#workshop: onstage

[derekklenadaily]

onstagecollectiveofficial: 🤯 What a lineup! Do you have your application in yet??😍 You do NOT want to miss working with these Broadway guest artists in June!#broadway #chrismccarrell #lightningthief #lightningthiefmusical #aladdin #drewgasparini #derekklena #moulinrougemusical #moulinrouge #comewhatmay #moulinrougemusical #moulinrougechristian #anastasiamusical #sunsetboulevard #newyorknewyork #onstagecollective #auditions #singersofinstagram #actorsofinstagram #dogfightmusical #wickedmusical

[aropride]

i cannot even describe how sure i am that there will be another mcr concert someday . Like ive been known to falter in my mcr5truthing (in the same way as peter when he tried walking on water & jesus reached out a hand to save him) but truly genuinely from the bottom of my heart those bitches will be back i know they will be

[brinkle-brackle]

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GO TO CLASS TOMORROW AFTER THAT. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO RETURN TO LIFE AS USUAL AFTER THAT. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LIVE

[siena-sevenwits]

🎭

[actingmasterclassseries]

Summer Stand-Up Comedy Workshop

Let's talk about stand-up! Lately, this has been our most requested class. If you have questions about building your set, touring, comedy etiquette, or connecting and working with bookers, you may find this workshop informative and worthwhile.

[bookwyrmbutch]

First Time on The Land

It is an eight hour drive to the Land, and I’m anxious the entire way. I’ve never liked meeting new people, and I’m terrified that my wife and I had wasted a ton of money on what would inevitably be a miserable experience.

But when we arrive at the gate, my anxiety is thwarted by a parade of helpful womyn who guide us through the check-in process. I drive through the Land at 5 miles per hour, and wherever we look, there are womyn. They're busy unpacking or talking to one another, but when a car comes by they all wave and smile, shouting "welcome home!" The Land itself is beautiful, a pristine forest with a blanket of ferns covering the ground. Everything is green except the asphalt walking path that shimmers with leftover rain. As we get further in, tents pop up everywhere, nestled side by side. Plastic flowers are staked into the ground, and clotheslines strung between the trees bear Pride flags and handmade tapestries that flutter in the breeze. All of this is woven so seamlessly into the natural forest that I can’t quite believe it’s temporary.

There is an opening ceremony before the first concert. A womyn stands onstage and sings, and hundreds of womyn join her. “I am open, and I am willing, for to be hopeless would seem so strange. It dishonors those who go before us, so lift me up to the winds of change.” I am already crying and I know if I lift my voice with them that I will sob, so I keep my head down.. I’m not ready to be open.

The next day we wake up to a choir of women singing in the morning chant circle, and BMG starts in earnest. Womyn of all backgrounds volunteer to share their knowledge in participant-led workshops on writing, poetry, drumming, quilting, whaling, massage, salsa dancing, indigo dyeing, lesbian history, Nordic runes, plant identification, body painting, detransition, butch identity, and more. There is an archery range, a movie tent, and a large vendor space where womyn sell their wares. Shuttles driven by volunteers trundle up and down the dirt path, ferrying womyn across the land. The days pass in a flurry of activity, both of us exhausted but unwilling to rest. We try to do everything, much to the amusement of the older lesbians watching. They know what we don’t, which is that being here is enough of an event by itself, and the conversations we’ll have before and after these workshops are as valuable as the workshops themselves.

I’m continuously stunned by the generosity on display. One womyn cooks breakfast for two hundred, and another makes lunch the next day. We overhear a womyn give a stranger her spare air mattress. My wife tells me she has a headache and a passerby gives her an electrolyte packet and an apple. A woman offers me a comically huge blunt during a night concert, and another shows me where she stores her food when I compliment her ciabatta.  Everywhere we go, womyn stop to talk. In workshops, I stand up (tits out!) and speak my mind, and womyn listen. I smile at everyone and say “good morning” to whoever I pass. And at some point I notice... I’m not anxious. I’m talking to strangers all day and it feels wonderful.

At the closing ceremony a womyn sings to us again, and everyone joins her. “I am open, and I am willing…” This time, I’m able to join in on the second chorus.

Sunday is bittersweet. My wife and I wake up early and cry into our oatmeal. We decide to take a walk before going back to our tent, unable to face packing up. I could sense the fear - absent for five glorious days - waiting for me outside the gates. Once we’re all cried out, practicality takes over and we pack our things, load the car, and head out. 

