collisionwork (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
collisionwork) wrote2006-10-19 03:13 pm
collisionwork) wrote2006-10-19 03:13 pm
Documentation
In continuing to occasionally note other writings and documents that come up as a result of putting on a show, two excerpts from recent email exchanges.
First, Tim Cusack asks me some questions about the brief tango that he and Alyssa are to do in one scene, and I finally get my thoughts in order about it and answer him (as much for my own understanding as I write about it as for his):
I've found someone who's willing to work with me on the tango. Do you
have some sense yet of how long it needs to be, music you want to use,
if there should be some "event" that happens during it, etc? Any
information would be helpful.
THANK YOU. Big help and a load off my mind.
Okay, the tango I've been hearing in my head (and singing at rehearsal) is "Tango del fuego" by Lieber and Stoller, which I mainly know as a song with lyrics ("Tango" recorded by Peggy Lee in 1976 -- which I've never heard -- and by Joan Morris/William Bolcom a few years later, which is the version I know). An instrumental version is heard in the film Tempest.
The problem is, there doesn't seem to be an available recording anywhere of the full instrumental version, and the song version starts with the tango and a spoken section over it before it goes off to non-tango places. The Bolcom/Morris version has enough instrumental lead before the speaking to use, but it's done on solo piano and isn't full enough (and almost impossible for me to get right now). I'm trying to find a way to download the Peggy Lee to see if it has a usable intro, but haven't found it yet.
The only other tango I know I have handy (I'm sure I have many others but I don't know where to start digging exactly) is Weill's "Youkali Tango," which has the right beat, but the instrumentation and melody line are a bit too "gypsy-mournful" and not "seductive" enough. It should be a tango focused on the rhythm, not any melody on top, if you have any ideas. And probably not entirely "authentic" if not "poppy" -- as in, composed by Mike Stoller or Kurt Weill as opposed to something Argentinian. Which may be a key to the actual dance as well, in this play about masks and false faces and pretense, it's probably a tango "as imagined to be authentic" by these characters. While in most ways I'm trying to get away from a pure "Eastern Europe Under Communism" feeling for the play, making the metaphor more universal, it might not be bad to think of the tango as what someone in that time and place would have thought authentic.
The dance moment in the show should be about eight measures, I think; the first six consisting of three repeats of the tango "theme," then a climactic measure to finish on sharply. The tango dancer and Vilma enter stage left and make an arc towards downstage center and then up right (this is all downstage in about 6 to 8 feet by 15 feet of performance space). At the downstage center of the arc, a rose should be passed from your mouth to hers (I guess midway at the end of 4 measures). At the other end of the arc, you wind up dipping her, or at least bending her back, over Foustka, who is sitting on a bench, miserable, and after he asks her how she's doing, she spits the rose at him and answers. Roger enters SL to ask her a question, and you rise her up to answer him over your left (downstage) shoulder. As Roger exits SL, the music starts again, and you take three or four measures to exit behind the bench (there is a shoulder-high (2-dimensional) bush behind it which hides you mostly as you exit R. There is not a lot of space between the bench/bush and the exit, so it probably should be a simpler "strutting" dance on the exit, if that makes sense.
When the two of you re-enter, it's just 4 measures to a sharp ending, from the tight entrance behind the bench around into joining in the semicircle just right of center.
Well, that's probably more than enough for now on that, huh? Does that help? As soon as I'm more certain on the music, I'll email it to you, if that works for you.
best,
IWH
And in a very different mode, just a few minutes ago, a short exchange with Aaron Baker, who plays The Secret Messenger.
You see, Aaron and I went to school in Massachusetts along with Uma Thurman, and we all acted in The Crucible together - Aaron was Judge Danforth, I was Reverend Hale, Uma was Abigail Williams (of course), and we were all pretty well friendly once upon a time. Aaron headed his email, "I'm a terrible failure":
So I just saw Uma walking down the street, but I realized it too
late to accost her. Which maybe is for the best. But I apologize
for missing the opportunity to plug your play.
Aw man.
Maybe for the best, indeed. I probably would have had the same reaction, and then regretted it.
