Magic Flute Tech + Tonys = Ranting and Diarrhea

Pineda Lyric's The Magic Flute

What a difference a day makes.

Judging from the Magic Flute dress rehearsals on Thursday and Friday nights, it seemed we were doomed to a very long and painful day of Saturday performances.  From the made-up blocking and dialogue, missed cues and general cluelessness displayed on stage, a few members of our teenage cast seemed to genuinely lack a sense of urgency or responsibility.  Very disconcerting for the producing team considering that in a day or so a paying audience would be witness to this mess.

Of course, I'm only talking about a few duds sprinkled amongst a mainly conscientious cast of young people.  But hey, it only takes a little spot of fuzzy green mold to ruin the whole wheel of cheese, right?

Fast forward less than 24 hours to the matinee performance and all of a sudden, voilà, we have a show!  Not that the made-up blocking was magically fixed and the dialogue learned.  That would have been a true miracle in the Biblical sense.  But the kids were finally performing, and at the very least committing strongly to their (often wrong) choices.

I'm definitely not advocating this type of preparation - or rather lack of preparation - as a viable option for a performer.  But it sure beats the agony of witnessing long stretches of uncomfortable silence between two dumbstruck actors on stage, an acting "technique" we witnessed dozens of times (not an exaggeration) during both dress rehearsals.

Sigh.

Is it awful to wish that just once, these ill prepared youngsters would crash and burn during a performance?  If these same young people always succeed with a wonderful - if inaccurate and completely improvised - performance, doesn't it just refute everything we're trying to teach them about the work and preparation required for success?  Isn't it better for them to fail now when the consequences are minimal rather than when it's their first big work/college project?  If a train chugging at 40 mph leaves Sante Fe at 4:00 PM...oh, never mind.

I guess it just rubs me the wrong way to congratulate a young person who, from the audience's perspective, has given a wonderful performance even though that performance was pretty much based on luck and improvisation.  Oh well, I guess that's what blogs are for - bitching and moaning about things you can't really change.

Speaking of bitches, did ya'll catch the Tony Awards?  I guess that's rhetorical considering my audience.  I have to say, I'm somewhat surprised that this year's Tony voters decided to base their decisions on merit rather than popularity.  How else do you explain Billy Porter's win over Bertie Carvel, Tracy Letts' win over Tom Hanks, Vanya's win over Lucky Guy, Kinky's win over Matilda...Not complaining, but it's a nice change.

That opening number was pretty damn impressive as well.  Just thinking about coordinating the rehearsals for that 7 minutes of lunacy gives me a slight case of diarrhea.  And that "Kiss LA Good-bye" parody had just enough queeny schtick for the gays while supplying enough pushed-up cleavage to appease the eight straight dudes watching.

Of course, my favorite moment was Audra's so-wrong-it's-right rendition of Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" and then dropping her mic, gangsta' style.  That bitch crazy.  Can't wait to see how NPH tops this next year.

(More pictures of the 2013 Young Artist production of Mozart's The Magic Flute here.)

"Magic Flute" frustrations & melodic colonic at "The Little Mermaid"

The Bad Seed, 1956

Dante has obviously never produced a full length opera performed entirely by 12 to 18 year olds, otherwise he'd most certainly have included a tenth level of hell somewhere between the fifth (anger) and the seventh (violence) rings.  I found myself precariously poised between anger and violence following Saturday afternoon's tedious Magic Flute rehearsal at which several of the leading performers were still stumbling over lines and blocking after a mere four months of rehearsal (the show opens in one week).

Is it no wonder Val decided to take last season off from producing operas?  Sure, producing any kind of classical art form, let alone opera, in this economy and within a youth culture of instant gratification and entitlement is an iffy proposition.  But last season's break was as much a mental health issue as it was a financial one.  Sometimes you just need to cleanse the mental palate - or in this case, scrape it clean.

Okay, rant over.  Moving on...

Trish matches the poster!

With those damn Magic Flute melodies insinuating themselves into our brains like a bad case of head lice, we decided on an impromptu trip to the Paper Mill Playhouse for a melodic colonic via Alan Menken’s tuneful Little Mermaid score.  There is nothing more catchy (or annoying) in all the musical theatre canon than Ariel’s three-note, ascending theme.  I bet you're hearing it in your head right now and cursing me.  Bwah ha ha ha.

The Little Mermaid

Paper Mill Playhouse

Saturday, June 1, 7PM

Apparently, Saturday's gay night (aka actor night) at the Paper Mill.  In the audience we spotted Ra-Sean Holloway, Don Rey, Matt LaBanca, Matt Tweardy and Daniel Torres all slumming it in Jersey for tonight’s performance.  At least we were in good company.

The original Broadway production of The Little Mermaid, though it had its moments (specifically the glorious vocals of Sierra Boggess), was mostly a bloated, stylistically inconsistent mess.  But that’s what happens when you attempt to stretch the near perfect original Disney movie into two acts in order to justify charging over $100 a ticket. 

