The Beggar's Opera: Version 2.1.1

I have no idea what version number* to assign to the project: we did a workshop of the script and songs in 2003 and then I put it on the shelf for a few years; we worked on and performed Benjamin Ickies' new musical arrangements of the songs this past June; now we're about to start putting it all together again for a one week run in December.

Regardless, everybody save the dates!

December 10 - 14, 2008

258 Bowery, NYC (map it)
(just below Houston, the soon-to-be-former-home of Dixon Place)

*I'm really not a fan of theater that uses computer lingo in the title: I'm just making a point about this workshop being yet another step in a continuing process.

Women and Beggars

There are two upcoming performances that I want to plug here today: one is a very good production that I believe deserves to be seen; the other is a very good production directed by me that I believe deserves to be seen.

Out of some outmoded sense of modesty, I’ll make the unselfish plug first: Taylor Mac’s The Young Ladies of… which runs July 9 through August 2. Catherine and I saw it at HERE Arts Center last fall and I was telling everyone for weeks that it was the best one-person shows I’d seen in years and among the best plays of any kind that we saw in 2007. The writing is exceptionally strong, Taylor is a joy to watch onstage and he’s made what is really a very personal story into something that can connect with anyone. And if that wasn’t enough, you owe it to yourself to go see the newly renovated HERE: now 100% artist owned and operated!

Now for the shameless self-promotion: Peculiar Works is kicking off the next development stage of one of our projects. It’s a 30-minute concert of music (with what the cast calls “the Cliff’s Notes version of the script”) from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (the play on which Brecht and Weill based The Threepenny Opera). Fun music, great performances, free admission, good food and drinks: why the heck wouldn’t you come? Use the Contact Me link on the sidebar if you want to make a reservation.

The Beggar's Opera: In Concert

Saturday June 28th and Monday, June 30th at 9pm

Zipper Factory Tavern

336 West 37th Street (btwn 8th & 9th Aves)

Admission: FREE (but come thirsty and buy drinks at the bar!)

with Adam Enright,* Christopher Hurt,* Sadrina Johnson,*

Catherine Porter* and Nomi Tichman

performing original songs by

George Croom, Beth Falcone, Alex Hill, Benjamin Ickies,

Peter Kieswalter, Daniel Levy and Tracy Stark

adaptators Christopher Burney, Myrel Chernick and Barry Rowell

musical arranger/orchestrator Benjamin Ickies

costumer Tara Hills

designer Myrel Chernick

vocal coach C. Colby Sachs

assistant director Robert Matteau

production associate Emma Malika

producer Ralph Lewis

director Barry Rowell

*member, Actor’s Equity Asociation

Play Try Outs: Beggars CAN Be Choosers...

The Beggar's Opera auditions on Tuesday were great: everyone did a great job with the singing and the acting. It was more fun than I expected, actually. I'm seeing even more people tomorrow night and then I can cast by Saturday, I hope. I can already tell, though, that the hardest part is going to be deciding who not to take: I could easily cast both roles at least twice over with the actors I've already seen and I know the remaining group are not a bunch of duffers. At this point, I think it's going to come down to which actors have the fewest rehearsal conflicts. It's not the way I'd prefer to make my decision but, ultimately, if two actors are equally capable, you have to have something to tip the balance.

When we come back, we'll announce the results of our judges' tabulations....

Play Try Outs (as we used to call them)

I haven't held auditions in a very long time... at least 15 years, if not more. In the past, we've offered people roles and, for the most part, that's worked just fine. But our upcoming workshop of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera is going to be complicated. The actors in this production are going to be singing with a live band which, as most musicians will tell you, is more difficult than singing with a piano accompaniment; for the people who are primarily Actors Who Also Sing, this will be their big challenge. For those who are Singers Who Also Act, the challenge will be that my collaborators, Chris Burney and Myrel Chernick, and I have edited the play in such a way that it can be performed by 5 actors, who all switch roles with one another during the play—everyone gets a shot at Macheath, regardless of gender; everyone plays a woman, everyone plays a man; sometimes, two or more people play the same role simultaneously. If we get it right, it's going to be very fast paced and an actor could be playing one character on one line and then be someone entirely different on the next. So I need to get a sense of everyones strengths and weaknesses in both of these areas. Thus, auditions.

Our production focuses on the play-within-a-play element—the story is bookended by The Beggar and The Player stepping out and addressing the audience. In reading the script, that device is virtually invisible while we follow the story of the Peachums, Macheath and the rest. I have no doubt it's been done before (everything has been done before—everything...), but we really want to see how much we can emphasize troupe of actors putting on a play and use it underscore the themes of unbridled capitalism and greed. Whenever I imagine the production in my head, I alternately think, "Wow: that's really obvious! There's nothing like taking a sledgehammer to an audience's head and screaming, 'GET IT?'" and "Wow: that's really obscure! There's nothing like abstracting everything remotely recognizable so that it's impossible for an audience to get it." The demons I'm doomed to wrestle....

We actually started this project back in 2001! The great thing about being project based is that you don't have to finish something within a calendar or fiscal year; the bad thing about it is that you almost never finish anything within a calendar or fiscal year. We did a workshop of the play in 2003, script-in-hand, that gave us a rough idea of the shape of the thing, got all of the songs written (17 by 7 different composers) and got us started playing around with projections (because Myrel is a visual artist who creates installations with projections, that's how we're creating the environment for the piece). After that, the project got shelved while PWP worked on our Don Quixote event and last year's Off-Off Broadway celebration.

So we're finally getting back to it now. This time, we're focusing on getting the musical arrangements created so that we can eventually record the music (part of the concept: the actors will ultimately be able to control all of the technical elements within their production, including the soundtrack, from onstage), costumes (Tara Hills has come up with a great paper doll idea that I think will be a lot of fun to realize) and projections (we have a couple of ideas for how to create projection screens that the actors can move and revolve to reshape the environment). I'm sure you haven't heard the last of this....