#biomuses

[supercantaloupe]

enough bio musicals but is that just for bio musicals about musicians/bands or like any historical figures

fair enough. i still want there to be less market saturation of biomusicals in general but i am far more willing to accept a biomusical about an obscure political/historical/social figure than like. a modern pop musician or band that's already super popular. the laziness of it is just staggering to me

[ask meme]

[jahbillah]

On Biomusic

Science has been moving in complementary ways to art for centuries, including recently, with the introduction of biotechnology into the arts. The mix of eastern/western and holistic/analytical-technocratic thinking contributed to a multi-angular approach to human nature. The informatics that supports biotechnology became a craftsperson’s tool. According to Whitelaw, especially biotechnology…

[bewareofitalics]

Okay how did I miss the existence of a fantastical L. Frank Baum biomusical????? This was practically written for me! I should have been informed!

[jgroffdaily]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/theater/jonathan-groff-bobby-darin-broadway.html

Jonathan Groff, Fresh Off Tony Win, Will Return to Broadway as Bobby Darin

“Just in Time,” a new musical about the “Mack the Knife” pop singer, will open next spring at Circle in the Square in Manhattan.

Jonathan Groff performed a concert version of the show, then called “The Bobby Darin Story,” in 2018 at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. Credit Richard Termine

Jonathan Groff, who won his first Tony Award in June for starring in a hit revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” will return to Broadway next spring to play Bobby Darin in a biomusical he has been developing for years.

The musical, “Just in Time,” is to begin previews March 28 and to open April 23 at Circle in the Square Theater in Midtown Manhattan. The theater, with its close approximation of an in-the-round experience, will be configured to accommodate an immersive nightclub-like staging, with a 16-person cast, an onstage big band, two stages and some cabaret-style seating.

The show began its life in 2018 at the 92nd Street Y as a five-performance concert called “The Bobby Darin Story,” and has been developed through a number of workshops. In an interview, Groff said he hadn’t been sure what to expect from that initial run, but that “it lit me up.”

“There is some sort of kinetic magic that happens with the live execution of his material,” said Groff, 39, who was also a Tony nominee for “Hamilton” (he played King George III) and “Spring Awakening” (his breakout role). He has worked extensively on television (“Glee,” “Looking” and “Mindhunter”) and reached global audiences with his voice work as Kristoff in Disney’s “Frozen” films.

Darin, a singer-songwriter whose pop career peaked in the 1950s and ’60s, is best known for the songs “Splish Splash,” “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea.” He suffered from a heart condition, and died at the age of 37.

“Dramatically he’s really interesting, because what do you do when your whole career is on borrowed time?” said the musical’s director, Alex Timbers, who won a Tony Award for directing “Moulin Rouge!” “His life was lived at high-octane speed. A woman he thought was his sister ended up being his mother. He went on a whole voyage into folk and pop and then decided he was a nightclub animal.”

The musical has a book by Warren Leight (a Tony winner for “Side Man”) and Isaac Oliver and will be choreographed by Shannon Lewis. The show was conceived by Ted Chapin, who wrote the initial script and produced it at the Y as part of that institution’s long-running Lyrics & Lyricists series.

“We all got invested and excited about the idea of telling his life story in this environment of a night club,” Groff said. “We’re playing with the genre of the biomusical, trying to find our own unique point of view and way into not only his story but also the genre itself. There’s a bit of experimentation happening here.”

The lead producers of “Just in Time” are Tom Kirdahy, Robert Ahrens and John Frost; the musical is being capitalized for up to $12.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

[bestmusicalworldcup]

Lempicka, a musical based on the life of Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka created by Matt Gould and Carson Kreitzer, has announced that it has booked a Broadway run at the Longacre Theatre, with performances starting March 19th and opening night set for April 14th. It stars Eden Espinosa and is directed by Rachel Chavkin. Lempicka was previously produced at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (2018) and the La Jolla Playhouse (2022).

[popblank]

New musical Lempicka has set a release date for its original Broadway cast recording. Matt Gould and Carson Kreitzer's biomusical following the life of the titular artist began performances at the Longacre Theatre March 19 ahead of an April 14 opening night at the Longacre Theatre. The cast recording will be available for purchase and streaming July 5; click here to pre-order.