Two womyn stop us at the gate. 

“Are y’all coming back next year?” one asks. We say yes.

“Good, because I know your faces now!"

The other pipes up, “Faces? I’m going by breasts!”

The knot in my chest loosens as I laugh, and we drive home.

We have our wristbands, our sunburns, and a new labrys necklace. We carry a warmth, a brightness, in our chests. But a few days in, the feeling disappears and I can feel my walls going up again. That unconscious tension in my gut. A week after re-entry, my bruise from archery fades, and with it the feeling of being on the Land that I could once call up so easily just by taking an extra-hot shower, or a long walk outside. Now as I write this, I can hardly remember the person I was this summer. She’s waiting inside me to make her appearance again. 

There are times I feel her stirring: when I connect with other womyn like me. When I feel grounded and at peace with myself. And sometimes I can feel her revolting when I try to duck back under the yoke of other people’s expectations. I’ve seen what life can be like without that now, and I can never really go back. It feels like there will always be a part of me waiting under the trees.

Thank you @nansheonearth for challenging me to write about my experience on the Land, and for helping me find it in the first place.

[benzgarfield]

Benz, Nut, and Pon at Grand Open House of IDEA LIVE

ETA: ENG Sub here

They talk about Benz receiving his Master's degree ("Doctor Benz next")

They give a shout out to Nut's heels

Pon gives a spoiler for Pit Babe 1st Anniversary and says that there will be a new song

The interviewer asks if there will be new artists and they're quick to insist that the artists are the same

They're asked if Tony will be joining and said to tweet if you want to see him onstage

Benz says production has leveled up, skills have leveled up, the new song is "not inferior to Speed of Love," and also that Nut's height has leveled up

They talk about a fitting and workshop (but it's a little unclear what was said - 5:38 if someone with better hearing wants to take a look)

In regards to one-upping Pavel's motorcycle at the PavelPooh fanmeet, Benz jokes that this one will have a car and maybe a boat, and Nut says he wants to rappel down from a helicopter

[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.

[fallinginaforrest]

SPOILER WARNING FOR WORKIN BOYS, I BREAK DOWN MY FAVOURITE SHOTS. SPOILERS WILL BE HERE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Okay here's my opinion:

Curt being the DP for Workin' boys is the best thing that coulda happened to it. There are so many choices that were made during filming that just absolutely heighten the level of comedy. It's shot like a Mockumentary almost? The shakycam and the randomized movement? As someone who wrote a Mockumentary last year, I can only dream of pulling off a film like this.

A couple things I wanna point out:

-the minuscule push in on Hidgens when he realises he won the workshop competition feels very office-ey.

-the cut back to MK's amused face had me WHEEZING

-the pan over to Paul as be reminds Hidgens to remember the changes

-"apparently a musical about six men bonding on a football field isnt 'of the times..."'etc, this line right here felt like a talking head, I appreciated it.

-those time cards eg: "Rehearsal #2, 28 days until opening" lent itself so much to the documentarian feel of it.

-"wow, what an auteur", not a camerawork comment but I appreciate the joke for all of the film and theater theory studiers

-the "rehearsal montage" I love a good meta joke.

-even in this montage, the camera is never really onstage. At all. Like, it's always situated off to the side or in the audience, and then zoomed in, the documentarian is trying to capture all of the action on stage instead of trying to make us feel immersed in the rehearsal process. We're not really aligned with any of the characters, we're an audience, and we better stay that way. For our own sake.

-and then this dynamic totally changes, and shifts away from the mockumentary feel

-but I'll get to that in a second

-henry is almost always by himself in the shot. I think the one of the only other times that the entirety of another character's face is seen alongside Henry's (I mean, both faces are CLEAR and uncovered in the shot) is in the two shot of him and Paul's stage manager in the rehearsal montage. He is totally singular in his experiences with this show! He is not one of these girls, if anything he is opposed to them. And this becomes clearer later, but it's a nice seed to sow, establishing that he is not in a collaborative mindset at all. The only other time I can think of is him and Zoey behind the curtain, even then, the only time both of their faces are actually IN the shot is when they're behind all the workin' girls. There's probably more but ykwim.

-also the sheer number of times that Henry is off centre in the shot with just a bunch of space surrounding him.

-okay after "two week notice" or whatever tf that song is called (Kim sounds amazing as always) is when the style shifts. It feels less like a mockumentary and more like this sort of voyeuristic peek into Henry's psyche. I LOVE IT.

