Tag: theatre

The Birds Take Flight

The Birds Take Flight

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The Birds

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say the last two weeks have been amongst the strangest of my life. It has been a period of excitement and exhilaration, since the musical I wrote with Andrew Perkins, The Birds, had its world premiere. At the same time, I have been experiencing deep grief at the loss of my step-mother. Her funeral ended up happening in parallel to the premiere. The two events collided in such a way that it was impossible to attend both.

Looking forward to The Birds

I wrote a post a few weeks back about how I accidentally wrote a musical. Thanks to the tireless efforts of composer Andrew Perkins, that re-telling of The Birds, by Aristophanes, was booked to have its world premiere at the end of May. Knowing this well in advance, I booked flights to New Zealand six months ago. It has been a bright spot on my calendar, something I have looked forward to for a long time.

There was some frantic rewriting once it was decided the premiere would be a shortened concert version. It was written as a two act play, with dancing and comedy, in line with how the ancient Greeks would have done it. I took out most of the dialogue and turned the action into narration. Since it was the world premiere, I thought it would be amazing to take on the role of narrator. With my background in acting, I wasn’t concerned or nervous. I just wanted to be part of the events, not just watching on the sidelines. This turned out to be a bittersweet experience.

A year of travel

My step-mother, Dee, has been ill for a long time. I won’t go into the full details of her illness, but we had seen a serious decline this year. She lived in Sydney, which meant it was difficult to visit – several hours of travel from where we are. I took my children to see her at the start of the year, concerned they might not get another chance once school started up. We had a special lunch together and the kids were able to give her big hugs. There are times that you just know time is running out, and the kids and my step-mother all had that sense, I think. So the farewells were underpinned by sadness.

Seeing how ill she was becoming, a few weeks ago I booked a flight to Sydney for the beginning of June. It meant I would only be back from Auckland for two days before heading off, but I really wanted that time with her. In the end it was time I didn’t get.

Long awaited news finally arrives

A week before my trip to New Zealand for the premiere of The Birds, I received the news. My step-mother had passed away. Grief is never easy, no matter whether you are prepared for it or not. It’s made complicated when you have something very exciting coming up. It’s very hard to hold such conflicting emotions at the same time. I had been looking forward to seeing The Birds take flight. But now, for every moment of excitement, there was a deep moment of sadness.

I knew instinctively the funeral would occur while I was away. There just wasn’t enough time to organise it before then. If it had been two days earlier, things might have been different. But it was scheduled for the day after our flight to Auckland.

Honestly, I never considered not going to the premiere. I don’t think Dee would have let me consider it. She was an actress by profession. She had a cultured, commanding voice. And in the split second when I realised I couldn’t do both, I heard her voice.

The show must go on.

Not a catch phrase. A command. There was no question in my mind. I would still be flying to New Zealand.

A joyous celebration

As is usual, not everything ran smoothly in the lead-up to the performance. Problems were ironed out swiftly though. Conductor Rita Paczian took charge and the chorus and musicians of Bach Musica NZ were unflappable (pun intended!). Everyone was a professional – they knew what to do and did it expertly. The night of the concert came, and the orchestra dove into the dramatic, majestic music of the preludium. The soloists were absolutely superb, Andrew’s magnificent tangos and plainchants played masterfully by the orchestra, and the bird chorus was exquisite.

I had known Dee would not be well enough to attend, but I had always held on to the thought that I would be able to give her a copy of the recording. Now, as the birds took flight, their beautiful voices soaring, I wished she could be there to hear it. But I knew there could be no more fitting tribute to her. Dee was such a pivotal influence on my creative life. She was the consummate actress, as well as a wonderful singer. To be involved in performing an ancient Greek play, with all its drama, and to hear it sung and played so wonderfully, made me feel very close to her. The tears would come later.

How I (accidentally) wrote a musical*

How I (accidentally) wrote a musical*

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In May this year I will travel to Auckland to attend the world premiere of a musical I created with brilliant composer Andrew Perkins. It is a musical re-telling of The Birds, a classical Greek play by Aristophanes. The original play is witty, biting and has themes that are more relevant today than ever.

An abbreviated concert version of the full musical will be performed by Bach Musica at the Auckland Town Hall, in a double bill with Beethoven, which is some pretty cool company. To be honest, I can’t believe I’m going to see my work performed live with an orchestra, soloists and a full choir. It will definitely be a night to treasure. And it feels somewhat surreal. You see, the musical was written around the edges of my life. So it almost feels like I completed it by accident.

