Monday, February 28, 2011
Rock knocks on stage door
Variety: "When true rockers and pop stars hit the stage, the results have been decidedly mixed. Long before Bono and the Edge started taking heat for their 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' score, Paul Simon ('The Capeman'), Jim Steinman ('Dance of the Vampires'), Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger ('Cry-Baby'), Styx's Dennis DeYoung (the non-Disney '101 Dalmatians') and the Abba guys ('Chess') experienced the brutal slap that characterizes trying to make the leap from the Billboard charts to the New York boards.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I feel like the genre of rock musicals has great potential to be a strong addition to the musical theatre community. However, there's not much argument that rock musicals can lean to the less successful side of the spectrum. I think the article made a great point that big artists who are writing shows because they can and not because it's their passion (Bono, Dennis DeYoung, Paul Simon) aren't seeing the results that they're used to when they release an album or a single. I'm curious to see what the author would have to say about shows like American Idiot, which already exists as an album and how that can impact the success of a show.
"You can't be afraid to kill your babies," he says. "To throw out songs that aren't serving the show. You are constantly making hard decisions to make the machine work. You turn one screw and it affects another thing. Musical theater is about collaboration and everyone getting in the room and working together."
Most important part of the entire article. It is fascinating that the hardest part of putting on a broadway musical is that big C word COLLABORATION something that is ingrained in our head from the very beginning whenever we approach a process. Even if they are rockstars it sounds like this guy has had some issues convincing someone that change in a musical is a very good natural part of the process and that these rockstars have to follow suit.
What I find interesting is that when comparing rock musicals (original musicals with rock scores) to jukebox musicals (musicals based around the songs of one rocker/group with an "original" plot) to rock operas (musical realizations of an entire rock narrative, such as Tommy or American Idiot), there is a divide in telling the story more than singing the songs. I find that rock operas, where the plot does come from the original album are stronger because there is already a narrative to work with, and I am wondering if perhaps these are the artists we should be encouraging to write original rock musicals, since they are already so adept at making the plot a part of the music. Like the article mentioned, jukebox musicals and rock musicals written by rockers have a tendency to get repetitive because the songs were either originally written as individual entities, not as part of a collection, or because these are the sorts of songs these rockers know how to write. There is some learning to be done on their part, and with artists these days less focused on the entire album and more on singles, we are losing the connection that we need to make a group of songs into one entity, and thus adaptable for theatre, or able to be conceptualized as a musical.
I love Rock musicals. They make musicals relatable to people who don't usually listen to musicals. Because art is getting so intermingled, people are expecting to get a mix of things when they go to the theater. We can go to a play and get a concert, and we are perfectly happy with that because it is entertaining, but it could be better. I think the line comes when the writers of musicals have not added a story. There needs to be a thread though out or we are not invested. Even though there are shows that contradict this such as Hair, there are still themes that carry though out. If you are just going to hear songs you should go to a concert. I think that musicians can write musicals, a rock star wrote Passing Strange and it is superb. That being said I think that the story could be refined. So I think what makes a good rock musical is a story because the songs are already there.
I think that the "rock" genre could be sensational in theatre, as long as it's true to both forms. I think the aspects of "rock" that make it so compelling and emotional need to be translated, but as the article says, theatre is a collaborative process. In order for rock and theatre to mesh there needs to be a solid collaboration. I would love to see a rock musical in the style of classic rock. I think it could be really great. But with any type of music for a show, there needs to be collaboration for it to actually work. In this case, the genre of music isn't the problem, it's the execution.
From the standpoint of trying to maximize the number of audience members in seats it seems like having musical scores by rock stars is ideal. Arena rock is doing a lot of the same, a lot of very expensive, and a lot of very cool things. Theater can borrow from these ideas, and grow. if the use of rock stars will cause the theater industry to develop in an interesting way then i am in complete support of it.
Post a Comment