Music Theater

The Music of Change: Utopian Transformation in Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny and Der Silbersee

by Robert Hunter

in Utopian Studies Vol 21 No. 2, 2010

Review of Showtime by Larry Stempel and South Pacific: Paradise Rewritten by Jim Lovensheimer

by Derek Miller

Forthcoming in TDR: The Drama Review

A review of two recent books on musical theater. A review of two recent books on musical theater.

Polyvocally perverse, or the disintegrating pleasures of singing along

by Derek Miller

Studies in Musical Theatre 6, no. 1: 89-98

Contemporary philosophies of voice, like theories of the musical, rely on integration. But sound resists... more Contemporary philosophies of voice, like theories of the musical, rely on integration. But sound resists contextualization, integration and wholeness. Embracing the exhilarating possibilities of vocal play, I read Stephen De Rosa’s performance of a community theatre troupe’s version of ‘The Baseball Game’ from Falsettos as a sign of the inherent multiplicity of voice. In De Rosa’s vocal agility, I hear a transgression of the integrated voice and the assumption of a polyvocality in which voice refuses the claims of a singular, corporeal identity. But, like the musical, voice can find strength in disintegration. Singing along to cast albums – which, although they separate the sound from the show, permit the musical to reach a broader audience than productions alone – fans find pleasure in a cacophonous polyvocality that our voices are always ready to unleash, if only we set them free.

Imagining His Dark Materials as a Gesamtkunstwerk

by Laura MacDonald

The Theatre of Transition: Boguslaw Schaeffer and the Polish Stage of the Brave New World

by Magda Romanska

Toronto Slavic Quarterly (2004) No.9.

ALLES is an original play. It has never been performed or published before. This translation is based on Schaeffer's... more ALLES is an original play. It has never been performed or published before. This translation is based on Schaeffer's own manuscript. The play tells a story of a Bonny-and-Clyde-style couple, a brother and sister, named Alles and Sorella, who team up to play a con trick on a group of job applicants. For Alles, the driving mechanism is the sense of power and self-importance in relationship to those whom he "interviews" for the position of his butler.The applicants are only recognized by numbers. They are dispensable and clueless. Like Ionesco's Rhinoceros, ALLES represents a brute force of iron will with neither scruples nor ethical consideration. A blend of Pirandello's self-referentiality, Beckett's grotesque, Durang's absurd cynicism and Vinaver's social critique of corporate structures, the play is an opus on the modern human condition.

Bogusław Schaeffer: Poland’s Renaissance Man

by Magda Romanska

Cosmopolitan Review (Winter 2011-12) Vol. 3 No. 4

Pushing the boundaries for the past six decades, Bogusław Schaeffer was still blazing the way at the Edinburgh Fringe... more Pushing the boundaries for the past six decades, Bogusław Schaeffer was still blazing the way at the Edinburgh Fringe last year with “one of the best productions since the festival was launched several dozen years ago.” Magda Romanska profiles a Renaissance man.

Boguslaw Schaeffer’s ‘HereThere’ – The Return to ‘Pure Form.’

by Magda Romanska

The Mercurian: A Theatrical Translation Review (2009) Vol. 2, No.1.

By the time he wrote HereThere, Schaeffer was already a respected and sought-after playwright. HereThere is one of his... more By the time he wrote HereThere, Schaeffer was already a respected and sought-after playwright. HereThere is one of his most popular plays, and it represents some typical elements of Schaeffer’s dramaturgy. The play consists of 19 short scenes that take place in a corner café. It is an unconventional love story of two couples. One of them is a pair, described as VOICES, of uneducated wait staff at the café. He is a crude and vulgar macho man with pretenses and an over-inflated ego. She’s a bemused, uncouth kitchen helper dreaming of a prince charming who will save her from an all-too-predictable future, but also, to some degree, from herself. The other couple, HE and SHE, are sophisticated urbanites who regularly visit the café to read and drink coffee. HE is presumably a not very successful writer. SHE is an intellectual with an air of self-importance. Discussing love, death, and fate over their books and coffee, they slowly fall in love. Their story takes place at the front of the café, and it is presented as the main plot. Although the VOICES appear on the stage periodically (mainly to serve the front guests, HIM and HER), their story, on the contrary, takes place in the shadow of what happens Here, at the front of the café. There, backstage in the kitchen, love is a brutal and lonely affair of underdogs. Here, at the forefront of social facade, love is woven from a web of illusions, structured and sustained by conventions and convenience.