-the fact that he is never shown in the shot with the workin' boys! It makes you absolutely feel like he is just talking to the air around him (this is hatchetfield so who knows, either way its unsettling)

-we get aligned with ruth, for the first time, we see the audience from the perspective of a character, not just from a stage POV

-the camera roll!! We don't get a full rotation but we feel dizzy and unsettled when we look at ruth, which is exactly how she feels!

-camera roll close up on Zoey. Uncomfortable, unsettling! Rests in a canted angle before continuing to roll on Hidgens! Who is centered in a low angle shot! We don't see the axe until he brings it up to his face! He is not only in a position of power here, but revealing the axe only when Henry makes it clear he is gonna kill them makes it clear that he calls the shots! We've departed from the Mockumentary style completely, as if this was never a documentary to begin with, more like we're flies on the wall or spirits in the theater or omniscient eldritch beings... anyway-

-long shot of Henry dragging zoey's body, no footage of them being killed, aligns us with the audience

-our friend the camera is getting shakey again, the chaos is in the process of ensueing

-THE PULL OUT SHOT OF GRACE WITH THE GUN. I GASPED. I KNEW IT WAS GONNA HAPPEN AND I GASPED. Fun fact on my first watch I thought this was a dolly shot but I dont think y'all are fitting a dolly on the Hudson theater main stage steps, and also the distance is too short so it must have been a pull out. It was REALLY SMOOTH.

-notice, when grace quotes the bible, we are EVER SO SLIGHTLY looking up at her. It gets progressively more obvious the further she gets into the line, but she has the power now. Somehow she always ends up with the fuckin' power, maybe I should convert to christianity smh.

-shakeycam is back again baby!

The creative minds put so much love and care into Hatchetfield, and you can tell that every project is a passion project. People know starkid primarily as a theater company, and that's great and all, but in reality it's an Avenue for all kind of creatives to not only have the opportunity to create all kinds of amazing things, let alone theater, but also have a way to show people. It's moved past being a theater company, with things like Starkid returns and Workin' boys, it's more like a production collective, and it feels like the beginning of a new era. Not only in terms of broadening the way that they Express themselves and be creative, but also in terms of finding a new niche in the industry. Finding a new, wider audience. Because yeah, you're always gonna have people that dislike the new media you produce, for nostalgia's sake or whatever, but beyond that, there are going to be be people that absolutely love what you have to offer. There's no point in trying to revert back to the way it was before, or trying to cater specifically to an audience from an era gone by. How do you grow as an artist if you're always thinking in the past? Starkid is moving in a new direction. The next musical is likely not going to be hatchetfield, but I dont even mind because it's going to be new. New is always good, and Starkid has a bright future.

TL;DR @curtmega you're a literal genius, and starkid is TOTALLY AWESOME

[armandjolras]

my thoughts on the warriors musical

in summary: besides its first-draft writing quality, it’s a near perfect adaptation of the film, but only passable as a musical due to flaws of the source material and the inherent differences between mediums.

the writing quality:

The writing is unpolished in a way that reminds me of early Hamilton songs like “First Burn”. Melodies tend to be predictable, the arrangements are cluttered, some songs don’t have a tight structure, and the lyrics are sometimes clunky. I assume a lot of LMM’s polishing happens while a show is being workshopped and staged, so this is intentionally an earlier draft, but it was released publicly so I feel it’s fair to criticise.

It’s also not a very mature musical, it reminds me a lot of shows targeted at teens. YA stuff is fine of course, but I expect from LMM some more adult themes.

The standout song for me is “Same Train Home,” which has a wistful Dave Malloy vibe, followed by all of Mercy’s songs and “Sick of Running”.

As an adaptation:

The film is not a very strong foundation. The Warriors’ characters are undeveloped, the plot is episodic, the antagonist Luther is barely present and has a ridiculous lack of motivation, and the importance of Cyrus’s vision of peace comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. It works ok as a silly and campy film though. All these problems are carried forward because LMM adapted the film very closely, and it doesn’t work at all as a musical — narrative flaws are much harder to accept in musicals than in film, because there’s something inherently embarrassing about the heightened emotion of characters singing, so the audience has to be fully convinced that their emotion is justified. When the motivations are paper thin and the characterisations lacking, im not convinced.

