Saturday, September 29, 2007
Trial and Error: The Hunt for Usable Musicals
New York Times: "Around the turn of this century, there was much talk of the new face of American musical theater: serious, boundary-defying works by the likes of Adam Guettel, Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael John LaChiusa. But it remains hard to get a musical developed and put on."
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11 comments:
As much of a breeding ground for shitty work these musical theater festivals can be, the idea behind them, offering a workshop enviornment for new musicals to be developed and progress is one of the only ways that an average joe can debut a new musical.
A super-fabulous / terrible musical with a NYMF history was given a world premeiere at Williamstown this summer. So i guess you could say that it moved through the ranks, to several other workshop showcases and then to a full production.
The great part about things like NYMF that people who want to produce new musical theatre, know exactly where to find it. And all they need is one success story every 2 years for people to keep submitting work.
Well the idea of a Festival based on showing new Musicals or other forms of theatre is a extremely good idea. It gives musicals that never would get any attention from Broadway a chance to show what they have over the others.
So it's natural that some of these musicals are not ready for their Broadway debut or that Broadway is not ready for them. But even so it gives everyone a chance to change for a later chance.
But perphaps the best part about the festival that is not as obivous is that we get to see what type of musicals that we can expect to see in later years. These are the muscials that will be consuming Broadway in years to come. The chance to see what type of musicals are coming is to the change in what Broadway is made of.
I feel like going to one of these festivals is like looking at the musical versions of something like Snakes on a Plane , while the piece may be intrinsically bad, there is still something about the atmosphere that makes it worthwhile.
In the end, even if only one musical is found, others will have had an opportunity to have an audience see their musical and then they can go back to wherever they came from, hone it, and then hope to make it big.
I think my favorite line in this article is the "want great art? get over it." It's kind of sad that people really want a heart-wrenching message throught a musical and get mad that the rest of the world is still obsessing over wicked and hairspray. Personally, I love musicals, but I hate it when people try and do things with them that they shouldn't. Congrats to creating a Festival that showcases a variety of musicals. I think the risk is much greater than a straight play festival would be. Musicals have such a small margin where they can be called successes.
I must express my immense amount of respect for of the new musical composers - Adam Guettel is incredible in so many ways. He made a musical that was beautiful and appealing, yet still had substance and musical brilliance. As for a lot of the new musicals out there, I suppose it is a shame, but personally I'm excited for when a Kooman and Dimond musical makes its way to Broadway. :)
I think this festival is the perfect vehicle for a musical that is amazing but just can't make an impact in script form (kind of the opposite of that other article). There are some musicals that have been successful only because someone saw greatness in what can seem ludicrous on paper.
Many of the modern musicals today need to either shock audiences in some way (Spring Awakening), have a big name attached (Wicked), or be based on a movie (a lot of them). Therefore, this is why so many of the smaller musicals, that aren't based on movies, have such ridiculous plots, because this is the path that many of the current musicals have been following. Granted, sometimse the musicals are good (SA comes to mind), but this is what seems to be popular now.
I agree with Joe, there's too much flack that new musicals must bring with them in order to gain success. I hope someday we can establish an audiance that is interested in going to the theatre for something new and exciting, instead of nostalgic and remeniscent. However, if we continue to showcase new shows like "Young Frankenstein" and "Wicked", I don't see how we can grow in material.
Go Susan Tsu and Roller Derby!
This assortment of plays certainly seems to be an interesting one. That is what a festival is for however - showing off new interesting works. I particularly like the closing line "You want great art? Get over it." I hope that will not be a trend with Broadway in the future.
So I'm not really sure of how much these shows spend in bringing their production to the festival, but a lot of money is probably spent on crap, and then one of them maybe makes it big every couple of years. If it really is a workshop environment, where spectacle doesn't matter yet, then it sounds worth it. But if sparkle gets you signed, then a lot of people will waste money on their crap shows.
At least they are trying new things...though most of these musicals may end up being stupid and lack public appeal, the fact that there is a fairly safe environment to try new things. If they didn't have this kind of environment free from most repercussions, because it allows for more development of new ideas that people are normally to afraid to try and risk money and credibility.
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