Brendan Milburn is the composer of Sleeping Beauty Wakes and a member of GrooveLily, a pop/rock band. The post below is published with permission from Brendan, and courtesy of GrooveLily’s website. For details, visit: http://www.groovelily.com/
At 12:20 pm yesterday, we turned in script pages for the end of the show, arguing (constructively!) about lyrics and stage directions until the last possible second.
As expected, I turned in sheet music only for the beginning of the end, a piece I titled “Typical Wretchedly Horrible World,” which is what the patients feel about their regular dreams when they’re back to their, well, typical wretchedly horrible nighttime routine.
Now I play catch-up in getting the rest of the finale on the page, and Val rewrites lyrics here and there in both acts, and we work from home.
Brendan Milburn is the composer of Sleeping Beauty Wakes and a member of GrooveLily, a pop/rock band. The post below is published with permission from Brendan, and courtesy of GrooveLily’s website. For details, visit: http://www.groovelily.com/
Never even made it to rehearsal today—long writing session in our apartment with Rachel. Our Orderly, Bryce Ryness, and his wife Meredith and daughter Mercy came by as I was winding down with Mose at the end of the day with some Paper Mario. They knocked on the door and Mercy’s happy 18-month-old face was grinning through at us. Mercy was saying “Mose! Mose! Mose!” and Mose came up to give her a hug at the doorway.
Bryce reported that the bridge of “Still Small Hours” has gone over like gangbusters with the patients, and they’re having a BLAST with it—and he seems to also really dig the new Patients’ bridge to “Ready For This,” the song that opens Act 2.
It’s funny how sometimes the things that come the most easily—like these two bits in the middle of pre-existing songs—are the parts that are the most effective. It’s a little like tricking yourself into doing a good job by getting your mind out of the way; if you think “this isn’t a big deal. I can see how to get this job done,” then you can simply do it. And these discrete pieces, where Val and I could see point A and point B and imagine a fun way to get between them—these pieces are the ones that are so easy to bring to life, and so fun. And it’s the vast, open expanses of open blank canvas that scare the crap out of us. (Or me, at least. I shouldn’t presume to say what scares the crap out of my wife, creatively. Though after nearly 17 years together I think I have some idea of what’s going on in her head.)
We wrote up a storm—Rachel re-did approximately 35 pages worth of Act 2, and I sent out piece after piece of updated sheet music in the direction of Emilia LaPenta, our wonderful Literary Intern who is in charge of changes to script and score, and making sure everyone who needs it gets a copy of same.
In addition, it was terrific to have us all in the room together—Rachel lounged on the couch with her macbook air, frowning at it for ages at a time, refusing my offers of hot beverages or snacks, and occasionally asking piercing questions about dialogue and character. Val would interrupt me every 10 minutes with another alternate version of a particularly tricky quatrain. And I would, maybe once an hour, ask them to come listen to a computer-generated playback of something while I pressed the “play” button in finale and they followed the bouncing ball of the on-screen sheet music. Whenever any of us had anything to present, the other two would have differing, strongly-held opinions, forcing all three of us to evaluate our own positions and frequently change sides. And by the end of each of these evaluating moments, we were all, at least tentatively, on the same path and the same side.
And that, my friends, is the end result of NINE YEARS OF WRITING TOGETHER. We’ve been lucky enough, since Val and I moved to LA, that McCarter has made it possible for Rachel to come out and stay either with us or in a nearby hotel for a week at a time three times in the past year and a half, and there’s really no question in any of our minds—we do better (and more) writing when we’re in the same building and can bounce ideas off each other immediately. We make so much more progress.
Tomorrow morning, we hire a sitter for Mose so we can hear the actors read through this two-thirds of Act 2 and see where we are. Wish us luck.
Brendan Milburn is the composer of Sleeping Beauty Wakes and a member of GrooveLily, a pop/rock band. The post below is published with permission from Brendan, and courtesy of GrooveLily’s website. For details, visit: http://www.groovelily.com/
Okay, I shouldn’t be writing this. I should be sleeping. But today was so great.
Firstly, we have a rehearsal pianist, Chris Ertelt. What this means is he can go over parts to the songs with the non-patients while I set up in another room and write with Val. This is heaven. Thank you, McCarter, for making it possible for Chris to be here while I write and write and write and write and write some more.
