A holiday tableau

Posted on December 21, 2007
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In a moment of compulsory good cheer, the crew gathers in front of the hearth and Michael Petro mans the camera. Kerry manages to smile for the camera the instant the shutter is pressed, but otherwise scowls and gripes. Peace on earth!

Da Night Before Christmas

Posted on December 21, 2007
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Christmas wishes from South Philly
By Steve DiMeo

‘Twas da night before Christmas,
You hear what I’m sayin’?
And all through South Philly,
Sinatra’s Christmas tunes was playin’.

Da sink was piled high,
Fulla dirty dishes,
From da big Italian meal
Of gravy and seven fishes.

Da brats were outta hand
From eatin’ too much candy.
We told them to go to bed
Or there wouldn’t be no Santy.

And me in my sweatpants,
Da wife’s hair fulla rollers,
Plopped our butts on the sofa
To fight over remote controllers.

When out in da shtreet,
There was all dis friggin’ noise.
It sounded like a mob hit,
Ya’ know, by Merlino and his boys.

I trew open da stormdoor
To look and see who’s who.
Like a nosy little old lady
Who’s got nuttin’ better to do.

In da windows of da rowhomes
Stood white tinsel trees.
And those stupid moving dolls
You get on sale at Kindy’s.

When what should I see,
Comin’ from afar.
But fat Uncle Nick
In his big ole Towne Car.

He was swervin’ and cursin’,
Givin’ all da gas he got;
As he barreled up the shtreet,
Looking for a spot.

More faster than Santa,
My drunk Uncle came;
Wit’ a car full of relatives,
All drunk just the same.

“Yo Angie! Ay Dino!
Vic, Gina, and Pete,”
He yelled out there names,
Then spit in da shtreet

“I can’t find no spot nowheres,”
Pissed off, he said.
So he double-parked the Lincoln,
And came in to hit da head.

As he hugged me, he burped,
And passed a loada gas.
It stunk up da house,
Like a rotten sea bass.

His coat was pure cashmere,
His pinky ring shined;
His toupee was all twisted,
The front was now behind.

He ran up to da bathroom,
Bangin’ pictures wit’ his hips.
Never lettin’ da smelly stogie
Fall from his lips.

With eyes oh so bloodshot,
And a butt, oh so flabby;
In walked Aunt Angie,
All dolled-up and crabby.

“D’jeat yet?” she asked,
As she thundered to da kitchen;
“All da calamari’s gone?”
Aunt Angie started bitchin’.

In came Cousin Gina,
In Guess jeans too tight.
She was bathed in Obsession,
Her hair reached new height.

In strut Cousins Dino,
Little Petey and Big Vic;
Shovin’ pizzelles down their throats,
It was makin’ me sick.

I said, “What da hell
Are all youse people doin?”
Not one of them answered,
They was too busy chewin’.

Uncle Nick came down at last.
His face was beet red
“Sorry I missed da toilet.
I pissed in the bathtub instead.”

That was it, I had it.
I yelled, “Get the hell out.”
Uncle Nick looked real puzzled.
Cousin Gina started to pout.

Wit’ that they mumbled curses,
And opened a Strawbridge’s bag.
And fumbled ’round to find da gift
Wit’ our name on da tag.

I then felt kinda stupid,
As I thanked them for their gift.
But they stormed out da stormdoor,
All of them miffed.

We tore open da paper
That was taped on and on.
It was a bottle of Sambuca,
And half of it was gone.

But I heard him yelling
As he slammed on da gas.
“Merry Christmas, ya ingrate!
You can kiss my ass!”

Yo. Happy Holidays, a’ight?

The Perfect Electoral Storm

Posted on December 11, 2007
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Surfing the web from Schiphol Airport, I came across this essay by Steve Fraser. “Every week, almost every day, another clue suggests that we may be entering a new political environment. ” Take a minute to read a very penetrating and disturbing analysis of current political and economic signs.

Final impressions in Amsterdam (not musical theater)

Posted on December 10, 2007
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A few images from my last night in Amsterdam:

An unexpectedly mild evening. I walk thru a light sprinkle on the way to dinner, but after dinner the rains are gone. The night streets around the Rijksmuseum are lined with gorgeous, handsomely lit buildings. There is almost no pedestrian traffic, leaving the night stroller the chance to luxuriate in his thoughts. A blond Dutch lass with a ponytail pedals by, chatting on her handy. All Amsterdam bikes are beat to shit – 3-speed rattletraps with fenders and chainguards, homely yet practical steeds for urban warriors. A bloke in a pea coat is plugged into his iPod, and sings loudly and unselfconsciously as he rides. A young woman on a motor scooter pulls up on the sidewalk in front of a posh mansion and rings the bell. I stumble upon the headquarters of ING Bank, and neighboring buildings feature names of investment companies engraved on brass plaques. I now know that the cab ride I took to my hotel from the station cost 23 euros more than the tram ride I took from the hotel to the station; my cab in Arnhem this morning was an equally expensive alternative to the ten-minute walk I could have taken if I’d only known the route. It’s nothing short of miraculous that one can travel to a foreign city and, armed with the Internet and a little moxie, find new friends, meet colleagues, discover beautiful things and almost feel at home. Still, there’s no place like home, right, Auntie Em? Back to the city of brotherly love!

