show — but this idea’s so dopey, I’ll do it. If the idea of the show is interesting, and the people writing the show are interesting, and the director and designers are interesting, if all those things align, I’ll say yes.”

See more examples of Kevin Adams amazing work on

his website: http://www.ambermylar.com

MTM



Janis Joplin was known for her pipes, so any singer who

dares to emulate her must be a singer to the core. Enter stage left, Mary Bridget Davies is now conquering Broadway eight times per week belting out Joplin’s bluesy showstoppers in A Night With Janis Joplin.

Without shame, Davies admits that singing was not her first love. “Dance is really what got me going,” but the opportunity to be in school plays introduced Davies to theatre. Beginning in third grade, she says, “I auditioned for all of them and got in. I was always in choir, but to actually pursue [singing], she was the third of the arts — it was dance, then theatre, then actual singing. But I love them all. They all fulfill a different place in your soul to complete you.”

A legit theatre singer, Davies also has a very accomplished blues band, and one of the perks of playing Janis Joplin is that the vocal influences on them both were the same. “Many of Janis’ blues influences were mine, and for me, including Janis. So when we’re in this production talking about the women who came before Janis that helped to sculpt her sound and who she became as a performer, that’s very easy for me to connect to — how much she loved Bessie Smith, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, and Etta James. Etta James, to me, was it. As soon as I realized I could sing and that I liked soul music, I was listening to her, and I would sing along — it just made you feel so good.”

Thinking about her stylistic influences, Davies lists a few famous names that helped shape her vocal style. “I still love Tina Tuner, Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, the Allman Brothers — all those rhythm and soul acts that evolved out of American music, the blues. I had this poster in college that was a family tree of music, and, of course, in the roots was Muddy Waters and all these blue artists. Then it shot up, and in one major branch was the Southern

rock and soul movement, and the other branch was Motown. It was cool because you could see who each artist’s predecessors were musically, and it all really made sense. To see that I had many of the same influences as Janis, I wasn’t surprised, but it made me feel good, like I was on the right track.”

The music of Southern rock and the Motown sound seemed to hit the national consciousness at the same time in the mid-twentieth century. Davies mentions that the recording industry of the 1950’s and 1960’s was very similar to the Hollywood studio system in which the artists were controlled by the label. “There was soul out of Memphis, so there was that family; then there was the Motown family and the Columbia artists,” which included Janis and Bessie Smith. “I think the light went on for everyone artistically around the early ‘60’s, and it actually turned into a product by the late ‘60’s. Blues and soul-inspired new rock-and-roll music because rock-and-roll is just an interpretation of the blues; it’s a mutation of it. Every genre of music has taken from something before it. None of it has hit the earth from a foreign planet and started from scratch. All the different styles are evolving from their predecessors. For the blues and rock-and-roll, you can’t have one without the other.”

So to say, ‘Did you ever think

you’d be on Broadway?’ Well,

yeah, when I was a delusional

kid taking 10 dance classes

per week.


For those who think Davies got a free pass to the Great

White Way, she is a tried-and-true Musical Theatre performer who always dreamed of being on Broadway, but in a more traditional setting. “I saw myself doing Broadway in major knock-down, drag-out numbers like ‘Anything Goes’ or ‘42nd Street’. All I wanted to do was tap dancing. When I graduated high school, I went on a dance tour, and we came to the City and saw Cats. And I got to do a master workshop with ‘Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, I wanna do this forever!’” she exclaims. “So to say, ‘Did you ever think you’d be on Broadway?’ Well, yeah, when I was a delusional kid taking 10 dance classes per week. But I had no idea I’d be starring as Janis Joplin!”

The reality of the business set in early for Davies whose first love had been dance. “By the time I was out of high school, I knew that wasn’t going to be a wish fulfilled because you’re out to pasture as a dancer at 22, 23 years old. I was old for the industry at 18, for just getting started. But there’s that one part of you that just never gives up.” Davies was steadfast in her dream despite the Negative Nellies: “I’m going to Broadway. You think I would joke about this?!”

Most performers experience the naysayers at some point in their career, which is harder to take when a career is stalled due to some life circumstance. Davies sums it up as, “Small town thinking.” The small town mentality does not understand how

performers will never be happy doing theatre “on the side.” Davies understands this all too well. “The people who are saying that to you have no idea they’re being offensive. They think they’re being helpful; [they’re] solving your problem for you. They have no idea because they don’t have that fire.”

Davies describes the moment she was told the show was going to Broadway: “It was a numbing shock. When you’ve dreamt of something your whole life and then it becomes a reality, it’s not like you pull the draw bar on the slot machine and 7’s come up, and ‘ding-ding,’” she mimics the sounds. “I was alone in my house, it was a gray morning. I was like, ‘You’re serious? We’re going?!’” Overwhelmed by the burden of responsibility of carrying a show on Broadway, her reaction was more akin to, “Oh my gosh this is real now. There’s so much work to be done! It wasn’t like, ‘Yay, let’s party! With Leprechauns and pots of gold and rainbows!’ There’s a lot of serious work to be done now.”

That inner fire is in every artist, though most of us qualify as the “struggling artist,” and Davies has been no different. “I had a friend say to me when he heard we were coming to Broadway, he said, ‘So… guess you’re not gonna have to pick which utilities you’re gonna keep on each month,’” she laughs.

“[There are] so many naysayers that surround us in our business and outside of it that don’t believe in that magic which is Musical Theatre — as soon as you sit down in the theatre and the

Photo by Joan Marcus



lights go down, there’s magic there, and you can’t mess with that. You can’t mess with someone’s dream. And the naysayers say, ‘But Broadway? The odds of that are, like, one in 20 kids go to Broadway.’” Davies response was always, “But what if I’m that one out of 20?”

Davies has been busy proving herself since she landed this gig on Broadway. “The craziest thing is that because of the subject of this play, which is Janis Joplin, and her being the Queen of Rock-and-Roll and having that passion for the blues, and then the parallel comes along with me with blues music and singing, there are a lot of people who know me professionally, but they only know me as a woman who has been singing in bands. They don’t know anything abut this girl that took dance from three to 18 and taught it from 21 to 26, or the girl that was in summer stock every summer and in all the major productions.” One of the roles Davies has played is the supreme belt role of “Reno Sweeney” in Cole Porter’s Anything Goes. Even here, Davies sees parallels. “Janis is that same woman, that same core, brazen, yet vulnerable loudmouth,” a persona that was at odds with Janis’ upbringing in which “you kept your mouth shut,” Davies paraphrases.

Janis was born in 1943 to a middle class family in the oil refinery town of Port Arthur, Texas. “In that part of the American cultural landscape, pre-counter culture, pre-civil rights, you were born and bred to be a mother and a housewife, perhaps a teacher, maybe a librarian. When you were born, your fate was decided for you if you never left town. And Janis refused for that to be her be-all, end-all.”

Davies quotes from the show, giving one of Janis’ childhood memories, “I had a lot of thoughts in my head as a kid, and my father was like a secret intellectual.” Some audience members get the joke; some do not. “Janis’ father was a technician at the oil refinery,” Davies explains. “He wasn’t supposed to be versed in poetry and classical music.” Then Davies recounts a story told to her by Janis’ sister, Laura. “They would sit at the

dining room table, and their father would bring up a hotbed issue; and they’d have to take a side and debate it. And their dad was like, ‘Good. Now switch.’ So their dad encouraged that free thought and analysis.”

For Janis, that free thought led to secret rebellious behavior that included swapping blues and rock-and-roll records with friends and even clandestine trips across the state line into Louisiana to visit honky-tonk bars. “At every turn, she was rebelling against who she was going to be if she never left. She was going to leave no matter what. She went to San Francisco and had a terrible time trying to be part of the beatnik and folk scene. Then she came home, went to UT at Austin, and tried secretary school. She had the constant trouble of ‘I want to make my family proud of me, but I can’t deny my dreams at the same time.’” Davies correlates these experiences with her own life and career. “Just having this Musical Theatre background and having had these talks in my own head, it’s very fun to slip into her skin.”

When you sing Janis, you’re

singing from your toenails, so

you want your whole body to

be awake. The show does not follow Janis’ career chronologically, but it shows her various musical influences from the 1950’s doo-wop through the iconic wailing, raspy hits of her later career. Davies delivers monologues and sings lead, but she is not the only one on stage, though. She is backed by an eight-piece band, along with the Joplinnaires singers and feature singers who embody Janis’ biggest influences, including Bessie Smith, Nina Simone, Etta James, and Aretha Franklin.


This style of show has people wondering if it’s a “real” Broadway show or a concert, a revue, or something in between. “Is it a concert masking as theatre? No, it’s legitimate theatre, it’s just so entertaining, you feel it’s a concert.” Davies adds, “I don’t know why so many people think theatre has to be painful.” For Janis, “We start at the very end of her career. There was a tour called Festival Express, which was a two-week Canadian concert tour, where all the bands and all the artists traveled by train throughout Canada. That was in the summer of 1970.” The production starts with “Tell Mama”, showing Janis’ introduction of the blues via Etta James. “There’s a lot of diva, heavy-weight singing going on here — but the good diva, the old school diva who really worked her but off and was still humble, and was a great artist. Not the ‘we show up an hour-and-a-half late, and you can’t say anything-diva.’”

We’re climbing up a human

mound of people tooth and

nail to get on Broadway. Then

you’re gonna get there and

complain about it?! With a vocally intense role such as Janis, Davies is very

clear that she has a focused vocal regimen. “I sleep a lot, and I have to exercise. It has to be closer to the show than away from. It’s not like I wake up at eight in the morning and work out and get my day started, and then kinda be quiet the rest of the day. The more active I can become throughout the day, the better off I am when I get to the stage. Then my body’s awake. When you sing Janis, you’re singing from your toenails, so you want your whole body to be awake.”

As for foods, Davies remarks, “I don’t deny myself anything, but I know better. I’m not gonna eat a wheel of cheese backstage at half hour and just pray for the best. On two-show days, Pedialyte is my best friend, and vocal rest. For me, it’s always about prevention. The one thing that I can’t live without is Zantac, just because acid reflux runs in my family, and there’s nothing that can stall a voice out quicker than a completely stripped acid throat. So that’s something that I do every day when I wake up, come rain or shine.”

Prior to the Broadway run, Davies was only doing seven shows per week, but she says, “It’s a regional seven,” which means performing Friday night, two shows on Saturday, and two shows on Sunday, “a five-show weekend.” With the show now on Broadway, Davies is performing the standard eight shows per week — one of the most grueling performing schedules in all of the arts world, but she won’t listen to those who complain about the amount of work performers have to put in.

“When you watch TV shows — and I can’t — like ‘The Biggest Loser’, and the people start complaining…. Do you understand people would die to be in your place, and you’re complaining that you’re there, getting this one-on-one coaching from this incredible person who’s going to transform your life, and all you have to do is put in the effort to complete these physical challenges — and you’re gonna cry and want to go home?! That’s how I feel about Broadway. We’re climbing up a human mound of people tooth and nail to get on Broadway. Then you’re gonna get there and complain about it?!” Along the way up that mound of Broadway hopefuls, Davies got her first taste of being Broadway starstruck at the

callbacks for Janis. “The blues singers girls that were auditioning and the Janis girls that were auditioning, we were all in the same room together. It was crazy — we were singing together in duets to see how people played off each other. Then we got our sides.” Davies says she turned around and, seeing a person she thought she recognized, she asked someone nearby, “‘Who’s that lady that looks like — Oh my god!’” Sitting in on the callback was none other than Liza Minnelli. “‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ It was at the Equity building, just a standard audition room and standard dance space, and to turn around and it’s this woman — it must be a hologram; no one really gets to see her in person,” jokes Davies. “For me, it was exciting, and I made her laugh in one of my monologue deliveries. I didn’t care if I didn’t even get the job ‘cause I can say, honestly, I made Liza Minnelli laugh. And I couldn’t believe how small she is. You think they’re all 10-feet tall because their personality and their pedigree are 20-stories tall.”

The director even told Davies he might bring Minnelli as his date for Opening Night of Janis Joplin so the Broadway baby playing the Queen of Rock-and-Roll could meet the legendary Tony Award-winning powerhouse that is Liza with a Z. The thought struck fear in Davies’ heart, and she remembered what Jane Lynch had gone through, performing in Annie. Davies retells the story she had heard, “They would have a sheet before the show of all the celebrities that were coming, and she’d say, ‘Don’t show me that.’ Then she’d go out to do a sound check, and the celebrities’ names would be on their seats.” Davies knows that Janis the Broadway musical will appeal to more than just the usual Broadway audiences. “This is a musical about a rock-and-roll icon. You know we’re going to get that crossover. Watch, I’m going to come out singing and Steven Tyler will be sitting there, and I’ll just fall off the catwalk, roll down the stairs, and just jump back up and keep singing.”

I don’t think I’d appreciate this

if I were 19 — I don’t think I

would appreciate how

wonderful this opportunity is.