The green room in the Berlind, where I set up for good and where Val set up until she needed to get the heck away from me
Here’s where we set up at first: the green room. Nobody else was there yet, and we’d dropped Mose off at school—nothing to do but show up and actually do the work.
Then, stage management and interns of various stripes started showing up and unlocking doors, and Val set up in another room because it’s annoying being around me when I’m thwapping on a two-octave keyboard and humming and laughing when I come up with something I like.
Val, deep into it
Before rehearsal began, Michele Sammarco, Prop Master (mistress? master.) and a friendly guy whose name I didn’t catch maneuvered a big spinning wheel into the rehearsal room. I got all excited and had to start snapping pictures.
Michele and friend loading the spinning wheel into the rehearsal room. McCarter note: Production crew member pictured is Mark Gill.
And then the actors started arriving and we had to buckle down. And buckle down we did. For the full text of this blog post, visit www.groovelily.com
Numbering Posted by Garrett Ayers on March 31st, 2011
This is the first big musical I have ever worked on, so every aspect of this process is an enormous discovery. Walking into the rehearsal hall the first day, I noticed numbers taped across the downstage (front) part of the staging area. I had no idea that this numbering system is used to help the actors/dancers in musicals with their spacing. The numbers are measured beginning from the centerline and moving out to both sides (in feet). So a number 2 means 2 feet from center, 4 is 4 feet from center, etc. I took a photo of the numbering as an example. It seems like such a small thing, but is enormously helpful when dealing with a show this complex.
Garrett Ayers is the Assistant Director for Sleeping Beauty Wakes.
Brendan Milburn is the composer of Sleeping Beauty Wakes and a member of GrooveLily, a pop/rock band. The post below is published with permission from Brendan, and courtesy of GrooveLily’s website. For details, visit:
I shouldn’t even be writing this. I’m so behind with my part of the rewrites of our show. But I can’t help myself: today, after four years of readings and work at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ, we had our FIRST REHEARSAL with ACTORS and EVERYBODY all in the SAME ROOM. And it’s a PRODUCTION. And it’s REALLY HAPPENING. One of the great things about McCarter is that they have a big staff, and a big facility, and a very big, beautiful room in which to rehearse:
Emily Mann is briefly interrupted by me getting all excited and taking pictures
Mose keeping himself amused while grownups talk a lot about Sleeping Beauty Wakes
Our last first day of rehearsal here was for the Midsummer Night’s Dream we did with Tina Landau—and it was an equally auspicious first day then as today, so my hopes are high that this is going to be a wonderful ride in addition to a wonderful show.
Our 5 1/2-year old son, Mose, is on a six-week leave from his school in Glendale, CA—and a terrific school out here in Princeton has agreed to take him on. He’s very excited about the new school, his new classmates, his new coat hook and cubby, all labelled with his name. Despite his excitement, his new teachers thought it would be best if he came in later today for just a short time, to ramp up into the new school process. Consequently he attended the first hour or two of our first rehearsal, which mostly consisted of people talking about stuff he wasn’t particularly interested in, so he amused himself with Angry Birds on my phone.
Miranda Hoffman’s costume sketches, about which we are very psyched
There was one moment which was particularly memorable and enjoyable for him, which I just need to share: it’s tradition at McCarter for everyone in the room to stand and introduce themselves: name, job. I’m Cheryl Mintz, Production Stage Manager. I’m Valerie Vigoda, Lyricist. I’m Brendan Milburn, Composer.
Peter Nigrini’s idea for the staging of “You Make Me Feel Awake
Mose stood up when it was his turn, climbed up on his chair, and announced in a big theatrical voice, in front of the assembled crowd of about 50 people, “I’M MOSE, THE CAPED AVENGER!”
The design presentation by projection desinger Peter Nigrini was pretty terrific-this was the first chance we’d had to see some of his visions of how the set would transform from a sterile sleep disorder clinic into a wild, otherworldly dreamland.
