Course Reader: Mandy's Thoughts on "The Music Man"

The OTHER required reading (or viewing rather) for the cast is The Music Man, the 1962 production starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones (and lots of FANtastic character actors: Hermione Gingold, Pert Kelton, Paul Ford, Buddy Hackett, Mary Wickes and all those other hilarious ladies in the pack -- and little Ron Howard!). THIS movie has all of the joy and spectacle that I want from Let It Snow!, with some handy ways to sophisticate up our singing and dancing. AND, it's about someone's town. Bonus!

I know this movie reeeeeally well, but watching it again with Let It Snow! in my mind was still inspiring. One thing I really enjoyed was the way the acting, singing, and dancing all blend together: the songs all begin out of speech and slide into full-fledged song. (Well, except for "Shipoopi.") And there's dance everywhere, with all the movement highly choreographed. Teenagers chasing each other make a little dance out of it, though a song is nowhere near and they're in the background! Marian and Charley do a little back-and-forth tango when she's trying to distract him. All of Robert Preston's movements look like he could be dancing at every second -- though he's not really a very trained dancer during actual numbers, his every movement is deliberate. And all the characters are so strong and identifiable, they feel very physically real and alive, whether it's just the workaday plainness of the boys' mothers, or the sharp birdlike movements of the Pickalittle Talkalittle ladies, or the ridiculously over-grand posturing of the mayor's wife.

It's also interesting to see how environmental the songs are: they don't take place in Fantasy Musical Land of clouds and shadows, they take place where the people ARE. They dance around the statue in the town square ("Trouble"), on the courthouse steps ("Iowa Stubborn"), in the barn ("Sadder but Wiser Girl"), outside the hotel ("Pickalittle Talkalittle"), in the gymnasium ("Seventy-six Trombones"), in the library ("Marian the Librarian"). The situation in that location just becomes too strong to talk about, so they slide into singing and dancing. They remain who they are, and they're having the same conversation -- it just morphs into song. When they're done, the conversation is over!

And because the songs evolve out of conversation, the songs are *like* conversations, like the characters decide to play with one another. There's some "teaching" of songs and dances, and some back-and-forthing to guide the song along as it's being "made up" by the characters. In "Trouble," Harold Hill *gives* the choreography to the crowd and indicates what they should do when, and in "Sadder but Wiser Girl," he and Marcellus (Hackett) trade off dance steps in a little flirty dance.





The other people onstage, meanwhile, are all sucked into the dance too. They're all participating, even if it's unknowingly. Those who are in on the song often "play along" with the singer's words, like Marcellus pretending to be a girl in "Sadder but Wiser," or the kids pretending to be a marching band in "Seventy-six Trombones." Sometimes they're part of the song without really knowing it: Mrs. Paroo rocks her rocking chair in tempo with "Sweet and Low," but she's not really singing or even paying attention to the song. Marian, in "Marian the Librarian," is dancing along with the song by refusing Harold's advances -- though soon she gets absorbed into the dance and is soon leading it -- before she comes to her senses, that is.

(This is my favorite scene! Well, one of them.)


Because the whole town is often sucked into a musical number, it creates a tangible sense of community in the film. The individually identifiable characters are strong and varied, and definitely memorable (like the girl who "plays" the player piano), and we get just enough quirk from them to know who they are without too much extra. When they come together as a group, either in subgroups or as a whole town, we see them as a whole family: no matter how much they may argue and bicker, in some ways they're united. The delightful contrast between the curmudgeonly nature of some of the characters, and the earnestness with which they band together for a cause, is a feeling I'd like to absorb into our show.



Individual vs. group; singing melting into acting and dancing; songs arising from the situation; family members who argue but band together; call and response songs and dances; counterpoint songs from different points of view (Lida Rose meets Sweet and Low) - I could go on about more specific details (delightful names of people and places, glimpses of town rituals, etc) but those are pretty good points to start with, eh musicals fans?

Course Reader: Mandy's Thoughts on "Our Town"

Since Thornton Wilder's Our Town is required reading for this year's cast of Let It Snow!, I thought I'd pre-pepper the discussion with my thoughts on why I chose to have people read it, and what I took away from it, reading it this time around.

There are things about the structure of the play that I *don't* want people to take away: the glimpse we get of the town doesn't delve all that deeply into any one person's experience; we get surface impressions, but the show is not from anyone's point of view, except maybe the narrator's (or the dead people).

But the fact that there *is* so much detail about the town and the surroundings is one of the reasons I thought of the play. Though the convention of the play is such that the stage is bare-bones (hey! just like OUR stage!), the language and actions of the characters fill up the world with color. They talk about landmarks such as the main street and the river, the hardware store and the doctor's house, schools and churches and the big butternut tree. The town has a newspaper and a police force. Off in the distance you can hear the train.

