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Favorite Musical (4/4): Passion, by Stephen Sondheim

February 1, 2011 by Amy Sundberg

I have saved Passion for last not only because it is the most recent addition to my list of favorites, but also because it is a difficult musical to explain. It is a difficult musical, period. It challenges its audience to the extent that for some, it is an alienating experience. I know this firsthand because the first time I saw Passion was on DVD many years ago, and my husband hated it. It really pushed his buttons, he hated the characters, he didn’t care one way or another about the music. In fact, it’s the only musical I introduced to him to which I remember him having such a violently negative reaction. 

We went together to see a production of Passion during our recent trip to London – yes, my husband loves me – and it was seeing it live that made me realize what a masterwork it is. My husband didn’t hate it this time around either, although we did have a lively discussion afterwards. The thing with Passion is, it grows on you over time, over multiple listenings/viewings, and through your own life experiences. That first time I saw it, I don’t think I had the necessary insights to understand it in the same way that I understood it this past November. And if I see it again in five or ten years, I fully expect it to be a different experience yet again.

Stephen Sondheim is an amazing composer and an equally dazzling lyricist (in fact, he got his professional start as a lyricist), and those skills are clearly in display in this, one of his latest shows. The score is romantic and lush, the melodies much more memorable than in many of his shows, and the inclusion of martial drum rolls ties nicely into both the show’s themes and even some of its lyrics (“They Hear Drums”). The show features a chorus of male soldiers who comment on the action (and spread gossip), and some of the music overlaps on itself (two people singing at once, for example, but not in a traditional duet) in a way that is almost dream-like … or perhaps crazy (the craziness of romantic love or the craziness of solitude, loneliness, and disappointment, depending, and sometimes a bit of both).

The story centers around a love triangle of sorts. At the apex of the triangle is the Italian soldier Georgio, who is having a passionate love affair with the married Clara. When he is transferred to a provincial outpost (and one at which he is very miserable), they swear to continue their love affair through letters. At his new post, he meets his commanding officer’s sickly cousin Fosca, who is ill, obsessive, depressed, and manipulative. Do you see where the difficulty of this show starts to come in? Especially when I tell you that by the end, Georgio has fallen in love with Fosca and thinks his love affair with Clara meant nothing.

Here is where I see the brilliance in this show. However much we’d like to believe otherwise with our happily-ever-afters and our formula romances, love is messy. It’s unreasonable, it doesn’t play by predictable rules, and it comes at unexpected times and in unexpected forms. And love is shown in high relief as being messy in this show. Through the course of events, Fosca gradually learns how to love unconditionally instead of being trapped in the grasping, needy obsession that she begins with. Georgio as well learns what it means to love unselfishly and to love above all else. He asks Clara to run away with him, and she refuses; while she insists he holds her heart, she is held back by her motherly love for her child. She asks him to wait until her child is older, but ultimately he decides he no longer wants such a carefully arranged, rational relationship. What he wants instead is the no-hold’s-barred passion, both the beauty and the ugliness, that Fosca offers him.  So while this show is something of a tragedy, it’s a happy tragedy because the characters have gotten somewhere and they have learned a deep abiding truth, which perhaps matters more than continuing on indefinitely in their old, miserable ways.

The difficulty is that Fosca is so truly unpleasant and unsympathetic, particularly at the beginning of the show. It subverts our narrative expectations to have Georgio choose her over the beautiful and romantically appropriate Clara. Watching Fosca play her manipulative little games with Georgio fills us with aversion. Personally I believe this makes the ultimate transformation of the characters that much more powerful. And it takes me back to the main point of this essay, which is this: love is messy. And yet even out of a dysfunctional and terrible love can come something beautiful. Relentlessness can show itself as either obsession or an unconditional love that is without price.

The first meeting of Fosca and Georgio:

 

An example of the manipulation games of Fosca:

 

A short example of the Soldier’s Chorus:

 

The end of Georgio and Clara’s relationship:

 

Georgio revealing he loves Fosca:

 

And with this post, I finish my series on my favorite musicals. Hope you enjoyed!

