Photos: First Look at PASS OVER on Broadway
Get a first look at the Broadway prpduction of Antoinette Chinonye Nwandusacclaimed, award-winning playPASSOVER, directed by Obie Award winnerDanya Taymor.
Over 70 Theatre Artists Share Thoughts on Present Moment, Future, in New Sundance Institute Study
After suspending its traditional theatre program due to the coronavirus pandemic, California’s Sundance Institute turned its live performance efforts and support to an Interdisciplinary Program. One outcome of this initiative, released August 4, shares insights from over 70 theatre artists as they contemplate the current state of an artform brought to a halt and what’s needed in its road to recovery.
The Emerging From the Cave field study, commissioned by Sundance and executed by longtime advisor Jesse Cameron Alick (recently named associate artistic director at Off-Broadway’s Vineyard Theatre), presents not hard data but rather a collection of ideas, thoughts, feelings, frustrations, and more from 76 individuals. Alick classifies these people, to whom he interviewed via Zoom over the course of several months earlier this year, as “performance innovators, field leaders, thought leaders, and field donors.” Participants include Pulitzer Prize winners Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Michael R. Jackson, plus Robert O’Hara, Liesl Tommy, Shaina Taub, Mike Lew, and Ty Defoe.
“The sampling of voices here is just that, a sampling, and there are 10 times as many smart people I didn’t speak with, who I hope will add to this conversation as it continues,” Alick says. “This study aims to give us a road map to follow in this new future in which we now find ourselves.”
Alick determines from his findings that skepticism towards commitment to equity and supporting local communities permeates the community, and identifies four calls to action to address this: an exploration of “Collective Leadership” models, long-term “Holistic Artist Support,” an embrace of “Digital Theater and Hybrid Futures,” and continued, communal “Field Ideation.”
See below for individual excerpts exploring each of these four themes; the full study, including interviews from all interviewees, is available at EmergingFromtheCave.com.
Collective Leadership
“Our structure as a team, as a collaborative leadership, is that no one person has the answer. And I think that this can be a novel idea when combating white supremacy and patriarchy. It’s like not one person has all the answers and is obligated to have all the answers—they aren’t the special one or the exceptional one.”
Eric Lockley (Performer, writer, and producer, Movement Theatre Company)
Holistic Artist Support
“We need to be thinking about the ways in which we are establishing a different model of work and making it clear to artists that actually this is not a one-time deal. We’re not interested in having one project with them where we pay them and then we move on to the next thing, as if this is some sort of news cycle.”
Legacy Russell (Writer and curator, The Kitchen)
Digital Theatre/Hybrid Futures
“I call it the tyranny of the proscenium. Rather than theatres thinking about how we can create theatre anywhere that demands that stage, they think, ‘How can you create theatre that meets the needs of our individual space?’”
Lynn Nottage (Playwright, Sweat, Intimate Apparel, Ruined)
Field Ideation
“I think about the seven-generations model that many different Native nations or tribes have. It’s the question of are you thinking seven generations ahead? Why this piece of work now? Why this play now? Why is it important?”
Ty Defoe (Interdisciplinary artist and co-founder, Indigenous Direction)
Barlow & Bear’s THE UNOFFICIAL BRIDGERTON MUSICAL Concept Album to be Released in September
Today, songwriting duoBarlow Bear, Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear,announcedthe September 10, 2021 release of their highly-anticipated concept album,The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical.
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theatre History: August 3
1921 Composer Richard Adler is born. Alongside Jerry Ross, he writes two of the most influential musicals of the 1950s: The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees. He also writes the score to 1961’s Kwamina.
1943 Martin Vale‘s melodrama The Two Mrs. Carrolls opens on Broadway at the Booth Theatre. Elisabeth Bergner stars as a woman who finds out her husband (played by Victor Jory) is attempting to murder her. During the run, Bergner befriends a fan who waits for her nightly at the stage door, but turns out to be lying in an attempt to advance her own career. When Bergner tells her experience to Mary Orr, fiancée of the play’s director Reginald Denham, Orr uses it as the basis for her short story “The Wisdom of Eve,” which is later adapted into the classic movie All About Eve.
