Saturday, October 04, 2014
'Waterfall,' a New Musical With Thai Inspiration, Aiming for Broadway
NYTimes.com: The veteran Broadway songwriters Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire (“Baby,” “Big”) are teaming up with theater artists from Thailand on a new musical romance, “Waterfall,” that will have productions in Pasadena, Calif., and Seattle next year before a planned move to Broadway in 2016, the creators and producers announced on Monday.
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4 comments:
I find it funny that this is being made such a big deal. Why was the main point of this that it was a new Asian centered musical?? Aren't we in a world that race doesn't matter? Can't it just be about a new show coming to Broadway that happens to be about a Thai person? And then the author went on to talk about other shows with Asian influences that are making it far in the world. I mean, come on! Is that necessary?? Is an Asian inspired show really that much of a surprise when it gets some popularity? The bias in this article is surprising. Why is the author so surprised that this show might get somewhere? Why is he so surprised that other shows have gotten big? Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if a WWII set musical gets anywhere, but that doesn't include the fact that he's Thai. I doubt that that will even play a huge part in the show. You could put this plot into any country and have the same themes. Why can't the article be more focused on the plot and less on the races involved?
I like to see new plays come to Broadway especially ones that are not “typical” shows. People now a day are going to be far more attracted to shows like “Waterfall” than they would be a new “Mamma Mia”. I believe that theater patrons want to see atypical shows, always looking for something unorthodox. I mean that is a big part of the cirque industry is giving people an entirely new experience. Around the time of World War II is a time period that people are still relating to through family members and different medias about the world at that time. I don’t see much interest in this section of the world, nor am I personally a fan of love stories, but I can see it being very successful. I hope that more shows with international ties make their way to Broadway, it sounds like an exciting future.
This is incredibly exciting to see! I'm a huge advocate for representation of other cultures to be present on our Broadway stages. I really hope the show is good enough (and marketable enough) to make it to the top.
We have to view the stage in the same context as we see other types of mass media such as television. The conversation is constantly being re-heated about representation of non-typical relationships and cultures on our television screens, where is the conversation about the representation on our stages?
I feel like a show like this could either go really well or really poorly. A lot of people (myself included) were looking forward to the success of Holla If You Hear Me and that didn't make it past previews. Then again, not a lot of people thought RENT would do well and it ended up running on Broadway for about a decade. I think that the appeal for a show like this on Broadway comes from its non-American based cultural background, which I'm sure audiences would like to see more of. But I also think that shows that tend to stray too far from the typical Broadway musical structure tend to not do as well. Additionally, I also think that a show like this could also find great success touring much like Riverdance and Shen Yun do. I'll be interested to see how this project progresses, and how West Coast audiences receive the show as opposed to the East Coast audiences.
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