“La revolución silenciosa de Caperucita encarnada (Costa Rica, 1916)”.

by Susan Campos

CAMPOS FONSECA, Susan. “La revolución silenciosa de Caperucita encarnada (Costa Rica, 1916)”. En: TRANS-Revista Transcultural de Música, Nº 15, 2011, Dossier: Música y estudios sobre las mujeres. XX Aniversario de Feminine Endings (1991-2011).

Abstract

Between 1916 and 1926, the Costa Rican writer Maria Isabel Carvajal, whose pen name was Carmen... more Abstract

Between 1916 and 1926, the Costa Rican writer Maria Isabel Carvajal, whose pen name was Carmen Lyra, developed a literary-pedagogical project that included the production of a children's musical play entitled Little Red Riding Hood, set to music by Julio Fonseca, one of the main protagonists of the "invention" of "Costa Rican music" between 1927 and 1938. Score and libretto bring together, very subtly, the resistance of a discourse where music education and education of the "Costa Rican woman" confront the oligarchic crisis, the making of a nationalist identity, and subsequent recovery under new heritage projects, becoming a dialectical image of a quiet revolution. This paper studies this resistance, using gender as a category of analysis.

Key words

Musical Theater, Education, Gender, Identity, History, Memory.

Negotiating the “Negro Problem”: Stew’s Passing (Made) Strange

by Brandon Woolf

Theatre Journal 62.2 (May 2010)

“Black folks passing for black folks. That’s a trip!” A trip is just what we get in Passing Strange, Stew’s Tony... more “Black folks passing for black folks. That’s a trip!” A trip is just what we get in Passing Strange, Stew’s Tony Award–winning piece of “genre-defying rock-pop-funk-punk-cabaret.” Stew and his band, The Negro Problem, serve as tour guides on a semi-autobiographical “pilgrimage” beyond the tightly patrolled borders of the North American continent, the traditions of black musical theatre performance, and the “chains” of a rooted, African American authenticity. Passing Strange renders a musical critique of any traditional or idealist rendering of “double consciousness” and explores the negative—and hybridized—nature of black identity formation. In turn, this essay employs a dialectical and diasporic vocabulary to situate Stew in problematic yet productive relation to critical interlocutors like W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Gilroy among others in order to articulate the complex relations between racial and national identity that Passing Strange performs. It maps the varied problems of problematization for which Passing Strange is arguing by charting the piece’s often contradictory trajectories. Finally, the essay works to understand Stew where he is most at home, “between the clicks of a metronome”: between black and white, between music and theatre, between the United States and Europe, between past and present, between fictional representation and lived experience.

Music and Technology in Death and the Powers

by Peter Torpey

Published in the proceedings of the 11th annual conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 2011

In composer Tod Machover's new opera Death and the Powers, the main character uploads his consciousness into an... more In composer Tod Machover's new opera Death and the Powers, the main character uploads his consciousness into an elaborate computer system to preserve his essence and agency after his corporeal death. Consequently, for much of the opera, the stage and the environment itself come alive as the main character. This creative need brings with it a host of technical challenges and opportunities. In order to satisfy the needs of this storyline, Machover's Opera of the Future group at the MIT Media Lab has developed a suite of new performance technologies, including robot characters, interactive performance capture systems, mapping systems for authoring interactive multimedia performances, new musical instruments, unique spatialized sound controls, and a unied control system for all these technological components. While developed for a particular theatrical production, many of the concepts and design procedures remain relevant to broader contexts including performance, robotics, and interaction design.

Mew Zick Ann Dwerds

by Paul Alan Barker

Presented at the Song, Stage & Screen conference, Portsmouth UK, 28-30 APRIL 2006

Abstract:
The paper aims to:
• briefly explore and contextualize through historical and sociological... more Abstract:
The paper aims to:
• briefly explore and contextualize through historical and sociological evidence, the residence of meaning in performance.
• demonstrate that opera and musical theatre may be seen to be out of step with developments in theatre and music in this respect, but some examples are illustrated in music theatre.
• elucidate and example a historical performative practice whereby creative roles such as author and composer are merged alongside those of performer.
• summarise that the non-rational relationship between music and text may be codified as a non-rational equation, in reference to the alchemy of the title.