Posted in Arts, Life, Music, Theater | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Theatrical Trends on a Small Scale

January 28, 2011 by Amy Sundberg

Last weekend I had the privilege of attending the Songwriters’ Showcase at Theatreworks, a theater company in Mountain View. One of the reasons I adore Theatreworks is because of their dedicated commitment to supporting new works in both straight plays and musical theater. They put on a New Works Festival every spring and often stage world and regional premieres for theater in development. And every winter they host a writers’ retreat (for those working on musicals) that concludes with a performance showcasing what the writers have been working on – the Songwriters’ Showcase I previously mentioned.

I noticed certain trends in the material presented at the showcase that I’d like to discuss. Now, the retreat program is fairly small at this time and only four works-in-progress were showcased; the limited sample makes it dangerous to extrapolate out beyond this program with much confidence. Indeed, these trends may not even be indicative of an overall pattern in the retreat program. But nonetheless, they provide food for thought.

First off, of the four works presented, all four were being worked on by teams of two, and each team consisted of one man and one woman. Every team was made up of a composer/lyricist and the playwright or book writer (the one who writes the script and develops the story). This mirrors the trend in the wider world of combining the work of composer and lyricist into one crucial role, instead of dividing it into two integral jobs as was done earlier in musical theater’s history (think Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kander & Ebb, Lerner & Loewe, Schonberg & Boublil, to name just a few). Examples of more recent composers who are also lyricists (sometimes very excellent ones) include: Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel, etc.

Another interesting fact about these teams was that in three out of four cases, the man was the composer/lyricist and the woman was the playwright. See all those names above? Also all men. So this might be reflecting a wider trend as well. (An interesting side note: when I took my required 20th century music history course, we studied pretty much no women composers. When the prof was asked about it, he said that no women had produced work that stood out enough to be included in a survey course. Ouch.)

One of the works was a fairy tale-like story directed at a children’s theater audience. Fairy tales are a perennial hit, not just for Disney but also for children’s musical theater, so this is a smart financial choice (although the piece needed some work to have the correct children’s theater “feel”, which in its present state is a bit uneven). The songs were for the most part derivative, easily recognizable as being a certain “style” and indeed sounded Disney-esque, which in a show like this is not necessarily a bad thing at all.

The other three musicals, all of which were directed primarily at an adult audience, were concerned with issues of race. One show revolved around  the Weathermen of the 60s and 70s, one was about the life of Madam C.J. Walker, a black entrepreneur and philanthropist who was also the first woman to become a self-made millionaire (she specialized in hair products for black women). The last one was partly based on the Scheherazade framing story in the Arabian Nights, but with a modern component featuring a romance between a Jew and a Palestinian. While race was a main issue addressed in the shows, only one person in the eight on the creative teams was a person of color (I can’t speak to religious affiliations, of course).

Which musical do I most want to see in its completed form? Without a doubt I’m most excited to watch the one about Madam C.J. Walker. Both the script writing and the music crackled with vitality, and it has the potential to be a fascinating show exploring both Madam C.J. Walker’s life and accomplishments, and her troubled relationship with her daughter.

Posted in Arts, Music, Theater | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments »

Run from your Relatives: Family Dysfunction in Fairy Tales

January 27, 2011 by Amy Sundberg

I have recently been struck by the preponderance of family dysfunction in Western fairy tales and myths. It seems that everywhere I turn, I find another evil mother or unkind sibling. Here are only a sampling of stories involving family strife and betrayal:
  • In Cinderella, she has an unkind stepmother (who I read was the biological mother in some older versions), an absent father, and cruel step/half/full sisters who compete with her for one man.
  • In Thousand Furs/Donkeyskin, the father either tries to or succeeds at raping his daughter the princess.
  • In The White Cat, we have three brothers competing for their father’s throne.
  • In Blockhead Hans, we have older brothers being cruel to their youngest “simple” brother.
  • In Toads and Diamonds, we have an evil “step”mother and sister conspiring against our heroine.
  • In Snow White, we have the evil, jealous stepmother who wants her stepdaughter to be killed. And what about the father? He’s apparently alive and just completely neglectful of his daughter.
  • In Hansel and Gretel, we have the evil wife who wants to get rid of an excess of children.
  • In Beauty and the Beast, we have a father willing to sacrifice his daughter for himself.
  • In the legends of King Arthur, we have the seduction of King Arthur by his half-sister Morgan, and his troubled relationship with his son Mordred.
  • King Lear has its root in British mythology, and shows the unhappy relationship between a king and his three daughters (and jockeying between the three daughters for position, including use of armed force).
  • In Rumpelstiltskin, we have a father willing to sacrifice his daughter to save himself because he lied, and the daughter in her turn carrying on the family tradition by being willing to sacrifice her future child for her own safety.
  • In Rapunzel (or now Disney’s version Tangled), we have the overprotective and narcissistic “mother”, exemplified by the wicked witch who pretends to be a blood relation.
  • Don’t even get me started on those crazy Greek gods and goddesses!

