Center Theatre Group News & Blogs

The Ensemble Behind 'Kansas City Choir Boy'

Center Theatre Group — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 11:11:00 -0700

Although Almond had been working on the piece for years, the world premiere at the PROTOTYPE Festival of new opera and musical theatre in New York City was produced very quickly. “The whole first show was thrown together in 10 days,” said Newbury. That meant making big decisions on the fly in the rehearsal room, and creating an environment where “everyone can feel free to express his or her ideas.” Luckily, Newbury had a “really different, incredible team of artists” at his disposal, all of whom were eager to work together. “The work is very seamless, so designers’ work begins to blend,” he said, noting that he “can’t remember who came up with what.” (He did, however, credit lighting designer DM Wood with coming up with the idea to add LED lights to the ceiling.)

The entire cast and crew of Kansas City Choir Boy is “a group of very fertile minds,” said Newbury. Todd Almond is a writer, performer, and musician whose works include the highly acclaimed Girlfriend, which played at the Douglas earlier this year. Singer-songwriter Courtney Love is a punk rock pioneer with decades of experience as both a rocker and actress. The Sirens are multi-faceted performers who sing, dance, and act. And the string quartet features members of Contemporaneous, a New York-based group that describes itself as “a new music ensemble that sounds like a chamber orchestra and works like a band.”

Putting these artists in a room together created a tremendous amount of serendipity, and inspired everything from the set design to the music, which features “Fleetwood Mac-level” harmonies, said Newbury. Many of the arrangements came together during the rehearsal period, he added, calling Courtney Love “an amazing collaborator.” At one point, the actresses who play the Sirens were harmonizing and playing with music for fun during some down time. Newbury and other creative team members overheard, and decided to make a new arrangement that “became an incredible group ensemble number,” said Newbury.

Moments like that are why Newbury finds himself drawn to new work. “I just think it’s so exciting to tell a story for the first time,” he said. “I love to create something new and original, to collaboratively solve challenges with living artists.”

The Hands are Alive with 'The Sound of Music'

Center Theatre Group — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 11:22:00 -0700

But the rapid-fire music education of the von Trapps is more true-to-life than you might imagine. Maria has a secret weapon wielded by music teachers for more than a century: the tonic sol-fa system, also known as the Norwich sol-fa, the Curwen method, or Glover method. Previously indoctrinated audiences will recognize the rising and falling hand motions Maria teaches the children; they are designed to simplify music theory and make it possible for people to learn to sing beautifully in a matter of days instead of weeks or months. The tonic sol-fa system uses hand motions and specific words for each note in a scale, which gives students physical, auditory, and visual cues simultaneously. The system makes learning to sing fun and interactive, as anyone who’s seen The Sound of Music will know. While not used extensively today, it was the primary method of teaching music in the English-speaking world for most of the 20th century and is still common in the some parts of the U.S.

Sarah Glover (1786-1867) devised the system while teaching in Norwich, England. Based on earlier systems and her own experimentation, the tonic sol-fa system allowed her to create good-quality choirs from first-time singers in weeks. In 1835, she published a book detailing the system, Scheme for Tendering Psalmody Congregational. The book and method were very popular, and Glover went on to invent a glass glockenspiel to accompany her system called a harmonicon. Pianos were not common in schools at the time, and the instrument allowed teachers with little musical training to teach using Glover’s method.

One such teacher was Reverend John Curwen (1816-1880). He discovered Glover’s system in 1841, when a friend lent him a copy of her book after the Sunday School Union asked Curwen to devise a way to teach music quickly in Sunday school. Although he described himself as “completely without musical skill,” Curwen found that Glover’s system worked wonderfully. In 1843, Curwen published his own version of the system, Grammar of Vocal Music. He went on to publish several books on the system, and started the Tonic Sol-Fa Association. Thanks to Curwen, the system Glover invented became widespread in the U.K., its colonies, and eventually the entire English-speaking world.

Will Social Media End Family Secrets?

Center Theatre Group — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 11:34:00 -0700

In this digital age, however, can the past still stay hidden for years, or decades? Are we going to be able to keep our skeletons closeted? Or will our children, and their children, be just a Google search, or a Twitter history, or a Facebook profile away from knowing all our secrets? We talked with Jim Halloran, Twitter’s global content manager, and Aishwarya Iyer, Whisper’s director of communications, to get their take on secrets, rumors, and the future of social media.