Keywords: words, music, sound, meaning, alchemy, heresy.

Kurtág on Stage? Between Pure Music and Latent Musical Theatre

by Karl Katschthaler

Paper at Music on Stage Conference, Rose Bruford College, 23 - 24 October 2010

The starting point of this paper is György Kurtág's ambivalent relationship to the stage and to the musical theatre.... more The starting point of this paper is György Kurtág's ambivalent relationship to the stage and to the musical theatre. On the one hand, we have the prohibition of theatrical gestures and the commandment to express everything by purely musical means. On the other hand, there is Kurtág's desire to write an opera, resulting in plans, which remain unrealized. In between we find theatrical means - facial expressions, gestures, proxemics – penetrating into the scores since the Kafka Fragments. Finally, in Op. 30b there is not only a stage ("Scène") on the concert stage but then in the premiere we find Kurtág himself on this stage in the “part” of the pianist.
What types of latency of the theatrical exist in the works by Kurtág and what is the nature of the relationship between pure music and stage? These are the questions I first and foremost want to investigate on the basis of “Kafka Fragments”, Op. 24 and “What is the Word”, Op. 30b. The subject of this paper is not the realized theatricality of musical theatre performances, but the latent theatricality of Kurtág's scores and their musical presentation. Seeing that in Op. 30b Kurtág comes closer to musical theatre than ever before, we finally may ask, if he has arrived on the scene.

"Underneath the Ground:" Jud and the Community in Oklahoma!

by Derek Miller

Published in Studies in Musical Theatre 2.2 (2008)

In their groundbreaking analyses of Oklahoma!, Andrea Most and Bruce Kirle present convincing arguments that the play... more In their groundbreaking analyses of Oklahoma!, Andrea Most and Bruce Kirle present convincing arguments that the play is partially an examination of the place of Jews in American society. Their readings emphasize Ali Hakim’s Jewishness and suggest that ‘Jud’s threatening otherness throws the harmlessness of Ali’s ethnicity into relief’ (Most 2004: 116). This essay argues that Jud himself can be read as a Jewish character. Jud is the play’s contemptible villain, yet as the antagonist he serves a crucial role in resolving Oklahoma!’s conflict, making him a version of the classic anti-Semitic paradox, a Jew who is both worthless and foundational. By exploring Jud’s power and how it serves the community that slanders him, this article recasts the play’s figuration of Jewishness to encompass both performed and buried Jewish stereotypes.

The Placement of Sound in Artistic Contexts

by Karen Lauke

Body, Space & Technology Journal, VOL 9/01, 2010

There are a range of compositional approaches and techniques to consider when producing work of a sonic nature; from... more There are a range of compositional approaches and techniques to consider when producing work of a sonic nature; from decisions about source material and location, to set-up configurations and sound diffusion. The presented case studies will examine approaches taken by the composer for indoor and outdoor spaces and discuss the artistic intention of each piece within a specified space. The case study examples will range from contemporary theatrical sound designs to sound art performance and audio-visual installations. Comparisons will be made between the various disciplines of sound art in relation to theatre sound in order to seek common ground and the suggestion of a sharing of practice.

Latente oder explizite Theatralität? György Kurtágs „Kafka-Fragmente” auf der Bühne

by Karl Katschthaler

published in "Werkstatt - Internet-Zeitschrift für germanistische und vergleichende Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft ": http://werkstatt.unideb.hu/de/aktuelle_ausgabe.htm

The present article uses a performative approach to György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments op. 24. This cycle of 40 pieces... more The present article uses a performative approach to György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments op. 24. This cycle of 40 pieces for soprano and violin is based on fragments from Franz Kafka’s texts and some parts of the score show theatrical elements, gestures, mimics and even proxemics. By giving scenic instructions in the score the composer ignores his own prohibition on the use of any theatrical means, which was valid for his works before op. 24 – now he opens his works up for the stage. After a brief exploration of the genre cycle and of it’s relationship to the song cycles of the 19th century on the one hand and to the fragmentarism of the romantics (Schumann) and the moderns (Webern) on the other hand, I focus on the question, whether the work requires a staged performance or it has to be performed within the conventions of the song recital. After answering this question I analyse and compare the stagings of the Kafka Fragments by Peter Sellar and by Antoine Gindt with regard to their treatment of the score.