I’m going to do it as best as I

can for as long as I can.

Now that she has the role, some of the weirder aspects of fame have reared their ugly heads. Other women contacted her for advice, via Facebook, on how to audition to become the understudy


for Janis. Incredulous, Davies opines, “Women writing to me and asking me for tips for the auditions this week — for my role!” Her response: “‘Well, take your résumé and your headshot, and do you best.’” She is obviously still shocked at the nerve of these actors. “I would never ever do that! And I would never say, ‘Trish, you know that job you have, I’m auditioning for it, too, and how did you get that job?’” Davies’ current job has her using just about every skill she ever learned and employing years of advice she was told along the way. “Those old school things take you notches above other people when you go into these [professional] auditions. All those little [bits of advice] we were dispensed, you can recycle.” Even her former dance students report that they, too, remember her teachings in their own career as well as pass along these pearls of wisdom to their own students. “I think the reason I’m getting to open this show on Broadway is because of all those things I learned in all those classes along the way. I don’t think I’d appreciate this if I were 19 — I don’t think I would appreciate how wonderful this opportunity is. I’m going to do it as best as I can for as long as I can…. When you look back, you think, ‘Man, that was kinda rough, but you’re such a better person for it.’ Because you’ve earned everything you’ve done, and no one can take that away from you. I wouldn’t have been ready to do this role two years ago. It took me a year to really get in her skin, to get that confidence.” Confidence comes with experience, which ties in to Davies’ favorite bit of advice: “Don’t ever discredit any gig you get. Take every job you get because you’re going to learn something from each one. Not only that, you’re building your résumé. And you’re in the business, and you’re meeting people. Trust me when I tell you that being a good person is the best thing you could ever do in this job. It really has helped me go a long way. You don’t ever want the people who actually decide whether or not you’re going to get hired knowing, ‘Oh, you’re talented, but you’re a handful.’”

As for her dream role, Davies doesn’t hesitate to name, “Mary Magdalene,” the lead female role in Jesus Christ Superstar. “I saw it on a regional tour when I was in junior high school, and I knew this is what I want to do. I was pulling on my mom, ‘I have to have the cast album!’” she remembers. Reaching this pinnacle of success has made Davies take stock of how far she has come. “My best friend in high school made me a scrapbook, and there are pictures from all these shows we were in, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m still that same girl.’ Which is crazy because that girl knew she was going to Broadway ‘cause she was 14. How simple everything is when you’re a teenager — ‘Well, I’m just going to take dance classes, and then I’m going to be a dancer on Broadway. That’s all you have to do,’” she laughs, as she remembers her own naiveté. Part of that teenage reverie was being ignorant to what it actually cost to take all those classes and be in all those shows. Davies’ mother was a nurse who put money aside to cover the costs of Davies’ dance and theatre addictions. “I just found out that my mom paid for my costumes out of a secret, rainy day account.” Her mother only recently told her, “‘If your father ever found out how much your costumes cost, he would never have let you do it.’” Now that Davies is on Broadway, she has a chance to look back and take stock of her road to the Great White Way. She recalls telling her parents the news that A Night with Janis Joplin was definitely going to Broadway, “I was all teary-eyed, and I never thought I’d say this, but I gotta get a new dream. And what a terrible problem to have.”

MTM

For more information on A Night With Janis Joplin and to get tickets, visit

the show’s website: http://anightwithjanisjoplin.com. And check out

Davies’ website: http://marybridgetdavies.com



Photo by Joan Marcus



After an incredible Broadway debut in the Tony Award-

winning Australian production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, veteran performer Tony Sheldon has returned to Sydney for a production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. He is one of the nicest gentlemen I have ever had the pleasure of interviewing, and this interview — my third with him — was a great chat on a Sunday morning while he was performing Horace Vandergelder in Hello, Dolly! Sheldon was born into a musical performing family in the land Down Under. “It was the family business,” he says. “My grandparents were vaudeville and radio stars. My mother was a Musical Theatre star by the time I was born. My father was a dancer. I always say he was the first Fosse dancer in Australia because he created ‘Steam Heat’ in Australia in Pajama Game. And he did Can Can, and Annie Get Your Gun, and several shows like that; then he became a television producer till the end of his life. My aunt — my mother’s sister, is Helen Reddy, who, of course, came to America and became a megastar and wrote ‘I am Woman Hear Me Roar’.”

With such an extensive career, I couldn’t help but wonder if he has ever wanted to revisit a character, possibly perform a role differently after some life experience or hindsight. “I got to revisit I Hate Hamlet, in which I played John Barrymore. I’ve played that in two separate productions, and that was enormous fun to play that twice. I don’t know if I’ve ever played anything when I wasn’t the right age. I’d probably be too old to revisit the roles that I did love, but I also love discovering new work. It’s like when people ask me what are the dream roles that I want to play — I don’t really have any. My mother always says, ‘They haven’t written the role for you yet,’” he laughs, but continues, adding, “Although, actually, they have — Priscilla was the one they wrote for me. But I love knowing there are new roles being created that are still out there in

the ether.” After the wild ride that was Priscilla, does Sheldon miss the constant attention, the pressure of the commercial Broadway theatre existence? “It was a total life-changer for me because I’d just been plodding along in Australia. My mother moved to America for 20 years; she lived in L.A. So both she and Helen had been urging me to make the move overseas from the time I was 20. I would say, ‘I don’t need to go overseas. I’m getting all the roles I want to play in Australia.’ And I also felt that somebody should


stay and fly the flag in Australia because everyone else is gone. My grandparents had passed away by then, my dad had died, and I felt I was the only one carrying on the family name in the theatre. So I was sort of resigned to have stayed behind,” he admits.

All of this happened from

the time I was 50 years [old],

which just goes to show you

must never give up hope!

His life path was destined to intersect with Broadway, though he didn’t realize it at the time. “I was doing The Producers, playing Roger De Bris, and word came out that there was going to be a workshop of a new musical of Priscilla. I wasn’t remotely interested in it. I thought, ‘I certainly don’t want to be in a dress— again!’ I thought it was best to put all that to bed. But it turned out, it was just a 10-day workshop, and I rocked along. I suddenly thought, ‘This show’s got legs.’ There was something about it that struck a chord with me. Also, I was allowed to have an enormous amount of input into Priscilla — I was helping rewrite the show, I was picking my own numbers. They were really listening to me; if I didn’t like the way something was going, then it was changed. That was the first time I’d been involved in the creation of a new Australian musical, where I was really being heard in the structure of the show. So when I finally got to [perform] it, I felt like it was mine; I felt like it was my baby.”

In creating the role of Bernadette, Sheldon realized too late that the role might have been to much of a team player. “The interesting thing was I didn’t have a big number of my own. It just never fit into the scheme of things. Somebody said to me that I was the glue in that show that held it together; everybody else had all the flashy numbers. Bernadette was the glue. I was always rather flattered about that, but it did work against me in the Tony Awards and the Olivier Awards because I never had a ‘moment’ in the show.”

It’s time to show them what

else I can do. Because

everybody thought I was a

drag queen!

Sheldon looks on the bright side. “Nonetheless, it was a life-changer because it took me all around the world, it kept me gainfully employed for five years, it introduced me to audiences who had never seen me before. I got to travel to see Europe, and all of this happened from the time I was 50 years [old], which just goes to show you must never give up hope! Suddenly my dream came true. [Priscilla] was the Australian-written show that introduced me to the rest of the world and brought me to New York. So by the time I finished the Broadway run, it had served its purpose. I was offered the tour and other productions, and I thought, ‘No, it got me to Broadway, it got me noticed; now it’s time to show them what else I can do.’ Because everybody thought I was a drag queen! So it was time to retire Bernadette. But I still get twinges — I see reports of the touring company going to L.A. and Vegas, and I thought, ‘Oh, I’d love to play those places!’ But I’ll get the chance in another show. So it’s mixed feelings.”

Australia has a vibrant Musical Theatre scene, but the

locals still look across the pond to the legendary rialtos. The ultimate dream for an Australian actor, Sheldon says, is “probably Broadway and the West End. Everybody dreams of conquering a bigger field in Australia, but it never used to be in our grasp. When I was growing up and my mother was a star, it wasn’t the global village that it is now. Australians just go to America now. You used to go to London in the ‘50’s. It was almost obligatory to go home to the mother country,” jokes Sheldon. “Several people did in fact make careers for themselves in London, but very few went to America. When they did, it was back in the ‘20’s and ‘30’s, and they went to Hollywood — people like Dame Judith Anderson, Cecil Kellaway, Cyril Ritchard. The only really mainstream Australian person who went straight to America to Broadway was Zoe Caldwell. But now, so many kids, straight out of drama school, are getting on the plane and coming to New York. There are so many young [Australian] dancers working on Broadway; I’m running into Australians all the time. When I was on Broadway, Rachel Griffiths was doing Other Desert Cities, Hugh Jackman was doing his show, Mig Ayesa was starring in Rock of Ages, an Australian girl was playing ‘Mary Poppins’ on Broadway. It’s becoming very much a dream that people can fulfill.”

I asked Sheldon about the attitude towards Musical Theatre in Australia. “The major cultural pursuit in Australia is sport. Full stop,” he replies emphatically. “I couldn’t believe when I got to New York how I was treated — I was treated like royalty when I got to Broadway. I took a look around me, and I realized it is the biggest tourist dollar in town. It’s part of the economy; it’s the lifeblood of New York.”

When I tell him that Broadway is an $11.6 billion per year industry for the city and state of New York, he guffaws, “Now, who’s going to look down their nose snivelly at that sort of money and say, ‘Oh, no, it’s an inferior artform?’” he laughs.

The trick is trying to keep some

artistic integrity involved in it

and not making it all a cynical

exercise in money-making. The financial aspect of the business is definitely affecting the artistic side. “For a start, the theatre has changed. Musical Theatre isn’t what it used to be anyway,” he says. “It’s no longer as creatively exciting as it was. It’s become a corporate thing that is put together by a bunch of producers who are frightened of losing money. So people aren’t taking the artistic risks that they used to be allowed to in big shows — they are in regional theatre and in smaller arenas. But the shows that are being put together [on Broadway] now are put together by committee, and it’s about being safe, and it’s about trying to please the largest common denominator. So it’s a different Musical Theatre to the one we grew up with a loved. Now, we’re reading about movie companies throwing millions and millions of dollars at developing film titles because it’s the age of the pre-sold title; it’s about the audiences knowing what they’re walking into before they buy their ticket. So the trick is trying to keep some artistic integrity involved in it and not making it all a cynical exercise in money-making. It’s about trying to create good product while making money. It’s a fine line.

“I think audiences instinctively know when they’re being conned,” continues Sheldon. “There is a temptation to take the easy way in putting some of these shows on, but I think the audiences have to give creators the benefit of the doubt and go and see them and make up their own mind before dismissing them out of hand.”


There’s a very good work

ethic in Australia, which I

was surprised to find

doesn’t exist in London. Since he has performed on several continents, I wondered if he had noticed a difference between the overall persona of casts in the various countries he has worked. “I think Musical Theatre people are the same the world over. The one thing about the Australians is that they are workhorses, like the Americans, and I think that’s why American production teams have always adored Australians when they go out there to put on shows. Our dancers are the best in the world, up there with the Americans. There’s a very good work ethic in Australia, which I was surprised to find doesn’t exist in London.”

Sheldon shares his dismal experience of performing in the West End Priscilla production. “I was very disappointed. I actually resigned from Priscilla early,” the disappointment still evident in his voice. “The first question I was asked was, ‘How many shows are you going to take off?’ I said, ‘I don’t call out. I never miss shows.’ They said, ‘You have to because we don’t pay holiday pay in England. You have to miss 28 performances in the course of a year.’ That was the first thing I was told on the first day of rehearsal. I was slightly hysterical about that. I went home and railed to my partner, I said, ‘I can’t be off!’ And my partner said, ‘Well… we’ve never been to Paris.’ “So I went in and said, ‘I’m taking that week off, and I’m going to Paris, and I’m taking that week off, and I’m going to New York, and I’m taking that week off, and I’m going to the Edinburgh Festival.” One unforeseen circumstance of having to work — or not work — like this became evident early in the London run of Priscilla. “From the opening night on, we never had the original cast on stage again — there were always two people on holiday. The rest of the time, everybody’s sitting around in the dressing rooms with travel brochures, planning their next vacation. It drove me insane!”

The struggling artist motif apparently exists in Musical Theatre everywhere. “The money is not good in London, so everybody has another job during the day, so they’re all exhausted,” when they get to the theatre for the performances. “The attitude was a little bit casual and prone to misbehaving on stage a bit more.”