1973 In one of the greatest disasters in Off-Broadway history, the 1870-vintage Broadway Central Hotel at 240 Mercer Street collapses, taking with it the honeycomb of eight theatre spaces known as the Mercer Arts Center. Among the shows left homeless by the collapse are the long-running One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Proposition, and El Coca Cola Grande.
1978 Sammy Davis, Jr. stars as Littlechap in a Broadway revival of the Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley musical Stop the World - I Want to Get Off.
1998 For the first time since a Times Square construction accident shut down business on July 21, the Off-Broadway musical Smoke On The Mountain performs. The production, first produced Off-Broadway in 1990 at the Lamb’s Theatre, returns to its home, this time on the upstairs mainstage. Connie Ray and Alan Bailey’s musical starring Robert Olsen tells of a humble, religious family who make music for local church groups and socials.
2002 Avenue Q is presented as one of three in-development musicals at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Music Theater Conference in Connecticut. Within a year, it gets an Off-Broadway production that leads to a Broadway transfer and the Tony Award for Best Musical.
2013 The world premiere of Jason Robert Brown and Marsha Norman‘s musical The Bridges of Madison County opens at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Bartlett Sher directs the Broadway-bound production, starring Elena Shaddow as Francesca and Steven Pasquale as Robert. Kelli O’Hara steps into the role of Francesca when the production opens on Broadway in 2014.
2017 The Off-Broadway debut of Bobby Goldman and Drew Brody’s musical comedy Curvy Widow opens at the Westside Theatre. In the lead role is Tony nominee Nancy Opel, who plays a widowed, 50-something woman who immerses herself in the modern dating scene.
2018 The stage adaptation of Baz Luhrmann‘s 2001 film Moulin Rouge! has its world premiere engagement at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre. The production, directed by Alex Timbers with a book by John Logan, combines songs from the movie with newer pop hits like Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.” Aaron Tveit and Karen Olivo star as poet Christian and courtesan Satine. The production opens on Broadway the following year.
More of Today’s Birthdays: Francis Byrne (1876–1923), Larry Haines (1918–2008), Maria Karnilova (1920–2001), Tony Bennett (b. 1926), Martin Sheen (b. 1940), Mamie Gummer (b. 1983)
Flip through photos from Curvy Widow Off-Broadway:
Take a First Look at Curvy Widow starring Nancy Opel
Billy Porter to Fund Inaugural WIO! Playwriting Prize For People Living With HIV, Launched by Playwright Donja R. Love
Playwright Donja R. Love has announced the first annual WIO Prize for playwrights living with HIV. In its inaugural year, the 5,000 award will be funded by Emmy Award-winning actor Billy Porter, known for his roles on the hit TV show Pose and the musical Kinky Boots, and the LGBTQ media nonprofit GLAAD. National Queer Theater, The Lark, Mobilizing Our Brothers Initiative MOBI, and The Each-Other Project have partnered to coordinate the submission process.
avoiding feedback: Vlog 47 – The Introductory Verse
Post #47. The ‘lost art’ of the introductory verse
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Today I want to talk briefly about the nearly lost art of the introductory verse.
Back in the days of Tin Pan Alley songs - the songs that were in the hit shows on Broadway were also the ones that were the hits on the radio. And everybody would rush out to buy the sheet music, and go home and play it on their piano at home. And it was very common in those days, no matter what the structure of the song itself was (often it would be an AABA song structure but it might be a Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus song structure or an ABAB or any other kind of structure) - but often it was very popular to begin the song with what was called an Introductory Verse.
That Introductory Verse was often four lines or eight lines - could be shorter, could be longer - that did not usually repeat. Occasionally, if you had a really long song, you might have another instance of the introductory verse later that used the same music. But most often it would be just at the very beginning of the song, and that particular musical structure - the rhyme scheme and the melody - would not appear again.
It often tended to be a little more talky, a little bit more like opera’s recitative, than the tune itself. It would have a little bit less rhythmic groove under it. The purpose for it was twofold: It helped transition from dialogue into music, so it didn’t seem quite so abrupt that someone who was talking one moment was singing a song the next moment - it would act as a bit of a buffer. But it also was an opportunity to set up the lyric and contextualize it in a way that can be very interesting.