For Paper Mill’s production, Disney granted the artistic team permission to re-write and tweak the original script.  It could still use some judicious snipping (the added Ursula songs are abysmal and the eels do not need their own song), but the Paper Mill version is superior, with a clearer, more streamlined book.

The physical production has also been re-thought.  No more mer-folk in heelys.  Instead, our scaly friends are suspended from cables and “swim” through the air.  It’s a major improvement visually over the skates, though the novelty began to fade by the second act.  And all those body rolls to approximate swimming are a little much.  We get it.  You're underwater.  You're fish.  But please stop.  

One major misstep with the flying/swimming is during “Part of Your World.”  Poor Jessica Grové is being whipped around the stage the entire song and as a result, suffers vocally and dramatically.  In the Broadway version, Sierra made me cry simply sitting there onstage.  Grové’s version only succeeded in making me seasick (not her fault, of course).

The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent with Nick Adams showing off a surprisingly legit voice (who knew he had that hidden underneath his Priscilla drag).  I wish Ed Watts had more opportunity to show off his ringing baritone voice, but he fills out his wet suit nicely.  And poor Liz McCartney valiantly tries to put over the two worst songs in the show (though in consolation, she also gets the best song, "Poor, Unfortunate Souls").

Don't forget to come out this summer and check out our middle school Spotlight Theatre students present Disney's Little Mermaid Jr.  We promise lots of flying and stunning visual effects!  And by "flying" I mean "walking" and by "stunning visual effects" I mean "a backdrop."

Ta-ran-ta-ra, Ta-ran-ta-ra OR the sound of my slowly dying artistic soul

Well, Pirates has come and gone - four shows with four different combinations of leading players.  All things considered, the shows came off quite well.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get the audience turn out we were hoping for, though the smaller audiences were surprisingly vocal and enthusiastic.

Sadly, like rehearsals, the performances were marred by a fair amount of line flubs and outright omissions (other than the official cuts we made during rehearsals).  I’d say the average line accuracy rate was about 75% - which, if we were going by school grading, isn’t horrible.  Though I don’t know many students who would be bragging about a “C.”  Hell, I’m usually suspicious of any restaurant in the city that gets even a “B” rating.

There was some exceptional singing, though, and it was a pleasure to hear many of our younger performers finally take center stage after years of paying their dues in the chorus.  

And our hard-working ensemble deserves some love, too.  They filled four shows with unflagging energy and enthusiasm that almost made up for some of the butchered dialogue.

The bottom line, I guess, is that audiences enjoyed the shows and for the most part, actors covered flubs well enough that the audiences were oblivious.  It would be an interesting experiment to use English supertitles for English shows (like they do at the Met) so that the cast would be forced to at least make an effort at accuracy.

I sound like such a negative Nellie, don’t I?  Don’t get me wrong, I want the kids to have a good show and have enthusiastic audience responses.  But at the same time, if students continually receive critical accolades from audiences for their semi-improvised, unprepared performances, why would a student bother to strive to do any better? 

I guess I take things too personally.  I should just stop worrying about it because the undue stress and aggravation just wears away at my already dying artistic soul. 

Or maybe it’s time to retire.  Or find different students.  Or just have a stiff drink.

Rehearsal hell

My inner monologue (minus the heels)
after this weekend's rehearsals.

Good thing I was able to cram in some quality drinking time before the weekend, because Pirates hell began Friday night with rehearsals for our Young Artists’ production.  Thankfully, I was spared the longer rehearsal period because Juan and Val opted to take the lead on this production.  I needed some much-deserved R&R after idiotically volunteering to direct and choreograph both of last season’s operas, La Traviata and The Bat.  It seemed like a fun idea at the time - at least until around the fifth or sixth weekend of reverse commuting to NJ for rehearsals.  Will I ever learn?  I doubt it.

For this highly abridged version of Pirates of Penzance, I was relegated to accompanying and conducting the “orchestra” - that is, if you consider an out-of-tune piano and a violin an “orchestra.”  But we sounded lovely anyway, thank you very much.  Remember, it’s about quality, dear readers, not quantity.



You’d think the weekend before opening - not to mention after several weeks of rehearsals - the cast would at least have a perfunctory knowledge of the script and score.  I thought wrong.  I won’t name names in order to protect the ignorant, um, I mean innocent, but this has got to be the worst prepared cast we’ve had in the history of our ten-plus years of producing opera. 

Rehearsals started in October.  How is it possible not to know your lines and music after two months of rehearsal?  Even worse, then have the nerve to giggle about it onstage while giving us a half-assed apology.  Back in ancient times, when I was performing in regional summer stock, we would mount five full-length shows in six weeks.  Granted, some of the shows sucked, but we at least knew our lines and blocking.



Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but then I think of our Major General.  She learned all her lines plus an extremely difficult patter song in two weeks (the original actor dropped out of the show unexpectedly).

Sometimes I get the feeling our kids - not all, but some - don’t really care about the show.  They just want to be front and center.  They want the accolades but don’t want to put in the effort to earn them.  To those few, I say “good luck” with that philosophy in the real world.  To the rest, I say “thank you” for putting up with the posers and for having to sit through our yelling and screaming and scolding.



