Sunday, September 24, 2006
The Prop Fetcher of 1950, With Quite a Future Ahead
New York Times: "IN the summer of 1950, immediately after graduating from Williams College, Stephen Sondheim joined a class of about a dozen apprentices at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut. He was 20 but not totally untested: he had written two shows in college, one of which was staged. He had won a composition prize that would help finance his further studies. And Oscar Hammerstein II, a neighbor from previous summers in Bucks County, Pa., had been giving him assignments in musical theater writing, critiquing the results without condescension."
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This is a cute story, but I like that it has a point. You really do need to understand every aspect of theatre before you can even begin to be an expert in a particular area. If you are writing major musicals, and don't understand what it takes to move a set around (especially in 1950) then your musical will be that much harder to stage efficiently. Its the same reason that the actors used to be on build crews here. Which raises the question of why they are no longer on build or install crews at all. Granted, they were slow and relatively unskilled labour, but they were learning and if nothing else they were another body that could push things around the stage. They were also getting experience that can really help them in the future. Just a thought...
- Jen Owen
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