There’s been less of a shift in how we share information than we think, said Halloran. “One of the things I hear is, ‘Everybody knows all your business, and they know everything you’re doing, and it lives forever,’” he said. “There’s this false sense that it wasn’t happening before. Now, it’s just much more visible that it’s actually happening.” When we lived in small towns and villages, people always knew their neighbors’ business, and family history has long been dominated by rumors and gossip, said Halloran. The difference now is that “digital is fairly black and white”—we know what happened, and when. Even if that information doesn’t come out until weeks or years later (like, say, Hillary Clinton’s emails), the digital past can’t be disputed.

Iyer agreed that social media generally reflects the past rather than breaks from it, pointing out that Whisper—which allows users to post their thoughts and feelings and stories anonymously—has a lot in common with confessional booths, which go back hundreds of years. “It’s not a new concept,” she said, but it is filling a particular need in our digital age. “Social networks like Facebook and Instagram,” she said, “just have your highlight reel of your life—the exciting, the sexy.” What about the thoughts, feeling, and experiences that can’t be curated and neatly packaged to get likes and favorites from friends? “There’s no place to really share that,” said Iyer.

But Halloran said that curation isn’t new, either: “People have always wanted to edit their brand, or felt that things in the past don’t reflect their brand,” he said. “We’ve now created technology that allows us easier access to these things.” People have also always curated, or filtered, their legacies. But Halloran actually sees technology changing that. “We’re going to have direct access to the pipeline to the legacy,” he said, offering the @POTUS and @Pontifex handles (for the U.S. president and the Pope) as examples. These handles will get passed on with the office, so rather than relying on biographers or historians, we’re going to have “mini-biographies stitched together” on Twitter that will create digital legacies “bigger than any individual who’s holding that office, said Halloran.

But does having such a record make reinvention impossible? “I think you have different pieces of yourself on different platforms,” said Iyer. “So I guess you can kind of pick and choose what you want to show” the world.

The anonymity offered by social media may also make people more comfortable with their identities and less burdened by their secrets. “I think, frankly, everybody’s looking for more empathy and understanding and connectedness,” said Iyer. “What we see the most is people saying that they’re just happy to know that other people feel the same way that they do.”

Making 'Something Good' a Little Bit Better

Ted Chapin — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 11:44:00 -0700

The song comes from the movie version of The Sound of Music, and its music and lyrics were written by Richard Rodgers. It is called “Something Good,” and it replaces “An Ordinary Couple” in the original Broadway musical score.

Here’s the story: the classic Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals are considered master works and part of the theatre canon. And while there are subtle changes that were actually made in the day—when you walk through a storm, for example, are you to “keep your chin up high” or “hold your head up high”?—making changes to well-known lyrics is a bad idea. So that doesn’t happen. But Jack O’Brien was so specific in examining every word and every lyric during rehearsals for this production, it occurred to both Timothy Crouse, son of co-librettist Russel Crouse, and to me, that the well-known Rodgers lyrics to the song might actually be looked at. We all know and remember Maria singing about her “wicked childhood and miserable youth” in the movie, but is there anything else in the show to give an indication that she really felt that way?

We decided to find out what Jack O’Brien thought, and even to see if his lyricist muscles (early in his career he did write lyrics for at least one Broadway show) might be in shape to take a crack at crafting some new lines. His response: “It doesn’t make any sense to me,” either.

And so, with full realization that he was treading on somewhat hallowed turf, and with our full support, O’Brien took on the task, and it is his revision of Rodgers’ original lyric that audiences hear in the current production. It is fair to say that what O’Brien has done does indeed fits with the characters and the situation, so audiences accept the new lyrics as part of the show. They don’t, in fact, stick out. As O’Brien himself characterized his revisions, “we are doing a little pumice work on it, taking the rough edges off” the original lyrics to the song.

Perhaps, then “Something Good” has become something just a little bit better?

How does the woman singing these lyrics feel about the changes? “It’s really exciting to watch them figure out what the song is really about,” said the production’s Maria, Kerstin Anderson, and to “make it accessible to audiences now.”

