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Monday, September 16, 2019
'Pronoun Showdown' transforms Broadway songs from 'me' to 'her'
Datebook: What if “On My Own,” one of the signature anthems of “Les Misérables,” became “On Your Own”? Or if the male murder victims from “Chicago” sang “Cell Block Tango” instead of their female murderers? Would they admit, “We had it comin’ “?
The idea of this concert, I feel, will become a super useful way of manipulating shows old and new to show really cool perspectives of characters. Often times in solo songs, such as “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables, audiences get an insight into one specific character’s mindset: their motives, their reasoning behind what they’ve done, etc. I sense the pronoun manipulation that this concert exhibits could very well be revolutionary for future shows, as such a use of pronouns could provide insight into multiple characters’ mindsets at once. The way I see it, common solo songs could become really cool multi-insightful collaborations, in a similar way “Sincerely, Me” from Dear Evan Hansen collaborated between the lead character, Evan, and his imagined reincarnation of the deceased Connor Murphy. It could provide previously unseen perspectives, enhance pre-existing traits in characters, or more. For instance, if those who tortured and abused Fantine in Les Miserables sang about how she once had dreams, it could be a really unique demonstration of the mutual corruption of the lower class in France at the time, or it could demonstrate how evil each of the abusers are. Ultimately, I feel the unique use of pronouns as seen in this concert could be manipulated in modern iterations of classic shows, or it could be a way to spice up one’s newly written show. If this show were to come to Pittsburgh as well, I almost certainly would love to see it.
The idea of adding a different perspective to these songs and stories through changing the pronouns used is really interesting, and also goes to show how small words and phrases can mean a lot and go really far. These changes of story remind me of the flipped fairytales that we watched and then recreated in Hedy Lamarr's Owl. Those stories were interesting because everything was more black and white. The stories that this concert is making revisions on are more complex and have a more grey area in their songs and plot line. One of the things I love about theatre is the way it is able to showcase different point of views and opinions, so this concept is even more thought provoking because it takes a perspective and then gives it a 180. I think it would be interesting to see if any parody shows that make a flip of perspective not just from a singular song, but for a whole show, stem from this concert series.
2 comments:
The idea of this concert, I feel, will become a super useful way of manipulating shows old and new to show really cool perspectives of characters. Often times in solo songs, such as “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables, audiences get an insight into one specific character’s mindset: their motives, their reasoning behind what they’ve done, etc. I sense the pronoun manipulation that this concert exhibits could very well be revolutionary for future shows, as such a use of pronouns could provide insight into multiple characters’ mindsets at once. The way I see it, common solo songs could become really cool multi-insightful collaborations, in a similar way “Sincerely, Me” from Dear Evan Hansen collaborated between the lead character, Evan, and his imagined reincarnation of the deceased Connor Murphy. It could provide previously unseen perspectives, enhance pre-existing traits in characters, or more. For instance, if those who tortured and abused Fantine in Les Miserables sang about how she once had dreams, it could be a really unique demonstration of the mutual corruption of the lower class in France at the time, or it could demonstrate how evil each of the abusers are.
Ultimately, I feel the unique use of pronouns as seen in this concert could be manipulated in modern iterations of classic shows, or it could be a way to spice up one’s newly written show. If this show were to come to Pittsburgh as well, I almost certainly would love to see it.
The idea of adding a different perspective to these songs and stories through changing the pronouns used is really interesting, and also goes to show how small words and phrases can mean a lot and go really far. These changes of story remind me of the flipped fairytales that we watched and then recreated in Hedy Lamarr's Owl. Those stories were interesting because everything was more black and white. The stories that this concert is making revisions on are more complex and have a more grey area in their songs and plot line. One of the things I love about theatre is the way it is able to showcase different point of views and opinions, so this concept is even more thought provoking because it takes a perspective and then gives it a 180. I think it would be interesting to see if any parody shows that make a flip of perspective not just from a singular song, but for a whole show, stem from this concert series.
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