So, last entry I talked a bit about Parade, the musical. I discussed the issues with the actual script, text, and songs, pointing out how difficult the language can be. Now, I have an interview with Katy Helbacka, director of Parade down at the Renegade Theatre.
I wanted to find out more about her thought process as she begins to take on the task of directing the show.
What, if any, are worries you have about dealing with the anti-Semitism and racism the show brings memories of?
Of course, anytime you're surrounded by racism - whether it's real or being staged - it's uncomfortable. It makes you sad to think people feel that way. But it is also a real part of our history that we cant ignore - instead we should learn from it. And I think this show helps with that.
What do you hope to achieve with this show (as an example to society)?
I honestly dont think of this show as a message about race or anti-semitism, I think of it as a story about one man. One man and his wife and what they achieve together in dire circumstances. There are many themes tied into this one story - racism, sexism, war, law and justice, hatred --- but really, it's about the character journey of Leo Frank, and hopefully his story sheds light on many topics that will just make our audiences go home and think.
What drew you to the show in the first place?
The main reason I was drawn to the piece is because it's a moving and powerful musical that too often goes underproduced or overlooked. It fits perfectly with the mission of our theater, of being the home for new and lesser known works, plus, I feel Duluth may have a special interest in the show due to our history with the Clayton, Jackson, McGhie case.
As Katy goes on to direct the show, I will be interviewing her to find out more about her experience with the show.
I will also be interviewing Bill Payne, professor and director of South Pacific at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Next blog, I look forward to dealing with the issue of "colorblind casting", or, casting actors of one ethnicity as a character of a different ethnicity.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Parade-the Leo Frank story
Duluth will be holding auditions for Jason Robert Brown's 1998 masterpiece Parade on October 9th at the Renegade Theatre.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=117234911663996&ref=ts
For those unfamiliar with the musical, it revolves around the 1913-1915 trail of Leo Frank and the scandal that shook Atlanta and America. Frank, a man from Brooklyn, had moved to Georgia and was working as the superintendant of a pencil factory. He oversaw many employees, including a teenager named Mary Phagen. When Mary was found dead in the basement of the factory, Frank was immediately suspected, despite having alibis and no previous record.
Why? Leo Frank was a Jew.
(Photo Credit http://poeforward.blogspot.com/2010/08/deathday-leo-frank-1884-1915-innocent.html, an awesome blog about Edgar Allen Poe and his influence on pop culture!)
The score is peppered with jabs at Frank's religion, as the character Britt Craig uses the city's prejudice to jump start his career, like in the number "Real Big News".
"All I needed was a snippy, pissy Yankee all along!
Take this superstitious city, add one little Jew from Brooklyn
Plus a college education and a mousy little wife"
"So give him fangs, give him horns,
Give him scaly, hairy palms!
Have him droolin' out the corner of his mouth!
He's a master of disguise!
Check those bug-out creepy eyes!
Sure, that fella's here to rape the whole damned South!"
Segregated Atlanta is also a hot issue in the musical, as "That's What He Said" goes right to the most flinched at of words,
"Why they gonna call that man?
Wait a minute!
Lord, 'nother nigger:"
And the black community offers up, in the song "A Rumblin' and a Rollin'",
"I can tell you this, as a matter of fact,
That the local hotels wouldn't be so packed
If a little black girl had gotten attacked."
"'Cause a white man gonna get hung, you see.
There's a black man swingin' in ev'ry tree."
Leo Frank was given life in prison. A lynch mob (comprising of mostly KKK members) took him from his cell and hanged him from a tree.
Such harsh words accompany such amazing and challenging music. But the story here is a warning.
The Onstage Journal and writer Christopher Rawson (http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/onstage/archive/2009/03/20/parade-musical-tragedy-powerfully-realized-at-point-park.aspx) offers a review and a great piece of insight on the show.
"It's not a comfortable experience. But there's a lot to be said for a show that can stir passion so deeply. Out of this ugly material, Brown, Uhry and Hal Prince (co-conceiver and original director) create a powerful dramatization of the seamy side of American self-conceit."