Donors Go Behind the Scenes of 'The Sound of Music'

Center Theatre Group — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 11:57:00 -0700

The show’s set is packed into six semi-trucks and driven from one location to the next.
Most of the set is comprised of flying scenery. This means that once a piece has been used and is no longer needed in the show, it is “flown” up and held above the stage for the remainder of the production.
Most of the props and set pieces are automated; crew members are not generally pushing sets onto the stage.
A special slip-resistant paint was used on the ramp that holds the von Trapp family as they escape into the mountains at the end of the show. (No falling children here!)
The production team is hugely talented and highly experienced.. In fact, Lighting Designer Natasha Katz currently has 16 productions running.
Over the next two years, this team will put on 1,000 shows around the country!

The Los Angeles engagement of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music is generously supported in part by Eileen and Ken Kaplan and The Blue Ribbon.

Blending, Bending Genres in 'Kansas City Choir Boy'

Center Theatre Group — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 11:04:00 -0700

Into this storied tradition comes Kansas City Choir Boy, which plays the Douglas through November 8, 2015. Composer/lyricist Todd Almond, who is featured in the show alongside rock icon Courtney Love, calls Kansas City Choir Boy a “theatricalized concept album” or a “rock operetta,” which conjures up images of something particularly hip, fresh, and artistic. But what does this actually mean, and what does it sound and look like?

The production plays with a number of different traditional and contemporary forms, including rock, opera, musical theatre, and electronica. The form of the piece—with the performers coming from and going into the audience, impressive video design, and a pinpoint sound system—is designed to shake up the audience’s expectations and immerse them in a different kind of theatrical experience. “Kansas City Choir Boy is more than a rock concert, but not quite a traditional theatre show,” said Director Kevin Newbury, who calls himself a “musical omnivore” and is a genre-bending artist who has directed a slew of new operas, including The Manchurian Candidate, Doubt, and Galileo Galilei. Kansas City Choir Boy “draws on all the things I love,” said Newbury, and features “cross-pollination of every medium.”

Containing no dialogue except song lyrics, Kansas City Choir Boy has elements of an operetta, but lacks the spectacle features such as massive sets, large ensembles, and seemingly impossible special effects that have come to define traditional grand opera. Yet it also eschews definition as a rock opera-style musical. Using highly theatricalized elements, such as the “Sirens,” who function as a classical Greek chorus, the aesthetic is at once more mystical and serious than that of your typical Broadway show. And unlike operas and musicals, where the music is used to tell a larger story, Kansas City Choir Boy is staged in service of the story expressed in the music.

Kansas City Choir Boy is also a reflection of today’s art and entertainment culture. Just as concerts have become far more theatrical, many theatrical productions have taken on the qualities of contemporary music concerts. Kansas City Choir Boy’s runway stage is something you might find at a rock concert, as is its lighting. But it also borrows from contemporary art by using space, everyday objects, and highly stylized performances to tell its story. And, like contemporary experimental theatre, it creates an immersive experience for the audience, who feel alternately as though they are in “Carnegie Hall, a rave, or Central Park,” said Newbury. Ultimately, he sees Kansas City Choir Boy as “the future of performance—it can be categorized as an art installation, theatre piece, or concert, depending on the moment.”

Newbury and the cast and crew of Kansas City Choir Boy are experimenters and innovators in their fields, with bodies of work that have sought to shake up the status quo. Kansas City Choir Boy does just that, with a story that is unique and compelling, and a staging that abandons the expectations of opera, musical, and rock opera productions and instead ventures out boldly into unknown territory.

How Do You Dress a Woman Like Maria?

Center Theatre Group — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 11:22:00 -0700

“The movie and most of the productions of the show have really not been done in period,” Director Jack O’Brien told Center Theatre Group. “If you look at the movie, the clothes are very 1960s. I’m doing this in 1938, which is when it’s supposed to be.”

How have the outfits of Maria and company changed over the past half-century? We asked Ted Chapin, president and director of Rodgers & Hammerstein, to tell us what has gone into the nuns’ habits, the children’s uniforms, and all that dirndl…

Chapin started at the very beginning, explaining that “when The Sound of Music was first produced, it was a star vehicle for Mary Martin, and she had her designer”—Mainbocher—design all her costumes. (They’re now in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.) “A star in those days was able to do that,” said Chapin, adding that Tony Award®-winning costume designer Lucinda Ballard designed the rest of the costumes in the original Broadway production. (“Lucinda Ballard’s costumes are up to her own standard,” wrote Brooks Atkinson in his New York Times review of the show.)

“I don’t know if Broadway types were ready to embrace everything Austria stood for in those days,” said Chapin. This was “a play that was about recent history in 1959, and not necessarily pleasant recent history. I’m not sure if it was a conscious decision to turn down the dirndl aspect” of the costumes.