[fandomrelatedshowerthoughts]

Rhetorically asking what is it about narrative and media stereotypes or whatever that causes a lot of biomusical leads to read as autistic even when the real people weren’t-by-modern-standards as Alexander Hamilton from Hamilton, PT Barnum from The Greatest Showman, Maria from The Sound Of Music and Jonathan Larson from Tick Tick Boom all read that way

[lgenvs3000w23]

NATURE AND MUSIC (unit 7)

There is a genre of music called Biomusic which is music with sounds created by animals and plants, instead of humans. There are two types of biomusic: music entirely made by non-humans and music that is composed of non-human sounds but arranged by a human. This sounds like a very out-there and foreign concept but you have absolutely heard biomusic before, the most common example is birds. Maybe it was just one bird chirping away or a duet of two birds chirping together and seemingly playing off of each other almost like they are taking turns singing or even multiple birds like a symphony, but you have heard the natural phenomenon of bird songs. Additionally, many songs sample nature sounds like Blackbird by The Beatles and Radiohead by Morning Mr. Magpie. 

My favourite example of nature in music is study, ambient, and sleep music. Most sleep music and white noise machines play nature sounds like babbling brooks, drizzly rain, or crashing waves. But why does the human brain find this so relaxing? For the majority of human existence, we have been immersed in nature and have only recently (since the industrial revolution) most people live disconnected from nature. It has been found that exposure to forest noises causes physiological and psychological relaxation, including lowering heart rates, and increasing feelings of comfort and improved mood. Evolutionarily, humans have only had a short time to adapt to the new sounds that surround us (Jo et al., 2019). We went from being surrounded by the peaceful “silence” of birds chirping, wooshing leaves, and streams running to the constant buzz of an air conditioner, honking and auditory stimulation 24/7. 

I have always found it really interesting how many people cannot stand to sit in silence; needing to listen to music or at least have some background noise. I wonder if there is a correlation between people who enjoy silence and love being in nature, as well as the opposite, people who want constant stimulation prefer indoors. I have a small sample size so I do not want to make any definitive conclusions but out of my immediate family, the people who enjoy silence and white-noise nature sounds also really enjoy the outdoors, the others find the outdoors “boring” because they have grown up with constant visual and auditory stimulation. I really resonated with a quote from the textbook by Eduardo Arango: “When technology has nothing more for man, then nature will go on showing him her wonders” (Beck et al., 2018). I hope that my younger siblings grow to love and appreciate nature as much as I do someday, but currently, they are only interested in Tiktoks and watching movies, even while up at our cottage surrounded by nature. Have you observed a similar trend in your life? Or do you think there is no correlation? 

The song that immediately takes me back to a natural landscape is Mountain Sound by Of Monsters And Men. This song reminds me of being up at my cottage and the very long drive up to the top of Lake Huron. It's amazing how powerful music can be, just listening to this sound reminds me of summer and gives me the feeling of warmth and freedom from school. 

References: 

Beck, L., Cable, T. T., & Knudson, D. M. (2018). Interpreting cultural and natural heritage : for a better world. Sagamore Venture.

Jo, H., Song, C., Ikei, H., Enomoto, S., Kobayashi, H., & Miyazaki, Y. (2019). Physiological and Psychological Effects of Forest and Urban Sounds Using High-Resolution Sound Sources. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(15), 2649-. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16152649

[supercantaloupe]

sleepover saturday: unpopular theatre/art opinion of your choice, whatever you'd like to talk about :)

enough biomusicals enough jukebox musicals enough jukebox biomusicals. society has moved past the need for jukebox biomusicals. if there ever was a need to begin with

more classic broadway shows in revival and in schools already. orchestral players deserve the work and modern theater kids need to be humbled. you'll listen to annie get your gun and sit with the outdated and hokey and #problematic elements and you'll LIKE IT. it develops character.

and anna garcia was 100% right in her smartypants society presentation about how no we should not forgive theater kids and how we should punish specifically annoying modern musical theater kids by forcing them to sit down and listen to parade and company. she's so right about everything.

[ask meme]

[lenbryant]

Sondheim (from 2021) LONG POST

Cherished Words From Theater’s Encourager-in-Chief

He wrote great shows, but Stephen Sondheim was also a mentor, a teacher and an audience regular. And, oh, the thrill of getting one of his typewritten notes.

In the fictionalized movie version of his life, Jonathan Larson ignores the ringing phone and lets the answering machine pick up. Crouched on the bare wooden floor of his shabby apartment in 1990 New York City, he listens as Stephen Sondheim leaves a message — instant balm to his battered artist’s soul.

“Jon? Steve Sondheim here,” the voice says in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s biomusical “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” and it really is Sondheim’s voice we hear, offering a bit of badly needed praise for the prodigiously talented, profoundly discouraged Larson.

Sondheim scripted that voice mail for the film himself, and goodness knows he’d had decades of practice, offering just the right words to buoy the spirits of Larson and countless other young artists. When Sondheim died on Nov. 26 at 91, the American stage lost not only a composer and lyricist nonpareil but also its longtime encourager-in-chief.

The story of his own early tutelage under Oscar Hammerstein II has been told and retold, but much less known — at least outside professional theater — is the rigorous dedication with which Sondheim passed that tradition on.