Would you like to write a musical?

I began working on this musical just after I finished my PhD. It was a very welcome distraction from the post-PhD slump that hits many people. Like any big project, when you finish a PhD it can leave you exhausted, both physically and emotionally. Having something to move on to helped me drag my way out of the slump. The idea for the musical was Andrew’s. He approached me and asked if I’d be interested in writing the book and lyrics for a work based on an ancient Greek play. The idea was an exciting one and I jumped at the opportunity. I particularly loved Andrew’s aim, which was to create something schools could perform that had great educational underpinnings. The Birds gives schools the scope to explore classical Greek theatre, complex musical forms and socio-historical issues.

We began by reviewing classical plays. Some plays quickly dropped off our list as they were… rather inappropriate for a high school production. Once we had a shortlist of possibilities we soon decided on The Birds, because it encompassed so many of the social and political issues we currently face. The story is about building a wall to keep out undesirable visitors, an event with particular resonance now. But The Birds also tackles themes of environmental degradation and the untrustworthiness of politicians and other power-brokers.

What’s it all About?

To begin the process I went through the play and created an extensive synopsis, which gave us our structure. Andrew then went through and suggested where songs might go. We also discussed key themes and which ones we wanted to highlight. I think we were both staggered by how relevant the themes remain now.  The synopsis was my scaffolding and from that point I worked my way through it, fleshing out dialogue and actions.

Writing the Book

Although Aristophane’s play was first performed in 414BC, so you would think it would be out of copyright, some recent translations do have copyright over them. This meant I had to be careful which version to select as the basis for the book. My aim was to rewrite all the dialogue, but adaptations are always tricky – some phrase might slip through by accident. For this reason I chose the Project Gutenberg version as my starting point, checking the copyright restrictions carefully.

I followed the structure of the original, which is dialogue interspersed with songs. The original play is full of witty in-jokes, but many don’t work if the audience isn’t from ancient Athens. So I searched for new ways of playing old jokes. For example, I brought in plays-on-words related to 20th century pop culture, such as referencing the Beatles. Andrew and I also worked out how to update the characters so they were more recognisable to a current audience. One of the characters had a bit of a Trumpian makeover. I used linguistic elements such as repetition and non-sequiturs to create a speech for them that would feel familiar to anyone following US news.

Writing for Schools

I have an extensive background in theatre, so I’m very aware of the gender imbalance that usually exists. For most productions you can guarantee there’ll be a lot more females wanting to be involved. At the same time the majority of plays and, to a lesser extent, musicals, are written with more male roles. I really wanted to address this, especially as we aimed for The Birds to be suitable for all schools, whether co-educational or single sex. Andrew and I agreed that the best way to approach this was to write as many roles as possible gender neutral.

Since many of the characters in the play are birds, this was actually very easy to achieve. Even the two leads, both male humans in the original, could be played by anyone, regardless of gender.

Andrew also wanted the musical to offer a different kind of challenge to students than traditional Broadway shows do. Whilst he kept the orchestration simple as schools don’t often have access to a lot of instruments and performers, he didn’t shy away from complexity in the music. The Birds draws on both ancient and modern musical forms, including Arabic modes, jazz, Greek and Latin American danceforms and church music.

Words and Music

When it came to writing lyrics for the songs, Andrew went through the synopsis and the play, pulling out keywords that he thought encapsulated the message or meaning of each song. He also identified the sort of music he wanted for that song. These varied greatly, from liturgical chants to a tango. At times he would provide me with a song in the style he wanted to write so I had music in my head to help me capture the write rhythms and style.

Writing the lyrics was a real challenge. Each song had to have its own clear scan, an internal rhythm that would work musically. But it also needed to explore the key themes we wanted to bring out, and capture the wittiness of the original play. It was an amazing process though – I would send what was essentially a poem to Andrew, and it would come back to me with a full musical background, as a song. Most of the time the process worked really well. The liturgical chant required a number of revisions as I had different music playing in my head than Andrew did in his. But the Latin American songs practically wrote themselves and were a lot of fun.