Musicals also require a more structured plot than films, because plot beats correspond to song placement. There also has to be a certain degree of repetition and symmetry to warrant musical reprises and leitmotifs. No changes have been made to the plot to make it conform to the standards of the musical theatre genre. I think it would make a decent movie musical in its current state, but would need serious overhaul to work onstage. Just for fun, here are the things I would change:

— Currently it’s not clear why everyone immediately believes in Cyrus’s vision of peace; they seem perfectly happy being territorial gangs, and the gangs aren’t even that brutal. Why does nobody push back against her proposal, and why do they morn it so intensely? I would instead start the story with the gangs having been at peace for a while, with Cyrus as their leader. We would learn that the gang warfare had been really horrible, so they’re glad to not be fighting anymore, and then Cyrus’s murder genuinely disrupts their lives. I would also change the ending to reflect on Cyrus’s dream in some way, either to say that it was futile or to restore the peace, otherwise the plot feels pointless. This would also give us a denouement; currently it ends quite abruptly.

— I don’t think a shallow villain like Luther works onstage; there’s a reason they cut Rasputin from the Anastasia musical lol. I would give him an actual motivation and a solo towards the beginning, and make his death more climactic.

— There are too many characters and none are fleshed out enough for the audience to care about them. Cowgirl should be merged into Cochise as a single comic relief character, and Fox should be merged into Rembrandt as the quiet/sensitive character. This would make Fox’s death much more impactful, because we would know her better. So we would have five Warriors (Cochise, Cleon, Ajax, Rembrandt, Swan). I would focus on Swan as the central character by developing her trauma, fear of opening up to people, and anxiety over leadership before the subway tunnel scene. Probably via a solo earlier on. And just for fun I would provide motivation behind Ajax’s annoyance at Swan’s leadership and Mercy inclusion: either she is Swan’s ex and jealous, or she’s Cleon’s girlfriend and in mourning.

— I would make the story less episodic by cutting some gangs and introducing stronger plot beats. I find the Hurricanes to be pointless and weirdly written; they’re portrayed as speaking wisdom, but it’s all proven to be wrong (Fox doesn’t make it home when she decides not to be quiet, and the Warriors get nowhere by telling people they are innocent). Their stagetime could be used to develop more important characters.

— LMM loves to include references to other musicals, so I would have a reference to Love Never Dies because the Warriors are from Coney Island.

things I like:

The use of different musical styles is really creative and fun. The Orphans being pop punk is hilarious, metal fits Luther perfectly, and the kpop Bizzies are pretty funny.

The cast is so perfect. I think “Sick of Running” is the best Amber Grey has ever sounded. Jasmine Cephas Jones is so good at portraying Swan as closed off and reserved, she’s exactly like the movie character without the toxic masculinity. Julia Harriman is so charming as a slightly-annoying and extroverted Mercy (so much better than the generic Eponine gamine with no self respect from the movie).

While being underdeveloped, the lesbian relationship is really lovely. Mercy and Swan have such great chemistry and immediate connection in “Orphan Town”, and having them kiss in “Same Train Home” is perfect. It’s amazing how the shallow and sexist romance from the movie was turned into this.

IDK what LMM intends to do with this, whether it’s even going to be a stage musical eventually, but I’m interested to find out. I’m not getting my hopes up because it doesn’t seem like the album got a huge reception. The audience crossover between musicals and The Warriors film seems narrow (fans on the subreddit seem pretty into the toxic masculinity and refuse to listen to the album because musical theatre is “gay”…)

[adarkrainbow]

I will complete my trilogy of Hansel and Gretel stage adaptations of fascinating visuals with this piece. I made several posts about the Royal New Zealand Ballet's adaptation and its homages to Germanic cinema (and obscure carnival traditions). I reblogged something about the Hänsel and Gretel concert of Lindemann-Tägtren and its disturbing, horrifying but also darkly clownesque visuals... And now I bring you the San Diego Opera adaptation of the famed Hansel and Gretel opera, with quite impressive puppetry!

I will copy-paste here the content of an article by Beth Accomando, which can be read in its original form here.

It’s not every day that an opera singer gets to bring a cannibalistic witch to life.

"I lure children into the forest and I cook them into gingerbread cakes and then I eat them. It's delightful," said tenor Joel Sorensen.

But what’s not so delightful is having to wear a big puppetry rig to create a larger-than-life witch onstage.

"I am a puppet," Sorensen explained. "The witch is a puppet, a very large puppet. And I have a colleague, Iain [Gunn], behind me. He bears the bulk of the weight on his back. So I'm basically working with a puppet while trying to sing and convey a character. It's a real challenge."