Or I would have said hi, and chatted with her briefly, as we have on a couple of occasions since school, and completely forgot to say anything about what I was doing now.
IWH
First, Tim Cusack asks me some questions about the brief tango that he and Alyssa are to do in one scene, and I finally get my thoughts in order about it and answer him (as much for my own understanding as I write about it as for his):
I've found someone who's willing to work with me on the tango. Do you
have some sense yet of how long it needs to be, music you want to use,
if there should be some "event" that happens during it, etc? Any
information would be helpful.
THANK YOU. Big help and a load off my mind.
Okay, the tango I've been hearing in my head (and singing at rehearsal) is "Tango del fuego" by Lieber and Stoller, which I mainly know as a song with lyrics ("Tango" recorded by Peggy Lee in 1976 -- which I've never heard -- and by Joan Morris/William Bolcom a few years later, which is the version I know). An instrumental version is heard in the film Tempest.
The problem is, there doesn't seem to be an available recording anywhere of the full instrumental version, and the song version starts with the tango and a spoken section over it before it goes off to non-tango places. The Bolcom/Morris version has enough instrumental lead before the speaking to use, but it's done on solo piano and isn't full enough (and almost impossible for me to get right now). I'm trying to find a way to download the Peggy Lee to see if it has a usable intro, but haven't found it yet.
The only other tango I know I have handy (I'm sure I have many others but I don't know where to start digging exactly) is Weill's "Youkali Tango," which has the right beat, but the instrumentation and melody line are a bit too "gypsy-mournful" and not "seductive" enough. It should be a tango focused on the rhythm, not any melody on top, if you have any ideas. And probably not entirely "authentic" if not "poppy" -- as in, composed by Mike Stoller or Kurt Weill as opposed to something Argentinian. Which may be a key to the actual dance as well, in this play about masks and false faces and pretense, it's probably a tango "as imagined to be authentic" by these characters. While in most ways I'm trying to get away from a pure "Eastern Europe Under Communism" feeling for the play, making the metaphor more universal, it might not be bad to think of the tango as what someone in that time and place would have thought authentic.
The dance moment in the show should be about eight measures, I think; the first six consisting of three repeats of the tango "theme," then a climactic measure to finish on sharply. The tango dancer and Vilma enter stage left and make an arc towards downstage center and then up right (this is all downstage in about 6 to 8 feet by 15 feet of performance space). At the downstage center of the arc, a rose should be passed from your mouth to hers (I guess midway at the end of 4 measures). At the other end of the arc, you wind up dipping her, or at least bending her back, over Foustka, who is sitting on a bench, miserable, and after he asks her how she's doing, she spits the rose at him and answers. Roger enters SL to ask her a question, and you rise her up to answer him over your left (downstage) shoulder. As Roger exits SL, the music starts again, and you take three or four measures to exit behind the bench (there is a shoulder-high (2-dimensional) bush behind it which hides you mostly as you exit R. There is not a lot of space between the bench/bush and the exit, so it probably should be a simpler "strutting" dance on the exit, if that makes sense.
When the two of you re-enter, it's just 4 measures to a sharp ending, from the tight entrance behind the bench around into joining in the semicircle just right of center.
Well, that's probably more than enough for now on that, huh? Does that help? As soon as I'm more certain on the music, I'll email it to you, if that works for you.
best,
IWH
And in a very different mode, just a few minutes ago, a short exchange with Aaron Baker, who plays The Secret Messenger.
You see, Aaron and I went to school in Massachusetts along with Uma Thurman, and we all acted in The Crucible together - Aaron was Judge Danforth, I was Reverend Hale, Uma was Abigail Williams (of course), and we were all pretty well friendly once upon a time. Aaron headed his email, "I'm a terrible failure":
So I just saw Uma walking down the street, but I realized it too
late to accost her. Which maybe is for the best. But I apologize
for missing the opportunity to plug your play.
Aw man.
Maybe for the best, indeed. I probably would have had the same reaction, and then regretted it.
Or I would have said hi, and chatted with her briefly, as we have on a couple of occasions since school, and completely forgot to say anything about what I was doing now.
IWH