Setting The Birds Free

To paraphrase John Lennon, a musical is what happens while you’re busy doing other things. Much of The Birds was written around the edges of a severe attack of real life due to a major health issue for a family member. It was almost an accidental surprise to discover we had a full musical at the end of the process. But retreating into the witty, fantastical world of Aristophanes was not only a great adventure, it also let me play with words and music, which is always therapeutic. And now, in a few months, I will get to see it come to life.

*or, why my writing is going to the birds….

MORE ABOUT WHO IS INVOLVED:

Andrew Perkins, composer, has written many works, including symphonies, choral works and solo pieces. You can find out about him on Wikipedia or on his personal website.

Bach Musica is an Auckland-based choir and professional orchestra who perform four concerts a year.

Commedia 101: An introduction to improvised theatre

Commedia 101: An introduction to improvised theatre

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Recently I was interviewed by a high school student who is studying the Commedia dell’Arte about how I have used this form of improvised theatre in my book. His questions were really astute and they got me thinking. I thought I’d follow up by putting my answers online. But I should probably start with my background in improvised acting.

Theatre sports and murder (or ‘theatre sports is murder’?)

Playing Madame Anastasia, a mysterious psychic.

A long time ago, in a city far, far away, I was part of a university theatre sports team. We called ourselves The Famous Five. Each of us took on the identity of one of Enid Blyton’s popular characters. I was George, the tomboy. Since theatre sports teams only have four members, Timmy the dog was actually a stuffed toy that I dragged around behind me on a lead. If I needed to dive into an active piece of improvised madness, I would drop the lead and say ‘sit’. Timmy always obeyed, and it invariably got a laugh. We were very fortunate to train with Belvoir Street Theatre, who had brought theatre sports to Australia. Eventually we ended up competing in the intervarsity competitions. Unfortunately we didn’t win. I think it’s because Timmy froze under pressure.

A few years later, in Melbourne, I did training in theatre games. These games, invented by Viola Spolin, have a set structure, but the content is left open to the inventiveness or lunacy of the actors. It was Spolin’s games that were adapted to create competitive theatre sports.

Improvisation is very much like a muscle. The more you do it, the better you get. As someone with chronic social anxiety, I was never going to be great at it, but because I’m very imaginative I could pull some interesting ideas out now and then. Part of the appeal was being able to take on characters very different to myself.

Fly forward more years, and I’m in the cast of Murder on the Puffing Billy Express. This is an improvised dinner murder mystery that is still running today. Performed on the Puffing Billy steam train in the Dandenong Ranges, it remains very popular. (Click here for more details.) I did this for five years. The scenario involved a 1920s party, with everyone on the train as partygoers. The entree was murder, then dinner included a lavish serving of clues. After dessert the audience would (hopefully) be in a position to solve the mystery. Character was key to the improvisation. We never knew what the audience might throw at us, but we knew how our character would act.

Writing about improvised theatre

What my improvisation experiences and the Commedia dell’Arte had in common was the use of structure. In theatre games this took the form of rules. For example, in ‘Death in a Minute’ a character must die at the end of the minute, funnily enough. For Murder on Puffing Billy it was defined characters and a general shape around what information needed to be introduced when. In the case of the Commedia, the structure comes from defined scenarios. In Harlequin’s Riddle the scenarios are given to the actors before they perform. Mina, my protaganist, has to learn these story outlines because they give the general shape of the performance. Within that shape she and the other actors can add speeches and physical action.  Mina’s discovery about where these story outlines have come from is a key plot point in the first book. In the real Commedia things are rather more mundane.

How scenarios worked

The Commedia has one-act and three-act performances. Whether short or long, scenes contain a proposition, then development, and finally a solution. One act scenes focus on a single theme. Usually this is love, money or vengeance. Longer performances are more complex. In my novels, to clearly distinguish between shorter and longer types, I use the name canovaccio for a one-act scene, and scenario for a longer one.

A plot summary is pinned up backstage so the actors can remember what to do. Basically this is ‘who does what when’. It contains an outline of scene content, the characters in that scene, the actions they do, and some hints for dialogue. For longer performances, there is a list of all the scenes. When the actors onstage change, that indicates a new scene to the audience.

Do we have records of scenarios?

