With his latest role, actor Rory Donovan had his “eureka!” moment while sitting in the makeup chair.

Once he was all polished up and ready to hit the rehearsal stage, he looked up and saw himself in the mirror in full makeup for the first time.

His skin was deep green, his forehead scarred with an oversize row of dark stitches. He was completely bald up top, with his scant black hair clinging around the back of his scalp.

Within an hour, Donovan had been transformed from his mild-mannered self into Frankenstein’s monster. Or rather, young Frankenstein’s monster.

Donovan, 27, and fresh out of his training at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, is the hulking brute at the center of the touring production of “Young Frankenstein,” which comes Tuesday to the Abilene Civic Center. It’s the first show in this year’s Best of Broadway Series at the center.

Read the whole article here.

The Music of Good Person of Szechwan

Paul Dessau wrote the music for Good Person in 1947 and ’48, five years after the original production, which had music composed by the Swiss composer Georg Fruh. Dessau was a favorite collaborator of Brecht, mostly because he was so agreeable to everything Brecht asked of him. “I have no pride. When a genius says something good to me, I believe him. I work on what he gives me as if it were my own.”

The resulting compositions are a striking demonstration of Brecht’s story-telling style. The music in Good Person reflects the attitude of the narrative in precisely the way Brecht preferred. Many of the melodies are pleasant to the ear, but are harmonized with dissonant chords. Some have a regular rhythm much of the time, but then there will be a measure with too few or too many beats. We can never relax, listening to it.

There are several categories of music in the score: strophic songs, where there are multiple verses sung to the same music; spoken songs, where the accompaniment is played but the voice doesn’t follow a melody; spoken texts with fragments of instrumental lines interspersed; and instrumental underscoring.

Brecht felt that all the elements of theater, music, scenery, lighting, costuming, acting, and singing, should comment separately. “Song of Smoke” has a cynical attitude, but the music is soothing. Our expectations of the way lyrics and accompaniment should match create a contradiction in our perception of it, forcing us to consider why it feels so alien.

For the production currently running at the Arts Bank, through November 19^th, some adaptation of Dessau’s music was needed. It is our strong feeling that amplification by means of microphones was not an option. We want the audience to work to listen, and so we decided not to use Dessau’s instrumentation, which is too loud much of the time. He calls for flute, clarinet, trumpet, multiple percussion, guitar, and piano. We have actors who are also accomplished musicians, so we incorporate them into the accompaniment, which in itself is an alienating effect. A recorder stands in for the flute, mandolin and violin take the place of the clarinet, horn instead of trumpet.  Percussion and guitar are as written. We use piano for most parts of the score, but use the instruments to point up specific places in the play.

The catchiest tune in the play is “The Song of the Eighth Elephant,” which appears in the tobacco factory scene. Workers, bullied by Yang Sun, sing about Little Brother, who in turn bosses his elephant brothers into tough physical labor for the sake of his own boss. The rhythm is relentless, and we reflect it in the slapping of hands on the factory benches, as well as with piano and drums, while Yang Sun whacks metal pipes together in time. We also use the melody in an eerie, a capella version at the top of Act II.

The music jolts, soothes, and intrudes throughout the play, and tells the story beyond the spoken lines.

UARTS Playwrights Take to the Underground!
P. Seth Bauer and Jacqueline Goldfinger led 30 playwriting students underground two weeks ago, charging them with writing short train plays in under an hour, all while riding the subway.  They rushed down to south Philadelphia and back, making rewrites at the stadium platform before hurrying back to Terra in order to print out scripts, cast them and present them all to each other in a marathon staged reading of all 30 hilarious and surprising plays.    Bauer will be leading a similar theatrical excursion this January at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts with University of Pennsylvania, only next time they’ll all be off book.  Who says you need more time to make theatre?

Brind School Assistant Professor Rick Stoppleworth reports on some of his recent adventures:

New Friends Found In Sweden

In September I attended an international conference of theater educators titled “Whose Art Form Is It, Anyway?” The conference was organized by the Musical Theater Educators Alliance International and was hosted by the University of Gothenburg Academy of Music and Drama and the Balettakademien, Folkunivetsitetet. There were teachers of every musical theater discipline from over 15 different countries gathered in Gothenburg, Sweden to explore, discuss and share ideas about how to approach the possibilities and challenges in making musical theater education not only pedagogically sound but artistically relevant and vibrant. For me it was one of those paradoxical moments in life, exhausting me and exhilarating me at the same time.