I don’t by any means think that it’s a requirement for a song to have an introductory verse, but I think it’s certainly worth looking at how an introductory verse can do those things for you, and to consider using it. Often with the popular songs of that day— we no longer remember the verses. For some of them you might remember verses - but generally speaking we remember the structure of the song, and that’s what we’re used to singing, what we’re used to hearing. And we don’t remember how the song was contextualized. And then you happen to hear one of those introductory verses along the way and you think “Huh, that makes me think about that song a little differently.”
That happened to me the other day when I was looking at a particular song and so I wanted to share this with you.
The song itself is an old-fashioned but pretty well-known song that goes like this:
MAKE SOMEONE HAPPY
MAKE JUST ONE SOMEONE HAPPY
MAKE JUST ONE HEART THE HEART YOU SING TO
…and it goes on from there. So it’s a pretty well-known song, and it seems like a fairly simple idea: just make someone happy, make them laugh. And it goes on in that vein, and it’s sweet, and it’s what it is.
The Introductory Verse to that is:
THE SOUND OF APPLAUSE IS DELICIOUS
IT’S A THRILL TO HAVE THE WORLD AT YOUR FEET
THE PRAISE OF THE CROWD, IT’S EXCITING
BUT I’VE LEARNED THAT’S NOT WHAT MAKES A LIFE COMPLETE
THERE’S ONE THING YOU CAN DO FOR THE REST OF YOUR DAYS
THAT’S WORTH MORE THAN APPLAUSE
THE SCREAMING CROWD, THE BOUQUETS….
MAKE SOMEONE HAPPY
MAKE JUST ONE SOMEONE HAPPY
MAKE JUST ONE HEART THE HEART YOU SING TO
And etc.
What I found really interesting about that is that the song itself feels a bit pat, a bit saccharine, a bit like “oh isn’t it sweet”. But contextualized that way, as if it’s someone who’s a theater person who’s used to applause but has realized that’s not enough, you want more out of life. You want to bring happiness to one individual and make that one person smile, rather than walking out on the stage and getting grand applause from everyone out there.
For me, that suddenly contextualized the lyric of the song tremendously. It made me think about the lyric of the song very differently. And if, for instance, I were going to choose to sing that song in a cabaret act as a standalone piece, I would absolutely sing that verse because I think it would very much change how i interpreted the lyric.
That’s just one example – there are tons and tons of examples - but you get the idea. And so I would encourage you - when you’re sitting down to write a song - to think about the value of writing four, or eight, or however many you think you need, lines in a very different musical style. They tend to be very rubato (follow the voice) - with just some simple chords underneath, and not a lot of rhythm. Your song hasn’t kicked in yet. But you can accomplish a great deal to transition us from dialogue into music, and to contextualize the lyric, so that once we get to it, we are coming at it with a frame of mind, a frame of reference. So that we understand so much more the theme that we are about to get through the lyric.
ICYMI: Watch the Top 10 College Students Perform for Next on Stage: Dance Edition!
Next on Stage Dance Edition is back with season 2 of our online dancing competition Miss the announcement of our college top 10 Check out the episode here
August 2021 Streaming: Center Stage, Annie, Vivo, More
Summer continues with lots of favorites ready to cue up while escaping the heat. From nostalgia-inducing Center Stage and Annie to the new animated musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda and the second season of The Other Two finally arriving, there’s plenty for everyone.
Plus, Andrew Rannells makes his directorial debut with an episode in Season 2 of Modern Love based on his essay published in The New York Times. The season premieres August 13 on Amazon Prime Video.
All titles are available to stream August 1 unless otherwise noted.
Amazon
Annie
This 1982 film adaptation of the Broadway musical brings everyone’s favorite “Tomorrow”-singing orphan to the big screen with a supporting cast full of theatre stars, including Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan, Bernadette Peters as Lily, Tim Curry as Rooster, Ann Reinking as Grace, Albert Finney as Daddy Warbucks, and Geoffrey Holder as Punjab (a character from the musical’s source material added for the film).
Catch Me If You Can
Another stage musical inspiration, the true story of Frank Abagnale Jr. comes to life thanks to fun performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks (played by Aaron Tveit and Norbert Leo Butz on stage in 2011). Steven Spielberg directs.