Art isn’t EZ – last stop on the journey

Posted on December 10, 2007
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My visit to the ArtEZ Conservatory in Arnhem, the final stop on my whirlwind tour of eleven schools in ten cities, was not only thoroughly enjoyable but also very provocative. Rising early and taking the tram to Amsterdam Centraal station, I felt very much like a native as I bought my roundtrip ticket to Arnhem and rode with the bleary-eyed workers and students on the Inter-City train. The school itself (whose name is pronounced art-EZZ) is sited spectacularly on a hillside overlooking the Rhine, and is comprised of three linked buildings: the music conservatory, at the top of the hill, housed in a renovated old building with jaw-dropping river views; the design school, a piece of world-class modern architecture reached by an enclosed glass bridge from the music school; and the dance and drama schools, located in a very new (only 3 years old) underground bunker, with two dozen studios and three theaters clustered around an enormous atrium with ground-level skylights. All in all, a very inspiring place to work, though the drama head seemed slightly frustrated by the limitations of his subterranean facility, which doesn’t have quite the student capacity or mechanical systems (ventilation and climate control are a big deal down there) they really require.

Thom Koldenhof, director of the Arnhem Conservatory and head of the Music-Theater program, was a most generous host for my visit. The name of his program (not musicAL theater, mind you) should have been my first clue to the department’s philosophy. (Dutch students who want to study for the commercial musical stage are steered toward the conservatories in Tilburg and Rotterdam, he says.) Their core performance work seeks to emulate no established models, instead emphasizing collaboration and creative process. They take 10-12 of the 100+ students that audition for them each year, and most of the classes seem predominantly female; gender balance isn’t that much of an issue, I guess, when your work is internally generated.

ArtEZ is a school much like The University of the Arts in that it is moderately sized (3000 students, as compared with 2000 at UArts) and offers a comprehensive education in performing arts, visual arts and interactive digital arts. The teachers there are grappling with the fundamental issue of breadth versus depth in curriculum design, and have taken a much stronger stand on the value of interdisciplinarity and project-based learning. The programs there, including those in dance, drama and music-theater, set aside about 30% of their time for collaborative projects, and work with students in other departments is mandatory. While this undoubtedly reduces the amount of time available to devote to mastery of craft, the school’s philosophy recognizes that the ability to work on projects (both self-directed and externally directed) with a diverse team including participants who come from different backgrounds is an essential skill to be passed on through higher education.

At the end of my trip, I’m feeling a desire to take stock, to see what lessons can be learned from my visits and conversations. I’ll take a little time tonight to do that, because I expect that once I’m home, I’ll be swept up in holiday preparations and picking up the threads of my life in Philly.

Having seen so many variations on the recipe for musical theater training in the past three weeks – on top of what I already know about US programs – I’ve got plenty of food for thought on the question of MTEA accreditation of musical theater programs. EU schools are scrambling to translate their programs into interchangeable “credits” that will be interchangeable at EU schools (the ECTS, or European Credit Transfer System, was a product of agreements reached at a summit in Bologna about five years ago), but every teacher and administrator I talked to seems to think that Bologna’s credit system is baloney, and that no amount of mathematical sleight-of-hand can change the fact that training for the stage is deeply personal and invariably idiosyncratic.

We all know the nostrum that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” and when it comes to musical theater performances, an audience is less interested in the recipe or list of ingredients and more interested in the quality of the work presented. In trying to speak of standards and quality, I think MTEA is well advised to steer clear of advocating any one recipe (the 4-year American BFA, the 4-year US BA, the 3-year UK or EU BA, the 4-year BA Hons. variation found in the UK and being considered by some EU, or for that matter professional trade schools like Stage School in Hamburg or AMDA in NYC), and will be better off trying to articulate desirable outcomes – that is, a set of competencies that we agree our graduates should possess. I present the list below just as a starting point for discussion.

In general, our graduates should possess sufficient competency to compete credibly for age-appropriate roles in the professional theater, AND sufficient skill and artistry to fulfill the expectations of a professional artistic team. Many of those skills will be evident in a short assessment (audition or jury-exam):

• Dynamic vocal production in traditional, pop and rock styles
• Clarity of text (sung and spoken) and ability to communicate content
• Believability and personalization
• Phrase-by-phrase nuance in song interpretation
• Hold a part in ensemble singing, able to coordinate with other musicians
• Quick pickup of steps and combinations in assorted dance styles
• Project personality and emotional intensity through dance and movement
• Execute choreography with appropriate attention to style and ensemble
• Able to respond impulsively during interaction with partner or reader
• For non-native English speakers, the ability to sing believably and with expression in English.
• SAVI: work is specific, authentic, varied and intense

Other skills can be assessed through other means, like traditional testing. Most of these are important to the student’s ability to participate successfully in the daily work of theatrical production:

• Music skills that enable the student to read fluently and accurately and hold a part (and not vex the music director).
• Life skills including time-management, self-promotion, budgeting and recordkeeping.
• Familiarity with a (short) list of leaders in the field and their contributions, as well as a (short) canonical list of seminal works and their significance.
• Familiarity with a set of basic styles (period and genre), including an understanding of their historical roots and the specific technique challenges they entail. (My list would include comic opera/operetta, vaudeville/musichall, integrated musical play, Brechtian music theater, “Broadway opera,” experimental music theater, cabaret, rock and pop)

Others skills can only be assessed over time, and require that the student and teacher be in a working relationship that lasts weeks, months or even years:

• The ability to plan and execute a project over an extended timeframe, involving self-managed effort as well as collaboration and participation of individuals from varied backgrounds.
• The ability to contribute meaningfully to a musical theater collaboration.
• The ability to use the elements of musical theater (song, music, text and movement) creatively and independently to tell a story, delineate a character, and arouse feeling and thought in a listener

If we can agree as a group on outcomes like these, and perhaps prioritize among the items on this long and ambitious list, we will have gone a long way toward establishing and promoting high standards in the work of member institutions. As Big Steve reminds us in “Putting It Together,” “art isn’t easy.”

keep looking »

A holiday tableau

Da Night Before Christmas

The Perfect Electoral Storm

Final impressions in Amsterdam (not musical theater)

Art isn’t EZ – last stop on the journey

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