The Others

 

OK, I’m not going to tell the plot of the Nicole Kidman film, “The Others.” Like that film, though, a ghost story is involved.

In recent blogs, I have focused on the principals and painted broad-stroke sketches of Sally, Phyllis, Ben and Buddy. In older blogs, I framed the discussion of the piece as a whole, looking at major dramatic structures girding this musical. Follies is powerful in its breadth and depth. We have the memories in the theater as the ghosts and these living memories materialize when they are emotionally summoned. This surreal world colors the story and characters.

But we also have the others – the other real people – the former follies girls, their husbands, and all those who participate in this reunion at the Weissman Theatre. In other words, we have the supporting characters in the story. These ladies and gentlemen deepen the story of Follies and serve as dramatic foils to the principals. What’s even better is that these individuals are rich characters in and of themselves. They help drive home the point that remembering is not, in and of itself, a dangerous and destructive exercise, but can be one of joy and reflection. This point differs from what I have stressed in past blogs, with the flawed remembering of our principals.

If done in context and done honestly, remembering helps deepen who we are and allows us to experience satisfaction in remembering the past. Follies chorus girls of yesteryear come back to relish the memory that they were the toast of Broadway as the Weissman girls. Their lives have taken them in different directions, and in many cases, away from the life of the theater. Nonetheless, they can come back to this night with joy, excitement and anticipation of reliving their youth for this one last kiss.

I really like these broads. Some are sweet, others dignified, others ballsy, but all are excited to be in this theater for this reunion. When they reunite, they relive the past by singing and remembering their great moments on stage. In nearly every case, these ‘memory numbers’ are sung with pride, joy, and contentment. As much as Sally remembers the past incorrectly, Ben tries not to remember, Buddy is forced to remember, and Phyllis knows she must remember, the others remember with abandon. Isn’t that the point of a reunion? The others embrace the past for they have not forgotten or distorted it. It really is one last chance to be with those that remember you as you really were.

Let’s take a look at some of them. There is Carlotta Campion, a slightly older contemporary of Sally and Phyllis, who, unlike her fellow follies girls, made her way out of the showgirl chorus line and has had somewhat successful show business life. She’s brash and straightforward and has no illusions of where she has been and what she wants out of show business and out of life, especially if it is a young man. Sexy, candid, and direct, she is one dame that is not deluded. Her “I’m Still Here” is one of the best songs about show business around.

There are married show business couples at this reunion. These performers met in the theater and their lives have centered on the stage. Seventy-ish Emily Whitman is quite a bit older than Carlotta, Sally and Phyllis. She met her ‘doughboy’ husband, Theodore, after the Great War and performed with him as a husband and wife team in the Weissman Follies, and they were known for their patter song, “Rain on the Roof.”

Vincent and Vanessa were the featured ballroom couple of the Weissman Follies. They married and now run a ballroom dance studio. When dancing at the reunion with the other couples, they are transported into a memory of dancing together on the Weissman Theatre stage and summon their younger selves to join them in the “Bolero d’Amour.”

And we also meet the Deems – Stella and Max. Stella was a former headliner in a Follies tap number. She met her husband Max and they became a theater comedy team in the 1940’s, eventually leaving show business for a simpler life. Funny and brash, she is a real broad who shoots from the hip, and though she’s not in the theater anymore, there’s no question that she was. It would come as no surprise that she rallies her fellow chorines at this reunion into trying recreate her signature number, “Who’s that Woman?”

Of course there are the older chorus girls – those that are now well into their 60’s, 70’s and even 80. The charming and vivacious Solange La Fitte is chic and fashionable, and loves to be the center of attention. She has gone on to a successful career in cosmetics, but no one can forget her ‘ooh-la-la’ number, “Ah, Paris” – a song that evokes the spirit of the 1920’s Parisian cabaret acts of the Lido or Les Folies Bergère. A fellow contemporary is Hattie Walker, but Hattie is quite different from Solange. Down-to-earth, obviously tough, and utterly no-nonsense, she is the one that looks the least likely now to have ever been a Weissman girl. Nonetheless, you can see that show girl appear in her when she sings one of the all-time favorites from Follies, “Broadway Baby.”

The grand dame of the night is former operetta ingénue Heidi Schiller. At 80, she is regal and delicate, but there is no doubt that she was the star that served as a muse to such operetta geniuses as Franz Lehar and Sigmund Romberg. Her rendition of “One Last Kiss” with her younger self underlines the reckoning that takes place when time has passed.