These behind the scenes tidbits might be a shock for most people to hear since performing on West End is a major goal for many performers, especially with the influence of the British musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh. Sheldon is quick to respond, “I think the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Mackintosh [musical] is somewhat to blame for this because it’s all about anybody can play any role. It’s not about promoting stars. All over the world, all those characters look the same. If you put a wig on ‘Christine’ in Phantom of the Opera, it could be anybody. The Thenardier’s all look the same. It’s that weird thing that didn’t actually exist before that Andrew Lloyd Webber/Mackintosh machine. People don’t feel irreplaceable in those productions anymore … which I don’t think is entirely healthy for the industry. “But Australians have always had a good attitude, I’ve found. I was quite prepared when I came over to work on Broadway. I think people were surprised by my work ethic when I got here. The usherettes at the Palace Theatre used to come up to me and say, ‘We love the fact that you don’t call out. We love that you’re a constant in the show.’ People did comment on it around

Broadway. I used to hear people from other shows said, ‘Tony Sheldon, yes, we’ve heard how reliable he is.’ That was very pleasing to me. That came from the way I was brought up in the industry, and I have to thank my mother for that as well; my mother instilled that work ethic in me.

One of the perks of being in demand is getting offers to do various shows, often one right after the other. For Sheldon, this steady work means keeping scripts straight as he performs one show while learning another, with a previous show still running through his mind. This happened after Priscilla when Sheldon was performing in Hello, Dolly! and memorizing lines for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. “[I’d] start to run through my lines, and the first line that comes into my head, invariably, is Bernadette’s first line!” The downside to such constant work is no time to rest in between. He closed Hello, Dolly! on a Saturday, flew down to Australia on Sunday, and walked into rehearsal on Monday. The director offered him a chance to rest up, but Sheldon declined, preferring to be in rehearsal with the cast. “Sometimes people laugh at me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

For the role of Lawrence in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in Sydney, Australia, Sheldon found the part to be a real mouthful. “It’s a very difficult role to learn. David Yazbek’s lyrics are tongue twisters, absolutely so dense and so clever, it’s a joy to learn such witty material. But my gosh, it’s scary!”

In DRS, Sheldon plays Lawrence Jameson, which was originated on Broadway by Tony Award winner John Lithgow. Just as the other actors who walk a mile in the high heels of Bernadette will be expected to live up to Sheldon’s creation of the character, is there any pressure on Sheldon to perform Lawrence as Lithgow did? “I never saw John Lithgow; I saw Jonathan Pryce, and Jonathan Pryce was sensational. He was in fact nominated for a Tony Award, so he was the talk of the town when he took over that role. Jonathan Pryce brought a slightly darker reading of the part to it, which is sort of where I’m going with it.

I’ve learned to latch on to

things in the script that give me

the key to a character rather

then just mindlessly following

what somebody else has done.

“Coming from Australia, we always got shows second-hand from London and from Broadway. When I was growing up, we always got the original cast album first, so we were always living in the shadow of somebody else’s performance and often expected to reproduce that performance by the American production teams that would come out. I had a shocking time doing The Producers where I was practically shoe-horned into Gary Beach’s performance. Now, I didn’t necessarily want to do what Gary Beach did. A lot of directors only know one way to do something, so they’re a bit uneasy when you bring something else to the table, but I’ve learned to latch on to things in the script that give me the key to a character rather then just mindlessly following what somebody else has done. With Lawrence in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, he says, quite early on, ‘When I was a young man, I longed to be someone remarkable, there was only one problem — I had no talent.’ So he’s created a persona based on what little he had to work with, which were in his mind his looks, his charm, and his supreme confidence. This is a man who basically knows he’s not good at anything, but it’s about power. He’s got total confidence that he can charm the birds off the trees. So that’s the


key to him. It’s not about being John Lithgow, it’s about being the man who is on the page. You have to go where that takes you.” A recurring theme, portraying Horace Vandergelder in Hello, Dolly! brought similar challenges in overcoming people’s preconceived notions that the role should emulate the film portrayal by Walter Matthau. “I was told, ‘There is only one way to play Horace Vandergelder.’ And there’s not,” Sheldon corrected them. “There are keys in the script. Curiously, when the reviews came out, they said, ‘Tony Sheldon has recreated the role.’ My eyebrows shot up to my hairline! I thought, ‘Good heavens. Really?! Have people not found other ways to play this role?’ But apparently not.”

Australians have had to do

this for forever — you had to

make yourself look like the

Broadway person.

For regional theatre, and even college and community theatre productions, there is the expectation to put on a show exactly as it looked and was performed on Broadway, making theatre less about exploring characters and ways to present them but rather rubber-stamping carbon-copies of the show to regional and local audiences. What was done on Broadway creates an indelible mark on how all future productions of that show will be done by other companies, from regional theatre to university productions and even in other countries.

Sheldon remembers a story his mother told him of her experience taking on the lead in the Australian production of The Pajama Game in the 1950’s. “My mother was a blonde. Because Janis Paige was a redhead, my mother had to dye her hair red. The girl who played the Carol Haney part had to cut her hair like Carol Haney. Australians have had to do this for forever — you had to make yourself look like the Broadway person. When I was doing The Producers, I had to dye my hair black like Gary Beach. At one point midway through the run, we had a four-week layoff. I let my hair grow out, and it grew out white. It was the first time I’d seen my own hair in years because I’d been dying it for roles for years,” laughs Sheldon. He approached the producers of the show about using his natural hair color. “I thought it was very striking, and it looked fabulous with all the costumes, and I just loved the look. And the producer said to me, ‘But can you still be funny?’”

After moving the show to Sydney, the producers still worried about Sheldon’s hair color affecting his comedic abilities. “When we got the show going back up again, the producers sat in on the previews, watching me with my white hair, and they clocked my laughs to see if I’d lost any. It was gobsmacking. And it was because they were so nervous that I looked so different, and I didn’t look like Gary Beach. They thought I was ruining the show. That’s the sort of thing that often we’re up against when we’re playing established roles. Fortunately, Lawrence in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has been played by people with white hair, so at least I can keep my own hair color.”

Audiences who have only known Sheldon since Priscilla may have a hard time seeing him play a pants role like Vandergelder or Lawrence, but Sheldon jokes, “I’ve playing pants roles for 40 years. The one I became known for was the one in the dress. I’ve played Elliot in Private Lives, Tom in The Glass Menagerie, the Boy in Equus, and Long Days Journey…. I’ve gotten to play some classic roles over the years, so that’s where I’m more comfortable. It’s the frock-roles that are the scary ones because you have to make them believable. And obviously, I was all too successful!”

I used to be a hard-living

party boy in my early days.

Everyone was waiting for me

to drop dead. Staying healthy is a prerequisite for stage work. Sheldon has his daily dietary and pre-show routine down. “I can’t do too much before a show because my whole day works toward the


performance. I find I can’t even go and see a movie because it wears me out a bit. I have to be very careful about what I eat; I have to be on a permanent diet because I gain weight really easily. I have to live on salads. I’m gluten-free and carb-free, and I don’t drink. I have a yoga mat that I have to stretch on, and I start warming up three hours before a performance. My whole day focuses on my show. I don’t go out and party afterwards anymore. All those days are behind me. I used to be a hard-living party boy in my early days. My friends used to call me ‘the walking time bomb’. Everyone was waiting for me to drop dead. I worked hard and played hard being the Australian that I am. I’m afraid a good 10 years ago, all that finished, and I now realize I have to husband my energy and my resources.” Here again, his commitment to being healthy is connected to his work ethic. “I always want to be there. It’s hard enough — you get colds and things all the time in a company because we all give the things to each other working in a small environment. You get it through the air conditioning. But I’m getting older, and I really have to be careful.” Prepping for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has Sheldon focused on his vocal health as well. “I haven’t really played a challenging vocal role in a long time. Priscilla was tough, but I didn’t have a big number of my own. And since then, I’ve been playing non-singing roles, so that will be the acid test.”

What will Sheldon miss about America? “Everything! New York is my home now, and it was always my spiritual home. I’ve always adored New York, everything about it. I’m always mystified when people say they don’t like New York,” Sheldon says incredulously. “I’ll miss the friends that I’ve made here. I’ve really been embraced by the theatre community in New York, and I’ve made some good friends here. But I’m not gone for long. I’m only going till the end of the year, then I’ll be back.”

There’s no money in Musical

Theatre. They’ve all gone off

to be real estate agents.

Sheldon mentions another reason for wanting to go back home: “My partner lives in Australia — my partner of 34 years, who is also an actor, Tony Taylor. He did the whole Priscilla experience with me. He put his career on hold when I went overseas, and he traveled with me because he knew how important

this is to me. But when I got my Green Card, Tony said he didn’t want to make a career in New York… so he went back to Australia and continued his career out there. We’ve been living on Skype for the past year, which has been hard. But after 34 years, we’re secure enough that we can do this, it’s just really, really tough.”

Thinking of careers and the toll the business takes on a person, Sheldon shares a story of a moment he had during Hello, Dolly! The die-hard thespian in Sheldon was impelled to go through the old playbills of productions at the Tony Award-winning theatre, Goodspeed. “I see all these names, and I’m reading the biographies of people with the most wonderful Broadway credits and who played these fantastic roles. I said to the wardrobe guy, ‘These remarkable people, some of them I’ve never heard of. What happened to them?’ He said, ‘Tony, there’s no money in Musical Theatre. People can’t afford to do it. They’ve all gone off to be real estate agents.’ And it’s heart-breaking when you think of the number of people who just had to find another way to make a living. All that talent, and the business sometimes can’t sustain them. Then again, there are the percentage of other people who plod on and keep going because it’s your life’s blood, and I’m afraid I’m one of those people.” With more than 40 years in show business, Sheldon knows what it takes to make it in the Musical Theatre world. “If you don’t love it, if it doesn’t mean everything in the world to you, don’t do it because it is so discouraging and nerve-wracking. You have to have so much belief in yourself. Be ready — be ready for anything the business throws at you. Say ‘yes’ to everything, no matter how small or if it seems like a dead-end. You never know where anything is going to lead, or who’s going to see you, or who’s going to remember you for another project. And don’t expect everything to be handed to you on a platter. It could take years, but you just never know what’s around the corner, so hang in there and prepare for it to be a very tough and frustrating existence. But if you love it, there’s nothing else you can do.”

MTM


I have wanted to interview Melissa Cross for a while now. I’ve been told she is the person to go to if you want to achieve a rock sound without damaging the voice. Anyone who’s heard my radio show, Musical Theatre Talk, over the past four years knows I’m a huge voice nerd, and I am most concerned with protecting the voice to sustain a career over many decades. So with the topic of rock musicals for this issue of Musical Theatre Magazine, I couldn’t wait to have an in-depth discussion on all things rock and vocal with this popular rock voice teacher. Right out of the gate, I ask Cross to explain how to make the rock sound and how to keep the voice healthy. Being a white girl with no rhythm myself, I have always been fascinated and terrified of the “rock” vocal sound: a distorted vocal fry somewhere between an edgy, gritty growl and a constipated cat. Cross begins where most of us start: classical training.

“It’s important to understand what is relevant and what makes classical training slightly irrelevant. In classical music, there are no microphones. In opera, the voice production is done

without a microphone. Long story short, the vowels that are used to make the classical sound are completely different. In Musical Theatre and in contemporary music, we use the vowels with which we speak. We don’t use the vowels that are used to fill a venue that has no microphones.”

We’re talking about what was

formerly known as peasant

music. Peasant music has

become a big business — and

it’s a much bigger business

than the opera. She brings up the popular classical style of bel canto, the style most singers begin in their classical vocal studies. “Bel canto means ‘beautiful voice’, and it was a pedagogy in which people were taught to sing beautifully, as opposed to sing as they speak. So classical singing got [put in] an elitist category that was reserved for connoisseurs of great music, and the other stuff was the peasant stuff. So when we talk about commercial music now, we’re talking about what was formerly known as peasant music. Peasant music has become a big business — and it’s a much bigger business than the opera, so therefore, a lot of opera teachers find themselves a little out of fashion because what they’re teaching is not completely suitable for what their clientele needs to be doing. A voice is a voice is a voice. The breathing, the placement, etc., is pretty much the same regardless of what genre you’re performing.

“So when you say, how do we keep [the voice] healthy, vocal abuse is done when there’s an over-emphasis on the vocal cords as opposed to the air pressure in the lungs. People who abuse their voices overuse the muscles in the larynx instead of balancing it out with the breath support system. That mechanical aspect is the same with both kinds of music, but with bel canto — with beautiful singing, the larynx stays lower in the throat. Those vowel


shapes are cultivated because the voice box itself lies lower in the pharynx — the surrounding throat, and creates a large reverb chamber where all the overtones can be created because there is a lot of space in which the vocal folds can vibrate. So the placement in classical music involves more overtones, and the peasant voice — or the speaking voice, has a higher position of the larynx, but the trick is to keep the larynx as low as possible without sounding dated or classical.”