I find this particularly fascinating because I’m used to thinking of family dysfunction as a modern phenomenon that only began to be spoken of in the last few decades, but of course there have been dysfunctional families since the dawn of time. Not only that, but it seems to have been a subject of much interest and anxiety in times past to be featured so prominently in the surviving stories.

This consciousness in fairy tales runs counter to the zeitgeist of the 1950s, which seems to be personified by the TV series title “Father Knows Best” and idealizes maintaining an image as the “perfect family”. No, in fairy tales, the downtrodden member of the family is usually the protagonist of the story, and these heroes and heroines are often shown having adventures and using adversity to help them transform so that they are able to escape their tormenting relations. In other words, they often win. The evil family members in question often meet horrible and gruesome fates, like the step sisters in Cinderella who have their eyes pecked out when attending Cinderella’s wedding, or Snow White’s evil stepmother who is forced to wear iron shoes and dance until she drops dead. Other times our protagonists merely leave their family members far behind as they begin their new lives.

Are these tales truly discussing dysfunctional families or are they merely providing enough hardship and conflict (often in the form of evil family members) to force the protagonists into growing up and coming into their own? Whatever the answer, it’s hard for me to read them now without noticing the implicit moral of distrust of family and reliance on self — maybe with a little help from a magical item or a fairy godmother along the way.

Posted in Life, Science fiction and fantasy | Tagged , , , , , , | 13 Comments »

Favorite Musical (3/4): Next to Normal, by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey

January 25, 2011 by Amy Sundberg

I was lucky enough to see Next to Normal on Broadway when I was attending the SCBWI Winter Conference last year, and it completely blew me away. Not only did this show win the Tony Award for Best Original Score in 2009, but it also won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (the first musical to win this award since Rent in 1996).

Next to Normal can be easily compared to Rent in many ways. In watching it, I felt I was seeing the promise to American musical theater made by Rent a decade and a half before finally coming to fruition. We saw a profound movement in this direction with the success of the award-winning Spring Awakening in 2007, but Next to Normal took this progression still further. It combines the rock-inspired score with a book scored with deep contemporary issues. The lyrics are also a stand-out here; not since Jonathan Larson have I seen such clever and facile lyrics being used for dramatic (as opposed to comedic) effect.

An article about the Pulitzer prize win says, “The Pulitzer jury recognized the work for its subject matter and stated that it “expands the scope of subject matter for musicals.”” You might be noticing a trend by now in my favorite musicals. They all expand the scope of subject matter for musicals. They talk about things that matter; they have something to say. Just as I mentioned last week that this is a major quality I look for in the short fiction I read, so is it also an important criteria for the theater I love best.

In the case of Next to Normal, the subject matter is mental illness, grief, and a family in crisis. And I have to say that, while the score is excellent, it’s the emotional subject matter that makes this show so memorable for me. The show follows the journey of Diana Goodman, a mother suffering from bipolar disorder and hallucinations, along with the struggles of her family, including her husband who is suffering from depression himself and her teenage daughter Natalie, who feels ignored and isolated. It is often quite dark, and the emotional notes ring very realistically. I’ve done a fair amount of reading about dysfunctional families, and many of those dynamics were shown — indeed, played out to their messy conclusions — during the course of the play.

I can’t talk about Next to Normal without mentioning how important I find it that this show introduces an open discussion about mental illness, a subject that is often marginalized in American society. Diana Goodman is without question the main character of the musical, and we are taken on a tour of her highs and lows, her moments of lucidity and complete mental breakdown, her pain and regrets, and the tough questions she is forced to answer. But for me, it was the character of her daughter Natalie who tugged on my heart-strings the most, just wishing for as “normal” a family as possible and trying to survive in a turmoil she can’t change or leave behind her.

Here are a few of my favorite musical moments:

Natalie’s song “Everything Else”, which is sung to a Mozartian piano accompaniment. I should note that Natalie’s song “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” is possibly the more popular of the two, and also excellent.