I attended workshop presentations in Clowning through Dance (presented by Lara Teeter for those of you who were in ON YOUR TOES), Michael Chekhov in Song, a choreography workshop using “Ease On Down The Road” from THE WIZ, a master class/discussion panel in the science and practicality of vocal production, a group discussion on the potential of new and changing forms in musical theater education, an acting workshop using text and physical expression to create environment among others, and a very interesting panel discussion on translating libretti and lyric from English into other languages.

My goal, as an acting teacher, was to learn how other teachers bridge the gap between the visceral, immediate impulse of the actor and the structured, formulaic demand of meter and lyric for the singer. I was also fortunate to be invited to present a workshop, “For The Birds” based on the work I’ve been exploring in my acting studio using peacock feathers as a tool to release physical tension, examine habitual behavior and promote a full physical response to impulse and thought. I worked with 12 upper-level students from the University and the Academy in front of the other teachers attending the conference. This was the first time I’d brought my feathers out in public (so to speak) and I was a bit nervous. I started the session with a question to my 12 Swedish students; how is acting a paradox? Without hesitation 12 hands were raised and the two hours ‘flew’ by. The students were eager, responsive and challenged by many of the same things as our Brind students. The work with the feathers was productive with realizations of emotional power, experience of story telling through song, softening of focus to engage the room and release of constriction helping to free vocal production and musical expression being made by the students. As I reflected on my time with them I was impressed by the support and breadth of knowledge these students brought to their work, being able to articulate and support choices and interpretation with clarity and specificity, and doing so in a foreign language! In comparison I was also left with a renewed commitment and confidence in the acting training that we offer at the Brind School, preparing actors who can reproduce choices made with authenticity and vivid dynamic.

After one of our group discussions in a large rehearsal hall/black box type space the room suddenly went dark. Out of that darkness came the beat of hands drumming on a wooden cube. The lights raised and we were entertained by a group of students from the Ballet Academy in a piece they had created from a current Swedish pop song. Their harmonies were beautiful, their choreography was dynamic and the story they told in language I didn’t understand was engaging and powerful. Whose Art Form Is It, Anyway? – I guess it’s anybody’s with has the drive to make it!

Food for thought from the book “The Empty Space” by Peter Brook, shared by Brind School Assistant Professor Ernie Losso:

“A word does not start as a word—-it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behavior which dictates the need for expression. This process occurs inside the dramatist; it is repeated inside the actor. Both may only be conscious of the words, but both for the author and then the actor, the word is a small visible portion of a gigantic unseen formation. Some writers attempt to nail down their meaning and intentions in stage directions and explanations, yet we cannot help being struck by the fact that the best dramatists explain themselves the least. They recognize that further indications will most probably be useless.  They recognize that the only way to find the true path to the speaking of a word is through a process that parallels the original creative one. This can neither be by-passed nor simplified.”

Behind the scenes at a rehearsal for High Fidelity, currently running at the Arts Bank Theater thru October 22. tickets.uarts.edu

High Fidelity opens in a week (October 14) at the Arts Bank, which means this is a good time to read this excellent essay by director Scott Miller about all the things there are to love in this distinctive and brilliant contemporary musical.  And then click here and order your tickets!

Dr. Mari Kathleen Fielder has provided the following excellent dramaturgical notes to enhance your experience of this weekend’s production of TOP GIRLS. A condensed version of these notes appears in the TOP GIRLS program. Click here to get tickets for TOP GIRLS.

“She’s a bit thick – a bit funny.  She’s not going to make it.”

Such is the cold indictment that our top Top Girl, Marlene, makes of her abandoned, mentally-challenged daughter.  Like so many Top Girls, Marlene assesses the ability to “make it” not only by male success standards, but also by those of the controlling capitalist class.  Those without the sanctioned appearance, education, ambition and self-promotion: relegated at one glance to the social junk heap.  They, in Marlene’s words, are “lazy and stupid.”  In this life, they get what they deserve.  Nothing.

