Pre-Show Preparation, Questions for Discussion, and Activities

Note to Educators: Use the following assignments, questions, and activities to introduce your students to Ten Cents a Dance and its intellectual and artistic origins, context, and themes, as well as to engage their imaginations and creativity before they see the production.

1. Ten Cents a Dance:  Web Site Basics.  Share the various articles, interviews, and information found on McCarter’s Ten Cents a Dance Web Site with your students to provide a developmental and creative context for the work of its award-winning conceiver and director John Doyle and his appreciation of the musical and lyrical genius of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.
   
   
2. Musical Theater and YOU?   Considered one of America’s greatest contributions to World Theater, the contemporary stage musical is perhaps the most popular and prevalent of dramatic forms.  Most high schools with drama curricula or after-school programs/clubs mount a musical as a major (or only) production every year; musicals are typically offered by the average local community theater; professional performing arts centers around the nation feature touring versions of the Broadway’s latest blockbusters; and much of Broadway itself caters to the musical theater tourist dollar—at present, 25 of 42 shows running or in previews on Broadway are either “book musicals” (in which song and dance are integrated into a story) or musical revues.  Ask your students to discuss their experiences with and thoughts about the musical theater form with the activities and questions below.
   
   
   • Compile a list of musicals that students have seen and/or in which they have performed.  Ask them to describe their interest in and/or relationship to musical theater.  Which were the students’ favorite shows and why were they their favorites?  For students who have little interest or a negative perception of musicals, ask them to explain their disinterest or dislike.  For fanatics of the form, ask them to give explanation to their fondness.
   • How is the musical theater experience different from the experience of seeing a nonmusical play?  Ask students to consider the way in which music, song, and dance changes or affects the nature of theatrical expression and how they affect the audience.  Which subgenre of musical theater—the book musical or musical revue—do they prefer and why?  To what kinds of stories and/or subjects is musical theater best suited?  (Ask them to review the stories and subjects of the list of musicals compiled on the board.)
   • If any of your students have seen director John Doyle’s recent, groundbreaking revivals of Stephen Sondhiem’s Sweeney Todd or Company, ask them to describe the nature of these productions and any outstanding or distinctive theatrical characteristics of Mr. Doyle’s work.
   • Ask students to consider what role music plays in their lives.  When do you listen to music?  Where do you listen to music?  Do you create or participate in creating music?  Are there any significant events in your life that are closely associated with music?  What meaning does music have in your life?  Are certain types of music more meaningful to you than other types of music?
   • Ask students to consider what would appeal to them and their peers—in terms of subject material and style of music—for a new musical production.  Also have them consider what stories might be ripe for new book musical or songs or themes for a new musical revue.

3. Rodgers and Hart for a New Generation.  A commission by the International Festival of Musical Theatre in Cardiff, Wales, encouraged director John Doyle’s conception of Ten Cents a Dance:

   They asked me if I would do a sort of Rodgers & Hart revue, if we call it that…it’s an evening of Rodgers & Hart.  And I did it for that very reason [i.e., to introduce the work of Rodgers and Hart to a new generation]:  Because I just think the songs are so wonderful and they’re often forgotten about, somehow.  Many of the songs are almost better out of the context of the shows they were written for.  They stand out so beautifully in their own right.  

   — from Playbill.com’s “Brief Encounter with Ten Cents a Dance Director John Doyle”  

Before the performance, introduce your Generation Z students to a one or all of the Rodgers and Hart songs linked below:  

“My Funny Valentine”
“It Never Entered My Mind”
“Manhattan”

• First, ask students to explore the lyrics of Lorenz Hart, referred to by author F. Scott Fitzgerald as “the poet laureate of America.”  For each song, ask them to consider the following:
• Have you heard this song before?  Can you remember the context?  The singer?
• What “pops” or stands out for you in the song?
• What subjects or themes are explored in the composition?
• Does this song tell a story?  What’s the story it tells?
• Can you imagine a context for this song?  Who could be singing the song?  To whom is s/he singing?  Why is s/he singing it?
• Does anything specifically make the lyrics products of their time or is there a timeless quality to the song(s)?

• Next, allow your students to hear Hart’s lyrics in the context of master melodist Richard Rodgers’ musical compositions.  [Recordings of the above songs are widely available online. It might be interesting and enlightening to find a number of different recordings of each song for comparison.]

  • Have you heard this music before?  Can you remember the context?
  • What “pops” or stand out to you in terms of the melody?
  • Is the mood, feeling, or attitude of the song what you imagined when first exploring its lyrics?  How would you describe the music in terms of mood/feeling/attitude?
    
    
  • For students able to listen to more than one artist’s rendition of a song(s):

    • How does each artist approach the material?  How do the various recordings compare musically?  Vocally? 
    • What alterations, if any, has the artist made to Hart’s lyrics?  Has the artist taken any liberties with Rodgers’ music?

     

  • For students able to explore more than one song:
    • Are there any qualities that these songs have in common either musically or lyrically?
    • Do you detect a Rodgers and Hart “signature” or style from these songs?  How would you describe that style?
    • These songs from the Rodgers and Hart songbook are considered American standards. That is, songs that have remained popular over the years, are held in continuing esteem, and are commonly used in musical repertoires.  What is it about these songs that account for their standardization?

  4. With a (Love) Song in My Heart.  A majority of the thirty-six Rodgers and Hart songs featured in Ten Cents a Dance are categorized as love or relationship songs, some with telling titles that hint at their various attitudes toward love or loving relationships—or not so loving relationships, as the case may be—such as:

  “My Romance” “Falling in Love with Love” “My Funny Valentine” “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” “It’s Got to Be Love”

  “To Keep My Love Alive” “This Can’t Be Love “My Heart Stood Still” “Nobody’s Heart Belongs to Me” “It Never Entered My Mind”

  • Ask your students to compile a list of their favorite love songs and to discuss what they believe to be the characteristics of a good love song.  Also ask them to delineate between the various attitudes of love songs [e.g., first-love, torch song (unrequited or lost love), happy-to-be-in-love, break-up, angry, anti-love, new-love, true-love].
    
    
  • Give your students the opportunity to write their own simple love song lyrics with two verses and a chorus/refrain.  The song’s inspiration can come from anywhere: From personal experience; from an observed situation or relationship; from a story they’ve heard, book they’ve read, or film they’ve seen; from a work of visual art; etc.
    
    
  • Songs need not be set to music, that is, no student need write original music to accompany their song, however if there are any musicians in class, they can team up with lyricists to compose original tunes for lyrics.
    
    
  • Students may devise their lyrics with a specific found or popular melody or tune in mind, but their lyrics should in no way relate to or resemble the original lyrics of the borrowed tune. [Hint:  Instrumental tunes or non-love-themed melodies might by easier to write original lyrics to.]
    
    
  • Create a “coffee house” atmosphere for song sharing.  Students can share their songs by singing them or reading them for the entertainment and appreciation of their peers. Following song presentations ask your students to reflect upon their song’s inspiration, their writing process and the joys and challenges of writing a love song.