<p>Just read this on facebook and thought this audience would enjoy it. Hopefully the link will work. Read the comments, too.</p>
<p>I really liked it. Since not everyone may have a Facebook login, here is the post:</p>
<p>
[quote]
by Jim Beaudry, re-posted from Facebook</p>
<p>As an Artistic Director, I expect that professional artists should be creating work at a certain level of expertise and technique across all the varied disciplines that comprise musical theatre.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I get the sense that the–admittedly–very complicated task of staging a “good” musical is beyond reach for more and more of those studying and attempting to work in the field. Sometimes we are in over our heads due to finances or fates, but more often than not these productions are just ill-prepared due to underestimation by the producer or management, incompetence of the staff or the egos of any number of people.</p>
<p>I’m in my 30s now, and I just can’t sit through another ill-conceived production in the name of friendship or support for the artform. I’m tired of watching work and wondering how a certain group of people couldn’t see the glaring problems and sometimes obvious solutions. This is not to say that our work must always be perfect. Rather, we need to pay attention to details, care a little bit more and solve problems (everywhere we see them). If we expect people to support the artform as audience members, we should be formulating something artistic.</p>
<p>Or entertaining.</p>
<p>Hell, I’ll even settle for amusing…</p>
<p>as long as it’s not that “self-possessed amusing” you find in so many BFA showcases and productions of Legally Blonde. </p>
<p>We should read more. Read criticism, not reviews or synopses. Read about literary theory and film theory and style. Read about architecture. Read social criticism and think about the dramatic structure of our social narratives. Then think about how to stage them. Read about Busby Berkeley, mass production and nationalism. Read about Yvonne Rainer, isolation and individualism. Read The Art of Making Dances before you read The Viewpoints Book. And then wonder why we needed both. Don’t direct, choreograph or design a musical comedy without having read Notes on “Camp.” Actually, read that whole collection of essays. Then read more essays. Read auto/biographies of all the greats of musical theatre.</p>
<p>Disregard all of it if you’d like, but read it. Keep learning. And then watch television.</p>
<p>Watch The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, All in the Family, Frasier and The Golden Girls. Watch anything Aaron Sorkin wrote. Pay attention to timing and editing and clarity. Watch people multitask and make their point.</p>
<p>Approach Meisner with suspicion. </p>
<p>Musicals are by definition not Realism. Honest and Realism are different. (See Above: Style)</p>
<p>Read the play. Read the play again. Think about the rules of the play. Write down the things that don’t make sense. Read the play again. Ask why the illogical thing is the most important thing that has to happen at that moment. Figure it out. (See above: dramatic structure and The Art of Making Dances) Don’t forget that it might have more to do with the audience than a written character. The audience is another character; make sure you’ve read more than them. (Lately, the audience is often my favorite character, and that’s a problem.) Don’t fight the illogical. Reconsider tone and intention. Reconsider again. Embrace the illogical things and make that embrace clear for the audience. If this proves to be impossible, and only if it proves to be impossible, change it. Fix it before you hand me a program. </p>
<p>Choreography is about much more than steps. Ballets have scenarios. Most musical theatre dances of the last ten years just have steps. Write a scenario before you look in a mirror, set a count or demonstrate one step. Endow space, gesture, tempo, energy, prop, set and costume with meaning through choreography. (See above: Busby Berkeley, Yvonne Rainer, The Art of Making Dances and The Viewpoints Book) Then apply a musical structure. Watch Cool from West Side Story and see that it’s a fugue and ask, “Why?” Watch the Dance at the Gym and see what the space means. Watch To Life and see that it’s The Dance at the Gym with different steps but the same conflict. </p>
<p>Show me where to look when where I need to look matters.</p>
<p>Why? Why have we all come to this place today to experience this story together?</p>
<p>Impose creative limits on designs, blocking and performances. Create the world and its laws. Stick to those laws consistently, but then surprise me. Overwhelm me. Give me the coup de th</p>
<p>Wow.
I wonder what he thinks of as “terrible ‘conservatories’” and what he thinks are worthwhile.
I know that while theatre is what I want to do with my life, I am not ready for it, and I need training and practice. So how can I make sure that I don’t wind up becoming one of these mediocre actors he’s talking about?</p>
<p>CaptainBoe: I wouldn’t worry too much about taking Mr. Beaudry literally, I think he was “firing for effect” (or not, but that’s how I read it). I thought that he had some interesting points to ponder, but I wouldn’t worry too much about any particular schools that he thought were “terrible conservatories.” I think his overall point is great about telling the story and really learn something about the material and its context vs. just trying to play the part and do the steps. Oh, and watch out for “camp.”</p>
<p>I am pretty sure that not all the dancers in West Side Story, who totally killed it, completely understood the gestalt of the fugue in their performance…</p>
<p>But it is a good idea to understand that Urinetown is the culmination of a line of ironic detachment that runs all the way back through Guys and Dolls to Three Penny Opera to Of Thee I Sing, for example.</p>
<p>Just background – Mr Beaudry is Artistic Director at Timber Lake Playhouse, a summer stock theatre in Illinois.</p>