For example...
/The biggest item looming over my plate is William Blake’s Inn: getting started building a production/design team, finding backing, etc. Part of that effort is trying to explain what I mean when I tell people that we will be holding workshops for anyone who is interested to meet and invent what this show is going to look like.
“Two Sunflowers” in the 2007 ‘cardboard-and-hot-glue’ performance
When we attempted to attract support for the project in 2007, we did exactly that for two of the songs, “Two Sunflowers Move Into the Yellow Room” and “The Man in the Marmalade Hat Arrives.” Imagine: You have a song — an entire song cycle even — that was not necessarily written with a staged performance in mind. How do you visualize what the audience is going to see?
If you’ve read Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy, you may remember that the chapter on SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION has a thorough description on how we decided what “Two Sunflowers” would look like (and how that resulted in my having to compose a grand ballet waltz to add to the song). It was a group process, and little by little we solved the problem.
Today, therefore, I’d like to describe the kind of thing that someone who was interested in joining us this time might encounter.
We’ll be working with the last song in the piece, “Blake Tells the Tiger the Tale of the Tailor.” Context: In the preceding song, the Tiger, who has eaten more than he should and has an upset tummy, asks Blake for a bedtime story. Blake responds with a horror show, wherein the Tailor ‘builds’ a house for his Wife and himself out of a bizarre list of materials: robins’ wings, comet hair, wool of bat, that kind of thing.
Alas, as the couple lies down to go to sleep, their house comes alive, with all the things the Tailor stole trying to escape. Finally the house comes flying apart and the Tailor and his Wife flee to Blake’s Inn. “All things are new in the morning.”
It is a stunning if unexpected finale to the show. But how to make it real? I’m going to take a couple of blog posts to talk our way through it, and you — dear reader — are invited to play along.
In the workshop, we begin by listening/singing through the entire song. If you click that link above, it will take you to my other blog where you can both download a PDF of the score and listen to the music.
Next, we tape a long stretch of white bulletin board paper on one wall of the studio. (We will be holding these workshops and eventual rehearsals at Southern Arc Dance.) We scribble measure numbers/lyrics/descriptors across it to create a timeline for our staging.
Then we list the characters we know we will need, at least to start with: Blake, the Tailor, his Wife. (There will be more.)
And then… we start spewing out ideas. Your assignment for the next blog post is to post your ideas about staging “Tailor” in comments.
But wait! First go read The Rules that govern how we do this.