The model of the set by Riccardo Hernandez
After a break for lunch and a discussion of how best to organize rehearsals, Musical Director James Sampliner and I split off into separate rooms with pianos in them to teach the music to the actors. James got the patients-who used to be the ensemble, but are now more individuated, and they sing my favorite music in the show, so we’re calling them the patients. I haven’t gotten to hear them rehearse yet, because I was busy with the other actors…
I got the non-patients-the King, Sleeping Beauty, The Doctor, and The Orderly. We headed off to dressing room #8 in the Mathews part of the building (which incidentally was my shared dressing room during Midsummer back in 2006) to grind through it amidst the extremely bright lights:
Bryce Ryness, Kecia Lewis-Evans and Bob Stillman on a break in dressing room #8
These people sound great. Kecia Lewis-Evans is our Doctor, and she’s got a really powerful presence (and a very powerful set of pipes).
Bryce Ryness is just silly—he can sing anything, and I’m astounded at his range. It’s going to be a wonderful problem deciding what kind of a voice the Orderly should have, because this guy is a baritone who can belt a high C. It’s crazy.
Bob Stillman is an old friend whose beautiful, James Taylory voice is kinda exactly what I’d always hoped for for the character of the King, and he needed only a little brushing up today because he pretty much remembered the whole score from when he learned his songs for the reading at Playwrights Horizons last December.
And Aspen Vincent is, well, Aspen Vincent. I don’t want to sound like a gushy fan, but I think I’m becoming a gushy fan. She’s got exactly the sound I was hoping for when we wrote these songs-she can do rock belting, she can do musical theatery mixing, and she can pick and choose-but mostly she just sounds like what I always heard in my head, and it’s a gas.
It’s really happening. It’s finally happening. I MUST go to bed now so I can wake up at four a.m. and finish these interstitial recitative bits for Act 1, but I’m just too excited.
Doc Porter (Lucas Van Engen) and Barnette Lloyd (Dustin Ingram) don’t have a scene together in Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart. Fortunately, these two multi-talented performers used their many skills (and apparently copious amounts of free time in Princeton!) to imagine what that scene might have been, if Beth Henley had decided to write it… as a music video. Enjoy the youtube clip below!
We hope you’ll join us this Sunday, March 20th for a special post-show discussion: Crimes of the Heart in Conversation: Women, Comedy, and the Legacy of Beth Henley.
This cross-disciplinary symposium, featuring Tony-nominated playwright Lisa Kron, former Saturday Night Live staff writer Patricia Marx, Chair of Princeton University’s Department of Psychology Deborah Prentice, and Princeton University Contemporary Drama Scholar Tamsen Wolff will explore (and explode!) the common assertion that women “have no sense of humor.” We’ll discuss how Beth Henley’s work changed the landscape for women writing comedic plays, ways in which comedy upends gender norms, and how humor intersects with mental health. This conversation between four brilliant and hilarious women promises to be lively, engaging, and unpredictable!
This event is free and open to the public. Whether you’re seeing the show that afternoon, already saw it, or have your tickets for next week, you won’t want to miss this illuminating conversation.
The discussion will begin directly following the 2pm performance on Sunday, March 20th (approximate discussion start time: 4:30pm) in the Matthews Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center.
The McCarter “In Conversation” Series consists of symposium-style discussions among leading artists, scholars, and other public figures that foster cross-disciplinary exploration of big questions and concepts in McCarter’s plays. The spring 2011 “In Conversation” Series is co-sponsored by Princeton University’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Click here to buy tickets for the March 20th Performance of Crimes of the Heart!
You can’t really ask for a better plug than to have Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Beth Henley, say, “I don’t feel very close to many theaters, but McCarter I really feel a kinship with so I’m just so pleased that they picked my play. It sounds like it’s going to be a great production.” In a recent interview about our upcoming production, Henley reflects on Crimes of the Heart: what originally inspired it and how her relationship to the work has changed in the thirty years since it premiered in New York City. The full interview can be found on the show’s website, but here are some context-free highlights:
“I think I have more perspective on their youth, and I think the play has a hope to it because they’re young.”
“What happens when something goes terribly awry and the family’s already been kicked in the face?”
“One thing that I think is great that the play has, is giving women actresses the opportunity to show their skills. You have to be a comedian and you have to be able to do something dramatic to make this play work.”
“Now I see it as very much a play of its time in such a specific way that it, perhaps, is why it is more universal.”
“In the South, they always say people talk a little bit longer because you’re sitting out on the porch.”
“Your pain is not precious, just get on with it or make a joke of it.”
“The thing is people in the South can present their pain but not make it a burden on others.”