The Renegade Theater production of Parade plays from February 3rd to the 19th, and you can reserve tickets or find out more by visiting their website,
http://www.renegadetheatercompany.org/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=117234911663996&ref=ts
For those unfamiliar with the musical, it revolves around the 1913-1915 trail of Leo Frank and the scandal that shook Atlanta and America. Frank, a man from Brooklyn, had moved to Georgia and was working as the superintendant of a pencil factory. He oversaw many employees, including a teenager named Mary Phagen. When Mary was found dead in the basement of the factory, Frank was immediately suspected, despite having alibis and no previous record.
Why? Leo Frank was a Jew.
(Photo Credit http://poeforward.blogspot.com/2010/08/deathday-leo-frank-1884-1915-innocent.html, an awesome blog about Edgar Allen Poe and his influence on pop culture!)
The score is peppered with jabs at Frank's religion, as the character Britt Craig uses the city's prejudice to jump start his career, like in the number "Real Big News".
"All I needed was a snippy, pissy Yankee all along!
Take this superstitious city, add one little Jew from Brooklyn
Plus a college education and a mousy little wife"
"So give him fangs, give him horns,
Give him scaly, hairy palms!
Have him droolin' out the corner of his mouth!
He's a master of disguise!
Check those bug-out creepy eyes!
Sure, that fella's here to rape the whole damned South!"
Segregated Atlanta is also a hot issue in the musical, as "That's What He Said" goes right to the most flinched at of words,
"Why they gonna call that man?
Wait a minute!
Lord, 'nother nigger:"
And the black community offers up, in the song "A Rumblin' and a Rollin'",
"I can tell you this, as a matter of fact,
That the local hotels wouldn't be so packed
If a little black girl had gotten attacked."
"'Cause a white man gonna get hung, you see.
There's a black man swingin' in ev'ry tree."
Leo Frank was given life in prison. A lynch mob (comprising of mostly KKK members) took him from his cell and hanged him from a tree.
Such harsh words accompany such amazing and challenging music. But the story here is a warning.
The Onstage Journal and writer Christopher Rawson (http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/onstage/archive/2009/03/20/parade-musical-tragedy-powerfully-realized-at-point-park.aspx) offers a review and a great piece of insight on the show.
"It's not a comfortable experience. But there's a lot to be said for a show that can stir passion so deeply. Out of this ugly material, Brown, Uhry and Hal Prince (co-conceiver and original director) create a powerful dramatization of the seamy side of American self-conceit."
The Renegade Theater production of Parade plays from February 3rd to the 19th, and you can reserve tickets or find out more by visiting their website,
http://www.renegadetheatercompany.org/
Friday, October 1, 2010
South Pacific
I'm going to start the conversation off with a bang-South Pacific. One of the MOST racially themed musicals (if not the MOST racially themed musical) ever written and produced.
The whole darn thing is about race. Literally.
You've got the war being fought, in the first place, in which one can argue that one of the leading issues is Hitler's campaign for the Aryan race to rise up and wipe out other "lesser" races.
You've got a group of American soliders set up on the island of Espirite Santu, south of China and right off of Australia, dealing with the Pacific Islanders and the Tonkinese workers who inhabit the island.
And finally, you've got the two main Protagonists, Joe Cable and Nellie Forbush, trying to overlook the races of the people they have fallen in love with while on the island.
Oh, and there's a stereotypical Tonkinese souvenir seller named Bloody Mary.
(Photo Credit the San Fransico Sentinel website, http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=43415)
One truly has to hear the music to understand the controversy. Here is a clip from the Carnegie Hall Concert production of 2005.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMSWEVtmHvk
Key things to listen for:
"Bloody Mary is the girl I love, well ain't that too damn bad."
"Her skin is tender as Dimaggio's glove."
"She is always chewin' betel nuts, and she don't use pepsodent."