Miranda, who first met Sondheim at 17 and began corresponding with him in earnest while writing “Hamilton,” said he was initially afraid of intruding on Sondheim’s time.

“It took me a while to realize he was serious when he said, ‘Reach out if you ever want to talk about anything,’” Miranda said.

The letters Sondheim wrote over the decades were so numerous that they might seem cheap currency if they weren’t so powerfully affecting to the recipients. Imagine the hand of God reaching toward Adam in Michelangelo’s fresco and you have some idea of the vital charge they could carry.

After Sondheim died, Twitter was flooded with images of them. Notes to students and professionals and fans, they were thoughtful and specific, full of gratitude and good wishes, each on letterhead, each with the elegant, sloping signature that’s familiar now from the Stephen Sondheim Theater marquee.

“He was always concerned about the future of the art form, and he wanted it to survive,” said the director Lonny Price, who played one of the leads in the original Broadway production of Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along.” More than three decades later, he directed the documentary “Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened,” about the making of that show, a notorious flop.

But it was as a Sondheim-obsessed 14-year-old in 1973 that he struck up a decades-long correspondence with his hero, and discovered that Sondheim was kind enough to take him seriously.

‘You make me want to write more’

Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld of Fiasco Theater got a cherished letter from Sondheim in 2013, after he saw their company’s production of “Into the Woods.” Declaring it “inventive and exhilarating,” he ended with a breathtaking line: “You make me want to write more.”

“It was the most important thing that’s ever happened in our professional lives,” Steinfeld said, calling it “unspeakably meaningful” to learn “that the cycle of inspiration might have actually flowed in the other direction.”

SONDHEIM CULTIVATED the field by founding the Young Playwrights Festival, where the theater and television writer Zakiyyah Alexander recalls him having “a proud dad vibe” about her and the other teenage winners. Elsewhere he championed emerging composer-lyricists like Larson and Miranda and Dave Malloy. For years, he was the president of the Dramatists Guild Council.

Revered as the closest thing we had to a theatrical deity, Sondheim didn’t retreat to reign alone on some Olympus. He ambled down from the mountaintop fully aware of the power and responsibility that came with his position. 

And so it was immensely moving, but utterly unsurprising, that he spent his last day of theatergoing, two days before he died, taking in a pair of form-bending documentary plays that were struggling at the Broadway box office and about to close: a matinee of “Is This a Room” and an evening performance of “Dana H.,” both at the Lyceum Theater.

He had told a New York Times journalist his plan, and after he died, Michael Paulson reported what he had said in anticipation: “I can smell both of those and how much I’m going to love them.”

To Emily Davis, the star of “Is This a Room,” the fact of Sondheim having been there — which she said she learned about only when she read it in the newspaper — felt like “the biggest and most grand actual welcome to Broadway that there could have been.”

And when she noticed, the day after his death, an unusually large number of audience members doing doubleheaders — spending their Saturday catching both plays — it seemed to her like people paying tribute to him by doing as he had done.

Children will listen. He got that right.

‘Forgive me’

The composer Jeanine Tesori, who spent many hours alongside Sondheim as the supervising vocal producer on the new “West Side Story” movie, got her first letter from him in the 1980s, when she was just out of college. To her retrospective mortification, she had mailed him some music she’d written.

“That’s what we all did,” she said. “We just cold sent him our stuff because we didn’t know not to do that: send a cassette, and then you would just sort of wait and hope.”

He wrote back, gently, apologizing that he had been unable to listen to her tape — and somehow even that felt like a kind of validation, because he had noticed she was there.

“The beautiful thing was, it didn’t go into the ether,” she said. “He could have easily ignored it. But what he did was acknowledge that he had gotten it, and he returned it. I’ll never forget those words, typewritten: ‘Forgive me.’”

TO A LEGION OF FANS Sondheim was and is the be-all and end-all. But his own horizons as a theatergoer were significantly broader than that. In an art form that is so much about being present for the unrepeatable moment, he not only showed up, but he also often did so to experience work that was offbeat and obscure, challenging conventions just as his own work did.

When the Chicago-based experimental shadow-puppetry troupe Manual Cinema brought “Ada/Ava” to New York in 2015, Sondheim headed downtown to see what they were up to — “the ultimate pinch-me moment,” said Ben Kauffman, one of the company’s composers.

When Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers performed their loopy Matt Damon-Ben Affleck sendup “Matt & Ben” at P.S. 122 in 2003, Sondheim went backstage afterward to celebrate its unknown, 20-something playwright-stars.

Kaling tweeted last weekend that she’d told him she hoped someday to star in one of his shows; Withers, by phone, recalled his grace in focusing the encounter on them, not him.

