Tomorrow is the last day of this year's Stagecoach Intensive Workshop, which is a week's worth of musical theatre training that culminates in a performance for family and friends.
The kiddies (aged six to fifteen) had classes in the morning and afternoon, with a performance on Friday evening, and us big 'uns had classes from 7pm to 10:30pm each night, and we'll have more hours than I care to contemplate on Saturday before our own performance.
This evening I watched the kiddies' performance before our class started - like last year, they did AN ENTIRE MUSICAL (almost) in just five days! WOW! This year they did Dazzle - A Musical Space-tacular!, replete with catchy songs, brilliant choreography, many accents, and more awful puns than you can shake a laser at.
I was very impressed - there were some children and teens who really shone as performers, and it was fun to watch them (and, hah, a bit humiliating, lol). The nicest thing was seeing all the kids as an ensemble though, because they were all having a whale of a time and that's always heart-warming. As the lady sitting next to me commented, she hopes that musical theatre training will help the kids have self-confidence, which will help them later when they have to make choices as they grow up. (Say no to drugs, kids!)
But yes, it was a great show, big prosit to all the kids and to their (very tired) teachers, and all the people who made it happen.
Us grown-ups aren't doing one piece, instead we are doing five songs from various sources - the two main songs are from Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins, and we are also doing a couple of scenes from the musical. One of the songs' score is a whopping 22 pages long, but that's because most of it has four staves of musical notation for each line, and, in some places, an impressive seven staves... good thing we have Rosetta Debattista as our music tutor!
I was very much looking forward to learning from Rosetta for the first time, and she's not what I'd expected - much cooler, for a start! Some of her teaching methods are hard to get, but others are better than I've ever experienced. She's fun and makes jokes, which means we have a good time even when ploughing through the difficult bits. I'm so happy that we're doing Sondheim - I first saw a Sondheim musical ten years ago on a trip in Scotland (Into The Woods) but I didn't really discover him until last year when I got into musical theatre. I love his work, it's so deep, and so rich. The kind of songs where the more you get into them, the more you discover interesting things in the music and in the lyrics. This is the first time that I'm learning one of his "complicated" songs though, and I'm finding that it can be quite tricky.
Most musical songs these days are like pop songs - you have verses, a chorus, and maybe a bridge to shake things up a bit, which is maybe three melodies to learn, and there's not much variation in the rhythm - the emphasis is mostly on the words, so the music, while good, is more like a vehicle for them.
But in Sondheim songs, the music is COMPLICATED. It's like another actor, and it has a lot to say! In Assassins, there are nine main parts, and the most interesting songs (like the 22-pager) have all nine people weaving in and out of each other and the music, and it's fantastic to hear.
However, it's murder to learn.
Maybe it's because usually I learn by finding the underlying patterns to the songs, and in this case there isn't really a pattern! So I just had to memorise by brute force, mostly by memorising the phrases that come just before the parts I sing, and using them as cues. For instance, on one particular page of score in this song, there are eight bars. The first bar, like most of the song, is in 4/4 time, and is sung by the ensemble. The second bar switches to 6/4, and the Balladeer (a character) comes in on the second beat of this bar and sings for five beats. The third bar goes back to 4/4, and is sung by the ensemble, as are the fourth and fifth bars. In the sixth bar, the Balladeer comes in on the second beat of the bar, and sings over the ensemble for two beats, and then he takes a rest until he comes in on the fourth beat of the following bar, and sings through the eighth bar.
See what I mean about finding a pattern?
Memorising this is not a problem as such, except that between work all day and the evening sessions, I don't have a lot of time to memorise! I put in a lot of effort on this particular song today (during lunch break, and on the bus, and in the cafe, I sang Sondheim all over Malta today) and I'm almost but not quite at the point of knowing it well enough to just enjoy listening to everyone else. I'm singing the part of the Balladeer (my favourite character in this musical) with another dozen or so people, but, erm, none of them are very confident about it either, because they're all in the same boat as I am!
Our grown-up group is split into two classes, one for the teenagers and one for the 20+'s. So our class has an age range of twenty to forty plus, and the younger class tends to outshine us. But then again, we can tease them by calling them "infants", heheh.
For our drama tutor we have Denise Mulholland, like last year. The scene that my class is doing from Assassins is where we are all trying to persuade one character to do something that he doesn't want to do, so as a group we're working on building up the scene to a crescendo where we all talk at once - sometimes we manage and sometimes we don't, ha, I think it will help when everyone gets off book, lol. From bitter experience I know that scenes where you have a bunch of people saying lines that sound random but must be said in a set order are hard, mostly because, when someone makes a mistake, it throws off the next person who is waiting for their cue, and so on. Aaagggrrrh... At least only the first half of the scene is like that, the second half is a free-for-all which, while liberating us from the script, also places the responsibility on each of us to listen for everyone else and change our words/volume/pitch/tone to (a) fit in with where the group is at that point, and (b) help advance the group towards the climax of the scene at an appropriate pace, while of course (c) staying in character. Wheee!
So far my absolute favourite part of the week has been playing djembes with Rosetta and the class. She taught us some funky rhythms and it's just such a buzz - I love rhythm but I never get to play drums.
My second-favourite part was being silly and laughing myself sick with my classmates during singing yesterday, and my third-favourite part was this evening, when both classes combined and sang Adiemus in St. James' theatre-in-the-round, and it was beautiful.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to tomorrow evening's performance.
I'm not looking forward to the afternoon (because I hate Dress Rehearsals, because invariably there is the Director's you-all-suck-and-you-don't-even-know-your-lines speech (which, OK, is usually deserved)) but the performance - the performance will be FUN!
Oh I think Rosetta is brilliant!My son used to adore her! He used to have music therapy with her and he loved it.I think she is sooooo talanted.
Posted by: hsejjes | July 14, 2007 at 19:50
Oh and by the way.I was looking at your wish list. Just bought a washing machine myself.Try getting an ARDO from Ventura. Its not too expensive and I have found it really good....and before anyone comes down on me NO I DO NOT GET A COMMISSION FOR ADVERTISING....LOL
Posted by: hsejjes | July 14, 2007 at 19:52
the performance was brilliant :D the rehearsing beforehand was rather.. um.. "rocky" (if that's the right word to use, hehe), and Another National Anthem was an utter PAIN (especially that backing track), but nevertheless I think we all shined in the actual show!
And a humongous well done to you! your acting is always so meaningful and heartfelt. Hope to see you again soon. Have fun driving around Malta, by the way :)
Posted by: Claire | July 14, 2007 at 21:51
Hi Hsejjes, YES she is! And she's very nice too, lol, which helps. And thanks for the tip on the washing machine!
Claire, I still have "and the mailman won the lottery" running through my head! I think we did well, x'ahna bravi - and PROSIT for your performance as Byck in "Another National Anthem", because your lines were what helped everyone know where we were (no pressure lol).
(is it sad that I'm currently listening to ANA? I'm hooked on Sondheim...)
Posted by: MaltaGirl | July 15, 2007 at 02:14