When you imitate, you’re using

the wrong part of the brain to

work your voice. Cross is quick to say, “You don’t want to throw classical music out the window.” (Oh, really?) She continues, “That’s a mistake I made in my career. I studied classical music for a long time, and nothing was relevant to what I was doing. I just threw everything out the window to make that rock sound, and ultimately, ended up with a small injury. I became imitative — I tried to get a certain sound, but I didn’t have a technique anymore. I was just imitating, and that’s where we get into a problem area. When you imitate, you’re using the wrong part of the brain to work your voice. My work is called The Zen of Screaming — I’m not a Buddhist, “ Cross laughs, “but the word zen means to be here in the moment — now. When you imitate, you’re not in the moment, you’re in a past place, or moment, or you have a results-oriented way of trying to create something. So you’re not really in your body. You’re in your brain trying to create something from the outside. Therefore, you’re not really in touch with the mechanism — you’re not inside of it. You’re trying to recreate it or imitate, and that involves a part of the brain that does math problems. You cannot physiologically do what you need to do to invoke the breath pressure because as soon as you go to that part of the brain, you stop breathing because you’re in your thinking mode.

“The breath is so important with the flow of vowel-to-vowel. It’s important that all training be dynamic in the sense that the imagery involved in voice production is what makes it all work. You can’t do it intellectually. That’s why voice teachers get such a reputation for being nuts! When they teach, they always say such weird things. My least favorite is ‘Sing from your stomach.’ Your stomach doesn’t sing! Further on down the list, ‘head voice’ and ‘chest voice’ are problematic for me. People have preconceived ideas of what is head voice and what is chest voice, and they’re usually dead wrong. In teaching way back when, we didn’t have all the diagnostic machines to figure out what’s happening when we sing. People felt their voice was in their head because their larynx was lower and their voice was in their chest because the larynx was higher. You actually feel these things in your body. But when you try to recreate head voice and try to put it in your head, you don’t do it the right way. People end up splitting their voice in half. The primary reason to get voice training is to get rid of the break,” called in classical training the passaggio.

I like to think of it as

painting vowels, so you paint

vowels across a venue.

Vowels are the only things that

make music.

When speaking of the different areas in which the voice resonates — head, mix, chest, the conversation naturally leads to the primary singing style associated with Musical Theatre — belting. “That word! That’s up there with ‘sing from your stomach,’” Cross groans. “The whole idea of that word invokes a violent, unnatural kind of behavior. Imagery is so important. ‘Belting’ sounds like you’re hitting somebody with a belt. It’s a very violent word.”

The perception of words can affect a student’s vocal output. Some voice students may have heard their teachers use imagery-based comments such as “Sing through the voice not on the voice” or “Sing in the mask” or “Sing across the dome of the mouth”. Such guidance can be problematic, especially for new or young students. Cross explains how she uses imagery with her clients. “With the imagery that I use, it’s very important that I keep it away from the body. People talk about the mask and the dome, but it’s important to know why those things work. Dome works because when you think of the dome or top of your head when you create sound, you are lowering the larynx. That lift of the soft palate in the back if the throat right in front of the uvula, the larynx lowers so there’s more room in the throat. However, when I think of just the dome, it goes too far back; and if it goes too far back, and then it sounds covered.”

If your voice is balanced, you

just sing the damn song.

For a tactile experience, Cross uses a simple pencil to great effect. “I put a pencil in people’s teeth and have them imagine that the sound is emanating from their body and over the pencil — and out the back at the same time. But all my images have to do with things that do not relate to the voice, and I encourage people to come up with their own imagery because that’s how you stay inside the note. I like to think of it as painting vowels, so you paint vowels across a venue. Vowels are the only things that make music. There are no consonants that make music. So anything that has a flow or a constant dynamic smoothness works for singing — silk scarves, lasers, paintbrushes, baseball pitches — anything like that will work if you have an imagery system that works outside of where you’re thinking about the sound of the voice or an actual result. Once you start listening to your voice, you stop breathing. And that’s a big problem in Musical Theatre because people are thinking, ‘Do I do the mix here? Do I do my head here? Do I do my chest here?’ If your voice is balanced, you just sing the damn song.

“Sing it from the point of view of where you’re at in terms of the person who’s emoting. In other words, if I’m in a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, the music itself will tell me how to sing it. I don’t need to put extra stuff [in it] to make it sound like a Rodgers and Hammerstein voice. Although, if I’m doing Rent or Spring Awakening, it’s going to sound really odd if I do the kind of singing that I would do for Rodgers and Hammerstein because the material is more rhythmic. The new musicals are rock-oriented so the phrasing is different. With Rodgers and Hammerstein, you have a linear melody that elongates over phrases, and the melody is more important than the rhythm. The music allows you to sing the room. If you’re singing in a jazz club, you have a tendency to invoke certain things with your voice that do what the saxophone does; as an artist, you would just feel that. You don’t need to paint something on. So that’s why I can’t stand these words ‘head’, ‘mix’, and ‘chest’ even though they do exist. In my mind, they only exist as positions of the larynx. There is a head voice position where the soft palate is arched and the larynx is very low; and in the chest voice, there is a position where,


when you pull your chest [voice] up past the passaggio, it’s going to start to thin out and become what people call ‘the belt’. But there is a way to invoke more head resonance in there and not over-raise the larynx, which is what people do when they think ‘belt’. They squash their larynx up inside their throat, and it sounds like whining.”

When a singer “belts”, the vocal folds come together in a thicker formation than they normally do, creating that thicker sound so synonymous with belting. Cross goes on to describe what is happening, “It’s not just the stretching and loosening of the folds, it’s those layers in the folds, and how many layers of folds are actually closing, and how much breath pressure you’re using to create it. And there are all kinds of variations that happen in a specific moment — from moment to moment; and if you paint something on and you just hold [that] something, then you lose the beauty of the voice. You lose the subtleties.

“That’s not say there isn’t a passaggio because there is. There is a certain point where the folds are needing to loosen to accommodate a pitch. When they do make that movement and the breath pressure is inconsistent while the movement is being made, there’s that little slippage — that’s what the break is. Good vocal training helps you to move from your lower register into your upper register seamlessly, and there’s a very subtle way in the body you learn how to invoke just the right amount of breath pressure to make it all work out. That’s what keeps me in business, that very thing.” One of the signature sounds of rock singing is the rasp or the growl that somehow makes an audience perceive the performer is experiencing deep or heightened emotion. Conversely, the clear tones of opera can make the singer seem aloof or unattached to the story. Cross explains, “The history of that is that for the longest time, at least half a century, that grit and growl thing was a very

prominent part of commercial music — we’re talking Jimmy Durante and Satchmo, and also blues. We’re talking the 1930’s, we’re talking gospel, and the outpouring of emotion through song, which was, embarrassingly so, up until the 1960’s considered a black phenomenon — which is terrible. But even up till this century, very few people really looked at what was going on there. I realized there is a way to make that sound without the emotional tension and without the scraping of the larynx. If you want to do that scraping thing, that is raising everything up so you’re clogging up the throat, and that gag reflex is the way people hear rasping and think that is the only way you can make that sound. Actually, that’s not true. I figured out a way you can raise the larynx without that extra bit of muscle tension. I have identified three different ways to enable that vocal distortion. The one for tenors and sopranos sounds overly nasal, like Fran Drescher or Marge Simpson. It’s a sophisticated application of breath pressure, and it involves doing my basics first because there’s an awareness of the breath pressure mechanism that’s important to keep the sound constant. First thing I tell people is you cannot do this loud. You have to remove the word ‘loud’ out of your vocabulary because as soon as you do something that invokes ‘loud’, you’re bound for vocal abuse because already you’re over-using.” In other words, forget about screaming, emotion, anger, anything you formerly thought of as causing rasp. “Think of a squeaky door or a rusted swing set,” she says. “What’s interesting about this whole sound is that what’s going on is a chaotic vibration of the vocal folds. The vocal folds are not vibrating at a consistent cycle per second so there’s no pitch to it. When a microphone gets a hold of that, it creates something much bigger out of it.” The distorted effects from amplifying a singer’s voice is one reason opera has remained vigilant against microphones. Cross demonstrates a sound that resembles the mewing of a cat. “Even


very quietly, that sounds like somebody’s dying. But the microphone doesn’t know what to do with that frequency. It doesn’t know where to go with it, so the microphone is an important part of this.” Cross details what is happening in the larynx. “We want the vocal folds to come together but not phonate in a cycles per second. So there’s a subtle breath pressure where you’re just holding the folds together, very gingerly, without actually pressing them down. For trained people, this is harder because your onset is so trained. For trained people, I have to get you very, very quiet because that invokes a very, very heavy breath pressure — to sing quietly takes a lot more strength.” Singing softly is not the same as not working on the voice, though. “You have to do something. It’s not passive. Learning this is learning the least amount of effort to make a certain sound, and to do it quietly actually invokes more strength than to do it loud. Once you are able to do a vowel and put that sound on top of it, it feels like it’s in your nose, but it’s not; it’s in the larynx.”

Your air has to be a completely

consistent flow from vowel to

vowel, and if there’s an

interruption of that flow, then

you’re bound for abuse. Cross then demonstrates a raspy sound on a pitch higher than the speaking voice. “It has to be high-pitched because once you’re in the low pitch, there isn’t enough breath pressure. It sounds like dial-up,” she laughs, mimicking the sound that was the hallmark of old dial-up internet connection prior to high-speed DSL. “Now, relax into it.”

Coaching me through this kitty-cat/old dial-up sound — which surprisingly did not hurt at all, she reminded me that this is just one type of rasp or distortion that a singer can put on a note to achieve that rock angst sound. “My word for that is fry screaming — not vocal fry, but fry screaming. What I’m doing is basically vocal fry with a raised larynx. Fry screaming doesn’t have a pitch. So you’re adding that to a vowel, going back and forth from a vowel to that in a split second, and you get really good at it once you understand how easy the mechanism is. There are different kinds of screams, and the other scream has a pitch. That one is the Jimmy Durante or Satchmo where it actually has a spoken pitch or vibration to it, but the trick with that one is that it needs a lot of support. If you’re not constantly supporting that, you’re gonna kill yourself, so I don’t really advise it for lyric [sopranos] or even mezzos; maybe contraltos can get away with it. People with thicker cords can get away with that natural sound and not feel contrived, but it takes a tremendous about of — what I call, the ‘dub’ for guys or the ‘baby’ or the ‘tea’ for girls.” Cross reiterates that the subglottal pressure must be constant, offering the reminder, “You don’t need more air for the ‘money note’, for the high note, for the long note. Your air has to be a completely consistent flow from vowel to vowel, and if there’s an interruption of that flow, then you’re bound for abuse.”

Over-singing and applying too much pressure to conquer certain notes is a common problem in Musical Theatre as well as opera and even rock music. “It’s about a balance, no matter what the genre is,” explains Cross. “It’s never correct to add or subtract subglottal pressure for any reason; it should always be constant. And it’s the same for speaking. When you think about the big note

and take a big breath, that’s the worst thing you could do because a big breath will invoke muscles that are doomed to collapse because they don’t have a slow release. That’s why I call it ‘strapless bra’ for girls. If you are maintaining a strapless bra that’s too big for you, you have just the right amount of breath pressure for any note; you don’t need to add anything, you just sing it. Breathing is all about the way you take it in, and once you take it in correctly, everything else falls into place. You don’t need to regulate the outgoing air; you just need to maintain the position of the floating rib out to the side, and it maintains the right amount of consistent pressure. Singing is about balance not volume. You don’t need more air to sing, you need less, actually. One of the big lessons in vocal training is that you don’t need a big breath for anything.”

Not worrying about the next note or the next breath truly is zen, staying in the moment of where you are with the current note or the current pause. “Singer’s breathing is maintaining air without holding your breath. It is a paradox. The outgoing sound should feel as smooth as air, but it’s the lack of air that you’re listening to.”

Cross has a few tips to share with singers to maintain a healthy voice while employing an edgy rock sound to their singing. “It’s all about technique. Keeping your voice in shape is about using it correctly. It’s about finding that balance. You mustn’t imitate.” Cross adds, “I’ll make it easy — just get my DVD,” she laughs. “Learn the basics, then you’ll be fine for any genre of music.”

Start feeling, and stop singing.

I don’t want to hear you sing.

I want to feel you feel.

As a final thought, Cross offers this wisdom on the subject of rock musicals. “The mindset for rock music is one of a complete lack of self-consciousness. It’s not about listening to yourself. It’s about speaking on pitch and navigating all those pitfalls of registration — that you learn in technique, but it’s not singing. Stop singing!” exclaims Cross. “Start feeling, and stop singing. I don’t want to hear you sing. I want to feel you feel.”

Musical Theatre’s “legit” performers can find rock musicals intimidating because of that rebellious freedom that is inherent in rock music. Rock musicals, then, might be said to be the zen of being comfortable in your own skin. Cross sums it up succinctly, “It’s about be-ing the sound, not ‘making’ the sound.”

