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Saturday, September 13, 2008
'Shrek' musical team work over time
Variety: "'Shrek the Musical,' which opened here Sept. 10 in its pre-Broadway engagement, has been percolating for five years, including three readings, a seven-week workshop and a month of previews."
Although all of these new movie-to-musical musicals scare me thoroughly, I do get excited about aspects of them. I think it is exciting for the costuming world because it is presenting the difficult challenge of showing these characters that are often cartoons in real life. It is a challenge to not only convey the cartoon onto the stage, but also to make it not look like a Disney park character. It seems that a lot of new Costume Technology is being invented and used, which is why it is also exciting that we will soon be doing some of this here at CMU.
Though I am generally not partial to these types of cartoon to stage shows, probably attacking it in the spring, I think that in a mot of ways my opinion is wavering on the issue. on one hand there is certainly something to brand new theatrical work, and making many adaptations. After reading this article I think that Shrek is coming ot the stage with good intentions though perhaps may not be the bast show to meat the goals of this production. For example, in the article they mentioned how there was no original music in the movie release. Though I think the use of the music in the movie added a lot to the story. I am curious to see how Shrek does with original music.
Like Peter I am really scared of movie-to-musical shows. They have the potential to either completely bomb or be such a hit that they don't leave Broadway for 20 years. And even though I am not 100% sold on a musical version of Shrek I would actually be really interested to see what the creators and designers have done. Though this can is true for all movie-to-musical shows I think Shrek might be a show that won't take itself too seriously and actually make fun of itself for not really being original.
This musical almost has failure written in its title. It's a story that may not translate well on stage as a respected musical and not just a child's entertainment. It's important that they have such perfectionists handling this job because they will find the ideas to bring out to make this work and even have a successful showing. Yes, it's fun to have playful musicals like this on Broadway, but not everyone can pull off what Beauty and the Beast did.
4 comments:
Although all of these new movie-to-musical musicals scare me thoroughly, I do get excited about aspects of them. I think it is exciting for the costuming world because it is presenting the difficult challenge of showing these characters that are often cartoons in real life. It is a challenge to not only convey the cartoon onto the stage, but also to make it not look like a Disney park character. It seems that a lot of new Costume Technology is being invented and used, which is why it is also exciting that we will soon be doing some of this here at CMU.
Though I am generally not partial to these types of cartoon to stage shows, probably attacking it in the spring, I think that in a mot of ways my opinion is wavering on the issue. on one hand there is certainly something to brand new theatrical work, and making many adaptations. After reading this article I think that Shrek is coming ot the stage with good intentions though perhaps may not be the bast show to meat the goals of this production. For example, in the article they mentioned how there was no original music in the movie release. Though I think the use of the music in the movie added a lot to the story. I am curious to see how Shrek does with original music.
Like Peter I am really scared of movie-to-musical shows. They have the potential to either completely bomb or be such a hit that they don't leave Broadway for 20 years. And even though I am not 100% sold on a musical version of Shrek I would actually be really interested to see what the creators and designers have done. Though this can is true for all movie-to-musical shows I think Shrek might be a show that won't take itself too seriously and actually make fun of itself for not really being original.
This musical almost has failure written in its title. It's a story that may not translate well on stage as a respected musical and not just a child's entertainment. It's important that they have such perfectionists handling this job because they will find the ideas to bring out to make this work and even have a successful showing. Yes, it's fun to have playful musicals like this on Broadway, but not everyone can pull off what Beauty and the Beast did.
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