“Sometimes the play knows more than you do …”
More about what Henley learned from Crimes of the Heart as well as other engaging material about characters, setting, and the creative team behind the production can be found on the show’s website-be sure to visit! http://www.mccarter.org/crimesoftheheart/
Coming up next at McCarter is a production of Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Crimes of the Heart. In an interview with Artistic Programs Associate Erica Nagel, Set Designer Andromache Chalfant offers insight into creating the physical world of this American Classic.
Andromache Chalfant has been designing whole houses lately, even though the play takes place in just one room. “It might seem odd to do so much thinking about rooms of a house that you won’t see on stage,” she says, “but you can look at hundreds of layouts for old homes before you find one that really lets you get inside the logic of the house.”
“Setting the whole play in a kitchen is great because it’s a central recognizable element,” Chalfant says. “But it creates a challenge to fill the stage believably. One way to address that is to think about the rest of the house. How do you make the house live in the transitions — the thresholds between the kitchen and the rest of the house or the rest of the town? What do we see when we look through those doors?”
“I don’t know if this is part of the quintessential Southernness of the play, but there is an utter lack of privacy in this kitchen. There are all these entrances that disrupt private conversations or actions. In this house, people can enter your space without warning. So that’s interesting to consider thematically, of course, but it also necessitates practical consideration of things like, where do we put the doors? How many ways in and out are there? How do windows figure into the public and private spaces in the MaGrath sisters’ world?”
Although the term “Kitchen sink drama” has taken on a slightly old-fashioned, or even disparaging valence, Chalfant is quick to point out that the term was actually coined to describe a revolutionary form of theater, which depicted working class people, and stood in stark contrast to the popular plays of the day set in parlors and drawing rooms.”A kitchen is like the backstage of the house,” Chalfant says. “It’s the least formal room. It’s where things are prepared.”
When asked about how it feels to take on a modern American classic as a set designer, Chalfant thinks for a moment. “What is the definition of a classic? Something that lasts, I guess. Something that holds up. A classic takes on new layers of meaning over time.”
When audiences experience McCarter’s production of Crimes of the Heart, the creative team wants the audience to feel not only the presence of the rest of the MaGrath house, but also the history within its walls. “The MaGrath kitchen has layers of history from the 1940s through the 1970s,” says Chalfant. “So I’ve been thinking about what the bottom layer of history is in the MaGrath kitchen. Under any updates, like new appliances or remodeled floors, what is the underlying structure? What has this family been building on for the last 30 years?”
By Erica Nagel
Crimes of the Heart runs from March 8-27 in the Matthews Theatre.
It is such a pleasure to watch these Crimes of the Heart actors dig into their roles, but it’s even more fun to be able to sit back and be utterly and completely swept away by how this play sounds. I knew the play was set in Mississippi, but I wasn’t prepared for how entertaining and inherently musical Beth Henley’s language is. In fact, during our last stumble-through on Sunday, director Liesl Tommy told the cast that the play has to “sing.” At different points in rehearsal, I actually find myself closing my eyes and simply listening to the banter…
Thom Jones, the production’s vocal coach, is incredibly specific about honing in on this particular southern dialect. He has specifically stressed the importance of avoiding the trap of entering what he calls “Tennessee Williams-land.” According to Thom, Tennessee Williams’ characters are breathy, elevated and tend to drop the R’s at the end of their words. In this Mississippi dialect, the R’s are stressed and there is a drive and a weight to the delivery. It’s been interesting to see what accents and dialects the actors came in with on the first day, and how they are now beginning to move from each actor’s “idea” of a Southern accent and the reality of that region of Mississippi.
Posted by Garrett Ayers, Directing Intern at McCarter Theatre.
Brendan Milburn is the composer of Sleeping Beauty Wakes and a member of GrooveLily, a pop/rock band. The post below is published with permission from Brendan, and courtesy of GrooveLily’s website. For details, visit:
“I think I have more perspective on their youth, and I think the play has a hope to it because they’re young.”
Andromache Chalfant has been designing whole houses lately, even though the play takes place in just one room. “It might seem odd to do so much thinking about rooms of a house that you won’t see on stage,” she says, “but you can look at hundreds of layouts for old homes before you find one that really lets you get inside the logic of the house.”