“Who’s Crazy/My Psychopharmacologist and I”: this song is all about the lyrics.

“Maybe (Next to Normal)”: the song that gave the show its title, coming towards the end of the second act.

Happily for me, Next to Normal is currently on a national tour so I’ll have the opportunity to see it again in a few weeks. And as I said about Adam Guettel, I’m very eager to see what comes next from the talented Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey.

Posted in Arts, Music, Theater | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Hugo Nominations: Consider Lightspeed and John Joseph Adams

January 21, 2011 by Amy Sundberg

Lightspeed, December 2010

As we descend into award season for the speculative fiction community, I would like to bring to your attention the wonderful new science fiction magazine Lightspeed and its editor, John Joseph Adams.1

Lightspeed began its publication last June and released seven issues in 2010. Every issue features two original stories and two reprints, as well as several nonfiction pieces that often (although not always) connect to the stories. It’s available on-line (for free) or as an e-edition, purchasable as either a subscription or on an issue-by-issue basis.

I’ve been deeply impressed by the quality of the stories published at Lightspeed, and I’m not the only one. Out of the 16 original stories published in Lightspeed in 2010, a full 50% of them have been selected for Year’s Best Anthologies. I’ll repeat that: FIFTY PERCENT.

In line with what I spoke about yesterday, John Joseph Adams seems to select the risky stories, the stories that say something, the subversive or vaguely disturbing stories, the interesting, mind-bending stories. Happily for me, the stories I want to read most.

So first of all, if you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out the magazine for yourself. You might also wish to consider nominating Lightspeed in the Best Semiprozine category for the Hugos, or its editor John Joseph Adams for Best Editor, Short Form. (He also had some anthologies out in 2010, including The Way of the Wizard and The Living Dead 2.)

Any other semiprozine or editor you think should be considered for this year’s Hugos? Let me know below!

1 Disclaimer: Yes, I know John in Real LifeTM.

Posted in Science fiction and fantasy, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Delusions of Grandeur

January 20, 2011 by Amy Sundberg

When I was a teenager, I enjoyed dreaming big. I wanted to be a novelist, I wanted to work on animated features at Disney, I wanted to write games at Sierra (this was back when they were still doing cool stuff like Quest for Glory, Castle of Dr. Brain, and the King’s Quest series). I wanted to be a singer and actress and perform in musicals, I wanted to write musicals, I wanted to direct musicals. I knew that many of these aspirations were unrealistic and difficult, but I wanted them all anyway.

However, a family member who shall remain nameless said something to me one day, perhaps just an offhand remark, that became fully lodged in my young impressionable brain. “Amy,” the person said, “you have delusions of grandeur.” They might as well have said, “Why try, because the only possible outcome is failure.” Even today, half my lifetime later, whenever I think of trying something daring or risky or simply ambitious, those words go through my mind. “I don’t know if I can do this,” I say to my husband, “because so-and-so said.” And then he has to go through the work of convincing me to do whatever it is anyway.

Photo by Tony Fischer

 

I was reminded of this when I read Christie Yant’s recent essay, Lessons from the Slushpile: Good vs. Great. She discusses what distinguishes the great stories (and incidentally, the ones that are bought) from the rest, and one of the distinctions she’s made is that truly great stories have something to say. They say something that matters, that makes us as readers think or question or feel. They are ambitious, meant to illuminate as well as entertain.In my limited experience, these kinds of ambitious stories are rare, but it was by finding them that I first learned to appreciate, and later to love, short stories as a form.So why are these stories thin on the ground? Perhaps for one or more of these reasons (and there might well be others):

1. It’s difficult to come up with something to say in the first place.
2. Even if you’ve got something to say, it’s difficult to express it in a clear and original fashion.
3. Writing such a story means that on some level, you’ve got to have delusions of grandeur.

I think I had it right as a teenager. Delusions of grandeur are what allow us to strive, to push ourselves beyond our perceived capabilities, to dive into projects of vast scope. They give us permission to take risks, do things that make us uncomfortable, and ignore those who don’t believe we can do it. Delusions of grandeur are what allow us to become great.

So right now, I’m going to finish up this essay, and then I’m going to sit down and work on a short story that scares the pants off me. It makes me uncomfortable, it kind of makes me want to cry, I’m not quite sure I know where it’s going, and even if I did, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to follow it there. All I can do is believe in its potential, as I believe in my own.

