Music Monday - What will we do next? How do you decide the next musical?

The curtain has just descended on your successful production. Your students (and their parents and even the Principal) are clamouring: “what will we do next?" You’ve done a run of successful shows and you want the next one to be as successful. How do you rise to this challenge?

This can be a delicious dilemma.

But there are questions that need answers.

• How do you choose the next musical or play to produce in your school?

• Who decides?

• What is the process? Is there a process?

• What are the principles on which choices are made?

Is the choice of your school’s next production whim? What’s trending? Debate? Consultation?

Who and how you decide is a measure of your underlying values. 

Who decides makes a difference.

How often are drama teachers portrayed in films as loopy, self aggrandising megalomaniacs (for comic purposes of course)! But can this sort of decision making ever be truly democratic? There is a question that needs to be always asked: whose production is this?

A process establishes clear guiding principles, timelines and is transparent and consultative

Some questions to developing guiding principles

Choosing a production in an education setting

• How does this choice of production meet the learning needs of your students?

• Is the production designed to meet a mandated curriculum or syllabus requirement? 

  For example, if the syllabus requires students to explore examples of historical music theatre using book structures and fully integrated songs and dances then the choices are different if what was required was a jukebox musical.

• what is the overall purpose of the production?

  Is it to satisfy syllabus standards? Or is it to bring together the school as a community working collaboratively on a shared project? Is it about “school spirit”? Or perhaps, what is the balance between these purposes?

• Is this chosen production appropriate for the level of skills development and learning progression of your students?

  – Vocal range?

  – Level of dance? 

  – Specialised dance such as tap?

  – Emotional demands of roles?

  In other words can your students manage the song ranges, dance requirements, acting challenges? It is OK for younger students to work on Junior Versions with adjusted scores.

• Is it age appropriate in terms of content, and acting? 

  There is nothing quite as off-putting as a Year 9 playing (trying to play) Bloody Mary in South Pacific.

• Are the themes and subject appropriate for your school setting?

• Will the community support it?

• Will your Principal and colleagues go on the journey with you?

Practical issues

• Can you get the rights?

• What is the size of the cast?

• What is the gender balance of roles?

• What is the gender balance of your students available for the production?

• What are the staging requirements?

  For example, Does it require Peter Pan flying? Or are there multiple sets? costumes? Props?

• Is the title recognisable and marketable for your community?

• Do you have to have a well-known production?

  Some productions, particularly musicals are known properties. Parents as audiences know the difference between Mama Mia and all the nearly-made it shows in the catalogue. 

There is one final question: do you want to spend countless hours of your life and a river of sweat and tears on a show that you don’t believe in?

It’s not as simple as pulling up the MTI Catalogue and sticking a pin in the title list. 

The Educational Theatre Association’s (EdTA) https://schooltheatre.org/play-survey/ annual play survey for the 2021-2022 year.

Music Monday - Music Theatre Overload

It’s a music theatre overload. Straight from Mac and Mabel at The Maj (WAAPA) to John Curtin for 42nd Street ( with a detour for fish and chips at The Groper and His Wife!)

42nd Street is amazing. 

Yes there were some sloppy mike cues. And a bit of fluffiness first night nerves. But truly amazing. Not just the usual disclaimer that they’re just school kids. The actors danced their taps off. They sang with attack and gusto. A complete package. The orchestra was fierce (sometimes a bit too so!). And tunefully on point for style and oomph. 

Yes, there are some severely overworked males filling too many roles. Take nothing away from them. But the drought of boys and flood of girl talent needs attention. But when you think where the music theatre program has travelled to get to this point it’s a theatre mystery. To quote the classics. 

And by contrast with this arvo, I could understand every word (when the mike cues worked!). Why do you think that is? 

Some talented younger performers too. Year 10. Great tapping – amazing tapping. Staging.  

Increasingly we see more use of projections. Jury is out still about the effectiveness of their use. Challenging to get right.  But as I noted to Liz, the whole MTI packaging of music theatre  productions for schools is phenomenal (https://www.mtishows.com/production-resources). It’s not just that they have a range of productions available (Senior and Junior versions), it’s the breadth of the resources: not just music and recordings but also choreography. The scripts are well produced and informative for students. There’s a range of resources. Talking of projections there are also packages of them for shows that can be licensed (https://www.mtishows.com/marketplace/resource/performance/scenic-projectionstm). Of course, you also need the equipment to project them – and the sophistication of this virtual scenography is increasing.  

The WAAPA production of Mac and Mabel was also highly entertaining. And used lots of projections. Those students are also amazing. But I do have a couple of  questions unanswered.

There’s good reason why some music theatre shows are revived often and have enduring popularity (though that can change over time!).

But there’s also shows that fade away. 

Mac and Mabel is Structurally problematic. Two Mack Sennets. And, my, how the 1927 Sennet grew 12 inches in the intervening years. Despite disparity of heights though they were well matched performances. 

But, you know there’s a problem with the show when there’s a full five minutes of explanatory slideshow to address the gaps in the audience’s understanding of the people in the story. 

The person beside me asked before the overture if this was about the Mabel from the wireless days (Mabel was a character in Dad and Dave from Snake Gully an Australian radio drama series 1937 – 1953). 

For me, it was minute 37 before there was a popularly recognisable tune.

And issues of clarity with spoken lines from leading lady - not from singing. Go figure!

Makes you wonder why this show was the Big Ticket WAAPA showcase in The Maj. Something to offer in terms of challenge and learning for students but why this  rather forgettable piece which would fit more easily into another slot in the WAAPA calendar. 

As I said, though, a music theatre overload for one day and I haven’t even talked about seeing the Black Swan production of Once at the Regal. 

Music Monday - Vale Stephen Sondheim, 22 March 1930- 26 November 2021

In the days following Sondheim’s sudden death at age 91, the internet has been saturated with an outpouring of reaction to the loss of the ‘Shakespeare of Music Theatre’, arguably the greatest writer of the form in the 20th century. In the past few days, singers, actors, teachers, writers, directors, artists and journalists have articulated tributes far more eloquently than I can.

My first Sondheim experience was the movie of West Side Story in 1961, though like many at the time, I thought of it as mainly Bernstein’s piece. 

Some years later in late 1973, on my first solo trip to Sydney as a young adult, I saw A Little Night Music at Her Majesty’s Theatre (restored after fire destroyed it in 1970). This was a pivotal point in my musical life. I can still remember sitting up in the dress circle, trying to absorb it all.

In my 30 plus years of teaching singing at WAAPA, I have been privileged to work with and learn from three Sondheim devotees. Firstly John Milson, founding head of Musical Theatre at WAAPA. It was John Milson’s ambition to direct all of Sondheim’s musicals. Denis Follington followed John Milson and would often say “To sing Sondheim well, you simply follow all the instructions contained in the score – Sondheim has written it all down for you.” I was reminded of this when watching the Times Square tribute below. Most recently, retiring former head of Music Theatre, David King, has taught, played, MD’d and researched all of Sondheim’s works.

What a huge legacy Sondheim has left for us all.

Please look at the three links below. They are among my favourites from these recent days. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/parenting/stars-react-to-the-death-of-legendary-composer-and-lyricist-stephen-sondheim/ar-AARcsbU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKSYeMgamIA

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/VIDEO-Broadway-Sings-in-Times-Square-to-Honor-Stephen-Sondheim-20211128?utm_source=newsletterdaily&utm_medium=email

Music Monday - How does an increasingly data-driven education system affect growth and satisfaction in music learning and performance?

A few weeks ago, I ran into a high school music teacher friend. She has decided to retire at the end of this school year. Why? Well, like many of us, she is of an age where retirement is a possibility. But more significantly, a driving force in her decision was what she perceived to be the increasing demand for data collection across all aspects of the education system. 

This teacher’s retirement will mean a true loss for that school and its students – she is  passionate and dedicated worn down by the demands of the system.

There is no doubt that as teachers we are asked to be increasingly accountable – and that can be a very good thing. But it does seem to come at a cost. For every step of the learning journey there is a marking rubric to be filled out, both in schools and in universities now. Again, a marking rubric does provide a level of moderation, but can it ever tell the whole story?

For many years I have prepared year 12 secondary school students for their exit performance exams in music. We spend years 11 and 12 practising songs with a close eye on the marking rubric and ensuring that melodies and rhythms (to name just two criteria) are accurately performed. I teach in a specialist music theatre program, so this is sometimes at odds with how the songs would be performed in the real world. 

Many of my students go on to audition for places in the various tertiary music theatre courses across Australia. Those auditions take place around the same time as the performance exams but have very different expectations. It is much less about the accurate processing of notational information and much more about demonstrating potential in story-telling and vocal flexibility. The final voice lessons for year 12 students tend to be a slightly crazy mix of ‘now let’s try the song in exam style’ or ‘sing it this time as you will for your audition’. Two versions of the same song – the less ‘correct’ one often the more authentic.

Similarly, the tertiary course where I teach music theatre and acting students,  has taking up the use of marking rubrics for assessment. For the final year music theatre students there is often a disconnect between preparing for the assessment and preparing for their careers as performers.

I don’t pretend to have answers. I know we needed to move on from the old days of ‘I just know what an A grade sounds like’ or ‘this student deserves an A; they have worked so hard’ to something more accountable. But in so doing, have we sacrificed a little of the joy? I hope not. 

My soon to be retired teacher friend mentioned at the start worked incessantly to maintain the joy. But in doing that she perhaps burnt herself out.

Schmigadoon!

I discovered this last night, after urgings from son Ben (not a particular music theatre fan) and conversations with several music theatre students in recent weeks.

It is an American musical comedy TV series of 6 episodes created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. It premiered on Apple TV+ on 16th July this year.

Broadly, it is a parody of the Golden Age musical, Brigadoon, but it goes much further in also parodying famous musicals of the 1940s and 1950s – Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, The Music Man, Finian’s Rainbow, Carousel, and many more. (You can play the game ‘spot the reference’).

The cast line-up is stellar- Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, Martin Short, Aaron Tveit, Ariana DeBose – to name only a few. It’s as if all these stars wanted to fill their downtime during Covid – if so, lucky us!

At all levels it tries to parody the Technicolor palette from the golden years of Hollywood, while using a contemporary sensibility. It is firmly tongue in cheek.

It would be an interesting classroom challenge for music theatre students to identify, not just the sources, but also the cliches and habits of music theatre writers. 

Sidenote – will they ever parody Sondheim?