Older men come back to this reunion too. Dimitri Weissman, the former producer and impresario, organizes this event and posits the reason and hopes for the evening. The ever lovable Roscoe – the Dick Powell tenor of the Follies – is here too to chime in the evening. Willie Wheeler gives us one of his trademark cartwheels. The husbands of the Weissman girls are here to support and honor their wives.

So what do all these characters have in common? They come to this night to cherish who they were. They accept who they were, who they are, and their journey in life. Unlike the principals, they have integrated their past into their present. This night is a joy, not a nightmare. The actors playing ‘the others’ must suffuse the story with their points of view to make Follies work. Their presence is needed to foil and balance the journey of Ben, Buddy, Sally, and Phyllis, and ensure that Follies is more than a screed.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Have a safe and wonderful holiday.

 

For additional information about the production itself, go to The Arlington Players website: www.thearlingtonplayers.org.

If you have questions for the director, feel free to respond to the blog or email him at folliesdirector@gmail.com. Responses to the blog may be posted publicly; email correspondence will be private.

Step, Kick, Kick, Leap, Kick, Touch…Again!

Step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch…Right!
That connects with…
Turn, turn, out, in, jump, step….

Sound familiar? These musical theater lyrics from A Chorus Line are the mantra for choreographers. Choreographers are known for teaching steps, demonstrating them, calling them out, and intermingling them with numbers in a rhythmic fashion. (Have you ever heard a choreographer call out something like 1, kick, 3, 4, ball-change, reach, 7, dig?) After calling it out a few HUNDRED times, or so it seems, the choreographer calls for the music and then suddenly magic happens: music and steps link, and a dance emerges.

I love the thrill of that moment. As a choreographer, I dream up steps to a score and often, these patterns of movement will stay unrealized for a long time, until finally the day comes for that rehearsal when they come to life. It’s really hard to explain how that feels. It’s like a mix of going to confession, with finally taking a deep breath after holding your breath, with finally eating your favorite dessert after having been ‘eye-ing’ it all evening. There’s a pleasure and relief in finally getting it out and onto the dancer’s body.

Like when I direct, when I choreograph, I start with the music and the score. I look at it, hear it in my head, and look for inspiration. For a musical, dance is one more way of expressing the emotions of the story, and great dance integrates seamlessly with acting and singing. I like to think of it as the final polish on the story. In a musical, when words fail the actor, the actor sings. When the singing fails the actor, the actor dances.

Sometimes the score makes it clear where a dance break needs to take place. In other places, there is a hint of dance that needs to effortlessly arise out of the blocking of the scene. And then there is the ‘Mt. Everest’ of musical theater dance, the dream ballets – those extended musical sequences with pages and pages of music – that challenge choreographers to enrich a musical by creating a dance that tells a story without words within the story. Those are hard to make, but they can be the most satisfying to both create and watch take shape. And cutting dance from a musical – like cutting scenes or songs – is sad. (This usually occurs when someone doesn’t want to do the job at hand, but let’s not go there.) Why not give the musical its full voice?

Like all the arts – all of which demands technical skill to create something of depth – dance in particular requires training in order to master how the human body moves to create emotion. I don’t know many people that can just go and choreograph without lots of dance training. Different styles of dance communicate different things and whether it be an adage or allegro, the choreographer must understand what is going on with the movement against the music. Are you going to create a fast series of steps against a slow melody line to communicate stress? Are you going too move slowly to fast music to show that that a character is independent and doesn’t care? What kind of dance do you use – do you choose soft-shoe, Pointe, tap, jazz or rap to illustrate your point? Choices, choices, choices.

Again, having a good dance vocabulary and understanding how the human body moves to express emotion is key, and the first thing is to start with the music. The music clues you and cues you what to do.

Because music and dance are basically mathematical, the first step in choreographing is a rather dry one. You count. The song begins with counts and ends with counts. There are a limited number of counts to a song, and movement needs to fit to these counts. How much time a movement takes needs to be calibrated and it must fit the counts. Choreographers count and demand that their dancers count, and if you do not count it like the choreographer, you will be corrected. As a choreographer teaching a dance, you count my counts. It’s my way or the highway. I have the counts – you have to learn them. I don’t need interpretation – I need you to dance my counts. But if you do count it right and practice it over and over and over again, it may perhaps transcend to something that’s art and dance.

But first you count.