Delusions of grandeur are the necessary caterpillars if we want our words to fly.

Posted in Arts, Life, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments »

Favorite Musical (2/4): The Light in the Piazza, by Adam Guettel

January 18, 2011 by Amy Sundberg

Not enough people have heard of this little gem, even though it won the Tony Award for best original score in 2005 (Spamalot won the Tony for best musical that year, but let’s not even go there).  The music is so beautiful, it makes me feel like there’s something inside me stretching towards the sky, and that’s really the top attraction for this show. The story line is interesting enough, the character development for the main mother character is well done, and the lyrics are passable although on the whole nothing special.  And given the music they accompany, they almost feel beside the point (which is particularly telling since I am usually all about the lyrics). 

The Light in the Piazza is not a “belty” show, as are most of the new shows we’ve been seeing on Broadway.  No, Adam Guettel draws less on rock and pop music and more on opera and classical music to create his romantic score, filled with soaring violins and Classically trained voices.  It’s possible that this choice is partly why the show isn’t more widely known, but I’m glad he made it just the same. The lush music suits the story and the setting (Florence , Italy).

My local theater company put this show on last fall, and after one of the performances I heard an audience member mention that the story was “creepy”.  Or maybe she said “strange”.  This reaction might also factor into the relative obscurity of the show.  I actually really like the story, although I will admit it’s challenging in that it takes a lot of thought, and it also depends a lot upon the interpretation of the role of Clara.  The general idea is that Clara, now 26, was in an accident when she was eleven or twelve that froze her mental and emotional development, so ever since she has led a very sheltered existence.  But now she and her mother are on holiday in Italy, and suddenly love strikes from the sky like lightning.  One of the questions the show pivots around is, exactly how impaired is Clara?  This is a question that is never answered explicitly, so one just has to guess.  Is she, as her mother finally comes to believe, capable of more than they’d assumed?  Can she aspire to a “normal” life with a husband and possibly even children?  Is she mature enough to truly love?  Or, is this all wishful thinking doomed to dreadful disappointment?  Plus we explore the obligations of disclosure (how much does the mother have to tell Clara’s lover? What about his family?) and we watch events shape and change Clara’s mother, whose worldview has been turned on its head by the end of the show. An ironic twist that happens mid-way through Act 2 highlights the differing values of the two families in question.

The fact is, a lot of these issues and questions are uncomfortable, so I can understand why audience members might be uneasy afterwards.  But for me, this is the best kind of theater: theater that makes me re-evaluate myself and how I see the world, and that leaves an open question.

A few favorite moments, both from the Second Act:

“The Light in the Piazza”, sung by Clara in Rome, when she wishes to return to Florence (and the man she’s fallen in love with).  One of my personal favorites to sing.

 

“Fable”, sung by Clara’s mother Margaret at the end of the show.  This song is truly epic.

 

Ah, so beautiful!  If you like what you’ve heard, “Dividing Day,” “The Beauty Is,” and “Let’s Walk” are also songs worthy of attention. I’ll definitely be on the look-out for any new work by this promising composer.

Posted in Arts, Music, Theater | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments »

The Dangers of Advice

January 13, 2011 by Amy Sundberg

A few days ago, I read the excellent article “Writing and Mortality” by Rachel Swirsky, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  I recommend reading it and coming back here, but since I don’t always do that myself, I’ll summarize. She talks about some advice she read about writing, how if the project you’re working on is not the project you’d be working on if you only had six weeks to live, then it’s the wrong project. Rachel calls foul on this advice, saying that if she had only six weeks, she’d be busy spending time with her loved ones. “Artists,” she says, “aren’t only real artists if they would spend their last few days creating art.” 

I agree with Rachel one hundred percent. Creating art is a high priority for me; in fact, I’ve structured my life around increasing my time to do so. But it’s not my highest priority, and that’s okay. This truth was brought home to me recently when I was suffering from root canal complications.  Mostly I was thinking, “My god, the pain, the pain, please make it stop, I’ll do whatever it takes to stop the pain.”  But when I could focus beyond the immediate suffering, what did I care about the most?  I wanted to spend time with my husband and my little dog, and I wanted to write long e-mails to my best friend.  I’m an ambitious person, but when it came down to it, I wasn’t thinking about my writing anymore.  What mattered to me was the people I love.