Melissa Cross teaches clients in

her studio in Manhattan. She

has coached rock stars such

as Maroon 5, Andrew W.K. and

Courtney Love plus singers in

all genres, including Kevin

Bacon. For more information

or to schedule a lesson, visit

her website: http://www.melissacross.com

Get “The Zen of Screaming”

DVD on Amazon:

http://amzn.to/HYJUlP

MTM


Most people are familiar with Carole King

and her music from the 1970’s onward — she has

won four Grammy Awards and been inducted

into both the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame and the

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; she was even named

the most successful female songwriter from 1955-

1999 due to her 118 hits on the Billboard Hot 100.

However, many people may not realize Carole

King was the young mastermind behind some of

the biggest hits in the 1960’s rock and Motown

genres of popular music. Far from the glamorous

life of a wandering troubadour, King wrote songs

for hire from a cubicle in Manhattan. The new

Broadway show Beautiful, the Carole King Musical,

explores these early years of one of modern

music’s most prolific songsmiths.

While in transition from the West Coast to

New York, I interviewed the show’s director Marc

Bruni about Beautiful and Carole King being the

other female rock legend on Broadway right now.

T: The recording industry, as with most industries, is

male-dominated, but Carole King became a successful

songwriter at an early age. What is it about Carole King

that made this show happen?

M: Her astonishing body of work that she produced. This show actually focuses on an era of her life that people are less familiar with. Like myself, everybody owns Tapestry and is aware of her work post-1971, but our story starts when she was a 16 year-old girl in 1959. She went to 1650 Broadway, which was a new group of producers who got the idea to have teenagers write songs for teenagers. She got her start writing songs as part of this song factory at 1650 Broadway, not for herself, but for other artists of the day. She was a hired hand, essentially, and she ended up writing some of the most well known songs of the ‘60’s that no one really associates with her because she didn’t record the songs. “Locomotion”, “Some Kind of Wonderful”, “Up on the Roof”. People say, ‘I can’t believe she wrote that, and that, and that.’ And all of this was before the tremendous body of work that she produced once she came into her own as a singer-songwriter. In that era prior to the era of the singer-songwriter, songwriters were employed to write songs for these great artists. T: Why is now the right time to tell her story? M: We’re in a special Carole King moment. She is living, and it’s wonderful to have a tribute to an artist when they’re still alive. And her songs are timeless. The way the songs are being treated [in the show] in terms of Doug McGrath’s book invests in the emotional quality of the songs. They’re about things that are completely relatable: first love, heartbreak, break-ups, joy, and pain, and all those things we experience as human beings. Any time you have a story that taps into the universal humanity of it all is a timeless kind of piece that is appropriate…. And why not now?

Carole King


T: Did Carole consult on the show or pick the songs?

M: The show has been in development for four years. She came to an early reading of the show, and she actually left after the first act, much to the dismay of everyone involved — until they realized it was just too emotional for her to see her own life on stage. She said, ‘It’s great. You have to continue with it; I think this is a very valuable piece, and I give it my blessing, but it’s too painful for me to relive that portion of my life.’ The show focuses on her first relationship with Gerry, her first collaborator and husband. I think to go through the details of that relationship and the events that led to a rather tumultuous breakup were very difficult to watch. But she has been very supportive along the way. Gerry came to see the show in San Francisco.

The show uses her songs and also songs of her best friends of the time and today, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who wrote “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”, “On Broadway”, “Walking in the Rain”, and “Uptown”. The show also explores the relationships between the writers for hire at 1650 Broadway and the competition that was fostered, racing to get the next song for the Shirelles or the Drifters. That’s one of the things that fuels the first act; the second act becomes more about the consequences of her breakup from Gerry Goffin and her coming into her own as a singer-songwriter.

T: How are her songs arranged for performance in a

theatrical setting? M: There are three ways to do a jukebox musical when you start with a catalogue of songs. One way is to do it as a straight-up revue with no book, and you present the songs and let them be on their own. The second way is the Mamma Mia! style which is to

take the songs and shoehorn them into a narrative and use the songs as the character is singing their own feelings. Neither one of those is the one we’ve gone with for Beautiful. We’ve gone with the technique that was most successfully used in Jersey Boys, which is every time we sing a song, we’re acknowledging it’s a song. We’re not pretending the actors are singing their feelings, in the way that they would in Mamma Mia! In our show, when they sing a song, the songwriters are auditioning a song for Donny Kirshner, the record producer, or they’re singing it in a club for an audience, or they’re recording it in a recording studio, so there’s some construct around the song that gives it a reason why the character would be singing a song.

With our show, the first act is about songs she wrote for other people, so the ensemble plays all these groups of the period. We get to see the writing of the songs and the songs being taken over by the original artists. You get to see them writing ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’ and then the Drifters take over and give a fully realized performance of ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’. So you see this contrast between how these songs came from these little cubicles in this office building at 1650 Broadway, and then the show biz aspect of it blowing up into a worldwide phenomenon.

T: Were there any difficulties with staging a period

piece or dealing with any issues from the time?

M: The period aspect was actually one of the easier aspects of it. It’s a very well known period especially with the advent of “Mad Men”. People are very familiar with that period. So with the clothes, you want have a nod to the period but have it feel fresh. The show goes to a number of different locations, so creating a set that was modular and fluid and allowed us to realize those locations in a way that was less literal and taking a hint of where we were but not slow down the show by trucking out a lot of realistic scenery.

First Rehearsal for ‘Beautiful’



T: Were the actors challenged by the material or

the timeframe?

M: I think their biggest challenge is that they’re playing characters who are living. The upside of that is there is a great resource for them to draw on. There are a lot of interviews available, and Barry and Cynthia have been around rehearsals. There’s also a great responsibility to playing a living person, to get the essence of that person but not do an impersonation. This is our theatricalized version of these characters and what happened that we hope remains truthful but is not

intended to be a wax museum version of their lives. Our star, Jessie Mueller who’s playing Carole King, is

extraordinary. She has a great emotional accessibility as an actress on stage, and the audience falls in love with her immediately because they’re seeing something that is totally unique, totally her own. They get the essence of Carole and everything they love about Carole, but it doesn’t look like [Jessie] is doing an impersonation of Carole. T: With Janis Joplin and now Carole King — Is New York

ready for this much female flower power? M: I say absolutely. Bring it on!

We begin previews at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on November 21st, and we open January 12, 2014. Also in the cast are Jeb Brown as Don Kirshner, Jake

Epstein as Gerry Goffin, Jarrod Spector as Barry Mann,

and Anika Larsen as Cynthia Weil. The Book is by

Douglas McGrath with Songs by Gerry Goffin and

Carole King and additional songs by Barry Mann and

Cynthia Weil. The creatives include Marc Bruni

(Director), Josh Prince (Choreography), Derek McLane

(Scenic Design), Alejo Vietti (Costumes), Peter

Kaczorowski (Lighting), Brian Ronan (Sound Design),

Steve Sidwell (Orchestrator/Vocal & Incidental Music

Arranger), Jason Howland (Music Director/Supervisor),

and Peter Hanson (Production Stage Manager).

For more information about the show and to get tickets

visit BEAUTIFUL’S Broadway website:

http://www.beautifulonbroadway.com/ MTM


Marc Bruni


Dear Trish: I am a Vocal Music Teacher for a public high

school music program in Yonkers, NY. My great love/ background is Musical Theatre and getting kids excited about it excites me.

I do feel that there is not nearly enough exposure to the Golden Age of American Musical Theatre. I am in a school which is Montessori-based from an educational philosophy point of view (student centered / independent learning). Once per year in April the students get to select a week-long program of independent study for which they fund raise all year. Many of these programs involve trips out of the school

Wow, Steve! Sounds like you have a good

program, but 3 days?! Yikes!

For a great theatre experience on the

cheap, I’d suggest contacting your local university

or professional theatre with artists-in-residence or

an outreach program of teaching artists, such as

the Roundabout Theatre Company. They may be

able to come to you or let you bring the kids to

the theatre for a tour. Working with a professional

teaching artist, they may be able to help you

design your week-long theatre-filled hiatus around

your kids’ needs, wants, and your school’s budget.

Contact a Broadway show and inquire if

your class could get a backstage tour before a

Wednesday matinee. Also, check out Off-

Broadway. Have your kids ever seen The

Fantasticks? Also, New World Stages is a great

space for exploration. And a super fantastic tour

is Radio City Music Hall!

Poll your kids to see what aspect of the

theatre really interests them. Maybe they really

dig costumes. See if you can arrange a tour

backstage at Kinky Boots or Cinderella. Do they

love dance? Inquire about meeting the cast of

Newsies.

If traveling is not an option, plan your

theatre immersion in the classroom. Maybe focus

each day of the week on one aspect of the

theatre. Example: Monday could be about

writing a song. Have them look at song structure

and music devices used by composers to affect

an audience, and accompany them for a sing-

building or collaborating with an expert for whatever program is selected. This is a week-long hiatus from their regular class schedule. This is my first go at this. Any ideas on how I can design a program that will appeal to an assortment of students from highly-specialized, talented students to spectators. I have only 3 days to design such a program! Please help!! By the way, Yonkers is a poor district so there have not been any school productions in which I have participated. I am a pianist.

Thanks: Steve

along. Tuesday could be about set design. Have

the class study the designs of different shows and

design a simple set piece. Then get a local set

carpenter to come in and help make the piece.

Wednesday could be for Costumes; design in the

morning, sew in the afternoon. Thursday could be

Stage Management, and Friday, design a show’s

poster and program. Or design props, have a hair

and makeup day, and so on.

Set up a movie night. Have your students

dress up as their favorite Musical Theatre

character from their favorite show. Have them

bring sheet music, and you can accompany them

as they sing their favorite showtunes. Then make

popcorn and watch a movie musical they all

know and love (and can sing along to).

Theatre does NOT have to cost money.

You need imagination. You can have all the

money in the world and still not have good

theatre (Spider-Man, anyone?).

Break a leg!

trish


“Broadway’s Voiceless” is a new single available

on Amazon that raises money for two animal

shelters. Singing on the track are Broadway Stars

Ann Crumb, Tony nominee for Anna Karenina,

Judy McLane, currently starring in Mamma Mia!,

and Olga Merediz, Tony nominee for In the

Heights. The song was penned by June

Rachelson-Ospa and Daniel Neiden; and the

music was performed by Jersey Boys’ Charles

Czarnecki, arranger, orchestrator, piano, John

Miller, who’s played for Patti LuPone-Mandy

Patinkin, on bass, drummer Jared Schonig of

Pippin, and Larry Saltzman on guitars, who has

played for Pippin, Paul Simon, and “Saturday

Night Live”. The song’s proceeds benefit Charles

Henderson Animal Rescue and The Rescue

Experiment. I wanted to know how all this came

together so I gathered up June Rachelson-Ospa

and Judy McLane for a quick chat on how they

made this happen.

T: So let’s talk about Broadway Voiceless. How did you

get involved with this project? June: Well, I’m friends with Pat Addis. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her, but she’s a Broadway producer: Christmas Story Musical, Promises, Promises, Dirty Night Steps, many others. She likes to do things for people, and she called me up and asked if I would like to do this song for Animal Rescue. And I said absolutely, and [brought in] Daniel — because Daniel and I have been working together for sixteen years. Then Sheryl [Mandel] called me, and that’s how it started. I actually had a rescue dog when I was a little girl. So the lyrics came easy, and I sat down with Daniel, and we wrote it. T: I rescue dogs. I will never buy a “pure” breed from a

broker or a breeder because there are so many animals

that need loving homes, and I’ve rescued squirrels, too!

And turtles! I just love helping little animals. I had a dog

that — well, we would let him run out every night and

he would come back late at night. And one night, he

didn’t come back. And so, going to animal shelters

every single day for almost two months, it just about

broke my heart.

June: I know, I picked my beagle because she was in a small cage. T: So Judy, welcome to the chat, June was telling me

about how she got involved with Broadway’s Voiceless.