“He made the effort to stay and talk to us and see our eyes get wide and let us ask him a couple questions,” she said. “He wasn’t there because his publicist told him to be there, and to be nice. He was there because he wanted to be.”

But Sondheim, far too famous simply to blend into an audience, was cautious about making such appearances. Jason Eagan, the artistic director of the artist incubator Ars Nova, said that Sondheim went to shows there but never to openings, because he didn’t want to be a distraction on someone else’s big night.

And while there was nowhere for him to hide when he first saw the immersive “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” at Ars Nova’s tiny space in Hell’s Kitchen, when he went to see it on Broadway, he sat in the mezzanine to be as inconspicuous as possible.

However much that theatergoing nourished him, as it nourishes all of us when the work is good, it was also frequently an obligation, and he fulfilled it diligently. Tesori remembers him showing up at City Center just after his close friend, the author and composer Mary Rodgers, died in 2014.

He had promised that he would listen to some young artists perform his music, so he did — “even though he was heartbroken,” Tesori said. He asked her to give him the performers’ addresses, “because he wanted to write to all of them, to encourage them.”

‘Why I wanted to write for the theater’

The playwright Lynn Nottage, now a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, was returning to the theater after a seven-year absence when Sondheim wrote to her out of the blue in 2004, praising her new play “Intimate Apparel” and telling her: “It reminded me of why I wanted to write for the theater in the first place.”

“I entered back into New York theater sort of tiptoeing and frightened and not sure whether there was a space for me,” Nottage said. “And so when I received this letter from one of the giants, it just was the kind of affirmation that I needed in the moment. What it said to me more than anything is that I belong in this community.”

From then on, at all of her plays, she said, “at some point I’d look out in the audience, and there he would be.”

SONDHEIM’S LETTERS generally weren’t long, but it’s the little things, right? Except that the little things combine to eat up who knows how many hours of a life. And even when a genius lives to 91, it’s easy to lament — as Miranda recently did, in an interview in The New Yorker — the works that went uncreated because of finite energies expended elsewhere.

Over the phone a few days after Sondheim’s death, though, Miranda said he didn’t truly feel that way.

“Obviously it’s to theater’s enormous benefit that he took that time, and I think it fed him to encourage others,” he said. “He succeeded on both fronts because he left a legacy of immortal works that we’ll be doing forever — I mean, just look at this season alone — and he also left behind a generation of artists who got encouragement from him, and support.”

It was part of Sondheim’s gift to understand not only the encompassing job description of great artist but also his singular effect on his colleagues — how even a few words of appreciation, or moments of attention, could prove enduring sustenance over the long slog of a career in an often pitiless field.

It was unglamorous work, and Sondheim did it exquisitely.

No single theater artist right now is as revered as he was. No one else can yet step into those shoes. We nonetheless could, artists and audience members alike, seek to borrow from his example — by being adventurous, by being generous, by showing up.

That would be one way to honor the giant.

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 5, 2021, Section AR, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Cherished Words From the ‘Encourager in Chief’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

[amostexcellentblog]

Actually really happy with the Tony Award noms this year.

As always, wish the Best New Musical lineup was stronger, but at least the nominated Jukebox show this year isn't another biomusical, and the musical-based-on-a-movie is actually a great show made by people with a vision and not a corporation looking to cash-in on an IP.

Also, love how stacked the revival categories are this year, glad there were enough shows for four nominees instead of three. Musical Revival especially is insanely competitive, but in the end Sweeney Todd will probably win (either that or Parade.)

Best New Musical will either be Kimberly Akimbo or Some Like it Hot. Not sure which, they're both such different shows in different styles. One is an old-fashioned Broadway musical comedy, the other is a low key dramedy, what will voters be in the mood for?

[musicalsorwhatever]

This is just my opinion but Beautiful: The Carole King Musical is the only modern biomusical that I've enjoyed like. At all.

Part of that is obviously that I'm only listening to cast recordings so I'll naturally prefer a show that lets the songs play out, but I also feel it's the only one that functions as a musical. It tells a story, and uses songs to further the characters and relationships. The other shows feel more like plays that happen to use songs as set pieces, or signifiers that a new era was entered. Which is fine obvi, but not what I'm looking for

[rpnewspaperblog]

'Beautiful,' 'Clue,' 'Jersey Boys' coming to Northport's Engeman Theater

“Jersey Boys,” Brooklyn-raised Carole King and a slew of suspects from points unknown will be taking the stage of the John W. Engeman Theater in Northport for its new season. The theater on Thursday announced the lineup for its 15th season, which will kick off with “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” from Sept. 14 to Oct. 29. The biomusical features dozens of the singer-songwriter’s hits,…