London-born playwright Caryl Churchill wrote Top Girls in 1982, just as Britain was acclimating itself to its first female Prime Minister - - it’s first, if you will, Top Girl.  Churchill, born in 1938, began playwriting while at Oxford in the 1950’s.  She came of age during Britain’s great decline, its economy shattered by the World War and then the collapse of the colonial empire.  Business nationalization and social security programs seemed reasonable mitigators.  The plight of the working class dominated the era’s drama: gritty, realistic sagas about entrapment and frustration known as the Anger Movement.  Socialist solutions dominated.  Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop particularly championed the Epic Theatre methods of Communist East German theatre maker and theoretician Bertolt Brecht.  Brecht, famously, had rejected the way in which “dramatic theatre,” with its suspense-filled well-made play formula and its empathetic protagonist, lured its audience to a predetermined resolution.  To Brecht, this was not unlike the ruling class leading their workers to share the rulers’ self-serving vision of how society should function.  Brecht upheld instead “epic theatre,” a non-linear theatre that forced viewers to arrive at their own conclusions.  Optimally, this conclusion would include the impetus to take much-needed social action in the real world.

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The Ira Brind School of Theater Arts is currently producing two challenging contemporary works that address notions of female identity, integrity and self-worth as part of its Platform Series. What does it mean to be a “top girl” or a “first lady?” What does a woman need to do to succeed in what is often called a “man’s world?” Two talented ensembles comprised chiefly of women will explore these issues as the Brind School presents Michael John LaChiusa’s musical First Lady Suite on September 29 - October 2 and Caryl Churchill’s drama Top Girls October 6 - 9 in the Caplan Studio Theater, 211 S. Broad St., Philadelphia.

A quartet celebrated First Ladies – Jackie Kennedy, Mamie Eisenhower, Bess Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt – are given fantastical portraits by composer-lyricist Michael John LaChiusa in his musical First Lady Suite.  LaChiusa is recognized as one of the most original voices currently writing for the contemporary musical stage; the Brind School produced his musical See What I Wanna See as part of the Philly Fringe two years ago, and his musical adaptation of Edna Ferber’s Giant received critical acclaim after its premiere at Signature Theater Company in Arlington VA last season.

Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls begins as a fantasy encounter between iconic historical figures, as Marlene, a modern-day executive, hosts a dinner party in a London restaurant to celebrate a recent job promotion and invites five women from the past as her guests. As the play unfolds, Churchill examines the kinds of challenges that ambitious women must face in their pursuit of success, and the price that Marlene has paid to become a “Top Girl.” Since its premiere at the Royal Court Theater in 1982, Churchill’s play has been hailed as a “bold and provocative” milestone in contemporary playwriting.

Both of these provocative productions are helmed by “first ladies” of the Brind School of Theater Arts.  First Lady Suite is directed by Dr. Patricia Raine, who is the head of the Brind School’s Musical Theatre program. Dr. Raine had an extensive career as singer/actor in over 35 leading roles in musicals, opera, and dramatic theater in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.  She is an internationally renowned clinician in the field of musical theater performance, and her past directing efforts have earned her a Barrymore nomination.

Top Girls is directed by Jackson Gay, an award-winning theater director who graduated from The University of the Arts in 1999 with a BFA in acting. Ms. Gay received her MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama and currently directs off-Broadway and throughout the US at prestigious venues like Peoples’ Light and Theater, the Alley Theater in Houston and new play festivals like Sundance, Ojai and PlayPenn.

The cast of the two productions is comprised of students in the Brind School’s BFA conservatory programs in Acting and Musical Theater. Scenic, costume, and lighting design and stage management are also provided by Brind School students in the BFA Theater Design & Technology and Directing, Playwriting, & Production programs.

Tickets for First Lady Suite and Top Girls are available online at tickets.uarts.edu. Further information is available by phone at 215-717-6499.

The Brind School’s examination of challenges faced by women in positions of responsibility will continue this winter, when the school presents a reading of Leading Lady, a new musical by P. Seth Bauer and Charles Gilbert about the career of Mae Desmond, a prominent Philadelphia actress who managed one of the city’s most successful resident stock companies in the 1920’s. Leading Lady will be one of the works featured in the Brind School’s New Play Festival, scheduled for January 26 – February 4, 2012.

UArts alum Justin Guarini, appearing in the Media Theatre’s upcoming production of CHICAGO, shares his thoughts about his training and his experiences in the years since his student days in this piece in the Delco Times.