By 1965, when the movie version premiered, the past was a bit further away; Chapin described those costumes as “Salzburg via Hollywood,” and said that many productions simply try to emulate the film onstage—exactly the opposite of what O’Brien is planning for the North American tour that just launched at the Ahmanson.

However, all Sound of Music productions do have a few things in common when it comes to the costumes. The demands of this show are “pretty specific,” said Chapin. “By the very nature of what a nun or a postulant wears,” for instance, “it tends to cover up everything but the face. So designers have tried to figure out, how can you expose as much of the face and head as possible so the character can come across, as opposed to burying the face in black and white?”

Chapin said that when it comes to Maria and the von Trapp children’s outfits made from curtains, “the costume designer always tries to be as ugly as he or she possibly can be.” But this is just one example, he said, of how the current production is finding room for innovation and creativity from the script itself.

The costume designer “was very excited” by finding fabric that “has all kinds of life and birds and flowers on it,” said Chapin. It “has the very life in it that Maria’s life is full of.”

For a sneak peek at the costumes in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music at the Ahmanson Theatre, check out production photos on the Center Theatre Group Facebook page. For more on costumes from CTG, check out our #EveryCostume tells a story posts on Twitter and Instagram.

The Sherwood Award Allows Sean Cawelti to Follow His Passion

Armando Huipe — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 11:31:00 -0700

The Sherwood Award was created in 2006 to cultivate innovative Los Angeles theatre artists of promise. It was established in memory of Richard E. Sherwood, former president of the CTG Board of Directors, who held a special appreciation for the energy and talent of emerging artists.

Receiving the Sherwood has opened many different professional doors for Cawelti, an art director, designer, and theatre director who is also the founding artistic director of Rogue Artists Ensemble. The $10,000 award has made it possible for him to take two months off from project-based work to focus on a production he and Rogue Artists Ensemble have been developing for over 10 years.

Many of us know the story of the puppet Pinocchio from the 1940 Disney film by the same name. But Cawelti and Rogue Artists Ensemble are going deeper into the tale of a toy who wants to be a real boy to find a story that feels authentic to them and to today’s audiences. They’ve mined the 1883 Italian source text, The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, to find themes of transformation, death, and redemption. Wood Boy Dog Fish opens on November 13 at the Bootleg Theater. Sherwood Award funds have also allowed Cawelti to purchase tools that will enhance his design work on this production and future endeavors. In the spirit of the late Richard E. Sherwood, the award has allowed Cawelti to channel his time and energy into a work that embodies his passion and dedication as an artist.

Cawelti doesn’t plan to sit on his laurels for long, however. “Being an emerging artist is about having a hunger for discovering what your next challenge will be,” he said. “So, in a way, I will always want to be emerging. I will always want to stay hungry.”

L.A. Feels Like an Artistic Home to Director Les Waters

Center Theatre Group — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 11:40:00 -0700

The relationship between CTG and Waters, who is also the artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville, began in 1989, when he co-directed the American premiere of Our Country’s Good at the Taper with Max Stafford-Clark. Stafford-Clark was the artistic director of England’s Royal Court Theatre, and Waters was the associate artistic director. Stafford-Clark wasn’t available during the first rehearsal period, so Waters stepped in, and it became a co-directed production.

Waters’ involvement in Marjorie Prime came about in similar fashion, when the original director had to drop out due to a conflict. But bringing him back so quickly was no accident on CTG’s part. The CTG artistic team fell for the Waters-directed Girlfriend in February 2013 at Actors Theatre; in spring 2014, a group of donors led by CTG’s artistic staff encountered the Waters-directed The Christians at the Humana Festival of New American Plays, also at Actors Theatre.

“The Christians was one of the best plays I have seen in decades. While the play centers on a challenge to the beliefs of an evangelical church, it is equally relevant to how we deal with confrontations involving our own fundamental beliefs, be they religious or secular,” said CTG donor Linda Peterson. She was particularly impressed by Waters’ staging of the show: “It truly felt like we were sitting in a megachurch, eavesdropping on the issues facing the congregation.” She’s looking forward to seeing it at the Taper, too. “I think L.A. audiences will love this show,” said Peterson. “I haven’t missed an opportunity since to urge CTG staffers to bring the show here.”