Taking a step back, this entire discussion was sparked from a piece of writing advice. I read a lot of writing advice every week.  I even occasionally write some writing advice.  It’s amazing how much helpful information about writing I can learn from the internet (although at this point, a lot of the advice I read is a reminder more than a revelation).

But this advice is not infallible, and it cannot be followed blindly.  Each piece of advice requires consideration, and if you find it doesn’t work well for you, that doesn’t mean you’re wrong or a bad writer or anything else.  It means that advice is not for you, full stop.

People try to give me advice all the time (and not just about writing, either).  Here are some examples of advice I do not take:

1. You should write every day. Yeah, I don’t write every day.  I usually take weekends off, and then I come back to the computer on Monday full of fresh ideas and vigor.  That’s what works for me, for now.
2. You should write what you know. Sorry, I don’t actually live in a world with working magic or a world set in the future, but I still write about them.  (Yes, this advice has deeper connotations that are more helpful, but its phrasing can be misleading.)
3. You should write x words every day. Unfortunately, only I know how many words I can write per day, and this number changes over time and depending on circumstances (like, for instance, a root canal or quitting the day job).
4. You should only submit to pro paying markets. I actually kind of follow this one, but the more I think about it, the more I think it’s silly.  Really I should submit to any markets I feel like submitting to, right?  If I’d be happy seeing my work at a certain publication, then I’ll submit.  If I won’t feel happy or I think the publication is shady in some way, then I won’t submit.  So this advice isn’t for me.
5. You should/shouldn’t outline. Um, really good writers go both ways on this one.  So I’ll do whatever I like, and experiment with both.  (For those wondering, yes, I outline for novels.  For short stories, it really depends.)

I could go on, but you get the idea.  Advice is in the eye of the beholder.  People give advice about what works for them as individuals.  But we are not cookie cutter people, and therefore some of this advice will not work for you.  The trick is to learn what you can, and then adapt that learning to fit your own lifestyle, your own priorities, your own artistic strengths and weaknesses, and your own voice.

I would love it if you would comment with some advice you have read or received (writing advice or otherwise) that doesn’t work for you.  It can even be something that I have said here on the blog (gasp). I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

Posted in Arts, Life, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments »

Favorite Musical (1/4): Rent, by Jonathan Larson

January 11, 2011 by Amy Sundberg

Rent has been on my current list of favorite musicals for the longest amount of time.  It came bursting on the scene both off and on Broadway in 1996, and I discovered it by late 1997.  In fact, it is possibly the first CD I ever bought after I received my first CD player in 1998. 

Rent is very much a product of its time.  It shows the HIV/AIDs epidemic when it was at its peak and is set before cell phones became popular, featuring an answering machine used for screening calls.  And yet, its music has a very modern feel and it was always a very popular show with my students, many of whom were born the year the show came out.

From a musical perspective, Jonathan Larson, the composer and lyricist of Rent, was trying to modernize the American musical, and in many ways he succeeded, although it took many years for other composers to successfully build on his innovations.  While the “rock opera” had been quite popular in the 1980s, as showcased by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera and Schonberg and Boublil’s Les Miserables, among others, Larson was going for a different sound, more influenced by modern rock and rap.  Combined with his genius for clever lyrics, Larson wrote a score that popped with originality and vitality.  The sheer energy that crackles from a live production of Rent can be spellbinding.

The story of Rent is a modern adaptation of Pucchini’s opera La Boheme, set in New York and featuring several starving (and in many cases HIV-positive) artists.  For me, the first act has always been the stronger of the two, focusing on the action of one night, whereas the second act is more diffuse and covers many months.  Our protagonists struggle with poverty, sacrificing and striving for their art, living with terminal illness, death, violence, homelessness, mainstream disapproval, and heartbreak/lack of trust/relationship drama.  I heard this musical and realized, more deeply than I had before, that musical theater can have just as much depth and as much to say as other art forms.

The show is not without weaknesses.  As previously stated, I feel it loses some of its focus in the second act, and some of the sung dialogue passes by so quickly it can be missed by newcomers to the show.  What always drives me nuts, however, is that the musician Roger’s song “One Song Glory” in the first act, in which he sings about trying to write the perfect song, is infinitely stronger and more moving than his song in the second act “In Your Eyes”, which is supposed to be the one perfect song but is, in my opinion, much more clichéd and not as musically or vocally interesting.  And the end feels rushed and doesn’t quite match with the rest of the piece.