It’s funny. Directors like being original with something – “I want to interpret and stage this like no one has done it before” – whereas choreographers often like staging something that has come before – “That dance is great – I want to do that!” In dance, there is a real respect for the past and recreating it. Agnes de Mille’s dream ballet for Oklahoma! has stood the test of time for 60+ years – why not recreate it? Petipa/Ivanov’s pas de cygnettes from Swan Lake, Jerome Robbins’ Dance at Gym from West Side Story, Fosse’s Hot Honey Rag from Chicago, Bennett’s Finale from A Chorus Line are prime examples – who does not want a crack at dancing those dances? And choreographers certainly want a crack at recreating them in the style of these geniuses.

Follies has one such dance that I want to recreate: Michael Bennett’s “Who’s that Woman?” – the mirror number. In the middle of the party, former showgirl Stella Deems recreates a tap number without tap shoes with her fellow aging showgirls. While they try and remember and then recreate the number that they danced more than 30 years ago, they experience the joy of what it was to be a follies girl. That emotion summons the ghosts of their younger selves who simultaneously dance and mirror their older selves in this dance. Hailed at the time and since as one of the most perfect pieces of musical theater choreography, this dance BEGS to be recreated. I’m going to do my best to honor Mr. Bennett’s work when making this number. I can’t wait.

The rest of the choreography is not for a choreographer who is faint of heart. It demands that the choreographer dig deep in his arsenal of dance steps for it needs both depth and breadth of dance movement. This piece showcases such a variety of dance styles: an opening dream jazz-ballet adage prologue for the ghosts, vaudeville masque-like pageantry, comic shtick, a leading man’s dance solo about emotional frustration, a leading lady with back up boys, a leading man with leggy showgirls with Sally Rand fans, ballroom partnering, and finally, just good old classic musical theater staging. It’s got everything but the kitchen sink.

The point of all this choreography is to ultimately bring memory back to life and that memory is Vaudeville. It needs to live again this night as this party remembers the glory days of this theater and its past. Vaudeville is the vehicle for the four leads to live out their follies artistically: Buddy gets the clown number, Sally gets the torch song, Phyllis gets the boys to back her up, and Ben gets the kick line of showgirls. As the director has told me, only if these numbers are rendered as classic Vaudeville, will we be able to see clearly the harsh judgment of the leads’ follies. I’ll have to take the director’s word on that. I will just create some great dance numbers, don’t you think?

The director is back for the next blog. I’m not sure what he will write about, but he’s sure to wrap things up soon since auditions will be here in a few weeks.

For additional information about the production itself, go to The Arlington Players website: www.thearlingtonplayers.org.

If you have questions for the director, feel free to respond to the blog or email him at folliesdirector@gmail.com. Responses to the blog may be posted publicly; email correspondence will be private.

A Note from the Director – My Preparation

The choreographer has finished his blog, but I, as director, asked him to hold off on his post, until I do this one. I want to talk about my artistic process and how I approach a piece as a director. I realize that I’ve been analyzing Follies for you thematically and critically, but it dawned on me that I should talk a bit about how I prepare a musical from a broader perspective. You are reading a good deal about of what I think about Follies. I think I should add the frame to the picture I’ve been painting of this production.

You may ask why have I decided to do that now. Well, it’s pretty simple. I’ve had number of actors email after the last post when I talked about holding a reading of Follies. First, I want thank all who wrote me and shared their point of view. Some wrote saying how great it was to hold a reading. Others who wrote were upset or concerned that I had pre-cast the show. They were concerned that I had my mind set on certain actors because I had invited actors that know and respect to read for me. These actors must, of course, be the front-runners for the casting of Follies. I can understand these actors’ concerns since many of them do not know me.

So now I will talk about myself and my process as a director of a musical, including holding readings. Hopefully, I can assuage fears about pre-casting – either literally or mentally. I want to assure all the actors who may be reading this and interested in being a part of this production that I have not cast any part. All parts are open, and the artistic team and I are open to any musical theater actor who wants to join us on this journey. So, join us and audition in December. If I were to pre-cast (as I have done for in the past), I would tell you upfront. Auditioning is never easy. I think that directors should never mislead actors as to the availability of a part.

When I start preparing a musical – and this usually takes place when I am throwing my hat in the ring, so to speak, and interviewing with a theater about directing a production – I start with two things: the script and the score. I must know these things thoroughly before 1) I make the decision that I want to tell a story, and 2) I try to persuade a theater to trust me with a lot of money and resources in order to put up this story on their stage.

A musical – and this seems like such a simple concept but one I have seen ignored time and time again by qualified directors – starts with the music. The music feeds and colors the words of the script. That is what makes doing a musical so special. You have two different sets of arts – words and music – to play with in communicating the story created by the author, the composer and the lyricist. And this does not even begin to incorporate the third art – dance – that is a vital part of most musicals. Thorough analysis of script and score is paramount, and for me, I find it one of the most exciting parts of putting the show together. It’s the time for dreams and make believe.