The challenge for director Brenna Corner in bringing Engelbert Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel" to the San Diego Opera stage was how do you bring a fairy tale to life?

"One of the things that I think is really tricky about 'Hansel and Gretel' is size. How do you make two grown-ups look like they're kids and two other grown-ups look like they're adults? And then someone else looks sort of even bigger and more powerful. And quite frankly, the best way I could figure out how to do that was puppets," Corner said.

So anything that was not human became a puppet. Like the witch.

"It's different in that it's not my physicality. So, because I'm manipulating her hands, her arms, and I'm working in tandem with [Gunn] so I can't move as quickly as I might normally or as sharply but facially and vocally, I'm trying to do the same things that I would do if I were performing it without a puppet," Sorensen said.

Now if you are thinking of puppets as something you put on your hand, think again. Imagine actors completely enveloped in layers of fabric with a large sculpted head or face high above their shoulders and an arm span that exceeds 10 feet.

"We had to really kind of blow up the notion of what a puppet is in order to successfully encompass the fusion of opera and puppetry," said Judd Palmer of Old Trout Puppet Workshop in Calgary. "Our inspiration was classic 19th century children's book illustrators like Arthur Rackham or N.C. Wyeth. We wanted the whole thing to feel like it comes out of a book and it becomes the illustrations coming to life like a pop up book."

Palmer designed the puppets for a production in Canada and Iain Gunn of Animal Cracker Conspiracy here in San Diego is now the puppeteer working with Sorensen to play the Witch onstage.

"I get to live inside this character that I'm helping to bring alive," Gunn said. "But she has her own voice standing right in front of me. I don't know how to describe it, but I feel like I am transported inside this imagination. It's like I'm in the 'Time Bandits' or something like that where … we're doing something magical and it's a magical character and the only reason it's alive is because we're in there giving it our all. So it's pretty cool."

The puppets engage the audience in a unique way.

"It's this agreement that the audience makes with the performers," Corner explains. "That we agree not to see the person who's obviously a person and instead we agree to look at what is fabric and some PVC pipe and a plaster-like face, right? But we agree to do that. So what's extraordinary to me about puppetry is that as an audience, we're continually investing our imagination in seeing the thing that the performers want us to see and then as the performers keep investing in that then all of a sudden they go away. They don't exist there anymore and it becomes something else kind of magical."

By not trying to fool the audience and instead asking them to play along in this game of make-believe, the audience becomes a co-conspirator.

Palmer pointed out, "You can see the puppeteer right there in a ridiculous outfit. They're sweating and panting from having to run across the stage and they're waving the puppet around. It lets us all in on the joke in a way but also in the kind of the dream. It makes it evident to everybody in the audience that they are going to have to invest imaginatively in this in the same way as the people on stage are."

It's recommended that you bring a child-like sense of imagination to this show.

"That joy that you had when you were a kid," Corner said. "And you could imagine what would happen if a stick was suddenly a giant scary monster. I think that's what you want to bring to this production because that's what this production creates is the sense of wonder and joy and mystery that's inherent in being a kid."

And inherent in a story that begins with the magical possibilities of once upon a time…

San Diego Opera’s production of Engelbert Humperdick’s "Hansel and Gretel" opens Saturday and will have three additional performances through Feb. 16 at San Diego Civic Theatre.

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Prairiewolf - Inspiration Barn, Longmont, Colorado, September 28, 2024

A beautiful (if unseasonably warm) night in Longmont! Last Saturday, Prairiewolf played our new record, Deep Time, in its entirety in a century-old barn. It was a blast — and we even made it through the one Deep Time song we hadn't debuted live yet, the tricky "Wheel of Persuasion." It sounds killer, its ghostly atmospherics ricocheting around the rafters. We also brought our pal Matt "Rayonism" Loewen out on clarinet for the closing "Revisionist Mystery > Journey In Satchidananda," which all together stretches out for a good 15 minutes. Yowza. Listen in on the Archive (while you still can!?).

The whole evening felt like a nice culmination of the 'wolf's 2024, which started out with recording our new LP, moved into workshopping it all onstage, took us on a brief/wondrous tour out west and finally brought us back to the Rocky Mountains for more fun shows (and endless hype, haha).

Deep Time has been out now for almost two weeks and it has been great to get it out in the world, in spite of vinyl-related manufacturing delays. One more reminder that you can get it on CD (with bonus mystery disc), LP or digital via Centripetal Force (North America) and Worried Songs (UK + Europe). However you get it ... get it!

