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Thursday, June 18, 2009

Camelot onto 2nd week...

This past week has simply flown by! 
Working with a very talented cast I've managed to get over 50% of the musical numbers staged. During the next two days, the goal is to finish the rest of act one.  The Arthur arrived into town today and is exceptional - as are all of the principals. That makes life much easier...
Tonight I worked dialogue with some of the cast and had a really interesting time talking about the piece.  In order to shorten the musical (it's rather long), I had made some pretty significant cuts.  However upon hearing the lines spoken by the players tonight, I decided to open up a number of those cuts.  It'll really help the show, and certainly makes me feel good as I love so much of the dialogue - being a fan of the Arthur legends since I was a young boy.

It's getting late, so I'll cut to the chase: I think that musicals AND operas should be treated much more as living entities that need to be reborn each time they are presented. We're currently in a present, operatically speaking, where directors and production designers re-think the operas, but where the music directors strive for note perfect renditions based on critical editions.  It presents problems when one is trying to create a whole piece in a genre that is based on sung text.

Just a thought on this late night out in the country in Virginia...


3 comments:

  1. Agreed. If we want our art form to survive, it has to constantly be reborn and adapt. See you soon Patrick!!!!

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  2. I like this! The living entity of theatre has to be renewed and reborn with each incarnation of a production!

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  3. Absolutely agreed (and very well put). Opera and theater is alive. We should be careful not to present older established works as museum pieces.

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