For me, Rent is inextricably tied to the time in my life when it was introduced to me.  It deals with artists struggling to make a mark on the world, while I was a music student struggling to improve my singing.  It shows main characters with terminal illness, and delves into the realities of living with illness and with death.  At this same time, my mother had a terminal illness and later died from it.  This musical spoke to the nineteen-year-old me in a way for which I’ll always be grateful.

Here are a few, out of many, of my favorite songs from the show:

– Seasons of Love: possibly the most well-known song from the show.  It raises the question of how to measure a life: what is it in life that we value most?

– Will I: a moving testimonial to the fears relating to terminal illness
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– One Song Glory: one of my very favorite songs of all time.  This song alone makes me wish I was a male tenor.  Every time I listen to it, I get tears in my eyes.  It’s about the desire to create lasting art in the face of mortality.
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What is your opinion of Rent?  Do you have favorite songs or moments, or see different strengths and weaknesses than the ones I picked out?  Let me know!

Posted in Arts, Music, Theater | Tagged , , | 6 Comments »

A Year of Meaning

January 6, 2011 by Amy Sundberg

When I started this blog six months ago, I made a private deal with myself.  “Self,” I said, “it might be very difficult to get a blog started.  Maybe no one will read it for a long time, plus I might run out of things to write about.  Plus I won’t want to write essays when I’m having a bad day.  I’d better make a commitment so that I don’t wimp out on myself.”  I decided not to give up for at least six months.  Any less than that didn’t seem like a real attempt.

Writers are often encouraged to start blogs.  Publicity (blah blah blah) promotion (murph) building a fan base/tribe (blah blah) building discipline (blah de blah) marketing (gack).  Okay, I actually think all those things can be pretty interesting at times, but the truth is that none of them provided the motivation for starting this blog.  They’re just a whole lot of cherries on top.

What I realized back in the spring, when I was first conceptualizing this blog and what I wanted it to be, was that for me, being a writer meant having something to say.  I say “for me” because I’m not sure if this is true for all writers (feel free to chime in and tell me!)   And I realized that with internet technology at the stage it’s in, not being published yet was no excuse for me to be silent.  If I was a real writer, I thought, I’d say what I felt was important to say, publishing contract or no.

Photo by Robin Ducker

Working on this blog has been a transformative experience for me.  It reminds me twice a week that, yes, I want to be the kind of person who has something to say.  It makes me stretch myself in directions I wouldn’t expect because some days I sit down to write and I have to force myself to say something, anything, and I don’t even have an inkling of where to start. And some days I get a comment from one of my readers that makes me realize what I said made a difference to someone, and I feel full to bursting.

Ultimately this blog has turned me into a writer by my definition of the word, and that’s what matters most to me.

So I will be continuing this little experiment for another six-month period.  In conversation, a few people have called this a writer’s blog, and my immediate reaction has been, “What?  No, it’s not a writer’s blog.  I don’t talk a lot about craft (only a little, I swear!) or promote my projects or give you word counts.”  But of course, I’m completely wrong.  This is a writer’s blog by definition because I am a writer, and that fact shapes the conversation here.

I’ve also spent some time worrying about writing on theme.  If you’ve ever read any blogs about blogging, you will have noticed that they always suggest finding a theme and writing to that.  For instance, I could write about creativity and the processes that surround that.  Or I could write about parenting, or I could write about training show dogs.  Or whatever.  Writing on theme gives your audience some idea what to expect from you; it also narrows down your writing options to more manageable proportions and gives you a frame for whatever you decide to talk about.

But since I’m embracing the fact that this is a writer’s blog, I can also play fast and loose with my theme.  So what is this blog about?  It’s about the things that are so important that I want to write about them.  It’s about creativity and art, sure, and it’s about how to live a dream, and it’s about optimism and how to be happier, and it’s about trying to pull together patterns to make the world coalesce in a different way.  Because this is what writers do.  We take a character’s life, full of random chance and mundane moments, and we polish it until it says something.  We create meaning.

So that is what I’m wishing: for 2011 to be, for me and for you, a year in which we can create meaning together.

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