NPR: A certain kind of book seems practically written to be adapted into a musical. Phantom of the Opera, for example, or Wicked. Then there's Fun Home, based on a graphic novel by a middle-aged lesbian cartoonist that grapples with themes of suicide, shame and familial dysfunction. Fun Home was a bestselling book, then a smash off-Broadway hit at the Public Theater.
5 comments:
This is so cool! A friend gifted me the book Fun Home for Christmas, and I finished it in hours. I was so involved in it. I can't believe that her life story is as wickedly true and fantastical as it's written in her novel. What I think might be challenging is translating the graphic novel form into an entire musical. I'm excited, but not certain that the song writing will parallel the kinds of themes that Fun Home talks about. Bechdel is the perfect sort of writer that we need to be popularized and broadcasted to show people the realism of the LGBTQA community -- the ins and outs of self-discovery, the destruction of the American Dream, etc. I hope the previews of Fun Home come out over the summer so I can see it for myself. I think it's also adorable (and very right of the director) to cast a young eleven year old as young Alison Bechdel. There needs to be a parallel between Bechdel as she writes the story, and Bechdel as she lives with her father as a young girl.
I had never heard of this production before this article and I’m a little upset because this shows appears to be amazing! I feel like that this show might be our current culture’s “Next to Normal”, a show taking a topic that some people don’ to talk about and bringing it into a musical. More importantly though, I’m happy that shows like this, shows that discuss social issues are being produced. I think so often that as audiences we go to the theatre as an escape, to forget reality, but it is just as important to let the audience escape as it is to make them aware of these important issues. I hope that I get a chance to talk to people that saw the show that additionally had read the memoir before hand. Musicals from books are a genre that has been around for a long time but books more current topics and issues are being written and taken in popular culture. It’s time to see these shows produced.
I am thrilled to see this kind of musical reaching Broadway. It is so difficult for this kind of uncomfortable non-mainstream work to be produced at all, not to mention on such a commercial platform. I first became away of the show a few months ago, because I had been a camp counselor to one of the kid who had just been cast. While my first interest was just a cursory one, I immediately became hooked.
Dark and unconventional musicals are so important because they change the way we look at both theatre and life, even if they don't seem like they make sense. Musicals are assumed to be light, silly and fluffy, a reputations gained from years of the majority of them being just that. But musicals have the capability to capture humanity the way few things can. If music can capture our hearts with such ferocity, the addition of musicals to plays simply draws us in further. Music connects everyone. I can listen to a song about a little girl realizing that she has feelings about a woman (Ring of Keys from Fun Home), and even though that is something I have never experienced, my heart is drawn in an broken by the sincerity of her voice. That is truly remarkable.
Back in Tech Management, we talked about the outreach that productions have on the lives of the people that watch them. It was a short discussion but it cumulated in this: we're not doing rocket science. We're not doing brain surgery. At the end of the day, we're in a profession that, if theater as whole didn't exist, society would still function. Would we be missing an entire art form? Yes. However, it's shows like Fun Home that make theater, and more specifically, musicals, into something substantive. Fun Home is opening up channels that allow us to talk about difficult subjects. It's easy to be caught up and love "frivolous musicals" but at the end of this day, using theater to discuss darker topics like sexuality will bring the value of theater back to where it should be.
(oops, I wasn't finished).
I agree with Ben in that once you start talking about a topic and integrate it into something that people can easily connect to, like theater, it educates your audience. Next to Normal was an important show because it showed real people going through these horrible problems. It gave people suffering with, or had a close family member/ friend a place to turn to, a face and song to a feeling. Once you give people an outlet and give them visibility, people are that much more empowered.
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