As John Rudlin notes in his actor’s guide to the Commedia, it is very difficult to notate improvisation. I doubt anyone could have come away from one of our Murder performances and created a detailed account of the events of the evening. There are written reports of Commedia performances, such as one by Massimo Trojano from 1568. But any oral tradition loses something in the writing. And what had meaning at that time may not translate to a modern audience without the cultural and historical context. On a recent visit to Japan I learned that the tea ceremony that geisha perform has many levels of meaning attached to it. But anyone not raised on Japanese folk stories will not recognise the clues that hint at the secret meanings.

In the Commedia, a similar example is that characters are based on regional stereotypes. Anyone not raised in Italy is like to miss the nuances of this. Another reason why we don’t have clear records of scenarios is that many Commedia troupes were families who kept their performance techniques as closely guarded professional secrets.

What this meant in writing Commedia scenes in my book was that I used the same technique I had used as a performer. I improvised! I would identify characters and plots, then let the scenes shape themselves on the page. There was an added complication in that sometimes I wanted the scenes to hint at or reflect what was happening in the story. But essentially I allowed myself the freedom to let these scenes take on their own life. Perhaps if I had written these scenes on a different day they would have looked very different.
What is the Commedia dell’Arte?

What is the Commedia dell’Arte?

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I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about Harlequin, Columbine and Pierrot so it always comes as a surprise to me when people look blank when I say ‘Harlequin’s Riddle is about the Commedia dell’Arte’. I’m not clear when I first became aware of these wonderful characters, but it was probably when my great-aunt gave me a tin with Pierrot on the lid. Inside was a facewasher and two soaps, also with different Pierrot images. Anyone who grew up in the 70s is probably very familiar with the classic images by Mira Fujita. The Pierrot in them is feminised, the face expressive. These designs were everywhere: on posters, on toiletries, on notebook covers. And Pierrot is the perfect icon for teenage girls – too sensitive for the world, and always yearning for something just out of reach (the beautiful Columbine).

Fujita’s images may be the reason that Pierrot is the most remembered of the Commedia characters today, but in fact he was a late addition to the line-up, and a minor character usually played by the youngest son, since player troupes were often families.  Harlequin too has survived, perhaps because tricksters have enormous appeal – just look at the current wave of interest in Loki in the Avengers movies.  Other characters are less well known now. But in their time they were adored by the public for whom they performed.

The Commedia dell’Arte is essentially improvised theatre that was usually performed in public spaces, in contrast to the Commedia Erudita, which was scripted and performed on private indoor stages. It appeared in Italy in the mid to late 1500s and its features, including slapstick humour and music, probably developed in order to compete with the noise of the marketplace. Those who look at the history of the Commedia suggest it grew from the antics of charlatans trying to sell their wares through any means possible.

Although Commedia performances were improvised, they had a clear framework from which performances grew. There were core characters, including the old men, Pantalone and Il Dottore, the lovers, the servants (known as zanni), Il Capitano (the Captain) and Columbina. Then there were secondary characters such as Pulcinella (later Pierrot), Scaramuccia and others. Harlequin, or Arlecchino as he was originally known, was one of the servants.

Each character was distinguished by a particular costume, status, posture and walk and particularly by their mask. This meant that when they appeared on stage the audience knew immediately who they were, and the function they would serve in the story. There were also set scenarios, or outlines of the events to be performed. Then, within the scenes, characters had set passages that they might recite, a repertoire of sight-gags the audience would expect from them, and particular ways of interacting with other characters. This means the improvisation actually occurred within very specific boundaries.  Much as Hollywood movies now follow certain tropes and patterns, Commedia audiences expected to see familiar characters, events and actions.

As with any popular form of entertainment, Commedia has changed over the centuries since its birth. Whilst there are still troupes today who try to maintain its original framework and characters, its influence can be seen in Punch and Judy shows, Cirque de Soleil and even musical theatre, which grew from the Commedia-like vaudeville performances of the early 20th Century. And, even removed from their Commedia roots, characters like Harlequin, the trickster, Pierrot, the sensitive, and Columbina, the unattainable beauty, still resonate with modern sensibilities.  For me, these enduring characters, and the magic that can emerge from improvised theatre, sparked my imagination, offering a world of possibilities that I explore in Harlequin’s Riddle.

 

Bio

Rachel Nightingale is a writer, playwright, educator and actor. With a passion for story telling and the theatre, it was only natural that her first fantasy series would centre on both. She lives in regional Australia with her family, a very bossy cat and the cutest dog in the world. She is represented by Creative Net speakers.

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