Center Stage
This dance-centric film follows students enrolled at the fictitious American Ballet Academy in New York City. Helmed by two-time Tony-winning director Nicholas Hytner (Carousel, The History Boys), Center Stage features performances from such theatre favorites as Peter Gallagher, Debra Monk, Donna Murphy, and Priscilla Lopez.
La La Land
Broadway vet Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling star in this movie-musical love letter to Hollywood, following the romantic and artistic entanglement of an aspiring actor (Stone) and a jazz composer (Gosling). The film’s Academy Award-winning music includes songs with music by Justin Hurtwitz and lyrics by Dear Evan Hansen writers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.
Annette (August 20)
Burn This Tony nominee Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard lead this film, about a stand-up comedian and his world-famous soprano wife whose lives are upended after giving birth to a daughter with a special gift. The new movie-musical features songs by Russel and Ron Mael of the band Sparks.
HBO Max
The Birdcage
Directed by Mike Nichols and adapted by Elaine May from the original French play, this 1996 comedy stars Nathan Lane and Robin Williams as a gay couple who run a drag cabaret club in Miami. When their son announces his engagement, the pair are in over their heads as they prepare to meet the fiancée, whose parents are very conservative. Hilarity ensues in this lighthearted look at what happens when two families from opposite sides of the aisle come together to celebrate love. Sound familiar? The same source material inspired the 1983 Jerry Herman-Harvey Fierstein musical La Cage Aux Folles.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
This is the story of two con men—one elegant and one slovenly—who scheme to bilk rich women out of their money on the French Riviera. Steve Martin, Michael Caine, and Glenne Headly star in this comedy that inspired the musical that opened on Broadway in 2005. Directed by Frank Oz, the film features a screenplay by Dale Launer, Stanley Shapiro, and Paul Henning.
The Other Two (August 26)
After a long wait between Season 1 and 2, the comedy returns for another round of chaos. The series follows two adult siblings navigating their not-quite-thriving careers and personal lives as their 13-year-old brother becomes a viral teen sensation. Broadway alum Heléne Yorke, Josh Segarra, Molly Shannon, Case Walker, and Ken Marino star with Gideon Glick joining for the second season as a love interest for Cary, played by Drew Tarver.
Hulu
Bagdad Cafe
A woman trapped in an unhappy marriage decides to leave her husband behind during a road trip and start working in a cafe in the middle of nowhere. Working with the tough-as-nails Brenda, the two build a friendship and encounter some unique characters on their way to making the pit stop a place to remember. A stage adaptation of the movie is currently playing in London, with performances set for the Old Vic: In Camera series August 25–28.
Plaza Suite
Check out the 1971 film adaptation of Neil Simon’s comedy ahead of its return to Broadway next year. Instead of two performers playing three different couples, Simon flipped the script by having Walter Mattheau play all of the male characters, but gave Maureen Stapleton, Barbra Harris, and Lee Grant one female role apiece. Arthur Hiller directs.
Only Murders in the Building (August 31)
The new comedy series features Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez as three true crime–obsessed strangers whose lives collide after they witness a murder. As they record a podcast of their own to document the case, the three unravel the complex secrets of the building which stretch back years. Soon, they realize a killer might be living amongst them as they race to decipher the mounting clues before it’s too late. Joining the cast is Nathan Lane, who plays a New York City grocery chain owner in the show, co-created and written by Martin and John Hoffman.
Netflix
Vivo (August 6)
Hamilton and In the Heights creator Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote songs for this animated movie musical and lent his vocal talent as the main character, a kinkajou who must deliver a letter from his owner in Havana to a long-lost love in Miami. Also in the cast are Gloria Estefan, Juan De Marcos, Zoe Saldaña, Michael Rooker, Katie Lowes, Olivia Trujillo, Lidya Jewett, Brian Tyree Henry, Nicole Byer, Leslie David Baker, and newcomer Ynairaly Simo. The movie, co-directed by Kirk DeMicco and Brandon Jeffords, also features a score by Alex Lacamoire with a script by Quiara Alegría Hudes and DeMicco.