You’re busy performing Mamma Mia! eight times per

week, so how did you fit this into your schedule? Judy: Well, you know it’s tight, and poor Daniel had to schedule us all because I don’t usually do a lot of singing or other outside things during the day because it’s a lot of singing at night. So he graciously put it later in the afternoon for me and we were kind of able to do it before the show which was great, so I was already ready and warmed up. T: The band was comprised of Broadway pit musicians,

so did you feel really comfortable with that, “Hey gang,

let’s put on a show, we can do this” feeling? Judy: Yeah, I knew he was going to get top quality people, and singing with Ann and Olga — Olga and I actually did Mamma Mia! together, and Ann and I — my first Broadway show was with Ann; we did Aspects of Love. I’ve known them for so long, so it was great to have Broadway veterans coming in and doing it. I knew we could just put it down in a short amount of time and it would be quality stuff, and that was really great. June: Daniel was just so excited to get everyone involved and had been on tour with Judy. He was just really thrilled. T: Well, you know Sheryl and I were just sharing stories

about why animals mean so much to us and I was just

explaining to her that I’ve rescued dogs for years, and

I’ve rescued turtles, and last year, I even rescued a

squirrel, rehabbed him, and released him. So Judy,

June was telling us about her beagle, and so can you

tell us why this means so much to you? Judy: Even since I was a little kid I was always bringing home strays constantly: stray dogs and cats and whatever in the city — and a rooster! I found a home for a rooster here once in the city, and so animals are really a big part of my life. I have a cat that had kittens, and I kept two of the other cats. But I think it’s really important, especially in New York City — the reason I represent Charles is because I have such faith in what he does. I think we need more attention to it in New York and in the boroughs. It’s something that needs more attention than just the ACC (Animal Care & Control) picking up the dogs and cats. They’re overloaded, really overloaded. And to me, I think it’s really important to help the small shelters because they’re getting a lot of the overload, and they don’t have the budgets. It’s important that we’re not putting hundreds of animals to sleep every year. The statistics are off the


charts for how many animals we’re putting down. You know, we’re such a strange society where pet food and things for our pets are at an all-time high in buying, and yet we are putting to sleep hundreds of dogs and cats every year. I’m not sure people are really aware of that. So I think it’s really important for me to get that out there and to encourage people to adopt instead of go and buy a breed. And there are also rescues for breeds as well — that’s what Broadway Barks is all about, helping other shelters. So for me it’s about bringing awareness to New York City because it’s really a huge challenge here in the city. T: June, did you want to talk about Rescue Express? J: Yes, well actually I’ve been friends with Ann for over thirty years and she’s been rescuing dogs for that long, and I spoke with her early on about Rescue Express, and I wanted to help. I’m so happy that this is working out so well because we are all doing this together, and that’s the important thing — that we’re all saying, “Let’s do something. Let’s make something happen.” Every time I’ve been to Ann’s house, she’s always had dogs all over the place. Judy: I can vouch for that. June: And she’s running all over the country picking them up. And it’s amazing to do that, and this is what it’s all about. We just need to help each other. T: I’m on an email list for the group called Rescue Me,

and you can go online and select which breed and

which state that you’re interested in, like Irish Setters or

Huskies or Dalmatians. You know, I’m in the South so I

pick animals all over the South, and it’s horrifying when I

get 4 to 5 emails a day for animals that need help now.

I can’t possibly help them all. So I’m hoping this will at

least help what you’re doing in New York City. Judy: I just think the awareness is so important, that this problem is really huge, and the more people we can get on board the better. And it doesn’t take much for the song — a dollar. If one thousand people give a dollar, that’s a thousand dollars. That saves a lot of dogs, a lot of cats. And there are people out there who want to do it and they don’t know how to, so it’s great that you’re putting this awareness out there as well. T: People don’t understand that — I don’t want to

sound like “Game of Thrones”, “Winter is coming” — but

winter is coming, and at wintertime these animals are in

these kennels that are concrete floors and cinder block

walls, and it’s cold! These animals need help and extra

provisions. This is my heart. I love animals, dogs

especially, and to see any animal hurting or in pain, it

hurts me. It takes each one of us doing our part. So

any final words before we go? June: I’m hoping that we can put this out and possibly do a live performance of it. I want to just get this to as many places as possible. Just keep spreading the word day after day and just make all of this happen, and really, thank you. I didn’t get a chance to thank you, Judy, I was out of town when it was done, and I was so pleased. Judy: Yeah, I’d love to get it out to the audiences, the Mamma Mia! people need to be aware. I think that we need to make the association between how many animals are being put down every year and that are sitting in shelters. There are great dogs out there — any breed, like you said, you can find anything out there to adopt, whether it be puppy or any kind of animal. So, I encourage people to try shelters first. T: Right, and you know, one of the things that annoys

me is when people don’t want the older dogs. They

say, “Oh, I don’t want an older dog for my child, I want

a happier dog or a more active dog.” Some of these

older dogs might make great helpers not just family

dogs, but service dogs. June: Yeah, I used to work with a composer that had a black lab that was a guide dog. Judy: You know, it’s funny because with that — can I say one last thing? Some of the animal rescues don’t look kindly on service dogs, but there are some breeds that really do want to work — that’s what they strive for, they WANT to do that. So I have to encourage that we can use these dogs, and they want to be used that way a lot of times. Certain breeds need to work. Charles does a lot of that as well, he does a lot of training in that respect, which is great. T: Thank you June and Judy for doing your part to help

these animals at the shelters.

Go to: http://amzn.to/1gSaNGt

MTM


Joe

DiPietro A Student of Life

by

Trish Causey

Tony Award winner Joe DiPietro knows what he likes. He loves rock, and he loves theatre. Put those two together in the form of a rock musical, throw in some quirky comedy, and you have one very happy creative artist.

Best known for winning two Tonys for Memphis (bookwriter and score/lyrics), DiPietro simply loves writing. “I always liked to write, and when I was a kid, I wrote journals. My parents took me to see Broadway shows when I was a teenager, and I was immediately hooked. I fell in love with the artform. So I started writing my own little plays as a kid, and I started taking creative writing classes in high school. I wound up winning a national creative writing award for dramatic arts, out of the blue.”

He won a writing contest for Scholastic Magazine, and the young DiPietro had found his niche. “It put the notion in my head, ‘Maybe I can do this,’ which is very valuable to a young person.

After high school, he attended Rutgers. “In college, I was an English major, but I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do. I was maybe gonna go to law school; but I always liked to write, and I always did that on the side. When I got out of college, I got a job working in advertising, writing copy. At night, I would write plays, and I wrote for a long time, but no one cared. I was young, and sent them out, and got tons of rejections back.” Slowly, interest in his work picked up. “I took every bit of encouragement I could. I had a good-paying job which supported me.” DiPietro pauses to wax philosophically: “I think many of us enter this business in odd ways. A friend of mine, who was a union organizer, was friends with someone who was a political cartoonist, and I joined a political writing group, writing a late-night cabaret at Primary Stages…. I wrote a comedy sketch,

having no idea if it was funny or not.” Apparently, the group liked his work, and DiPietro experienced a revelation, “A bell went off in my head, and I thought, ‘Oh, okay, I can write funny. I’m a funny writer.’”

At night, I would write plays, and I wrote for a long time, but no one

cared. I was young, and sent them out, and got tons

of rejections back.

DiPietro branched out to writing his own sketch shows, “And one of those sketch shows morphed over many years to become I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. But that’s really how I started. I was writing sketch shows in basement theatre bars in New York City. That was my education in theatre [writing], and it was a wonderful education.”

One of the biggest problems for writers is the phenomenon of writer’s block; not prone to it himself, DiPietro can pinpoint when he’s having trouble. “I don’t quite have writer’s


block, but if I don’t know what I’m writing about, [that’s] when I write terribly. I have to know what does the character want, what is the scene about? If I’m not answering those questions in an honest, interesting way, then I’m not writing well.”

The art of writing is an open door, revealing the writer’s most private thoughts. “It’s stripping yourself naked,” says DiPietro. “Writing is so personal. I always say every character is me and none of the characters is me.” Yet, he puts a boundary between himself and critics. “I’ve never been worried about what people think of my work. I think if I did, it would paralyze me. I know how to write for a show I want to see — and I have very eclectic tastes; but I don’t know how to write for a show that the general audiences wants to see. Every time you write for an audience, you start to lose that audience,” he adds.

The other side of writer’s block is having too many ideas, something DiPietro knows all too well. “When a character has four motivations, it’s intellectually interesting but really hard for an actor to play and really hard to write a coherent scene. When a director asks me what a scene is about and I give too many answers, immediately, the bell goes off in my head, ‘Oh, wait a minute, what am I talking about?’ Clarity and specificity are our friends as creative people.”

Show business is all about whom you know, so how does

this Tony winner find work? He doesn’t. Usually. “I like to generate my own ideas. I have been approached by estates who own songbooks and song collections of famous artists like the Gershwins and the Elvis folks. And every once in a while, I’ll get approached by a producer for a movie script who wants to turn it into a musical. But most of my shows have been my idea, and I

approach a composer.” Whatever work for hire he may be doing, he keeps a show simmering on the back burner. “I always make sure I work on one of those where it’s just me, where I’m responsible for the guts of a show.”

The Musical Theatre graveyard is full of great scores with books that

didn’t work.

In musicals, as in opera, the book (libretto) is often overlooked as the songs are the standout feature, but the book is the glue that ties the songs together into a story with a beginning, middle, and end. DiPietro knows all too well the importance of having a good book binding the story together. “If a musical is good, you remember the songs. But the Musical Theatre graveyard is full of great scores with books that didn’t work. Often times when I read reviews, the critics liked the score but don’t like the book and the storytelling. The storytelling is so specific when you’re writing a musical; it’s different than writing a play or a movie. You’re almost writing in shorthand because your scenes can’t bee too long. You can’t wallow in an emotion for pages and pages like you can do in a play. You have to give your big emotional moments over to the song, and what many writers like to


write are the big emotional moments — like big screaming matches. But that has to be musicalized. So if you just can’t give that over or if you’re constantly fighting that, then you’re not going to be a happy book writer. We’ve all seen those musicals where we liked the music but the story was boring or the story didn’t make sense. I think there’s a limited number of people who know how to write a good musical book.”

I also really enjoy writing rock songs in theatre

because I feel it’s still such a being-discovered world

and artform. DiPietro is proficient in writing both the spoken word as

well as the sung lyric, so which does he prefer? “I consider myself a dramatist first and foremost. I love the story structure, and I love writing dialogue. The reason I don’t write novels is because I love the dialogue form of what’s said and what’s not said — how different people in a room can affect what’s being said really turns me on creatively. I love writing lyrics, if it’s a lyric that is really telling the story. In Memphis, those lyrics really told the story. In Toxic Avenger, the lyrics helped tell the story in a specific voice. I also really enjoy writing rock songs in theatre because I feel it’s still such a being-discovered world and artform. How rock songs sound on the radio and writing theatrical versions of those I find to be really challenging and interesting. And they’re different than traditional lyrics that we all know from the American songbook and classic musicals of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. Discovering that I find to be really gratifying.”

Even though he is best known for rock and pop musicals, DiPietro’s work spans all of American music as evidenced by his work on the Elvis’ tribute All Shook Up, the quirky Toxic Avenger, the bluesy rock music-infused Memphis, as well as the American songbook shenanigans of Nice Work If You Can Get It. “Some writers write the same show over and over. If you see a Tennessee Williams play, you know it’s a Tennessee Williams play. He just writes the same milieu. Or Horton Foote. Genius writers, but it’s the same milieu. I, for whatever reason, would never like to write the same play twice. I like to explore a period of time or a different type of story. I consider myself mainly a comic writer, but I love drama, too. One of the secrets of Memphis is that it has a lot of comedy but it’s essentially a drama. It was obviously a very difficult time in our history, but it tells it in a way that is sober, but ultimately inspiring and human. The commonality between my works is that I write human comedies — real human beings in real situations, facing the specific circumstances of their lives and their time. “I grew up on rock music in the ‘70’s, and I listened to AM music and all the great bands.” DiPietro listened to all modern rock and pop styles, from the early rock-and-roll of the 1950’s through the 1960’s and The Beatles’ British music invasion, to the 1970’s and 1980’s music. “That’s 40 years of rock music [that] are inside me.” Those four decades of music influences have definitely made their mark on DiPietro’s writing aesthetic. “When you write rock musicals, you can’t over-rhyme them. You can’t have too many internal rhymes — that sounds weird in a rock song. It sounds great in theatre pop, but [in rock] it just sounds wrong, like you’re trying too hard, you’re being too fancy. There’s a rawness

and an emotion to rock music that plays fantastically on stage, but it doesn’t mean you should write lyrics for it that should have been written in the 1940’s. I find you can get away with many more false rhymes in rock song because that’s what rock songs do. The rhythm is so strong, and the rhythm is the rhyme. Every once in a while, I’ll work on a song and write a perfect rhyme for it, and David Bryan and I will sing it back. And we’ll say, ‘No, that’s too clean. There’s no rawness to it.’ Rock is dirty, and you need to dirty it up sometimes.”

The spoken words of speech have rhythm and pitch as do the sung words of a song’s lyrics. The spoken dialogue and the sung words should compliment each other so the show doesn’t sound like it’s written by different people. “That’s one of the keys to writing a good musical.” DiPietro remembers his first experience writing lyrics out of necessity. “I had never written a lyric before, and I was writing I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, and I hooked up with this composer Jimmy Roberts, and he said, ‘We should get a lyricist.’” DiPietro had concerns about bringing in someone else, telling Roberts, “I want the lyrics to match the style of the book, broadly funny and also warm. I said, ‘Who are the lyricists around here who write really funny, broad jokes in their songs?’ He said, ‘I don’t know of anyone like that.’ I said — because I was young and stupid, ‘Well, I’ll do it then.’” DiPietro jumped into the deep end of writing lyrics under Roberts’ guidance. “He was very patient with me and said to read Sondheim, read Cole Porter, Larry Hart, and figure out how they do lyrics and get your own take on these comic songs. So part of the success of that show is that we have sketches, but the songs are also funny — and they’re written by the same voice.”