[pyreo]

//slams my face into my hands OKAY

You know how everything in Scaramouche’s life is either a Bohemian Rhapsody reference or themed around Performance. (Which, also counts the Bohemian Rhapsody thing)

He is a puppet, often likened to a stage-puppet with strings attached to control his actions for an audience.

And sometimes this is literal.

But once we found out Dottore had been there creating falsehoods to control his personality and the direction of his life since the beginning of it, the metaphor extends all the way back. Il Dottore sabotaged the Mikage Furnace to remove him from his accepting human family and turn him against humanity. His induction into the Fatui was similarly orchestrated. He acted as an agent of Pierro while a Harbinger, was first seen in 1.1′s Unreconciled Stars expressing confusion over Pierro’s intentions, not even understanding the purpose of his own mission. He ended up in Dottore’s hands again in Sumeru to become part of their construction of a massive mechanical god, crafted into it with tethers on his back that leave you wondering which of them is more a puppet to the other.

He’s practically never had control over the direction of his own life, the truth obscured as is customary for the ‘delusion’ that is literally offered by serving the Fatui.

The first time he’s met during the story, he walks out literally onstage:

All of his names reference a kind of performance. His adoptive furnace family just called him ‘the kabukimono’, a Japanese term for a vagrant who dresses oddly, an othering moniker and not a real name. However, this term, in real life, was the naming basis for Kabuki Theatre, the classic stylised and glamorous Japanese performance style.

Once he was turned against humanity and harboured a grudge against his mother for both creating and abandoning him, he named himself Kunikuzushi, ‘nation destroyer’, in defiance of the Shogun’s attempt at stable, endless rule. However he’s kept to the theme: Kunikuzushi is a stock character in Kabuki Theatre, an archetype that a performer uses to quickly establish motivation with the audience. A villainous character, in this case. It suited his goals to play into the part.

When joining the Fatui and being required to adopt a fresh name, he became Scaramouche, named for the Scaramuccia of commedia dell'arte - also a villainous archetype, but now also a clown, because the Fatui (literally ‘fools’) led by Pierro (’The Jester’) are counter-narrative through-the-looking-glass playing their roles on purpose, jeering at a reality they seek to tear down and replace like destroying the props and backdrop.

In his mechanised god-form the repeatable domain is called Joururi Workshop, a term associated with Ningyō jōruri, Japanese puppet theatre.

Everything, everything is about performance, up until his final act as Scaramouche, where the quests are named:

Curtain call occurs at the end of a performance when one or more performers return to the stage to be recognized by the audience

His acknowledged last appearance for us, and the Traveler as his audience. His finale. He is seen here taking a bow in these quest names before the end, a very complete end, where he disappears and erases the roles he inhabited-- from existence and everyone’s memory. As the theatre curtain represents the end of the viewer’s reality and the change into the performed one, so does he disappear behind the curtain and cease to be part of everyone else’s lived reality.

Anyway I just read his character description again and groaned. His new life, no longer controlled or performing a role, just living as himself.

He certainly does not act the part.

[aropride]

am so confused,,,,i thought gerard way was a transwoman??????? top ten mew confusion moments @_@

I DIDNT SEE THIS EARLIER HI. ok so well first u would not believeeee how many people argue abt this topic online 😭 second: they havent said specifically what labels they use but they said theyve "always preferred he/they" and that "ppl can use whatever i dont really have a preference" and apparently dressed as a girl during high school and college & theyve talked abt gender and stuff and how they wouldve gone 2 a gender therapist of they couldve at the time. and in hit unreleased song everybody hates the eagles which they workshopped onstage over several shows (insane thing that happened And i watched this on instagram live. insane. bonkers.) they called themself a girl so. theyve not like Officially publicly labeled themself as nonbinary or gnc or trans but at this point i think its a little silly when ppl get mad at each other online for saying theyre probably under the trans umbrella

[adridoesstuff]

So all I've seen of Czech Elisabeth is what you've posted, but - thoughts/notes on Smrt's and the angels' costumes?

I'm always here to talk about the Smrt and angel costumes because oh my god, do I love them.

(More under the cut)

Smrt and his angels are designed to look very birdlike, specifically like carrion crows/ravens, who are frequently associated as symbols/bringers of death. The choice to really lean into the bird-inspired costumes was especially smart when combined with the Czech translated lyrics, which really leaned into the bird-associated symbolism in the text.