And people wonder why we’re always so irritable right before a show opens.

Rant over - until next rehearsal.

Another Opnin'... my angry actor rant for the day and a few pet peeves

Tonight we finally open our Young Artist production of The Bat at the CDC theatre in Cranford, NJ.  The last four days have been spent in commuter hell - subway to work at 8am, bus to NJ at 5pm and then back to Queens on the bus, subway, hitched car ride or some combination of all three.  Finally around midnight I stumble up my third floor walk-up and straight into bed to start all over again the next morning.  Why do I do it?  Stupidity mostly. 

This tech week has been particularly trying.  Many of our leads are first-timers and are learning that theatre isn't just play time with wigs, make-up and the occasional sexual experiment.  There's actual work involved.  Trust me, I know from whence I speak.  I paid my dues on-stage before finally my obsession with power and control forced me to move on to directing.  Yes, I know I have issues.

So in an attempt to diffuse my ever growing "theatre-rage" and avoid finally lashing out and possibly decapitating some poor student with a prop banana for calling "line" one too many times, let me spell out my top actor pet peeves.

1.  Paraphrasing - Please say what is written.  I understand that paraphrasing at the start of rehearsals is the "process" for some working actors, but there's no excuse for it once rehearsals are in full swing.  Oh, wait, there is one excuse, laziness.  When you win your Pulitzer or hit the NY Times best seller list I'll consider your re-writes.  Until then, learn the F*#+$*%*$@ lines as written.

2.  TV acting - OK, I have nothing against TV actors as rule, but I'm referring to what many actors call an "intimate" acting style.  Bullshit.  Unless you're in a tiny blackbox theatre in the East Village getting paid in Jäger shots, you need to speak the hell up.  I don't care how emotionally connected you are with your scene partner, if I can't hear what you're sayin' I ain't payin'!

3.  Back-of-the-head acting - In general, I do prefer the American school of naturalistic acting.  But again, it's theatre - it's a heightened realism.  Granted, there are times it is impossible to always stage an actor so they aren't up-staging themselves.  But please, I don't want to watch the back of your head for any extended amount of time unless you're the "listener."  If you always seem to be looking upstage or away from the audience, for the love of God, cheat out.  Either that or your director just sucks.

4.  Know what you're saying - If I had a dollar every time an actor answered "no" when I asked, "Do you understand what you just said?"  I'd have at least enough money to buy that actor a dictionary.  Seriously, with the internet there are no excuses.  Remember the old days when you actually had to go to that dark, quiet, brick building with all the books in it?  If you don't know what you're saying, look it up. 

5.  Stupid questions - I'm sorry, despite popular opinion there is such thing as a stupid question.  Some gems from my own personal files: 

"I don't like this costume, do I have to wear it?" 
"While that scene is happening downstage (usually some important plot development), can I add this bit?" 
"I have dance class, can I be late to the final dress rehearsal?" - no joke, someone actually asked this.

6.  Know your blocking - Blocking is not optional.  It is not a suggestion.  If I ask you to be at a certain spot at a certain time, be there.  And please, please - I'm begging you - don't make me re-block a scene again just because you were too lazy to write it down.  Actors always seem to forget that a director is there to make them look good and is on the outside seeing "the big picture."  We're on your side.  If you don't trust the director, don't do the show.

Ah.  I feel much better.  Love ya' - mean it!

Until next opera season...

Pass me a cocktail. It’s over and the kids managed to pull through once again. After some nail biting and stress binging on ice cream and sun chips, the final performance of Pineda Lyric’s Young Artist production of The Magic Flute is history. I’m not saying it was perfect, but what transpired on that stage was astonishingly good considering certain leads (who shall remain nameless so as not to tarnish a great weekend of performances) had not yet had all their lines memorized 48 hours prior to opening.

I know, you’re probably thinking, “If the kids did such a good job, why even bother pointing it out?” Well, dear readers, it is to make a point. Pineda Conservatory is about learning and about teaching students proper performance technique. If I were to judge myself by the students’ preparation, I would have to give myself a big fat “F”.

When leads don’t know their lines, you can’t rehearse them. Sure, you can tell them, “Stand there. Cross over there. Sit on this word.” But moving living furniture is not the same as directing. Reading from your script and fumbling through your lines is not rehearsing. What is exasperating to me is that the potential was there for not just a good production, but a spectacular production.

Yes, the audience sees a great final product. But since I know the cast’s freakishly high talent level and I realize the immense potential, what I see is “what could have been.” In a way, it feels like I haven’t done my job properly. Was there something I should have explained differently? How could I have motivated the students better? It’s tough to admit, but not having my own children, I sometimes feel like a surrogate parent to these thirty some odd kids. Luckily, I don’t have to feed them, clothe them or send them to college.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m immensely proud and happy that our Young Artists were able to present such a good show, but hope they go away thinking, “Next year, I’m gonna’ know my sh*t before the first performance, because this could be something amazing.”

Queen of the Night and 3 Ladies

Papageno & Papagena

Pamina

Tamino, Papageno & Priests