So, basically, she's ugly, rough, drug addicted and has no teeth. And this is one of the opening songs of the show.
Mary exists in the show for a reason, though. The sailors use her as a mascot, mocking her and poking fun at her. As audience members, we see the injustice.
Next, Joe Cable. He falls in love with Bloody Mary's daughter, Liat, and refuses to marry her because she is Tonkinese. He sings this poignant song, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwK8HyAbFZA&feature=related
Here are the full lyrics, from http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/southpacific/youvegottobecarefullytaught.htm
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!
Victor Lana, in a review of the musical you can find at http://viclana.blogspot.com/2010/08/tv-review-south-pacific-live-from.html, states of this song,
"One only has to really listen to the words of "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" to know the strength of the message sent here. In essence, as powerful as a soliloquy in a Shakespearean play, the song is meant to reveal Lt. Cable's issues with race, but we can also understand that love, if it is meant to conquer all or not, can in the end just break someone's heart."
And finally, Nellie Forbush's story...a girl from Little Rock, Arkansas, who falls in love with a French man living on the island, only refusing to marry him because of his previous marriage to a Polynesian woman (which left him with two half white, half black children). She is the only character to overcome her racism, and end up the happy adoptive mother of the two children.
The issue: How is this show put on? How do companies portray the racism without offending? This is something that I will be looking at, seeing as I am currently in the University of Minnesota Duluth's production of South Pacific, playing the walking stereotype, Bloody Mary. I am learning the tricks of playing a raced character carefully...hopefully.
The whole darn thing is about race. Literally.
You've got the war being fought, in the first place, in which one can argue that one of the leading issues is Hitler's campaign for the Aryan race to rise up and wipe out other "lesser" races.
You've got a group of American soliders set up on the island of Espirite Santu, south of China and right off of Australia, dealing with the Pacific Islanders and the Tonkinese workers who inhabit the island.
And finally, you've got the two main Protagonists, Joe Cable and Nellie Forbush, trying to overlook the races of the people they have fallen in love with while on the island.
Oh, and there's a stereotypical Tonkinese souvenir seller named Bloody Mary.
(Photo Credit the San Fransico Sentinel website, http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=43415)
One truly has to hear the music to understand the controversy. Here is a clip from the Carnegie Hall Concert production of 2005.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMSWEVtmHvk
Key things to listen for:
"Bloody Mary is the girl I love, well ain't that too damn bad."
"Her skin is tender as Dimaggio's glove."
"She is always chewin' betel nuts, and she don't use pepsodent."
So, basically, she's ugly, rough, drug addicted and has no teeth. And this is one of the opening songs of the show.
Mary exists in the show for a reason, though. The sailors use her as a mascot, mocking her and poking fun at her. As audience members, we see the injustice.
Next, Joe Cable. He falls in love with Bloody Mary's daughter, Liat, and refuses to marry her because she is Tonkinese. He sings this poignant song, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwK8HyAbFZA&feature=related
Here are the full lyrics, from http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/southpacific/youvegottobecarefullytaught.htm
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!
Victor Lana, in a review of the musical you can find at http://viclana.blogspot.com/2010/08/tv-review-south-pacific-live-from.html, states of this song,
"One only has to really listen to the words of "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" to know the strength of the message sent here. In essence, as powerful as a soliloquy in a Shakespearean play, the song is meant to reveal Lt. Cable's issues with race, but we can also understand that love, if it is meant to conquer all or not, can in the end just break someone's heart."
And finally, Nellie Forbush's story...a girl from Little Rock, Arkansas, who falls in love with a French man living on the island, only refusing to marry him because of his previous marriage to a Polynesian woman (which left him with two half white, half black children). She is the only character to overcome her racism, and end up the happy adoptive mother of the two children.
The issue: How is this show put on? How do companies portray the racism without offending? This is something that I will be looking at, seeing as I am currently in the University of Minnesota Duluth's production of South Pacific, playing the walking stereotype, Bloody Mary. I am learning the tricks of playing a raced character carefully...hopefully.