I must confess that when I first saw the production photos, I didn't like the costumes. I think it might have been because I already had the association formed that Tod in a pleather costume is not a good choice. However, what really made me love the costumes is when I saw them onstage and saw them in movement. I don't know what kind of weird pleather the costume workshop used, but despite obviously being pleather, it had such beautiful light movement on both Smrt and the angels and flowed so beautifully every time they moved.

The angels all wear long coats with hoods, one of their sleeves is close fitting and covered in little "feathers" and the other is made to look like a wing. The wings, aside from creating gorgeous movement, were also used to create Rudolf's grave during Totenklage, which was an absolutely genius move.

(Two of the angel dancers with Jan Kříž as Smrt)

Smrt is given a different costume to clearly differentiate him as the leader of the flock/not an angel himself. And I honestly think his costume is ICONIC. He wears a pretty standard undercostume of pants with knee high boots and a vest, but I like that instead of buttoning straight down the front, Smrt's vest buttons diagonally. Which is a tiny detail, but it shows that Smrt is not a human.

And then, there is that absolutely EPIC coat. The coat is pretty simple at first glance, but just the way it's patterned and cut is very interesting, since the front is cut a bit shorter so the Smrt actors don't step on it, but the back pieces are kept longer to have more movement in the garment. And the back was given triangular gores in the "skirt" of the coat for even more movement.

And of course, instead of the wing sleeves, Smrt has a feathered shoulderpiece made out of various types of feathers, most prominently rooster feathers, which throw subtle green and blue reflections under the stage lights. Once again, I have to mention the movement, because those feathers at moments seemed to live a life of their own, almost ruffling themselves up with the movement.

Also, you might have noticed I talked about the coat and vest, but not a shirt and that is because Smrt just doesn't wear one. Which is just a detail that is so subtle, but when you know about it, it is just one more of those details that just show that Smrt is not a human. And if you need proof that there indeed isn't a shirt (and this is an excuse for me to include one of my favorite silly pictures of Pavel Režný as Smrt):

And of course, the makeup deserves a mention, because once again, it's ICONIC. Both Smrt and the angels wear a bold black eyepaint, with the angels sporting a more graphic liner look alongside black lipstick and Smrt having a more simple, but varied look through the production's 4 year run.

And what I think speaks to the greatness of the costumes is that the actors themselves were fond of wearing them. Pavel Režný in particular seemed very fond of his Smrt costume and makeup, doing the pre-show soundchecks in almost full costume and with the eyepaint, donning the full Smrt costume and makeup for concerts only to have to immediately take the full thing off and after the production derniere in Brno evidently not taking the Smrt makeup off until he returned home in the middle of the night.

Pavel Režný also went through multiple hairstyle changes through his run as Smrt, since he had to grow his hair out for Jesus Christ Superstar. So, after the derniere, we got a full on Jesus!Smrt moment for an offstage event. Tbh, I wish we had gotten this more flowy hairstyle on Smrt onstage while the show ran, because it is a look tbh:

Hope I didn't make this one too long and overwhelming, but I just love this production so damn much and feel free to ask more about it!

[consanguinitatum]

David Tennant's Plays: An Experienced Woman Gives Advice (1995)

I haven't done a thread on any of David's plays in a while, so I had some time yesterday to rustle one up about his 1995 play, An Experienced Woman Gives Advice. It premiered 28 years ago yesterday (which was why I chose to do a deeper dive about it) so let's get into it! An Experienced Woman Gives Advice (I'll use EW to refer to the play from here on out because what a long title!) would be David's first time performing onstage at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

Prior to winning his role in EW, the last play David had done was What The Butler Saw as Nicholas Beckett, a role he was warmly praised for. What The Butler Saw ran for two months at five different venues around England before closing its run at the Nottingham Theatre Royal in late May 1995.

EW's playwright, Iain Heggie, had seen phenomenal success with his 1987 tour-de-force, A Wholly Healthy Glasgow. But in the years afterwards, Heggie had produced only a few more plays before deciding he'd rather go back to teaching and let his writing commence at its own pace.

Originally written as a miniature sex comedy, EW was long in development, and received further script development workshops at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow in 1992, and at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1993.

Its world premiere would see Heggie's return to the stage.