The commonality between my works is that I write human comedies — real

human beings in real situations, facing the

specific circumstances of their lives and their time.

DiPietro likes having control over shaping the sound and feel of the show and then collaborating with other creatives in the process of mounting the show onstage. He uses Nice Work…, directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, as an example. “We had to be on the same page. She couldn’t do a dance extravaganza, and I couldn’t do a silly comedy.

“I like to be responsible for all the words. I’ve worked with dead lyricists, but I haven’t worked too much with living lyricists. Maybe I will in the future, and there are some great lyricists out there I’d work with in a second. But it’s not even about them being talented. You have to feel like you’re speaking the same language. You have to feel you can give critiques to someone and say, ‘Change this, change that’ or ‘This is not your strongest work,’ and for you not to hate each other. It’s like a marriage — you need to be able to inspire each other without taking offense at criticism. Really good shows have a really strong voice to them, and that’s what I aim for.”


It’s like a marriage — you need to be able to inspire each other without taking

offense at criticism.

For Memphis, DiPietro won two Tony Awards. So does winning a Tony make work easier, validate the artist, or add pressure? “The very next day after I won the Tony, I wasn’t a better writer, but everyone thought I was,” jokes DiPietro. “It was validating. It happened in a fantastic time in my career, where I’d been getting produced and working really hard for 15 years. I had ups and downs like everyone. And it felt like the industry telling me, ‘We appreciate you. We like you. We think you’re good.’ So it was a validation, but it made people think of me in a new way. It was an award happening at the right time in my life. If it had happened too young, it wouldn’t have been great — it would have been pressure. So having it happen in my middle years was a perfect blessing.” For young writers, DiPietro has very simple advice. “See as many shows and listen to as many cast albums [as you can]. Listen to modern music so you know what modern music is. The first thing you have to do as a writer, you have to be smart and you have to know about something besides writing; so really educate yourself as much as possible. Stay in school. Take classes.

Travel. Read. I read all the time. I see plays all the time. I’m a life student of literature and art and narrative and humanity.”

DiPietro has another important piece of advice for young writers when they have written a new work. Don’t just let that new work sit on your computer’s hard drive. “Invite some friends over and read it out loud because plays are meant to hit the air. When you read it out loud — even if it’s just friends over for pizza, you can actually hear what’s working and what’s not working about it. I do that to this day. Often time, my directors say, ‘Send me the script,’ and I’ll say, ‘No, come on over; we’ll read it out loud.’ And they’re like, ‘What?! Read it out loud?’ Then they come over, and they’re like, ‘This is so much fun!’ And we can then see what’s working and what’s not.”

DiPietro’s final tip on being a writer: “You have to be a lifelong student of the craft of life.”

The first thing you have to do as a writer, you have to

be smart…know about something besides writing; really educate yourself as

much as possible.

MTM


Don’t look now, but a huge, terrifying

gorilla is making his way through New York … by

way of Melbourne, Australia.

Five years in development, the new

Australian-engineered production of King Kong hit

the Melbourne stage just time to for the 80th

anniversary of Merian C. Cooper’s original

celluloid colossus of the same name. The show is

produced by Global Creatures and has won a

bevy of awards, including Helpmann Awards for

Best Lighting, Best Sound, Best Scenic Design, and

Best Costume Design.

Directed by Daniel Kramer, the production

boasts 50 actors, singers, dancers, circus

performers, and puppeteers on stage and 76

stage technicians behind the scenes to bring the

show to life each performance. The musical

features old school dance numbers and great

lighting, plus new and existing songs from popular

talents such as Sarah McLachlan, 3D from Massive

Attack, Justice, Guy Garvey from Elbow, and The

Avalanches.

With

Fans of the Great White Way marveled at

the puppet wizardry of War Horse and are now

accustomed to seeing singers being wired from

the rafters. Will the monkey musical cross the

pond to Broadway? Read on….


T: What drew you to want to work on KING Note: After a failed Skype chat due to

inclimate weather, the globe-trotting director

of KING KONG, Daniel Kramer, answered

some questions via email.

T: What drew you to want to work on KING

KONG, and how long have you been working

on the show? D: The idea of creating a score with musicians like 3D from Massive Attack and Justice to recreate the Kong myth was my initial attraction to the project. T: Usually, the Set Designer is the first creative

to work with the Director, was that the case

for KING KONG or did you need to work with

the Production or Creature Designers first? D: Production (Set) Designer Peter England and Creature Designer Sonny Tilders and I began together in one room for three days. From there on, Pete and I were joined at the hip, and we kept in regular contact with Sonny as the story around Kong took shape, which in turn affected how we expressed and designed Kong.

If any piece of art can truly

tap into this sensation of

wonder, I think it has great

power to move us all. T: While Musical Theatre is known for its

suspension of belief, how did you create a

show that doesn't veer into the realm of

spoof? D: I grew up on a farm; cruelty to animals was never the subject matter of spoof for me. We stayed connected to our themes. Also by spending a great deal of time with silverbacks in Melbourne Victoria's incredible preservation reserves. T: Was the scale of the oversized primate a

help in creating the show (filling the stage,

being a dramatic/emotional element) or a

hindrance (the mechanics, tech safety issues,

etc.)?


D: At times if felt like both, but of course Kong is the centre of the story — it was a constant creative challenge to be relished. His scale very much inspired and instructed the language of the entire piece and is finally what makes the story and event so unique — we actually see a 6 metre tall creature sitting, lying down and interacting with this normal size woman. The scale inspires wonder. I think ‘wonder’ is the stuff of very early childhood. If any piece of art can truly tap into this sensation of wonder, I think it has great power to move us all. So I tried not to dwell on hindrances — but focus on this chance of a lifetime. T: Did your opera background help you in

handling both the scale as well as the mythic

quality or melodrama of the KING KONG

story? D: My opera background definitely influenced the scale and diversity of our musical language — specifically the use of the chorus, how we manifested Kong's power via music and image, but also the musical freedom to switch not only themes but style as the moment dictated. Opera has always inspired me because the diverse range of composers reflect the

diverse range of styles we have at our fingertips to express a story. Each composer found their own style of melding music and story. This very much inspired me to search for our creative team's voice and tastes, not received formulas.

T: Did creating a show around a big gorilla

cause "director's block”?

D: The opposite; I had to whittle it all down! The closer to fantasy a show is, the more engaged I become! T: Normally, a director works with one actor

to create a character, but with KING KONG

you were working with actors, stage hands,

and the tech department — a group of

people on stage and off — to make the

Creature come alive. Did that present any

challenges to you as a director, i.e., can't just

tell an actor to express a certain emotion or

perform a simple action? Did you find

yourself inserting emotion, or inserting motive

into the team members maneuvering the

Photo by Global Creatures


Creature, since you didn't have

emotion/motivation being exerted *by* the

Creature — or was there emotion" coming

from the creature that helped spur your

direction? D: For 3 years I worked with one actor as Kong opposite our Ann Darrow by the name of Harley Durst. That really built the performance alongside the limitations and possibilities of puppetry. Of course moving a 6-metre puppet about created many challenges; but we knew it would from day one. I was very aware of the complexity his puppetry would require during rehearsals. Melding automation, animatronics, and live puppetry via circus artists was always going to be a technical integration. We pushed through that process very efficiently, all the while aiming towards the art that this one actor had created with myself and Ann Darrow for three years. Once we got the technical aspect down, we quickly found the soul of the creature. I remember the magical day of rehearsal — the day Kong truly came to life. FINALLY the story and relationship came to life on a whole new level. (Producer’s note — Harley Durst remains in the KING KONG cast as a ‘voodoo’ animatronic control operator and does the voice of Kong live for every performance.) T: Were there any specific problems you had

to overcome in designing the show around

the creature? Any tech safety issues? D: Rope management and where to build Kong’s ‘dressing room’ stand out, especially given we had to also build NYC, Skull Island, and the boat between the two! It was a storage fight from day one. But as ever, each technical challenge unveiled a simple creative solutions. (Being in the USA, I have not seen the show.) T: What styles of music are in the show?

D: Classic Broadway, big band, pop, folk, remixes of classics from the 1930s, electronica, hip hop, mashup, and opera. The music was overseen by composer and arranger Marius de Vries, whose credits include the soundtracks for Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet.

T: Will KING KONG transfer to Broadway? D: That press release is not in my job description!


Photos from King Kong On Stage

Photo by Global Creatures


From Global Creatures:

• The 6-month bump-in required from the

KING KONG production was the longest

load in/pre-production period of any live

theatre musical ever staged in Australia.

• The production requires a crew of 76 to

support a cast of 50 actors, singers,

dancers, circus performers, and

puppeteers.

• Kong is part marionette, animatronic, and

puppet, made entirely in Global

Creatures’ West Melbourne workshop

where the creatures of Walking With

Dinosaurs and How To Train Your Dragon

were also made.

• Kong is made up of 1.1 tonnes of steel,

aluminum, lycra, and latex and is 6 metres

tall.

• Inside Kong, there are 300 metres of

electrical cable, 1500 connections, and

16 microprocessors. Kong even has his

own on-board hydraulic power with a

liquid cooled quiet pump.

• As well as his animatronic core, Kong is

operated on-stage by 10 ‘King’s Men’

who are all circus artists that are being

specially trained in puppetry.

• The detail of Kong's facial expression is

delivered by 15 industrial servo motors (the

same ones used in the NASA Mars rovers)

and 2 hydraulic cylinders, all controlled in

real time by 3 off-stage 'Voodoo'

puppeteers who sit at the back of the

auditorium. One of the puppeteers

supplies the voice of Kong live for every

performance.

• On top of his core chassis, Kong has a

layer of air-powered muscles that give him

a lightweight body form. Over the top of

that are a series of highly sculptured

muscled bags that stretch and contract

as Kong moves.

• There were two full-sized Kong prototypes

before the current ‘sculptural-look’ version

performing at the Regent Theatre.

For more information on KING KONG THE

MUSICAL, visit “King Kong On Stage” online:

http://kingkongliveonstage.com.

MTM

KING KONG FUN FACTS



Censorship is a four-letter word.

The United States’ First Amendment guarantees the protection of an American’s freedoms of speech and expression, among other things. Being able to express ourselves freely is a foundational principal in all areas of the arts. As artists, we must maintain the freedom to say and sing and dance and paint what we want, regardless of whether other people approve of it or not. No one has to like what we express, but they do not have the right to hinder or prohibit that expression. For example, abortion is a topic that is stigmatized by religion, and as such, we don’t hear much about abortion in the arts. This is curious since pregnancy or fear of pregnancy affects most women at some point in their lives. When a woman is not ready to start a family, the fear of pregnancy is omni-present. Every time your period is a day or two late, every time the condom breaks during sex, every time you can’t remember if you took your birth control that morning, or if you did but you’re sick and on antibiotics, not realizing that antibiotics nullify the effects of birth control. Then there are the very real incidences of rape or incest.

The fear of getting pregnant is a constant for most heterosexual women from the time they are sexually active (in their teens?) until they are finally in full menopause in their mid- to late 50’s, or later. That’s around 40 years of fear. Forty years of wondering, What would I do if?…

So, what the hell does any of this have to do with Musical Theatre?

Well, I am usually an open-minded person. I try to see an issue from the other person’s side before I indulge in an Irish rant when I disagree. Therefore, please know that I write this piece out of a sense of justice for the freedoms of speech and expression in art and not for sensationalist purposes. Recently, I was perusing a website that offers advice to teenagers preparing monologues for college auditions. I found the information to be generally helpful and standard. Then I saw a list of things to avoid in a college audition. While I laughed at a few of them and scoffed at couple others, one recommended topic to avoid stopped me in my tracks. The site advised teens to avoid monologues that dealt with abortion. I was outraged. Knowing that the writer was male, it only figured that a man would be clueless to why this was sexist. My activist — artivist — self could not be silent in the face of this injustice.

Actors are told all the time to “make a choice”, but are they really prohibited from performing a monologue about choice? For what? Politics? Not offending someone’s delicate sensibilities? When did politics and censorship enter the sacred space of the audition room? Are audition pieces now subject to approval under the Patriot Act? If a girl is not supposed to perform a monologue about an issue that impacts women as a whole, what

kinds of monologues should girls recite? Something sweet and prim and proper? Something girlie? Should she wear pink and have a bow in her hair? Get real.

If a gay teen wanted to do a piece from The Laramie Project for his college audition, I doubt educators would say the subject matter of violence against LGBT teens is objectionable — and gay rights groups would swarm to the teen’s defense if they did. Some might argue that LGBT issues of body autonomy are different from the women’s rights’ body autonomy issue of abortion — as if no lesbian or bisexual woman has ever been raped by a heterosexual rapist to make her “see what she’s missing”.