The enthusiasm of Peterson and her fellow donors was echoed by CTG Artistic Director Michael Ritchie. “I have admired Les Waters’ work for many years and am quite pleased to be bringing him to Center Theatre Group for a trio of productions that showcases the depth and range of his directorial skills,” said Ritchie.

Ritchie and CTG have a rich tradition of long-term collaborations with prominent directors from all over the country and world. Moisés Kaufman, who directed Bent at the Taper this past summer, has directed six CTG productions since 1998. Phylicia Rashad will return to the Taper for the fourth time in five years to direct Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in fall 2016. And Garry Hynes, who helms The Beauty Queen of Leenane at the Taper next fall, also directed The Price at the Taper and The Cripple of Inishmaan at the Kirk Douglas Theatre over the past few years.

Waters is delighted to be working with Center Theatre Group so frequently and to be spending time in Los Angeles. He said that when you get to return to any company over and over again, you get to know the people. But Center Theatre Group is special because it’s “a theatre that champions new work, as does Actors Theatre of Louisville,” he said. “It feels like an artistic home.”

Although Marjorie Prime, Girlfriend, and The Christians differ in tone, style, and subject, Waters identified a few threads that link them together. “All three plays explore major issues that are important to audiences,” he said. “All three play with theatrical form, and examine what a play can actually be.”

And, bringing both Girlfriend and The Christians to CTG is “great for Actors Theatre,” said Waters. “It’s wonderful that the plays have a further life and can be appreciated by audiences in different cities.”

Directing outside of Louisville is also an artistic boon for Waters. Working here means that “my focus is entirely on the play,” he said. “I’m an observer at CTG—a very privileged observer. I don’t have to be part of a team of people running the theatre. So my sole focus is in deepening and enriching these plays for CTG’s audience.”

That focus, according to Ritchie, is readily apparent and highly valued. “Les brings a collegial spirit into every rehearsal room or theatre that he walks into, yet at the same time he maintains a steady hand on the tiller of the production,” said Ritchie. “This gives everyone involved the freedom to do their best work—and is a far too rare quality to ignore. I am sure that Les will be with us for many seasons to come.”

Why Our Hills Stay Alive with 'The Sound of Music'

Center Theatre Group — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 11:04:00 -0700

Set in Salzburg, Austria, on the eve of World War II, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music is populated by characters who have no knowledge of the terrible history about to unfold, but the audience does. This gap creates a palpable tension, because even as Maria sings “The hills are alive…” the audience is silently screaming, “Get out you fool; the Nazis are about to invade!” To the characters, their actions seem isolated and personal, but we know that they interlock with a much larger story that will eventually overwhelm their own.

In The Sound of Music, we experience history that parallels our present, and warnings for our future. The invasion and annexation of Austria by Germany, or Anschluss, on March 13, 1938, and Georg von Trapp’s refusal to serve the Nazi cause, seems at first glance to be distant from our own time. But just a year and a half ago, we watched Russia invade and annex Crimea. Like Ukraine and Russia, Germany and Austria have a shared history and closely related languages and ethnic groups. Hitler used this shared history and culture as a pretext to invade and occupy Austria following several failed coups and attempts to elect a Nazi government. After the Anschluss, the occupied Austrian government and Nazi Germany went through legal and political acrobatics in an attempt to “prove to a credulous world that Germany did not take Austria, but that Austria gave herself to Germany,” as a political commentator wrote a few months later.

In The Sound of Music, Georg von Trapp’s resistance to the Germanization and Nazification of Austria and his refusal to fly the Nazi flag at his home and to serve in the navy eventually bring him and his family into danger, and necessitate their flight from Austria. Captain von Trapp’s defiance of extremism is incredibly compelling, particularly when juxtaposed against recent global events. The stories of the rest of the characters as they grapple with what should be acceptable in love and in growing up are similarly universal and continue to dominate our contemporary cultural discourse, and likewise continue to resonate with audiences.

The new production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music playing at the Ahmanson Theatre through October 31, 2015, explores these issues with more immediacy than we have seen in previous versions. But it also contains everything audiences have loved about the story for the past half-century. As Director Jack O’Brien said, “We tell this story over and over again because our world will always be in peril…Any time you see people stand up for their rights and make a moral decision, it’s riveting.” This is, after all, a story about love battling with a Nazi invasion. At its heart, The Sound of Music is hopeful and joyful, but it also offers a stern warning and a daunting historical reminder of the realities of our world.