Initially, it might have seemed odd that EW - with its Glasgow setting, Scottish writer, and fully Scottish cast - didn't make its debut in Scotland. But because Heggie and the Royal Exchange had similar actor-centered outlooks and many of the artistic directors in Scotland preferred a more visual style, Heggie chose to work with the Royal Exchange (who liked his work anyway) and the play made its debut in Manchester.

Previews for EW began at the Royal Exchange Manchester on 21 November 1995, with an opening day of 23 November 1995. It had a small cast of five: Siobhan Redmond as Bella, David Tennant as Kenny, Jenny McCrindle as Nancy, Alastair Galbraith as Irving, and Alexander Morton as Stick. It was directed by Matthew Lloyd, and its assistant director was Marianne Elliott.

The set, which was designed by Laurie Dennett, was quite sparse - a communal back garden and garden shed of a block of Glasgow tenement flats. The music was composed by Paddy Cunneen, who fans will recognize from many other projects he did with David, some of which I've previously done deep dives into (like Sunburst Finish, The Pillowman and Bite).

The three-act play had a runtime of 3 hours and 20 minutes, with two intervals - one 15 minutes in length, the other 10 minutes in length. It closed its run on 16 December 1995. Tickets were priced from £5.50 to £18, with matinees on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The action takes place on two Sunday mornings and opens with Bella, who's a 39 year old teacher, gardening in her back garden. We learn she's in a three-year long relationship with a live-in toyboy lover, Kenny (DT) who's a former pupil and 15 years younger than her. And that he didn't come home the previous night.

Bella calls Kenny her "charming, fallible boy", and she treats him like one. Former lovers say he's "tall, kind of blond, with a lovely lean build" and "incredibly rich brown eyes." There’s "just no resisting him,” and he's "bastardly good looking.”

David in rehearsals as Kenny (from program of An Experienced Woman Gives Advice)

In a series of interruptions from people passing into the garden, Bella (Redmond) dispenses advice to the inquiring strangers Nancy and Irving (Galbraith), and learns Kenny spent the night with another woman...from the woman herself, Nancy (McCrindle), who doesn't realize who she's told. What Bella does with this information - and how her meticulously cultivated freedom of choice lifestyle shatters, especially given her first love, Stick (Morton) lives nearby - is what the rest of the play explores. We see love, lust, and lies play out as Bella makes her choices.

And there's a scene with Bella and Kenny...and sex behind the doors of a rocking, exploding garden shed!

I haven't been able to locate a production script of the play to see whether this scene was enacted onstage, but Heggie's published script book says this scene, where Bella strips Kenny of his clothes piece by piece before they go into the shed to have sex offstage, had some brief nudity. None of the play reviews I've been able to find mention any nudity, though one article about the play does state that due to "strong language and the sexual nature of the story, the play is not suitable for children under 15." (I don't know how much weight I should give this particular article, however, because it also calls the lead character "Maggie" rather than "Bella"!) Anyway, if this scene was included in the play, it would be the second known instance (the first being that now-infamous What The Butler Saw full frontal nude photograph) where DT was onstage in the buff!

Speaking of reviews, they were wildly different - some found it hilariously funny with barbed, sharp dialogue, while others found it fatiguing. David's "able portrayal" as Kenny was praised as part of an extremely talented cast, and his was called a "great performance".

David and Siobhan Redmond earned Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards (MENTA) nominations - Redmond for Best Actress, and David for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. They also earned British Regional Theatre Awards nominations; Redmond for Best Actress and David for Best Actor. The play itself was also awarded a MENTA nomination for Best New Play. Redmond won both her nominations; David and the play didn't.

Photos from the play are almost nonexistent. I haven't located any images housed in any archives anywhere...so far. That doesn't mean they're not out there, mind you, just I haven't found them yet! I did manage to find a few of horrible quality while digging around in newspaper archives (I'll refrain from venting here about the quality aspects of digitizing newspapers, as that's a rant for another day) but it's a damned shame. I mean, in one of these, David just looks like a David-shaped black hole with floating arms! Nevertheless, I'll leave them here.

Something else I found fascinating during my research was that, like many venues, the Royal Exchange had a tradition of scheduling at least one informal discussion with the director and members of the company for each of their productions. While I didn't find any information on whether a discussion of this sort occurred during EW's run, I have to assume it did. Ah, to be a fly on the wall for that!

And that, my friends, is pretty much the story of An Experienced Woman Gives Advice! I wish I knew much more about this play, but like many parts of David's theatre career, wide gaps in our knowledge remain. But I keep on looking.

Thanks for reading!