I’m fortunate to have had an introduction to music at an early age since my father was a professional musician. I learned how to comprehend music young and was fortunate to develop the skill of reading music. I’m grateful to my dad for this. I remember in college sharing with a dear friend this very thought. We met in college concert choir. We both had early musical training and could read scores. We were talking once and opined about how easy it was to read a score and hear what the music would sound like in our head. This skill was something that we appreciated. We also (pompously I think) could not imagine not being able to do that and felt sorry for people that couldn’t read music.

Understanding music and its structure has served me well as a director of musicals, since I can analyze both script and score together, rather than relying on recordings that often are incomplete. Using recordings is particularly a problem in approaching the modern musical, where underscoring is such a significant part of the spoken scenes, unlike musicals prior to 1970 where there was minimal underscoring. The music supports the words and not hearing it can hurt the story telling. The music is always telling you something. This is also one of the reasons that I’m very leery of people that cut music that they decide is in the way of their story. It’s one thing to re-work a musical with the composer and author; it’s another thing to slice music out of the musical score because you don’t know what to do with it. My advice: start over and figure it out. It’s there for a reason.

So I start with the script and score. I open myself up to seeing if they talk to me. How do I know if they talk to me? I start seeing pictures; I start seeing movement. Something clicks and images start occurring in my mind’s eye. Some scripts don’t talk me. I read them and read them and read them, and I don’t see anything. Oh yeah, I could probably stage them, but it would probably be more elbow grease than wanting to tell that story. But, boy, when I start seeing a script come to life with images – those moments are highs and for me, a creative high is one of the great moments in life. I feel so alive. It’s like what I imagine having a past life regression would be like. I see the story coming alive with such vibrancy and visual intensity.

Some musicals that I have done have started with seeing a character. Some start with seeing a scene. Still others start with a dance combination or the musical staging of a number. It doesn’t really matter where it starts, because once it starts, it spreads like a puddle into the other parts of the story. After reading and re-reading the script and the score, the visual story takes shape. This, of course, happens well before technical choices are made about set, costumes and properties, and before a show is cast. Everything sits in the imagination. (So, what did I see first in starting this journey with Follies? I’ll tell you – it was Phyllis’ folly, The Story of Lucy and Jessie.)

Of course, musicals are collaborative. So many people need to be involved and contribute to their creation in order for them to come to life. I’ve been fortunate to work with some fine creative colleagues to put together the musicals I’ve directed. Being able to partner with and lead them as director is based on this initial imaging of the story.

But stories can’t stay in my head, because all of those images have sprung from me and it’s not a one-man show. So, to get it out of my head and my interpretation, I enlist talented actors I know and respect to read the script out loud. The actors know that they are not being auditioned or pre-cast. They are creative friends helping out the director. This ‘out-loud’ reading helps immensely in making the story move from imagination to reality, and it helps shake it loose from me holding on to it exclusively.

The hardest aspect for me – and the most disciplining – is to annotate this vision and write it out before rehearsals begin. Because this primer serves as the guide and springboard for what will happen in rehearsal with the actors and in creative design meetings, I must write it down and be able to share it. I suppose that the choreographer in me is the one that has taught the director to put it down on paper, since the choreographer really needs to write it all out in order to be ready to teach the choreography. He tells the director that having it down on paper is really helpful.

For me, the director makes the psychology of the scene come alive by imbedding in the staging the objectives and subtexts of the actors. There are clues for the characters in my staging choices. For me, this process of dreaming and writing works well. It serves as a baseline and starting point for rehearsals, and allows me to be there for the actors as they discover who they are as characters in the story. It opens me up to watch and listen to them, rather than focusing on the needs in the scene. That’s already been done in this early preparation.

Working with fine actors is always a delight and a surprise. They so often bring so much more than I have dreamed up as the director – and often a different way of seeing something – that renders the music, the staging, and the choreography more powerful and honest. I love it when the ‘booster rocket’ of my preparation takes off and the actors then commandeer the ‘space ship’ to the stars. Cheesy metaphor, eh? Best I could come up with.

I promise the choreographer will write next. Thanks for the indulgence.

Next up: Vaudeville at its Best – Let’s Dance.

For additional information about the production itself, go to The Arlington Players website: www.thearlingtonplayers.org.

If you have questions for the director, feel free to respond to the blog or email him at folliesdirector@gmail.com. Responses to the blog may be posted publicly; email correspondence will be private.