There are even characters in the play who are "audience members," asking questions about the town. (hey! just like we'll ask the audience member about the town!) Though Wilder may have meant them satirically, they ask pretty good questions for our purposes, about town activities and character: is there drinking? Do people care about social equality? What do they do for culture?

In thinking about a play that features a town as a main character, one of the temptations is for something to *threaten* the town, and for the town to be saved. But real towns don't quite work that way: in Our Town there are some minor changes afoot: they're building a new bank downtown and putting in a time capsule, horses are being replaced by "auto-mo-biles," some people leave and some people die -- but the town remains, in character, the same -- like a river it flows around obstacles and just absorbs them, until they become part of the town too.

But things *do* change on a SMALL scale -- small as compared to the town, but still large for those who are involved. George and Emily get married, which affects not only them, but their families. Big events happen, which may be the kinds which happen to everyone, but strike home for people nonetheless: the characters take time out to MUSE about events big and small: the full moon, marriage, youth, death, the weather. Everything that happens to you is important, if it's happening to YOU. It's important in the noticing. Emily says near the end, "We don't have time to look at one another" -- when we see characters *looking,* we see what's important to them in that moment, even if it's "just" the full moon or the coming rain.

Aside from all this big stuff about Life and Death, there's also useful practical character information to be gleaned. The characters live their everyday lives full of nuance: they gossip about people who live in town and who've left. They grouse at each other about hurrying up for breakfast. They chat while they're doing something useful like stringing the beans. They have pet hobbies and interests that are only mentioned in passing, but to them are whole lives: the chicken incubator, research about the Civil War and about Napoleon. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Gossip, gossip, gossip. It's the details that make stories specific instead of universal; aren't there endless stories about people growing up, getting married, and dying? It's all in the details.

And even more practical and technical than talking about details are the conventions of movement onstage. Thinking about how to make the stage seem bigger than it is. Characters bump into and talk to invisible townspeople extras. One young boy comes in from somewhere, throwing a ball up so high that sometimes he has to take six steps backwards to catch it. Theatrical convention is thrust to the forefront, with no scenery to speak of: climb a ladder and you're upstairs -- look over the top of the ladder and you're looking out the window. Lots of the action in the play is space-objects: stringing beans, washing dishes, even the doctor has a space-object bag. And the actors clean up their "props" before they leave the stage.

In short, I guess it's the abstract setting, but the total commitment to the characters' concrete reality that's a takeaway, plus the affection for the town, and the cataclysmic feelings that arise from the everyday. We're shooting for all of the nostalgia with none of the depressing. ;o) The real-town feel withOUT Wilder's abstraction FROM it (see Act 3).


Here's a clip from the drugstore scene between Emily and George -- from a Lincoln Center production starring Penelope Ann Miller as Emily, Spalding Grey as the narrator, and baby Eric Stoltz! as George:

Link to the Drugstore scene on YouTube -- no embedding for me!

And here's the part where George tries to go see Emily on their wedding day, and ends up stuck in the kitchen with her dad instead. (this is from some adorable college production, so the video is lo-fi -- BUT, you get the sense of the family being all irreverent with each other):

Cast Choreography

So each week, during dance warm-ups, an early 10 minutes is spent on learning choreography. It's not choreography we're going to use in the show, but each week, three members of the cast teach 16 to 32 counts of choreography to a small group, then we perform for the rest of the cast.

Tomorrow is my day to teach, so I've been spending tonight working on what I'm going to teach tomorrow night.

Now, it may be cheating a little, but I'm pulling a piece of choreography that I learned in highschool (*COUGH*twenty*COUGH*years*COUGH*ago*COUGH*). I seriously seriously doubt that the muscle memory still exists for this, but honestly, it seems much easier than when I learned it way back when.

Hopefully it'll be as easy to teach.

Mandy's Dance Warm Up

Not sure if Mandy intended this for general public consumption, but then she shouldn't have posted it on YouTube. Here's the dance warm up we do at the beginning of every rehearsal:


No, we're not doing Let It Snow: Mumbai. She's just using a Bollywood song for the warm up.

Let It Snow Required Viewing

Rehearsals have started for Let It Snow! Mandy's taking advantage of this crazy world of the interwebs and assigning required YouTube viewing to the cast. Here's what we were supposed to watch for last week:

From the Music Man:





I never realized "Shipoopi" was the Music Man's version of the dream ballet from Oklahoma!

Speaking of which, here it is with Hugh Jackman:


How about some actual ballet:


And now ladies and gentlemen, Bob Fosse:


Fosse was in to "sexy"




and was a good dancer himself: