Developing Musical
This week has been one of the most challenging, and exciting, that I think I've ever faced. We are just about to head into the final day of development of my new musical 'Towards the Moon' with a showing of it tonight.
The four days have consisted of me working with 6 fantastic MA musical theatre students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and an equally fantastic musical director on developing the piece alongside the director Michael Howell and my director-friend Emily.
We started with a readthrough of the whole script with me singing the songs on piano. It's about 90 mins long. We then had some great, insightful discussions on the piece and it was fairly mind-blowing to hear the different interpretations, and therefore possibilities, of the piece.
I had previously cut the show for this week as I knew the final performance was to be no more than 40 mins - however after the readthrough it became clear that a lot of work had to be done to make the piece really clear and focused. As the actors learned the music, on the second day, Emily and I worked through the script and tried to tighten it up.
The main problem we had was that the play had a fairly negative ending, where the message I wanted to send was a positive one. So we worked hard at changing this, which meant adding a new song in on Wednesday night at 11.15!
Yesterday was spent putting it on its feet. Looking at a theatrical language that could work. We have no lights and virtually no set, but Michael has come up with interesting staging that shows the movement of time (the main character Bobby time travels backwards and forwards throughout) and hopefully makes place clear.
The four days have consisted of me working with 6 fantastic MA musical theatre students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and an equally fantastic musical director on developing the piece alongside the director Michael Howell and my director-friend Emily.
We started with a readthrough of the whole script with me singing the songs on piano. It's about 90 mins long. We then had some great, insightful discussions on the piece and it was fairly mind-blowing to hear the different interpretations, and therefore possibilities, of the piece.
I had previously cut the show for this week as I knew the final performance was to be no more than 40 mins - however after the readthrough it became clear that a lot of work had to be done to make the piece really clear and focused. As the actors learned the music, on the second day, Emily and I worked through the script and tried to tighten it up.
The main problem we had was that the play had a fairly negative ending, where the message I wanted to send was a positive one. So we worked hard at changing this, which meant adding a new song in on Wednesday night at 11.15!
Yesterday was spent putting it on its feet. Looking at a theatrical language that could work. We have no lights and virtually no set, but Michael has come up with interesting staging that shows the movement of time (the main character Bobby time travels backwards and forwards throughout) and hopefully makes place clear.
So I'm just getting ready to head out now for our final days rehearsal before we show the pieces tonight. Very exciting, hopefully there's a life for the piece after this week, it would seem a shame for this to be as far as it goes.
After rehearsal at the RCS I have been heading along to the Citz to continue working as assistant director. We had the first dress run last night and it went really well. Sure to be a great show.
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