Would an educator tell a student of Middle Eastern descent not to use a monologue that mentions Islam to avoid being considered a terrorist by college scouts? Would an educator tell a Hispanic student to pick only monologues in which the character is a housekeeper or a migrant farm worker — because that kind of stereotype goes better with their brown skin? Telling a student not to use a monologue that talks about abortion is sexist and misogynist to the core. Not talking about a sensitive subject increases the stigma of shame and ignorance surrounding the subject. Abortion is just as valid a subject line as any other social, cultural, or political topic.

“But, Trish,” you counter, “these are just teenagers, wee babes! Why would they want to discuss abortion? What do these young, sweet darlings know about the real world of grown-up matters … like … sex?”

Rape exists. So do unplanned pregnancies. This is what women of all ages deal with in the real world. As new musicals continue to break free from the conservative mold set in the middle of last century, socially aware and politically volatile topics will continue to make it to the fore of Musical Theatre.


“The rights of women

and girls is the unfinished

business of the 21st

century.” ~ Hillary Clinton

Musical Theatre was never as sanitized as some people think it is. “Sex in Musical Theatre? Say it isn’t so!” some would exclaim in horror, as they reach for the smelling salts and swoon toward a convenient fainting couch. Sex isn’t the only taboo topic that emerges when you look beneath the veneer of musical whimsy.

The Phantom of the Opera and The Beauty and the Beast are both beloved musicals for their sweeping scores and box office bankability. They both incorporate that old familiar storyline — misunderstood monster meets girl, misunderstood monster falls in love with girl, aforementioned misunderstood singing monster kidnaps girl, locks her away in his dungeon, the chorus wows and amazes with a couple of snazzy showstoppers, and soon the girl is singing heartfelt songs of love for the misunderstood monster; close curtain. Looking more closely at the plotlines of both of these shows, we see the actual story: a delusional male prone to violence, holds a naïve woman hostage against her will, and over time, she suffers psychological trauma, developing emotional feelings for him thanks to Stockholm Syndrome. (Just how many community theatres or high schools put on The Beauty and the Beast?) Speaking of high school, Grease is the most performed musical at high schools in the United States. When auditions are announced, teenage girls gleefully prep their audition songs in the hopes of landing the role of Sandy because she is the lead, or Rizzo because she sings “that song!” A few weeks into the rehearsal process, the school invariably receives phone calls from irate mothers who demand to know when Grease became a show about unprotected (teenage) sex, (teenage) drug use, and under(teen)age drinking. Clearly, these stage moms missed those plot points that were actually included in the 1978 film adaptation.

Another show that leaves female belters breathless in anticipation is the Kander and Ebb classic Cabaret. Female singers salivate for the chance to sing the title song as the salacious Sally Bowles. The joi de vivre of Liza Minnelli’s legendary performance in the original production, along with Joel Grey’s perfect M.C. and Bob Fosse’s direction and choreography earned Cabaret a slew of Tony Awards, plus an adaptation on film, subsequently earning Oscars all the way around as well. However, one important plot point differs between the two. In both the stage and film versions, Sally becomes pregnant by Cliff. In the film, she decides to keep the pregnancy. This is what Sally-wannabes will likely see in preparation for performing the role on stage, only to discover that in the stage version, Sally actually has an abortion. In the same scene, Cliff hits her. So here we have a situation in a musical in which a female has to deal with both abortion and domestic violence.

For some reason, it is preferable to think the female characters in musicals never have sex. Society still has a problem with “good girls” being sexually active and not being ashamed of being sexual. Our culture says a woman who wears long skirts is a “prude”, while a woman who wears a mini-skirt is seen as a “slut”. A man who sleeps around is lauded as a “lady’s man” while a woman who takes many lovers is a “whore.” It is easier to accept a “morally corrupt” woman being sexually active so that the ingénue lead remains virtuous and unrealistically pure. But why? Surrounded by randy sailors, maybe South Pacific’s Nellie isn’t

referring to the follicles on her head when she sings about washing that man right out of her hair.

Musical Theatre is rife with female roles that deal with sex — just not the sex that parents of teenagers want to admit goes on in the real world. Lucy in Jekyll & Hyde is a prostitute. Les Misérables’ Fantine begins work in a brothel to escape being homeless. In Jesus Christ Superstar, Mary Magdalene is wrongly portrayed as a prostitute even though the New Testament never said she was. In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, numerous women are slaves ready to be sold for the sexual pleasure of their new male owners. Anita is raped by members of the Jets’ gang in West Side Story, and when we meet Porgy’s love, Bess, she is in a relationship with a violent man, Crown. Sweet Charity, Chicago, Miss Saigon…

With these few examples from classic Musical Theatre productions, is the topic of abortion actually out of bounds for college auditions?

More importantly, not talking about abortion — or birth control or rape, does not help the problem in society. Our main duty as artists is to tell stories. Unfortunately, within the art of storytelling, not all stories are light-hearted romantic comedies. Art is a reflection of society, mirroring who we are and where we are in our development as conscious beings. Art shows us what can happen if we make certain changes in society and what will happen if we do not.

Apparently, as long as women are portrayed in art as being raped by depraved men, beaten by abusive men, or selling our bodies for pleasuring men, everything is fine, but as soon as women speak up — in society or in an audition monologue, we are told the topic is “too sensitive,” the world “isn’t ready,” be happy with what you have. Essentially, we are told, “Women, shut up.”


“As soon as a woman

gets to an age where

she has opinions and

she’s vital and she’s

strong, she is

systematically shamed

into hiding under a

rock.” ~ Sarah Silverman

Women are still in the minority in the professional Musical Theatre genre. A 2002 poll by the Broadway League showed only 20% of production jobs in professional theatre were given to women. Looking through the Tony Award winners, only a handful of women have been honored for writing or composing musicals. Translation: Women’s stories and women’s issues are not being represented in Musical Theatre; women’s voices are not being heard.

This is the one area in which Musical Theatre is decades behind its non-singing, non-dancing counterpart. Plays can be quick to write, cheap to stage, and are almost expected to touch a nerve. Whoever said musicals shouldn’t touch nerves? I know we all need to make money here, but not every musical has to be formulated according to the entertainment-first/story-second modus operandi.

Rodgers and Hammerstein dealt with sensitive topics their entire career. R&H explored interracial relationships during the Roaring ‘20’s when they wrote Show Boat. They dealt with racism in South Pacific and questioned a king’s rule and religious authority in The King and I. We don’t consider these shows to be “touchy” because we live in the post-presidential sex scandal, post-internet world. Nothing shocks us nowadays, but consider the timeframe in which Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote some of their biggest successes.

In the years following World War II, America emerged as a superpower with its prime enemy being the Communist, atheist Soviet Union. In response, American culture circled the wagons, bringing about a whiplash of religiosity under President Eisenhower and a Republican Congress who tacked “Under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, changed the country’s official motto from E pluribus unum to “In God We Trust” in 1956, and began printing all paper currency of the United States with “In God We Trust” in 1957. Television shows like “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” were part of the American myth makeover that was solidified by Norman Rockwell’s rosy-cheeked, carefree Saturday Evening Post illustrations, selling a version of Americana that never actually existed. Rodgers and Hammerstein had to conform to certain conventions just to get their shows on stage, but their awareness of social issues was present in all their works. Fast forward to 2012 and 2013, birth control, emergency contraception, “legitimate rape”, and “binders full of women” were part of the national debate in the modern-day Puritans’ #WarOnWomen, and yet no one is protesting men getting vasectomies or buying condoms. Would a college hopeful be banned from college for reciting a monologue about the importance

of men getting prostate exams? Furthermore, when sucking on this mind candy

discussion about whether or not abortion is suitable for audition monologues, I would like to offer this reminder: Abortion is a legally protected medical procedure in the United States, upheld by the Supreme Court in the landmark case Roe v. Wade. When was the last time a man had to justify having a legal medical procedure, such as a root canal, hair plugs, or penis enlargement? Aside from abortion, what else are females forced to contend with in society?

The runaway hit Twilight was popular with teenagers, which is unfortunate since the relationship between Edward and Bella meets all 15 warning signs of an abusive relationship as listed by the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

The Center for Disease Control’s website states, “New HIV infections among women are primarily attributed to heterosexual contact (84% in 2010),” and “at some point in their lifetime, an estimated … 1 in 32 black women will be diagnosed with HIV infection.” Just in case anyone still thought AIDS is a “gay man’s disease”.

In the United States, women comprise 51% of the population but hold less than 20% of elected offices. Women earn less than men in 99% of all occupations and comprise 70% of the world’s poor. Ninety-two percent of homeless women in America are victims of sexual and domestic violence, showing a dual problem of violence against women as well as a growing phenomenon, termed by the United Nations as the “feminization of poverty”.

If you paid attention to the news in the past couple of years, you will have noticed more cases of teenage rape being reported. In the Steubenville, Ohio, case, the 16-year-old victim was vilified by the town and some school personnel for damaging the reputations of her rapists, the school’s star athletes. In the very recent, very similar rape cases in Missouri, a 14-year-old-girl’s rape by a 17-year-old star athlete was caught on camera, but the case was not prosecuted; meanwhile a 15-year-old guy admitted to having non-consensual sex with the girl’s friend who was 13. And yes, teenagers hear all about these news stories … usually on the overpriced smartphones paid for by their parents.

Anyone who still thinks abortion is not an appropriate topic for teenagers to discuss is absolutely clueless as to what teenage girls actually encounter on a daily basis.

As someone who is a mother to a teenage girl and has taught numerous high school students, I know it is easy only to see teenagers as the baby-faced, starry-eyed hopefuls they are at the moment. During that rebellious time of hormonal hell known as


puberty, teens straddle the cusp when they are not quite a child but not quite an adult. I think some audition coaches, likewise, only see these teenagers as “kids”. The university adjudicators will look to these teenage auditionees’ potential, imagining what these young performers will be like in a few short years when they are 21-year-old adults, getting their first degree and possibly moving forward with graduate work.

Teenagers are people trying adulthood on for size. Don’t stifle them with your prejudices and insecurities.

The purpose of this piece is not to push one side of the abortion issue or the other, but to acknowledge that censorship has no place in the arts. Artists’ voices cannot be muffled and muzzled into obedience. Art is the mirror of society. Art is the oracle by which we read society’s pulse. When Puritanical politics and religious dogma dare to shun or shame the artist into silence, this is the moment the artist is required to shout even louder.

If we allow monologues, audition pieces, and full productions to examine war, suicide, LGBT issues, and minority struggles, then a woman’s right to self-determination is equal in importance in the scope of exploring the human condition.

There is room for everyone in Musical Theatre. If you want to attend only the happy-go-lucky shows, that is your choice. However, newer musicals increasingly delve into subject matter that mid-20th century creatives would never have put into a show so blatantly. That does not mean the topic doesn’t have a right to be in a show, or that a person should not explore that topic via a monologue for an initial audition or a callback. Believe me, no one sitting at a casting table wants to hear every teenage girl singing “Defying Gravity” and reciting a monologue about picking out the perfect prom dress. Give the casting team or the college recruiters some substance. The times we live in are complex, and newer material reflects both that complexity as well as the reality that we all face — including sexism and misogyny in society, and apparently, the sexism and misogyny being imposed on college auditions.

One of my favorite lines ever is from the Australian indie film, Strictly Ballroom. The quote is simple, yet powerful: “A life lived in fear is a life half-lived.” So I offer college-bound teens (and their parents) these questions:

1) Do you really want to attend an institution of so-called higher learning if they deny the exploration of women’s issues, which are essentially human issues?

2) Do you really want to spend $100,000+ on an education based on censorship and political and dogmatic agendas?

Burst the ivory-tower bubble of academia. Show them you are adventurous and fearless. Wallflowers don’t make it in this business anyway. Be bold. Take risks. Take chances. Follow through. Sure the cradle will rock, but Musical Theatre and college hopefuls will survive. Just remember, the choice is yours. Resources:

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/basics/ataglance.html

http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/women_poverty_economics/fact

s_figures.html

http://www.weforum.org/pdf/Global_Competitiveness_Reports/Reports

/gender_gap.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminization_of_poverty

MTM

Trish Causey is a life-long activist and advocate for the protection of the First Amendment and Human Rights.

Creative persons, therefore,

experience a wider range of

human possibilities than the

average person: they travel widely

across a spectrum of possible

behaviors, thoughts, experiences,

and emotions. They can be both

open and closed, intuitive and

rational, capable of experiencing

both great emotional disequilibrium

and restabilizing at a new

equilibrium. This paradoxical

relationship of apparent opposites

or polarities is central to both the

creative person and the creative

process, and it is one key factor in

what has made creativity so

“mysterious”, because

open/closed, healthy/sick,

reason/intuition, are more often

than not, viewed as opposites, not

as interrelated aspects of a larger

whole.

Alfonso Montuori

ReVision Vol. 28 No. 3, 2006, p. 11

cast notes

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