WashCult

I’m an ima virgin so my impressions are skewed… but here’s what I think… (BTW IMA is the integrated media association - find out more here

reinventing the wheel:

this was the most prominent takeaway for me. I’ve been doing stuff on the web since 1995, and used to be involved with museum folks who were putting up the first web sites, and trying to change the visitor experience, democratizing and diffusing the content in their stuffy institutions… next time, maybe get one of these folks, like Steve Dietz, to talk about lessons learned in this endeavor in the past 13 years…

can we really sit in a room, and have someone tell us they’re inventing the encyclopedia, or that “local” radio content is something new… perhaps this is someone who never heard a dj shout out to somebody’s girlfriend…

but still… 30% of the conference was pure genius and inspiration.

For example, think about language:

instead of trying to “monetize” the web, Jimmy Wales calls Wikipedia a “charity” — not a five oh one see three — a charity. To me, that’s genius.

Free the culture, free the people, free us from our hidebound organizations and the stultifying culture of so many of them.

And let’s continue the dialogue. My idea for next time: a secret team not only live blogs the conference, but tells stories about it, and anybody can take part in the workshop to make that happen. The resulting stories go nearly live to the web, as a complement to the C-SPAN style live streams.

anybody wanna join me?

@menschmedia

Since the first of the year, I’ve seen three incredible women in concert in New York City: Barbara Cook, Judy Kuhn, and Joanna Newsom.

Perhaps the last is the most interesting. As a rather clueless 55-year-old, I’d never heard of Newsom, let alone heard her sing. But the excitement of going to the big city is partly about serendipity. With an extra night to see a show, I scoped out the most exciting event that had the maximum hip signifiers (BAM, sold out, freak folk, harpist, accompanied by a symphony orchestra) and begged a ticket because of my media connections as a senior producer at the senior’s product.

So who and what are Joanna Newsom? Well, everyone there was in their twenties and thirties. Everyone was dressed as an artistic sort, or a tech type. And Ms. Newsom was a winsome pop songstress, who sometimes sounded like a mewling cat, but only enough to scare away the old folk. With roots in Irish and Scottish folks songs, singer songerwriter expressionism, and straight from the heart girlish charm, Newsom was that perfect work of art, a singer who spoke directly into the ears of her audience.

To hear her, search for her on YouTube…

More on Barbara Cook, and Judy Kuhn as Laura Nyro, as soon as I can prove that more than three people have read this recent post. Write to me: menschmedia(at)yahoo.com.

See my most recent work at http://radioprimetime.org/specials/

Talk Radio

The producers of Eric Bogosian’s “Talk Radio” on Broadway, which stars hyperserious Liev Schrieber, are taking out huge print ads complaining that their radio spots have been “banned.” Apparently, the words “pet orgasm” cannot be spoken into the ether in virginal New York City. Listen for yourself. Of course the controversy is much more valuable than the small number of impressions that would have been made by the spots. Got us to listen, didn’t they?

Tristan

“The Tristan Project” brings together the hottest talent in performance today, including director Peter Sellars, video artist Bill Viola, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, and mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. They have reimagined Wagner’s opera “Tristan and Isolde” in a staging that is dominated by Viola’s giant, ultra-high-definition video images. The Project yanks Wagner’s opera into the 21st Century, for better or worse, and demands we consider it as something brand new.

Heard in its premiere engagement at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the result was, in turn, exhilirating and stupefying. The video tended to overpower the singers, erasing them from the scene, while their voices and the performance of the LA Phil represented the music in all its glory. The artists have continued development since then, and Tristan may have grown more focused or more ponderous.

Read more here.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks is turning his attention to the musical of “Young Frankenstein,” as his megahit “The Producers” gets ready to close. “The Producers” was a great show, but most of the headlines today have to do with business: the first $100 orchestra ticket, the first $480 big spender ticket, the billion dollars in worldwide grosses since the show opened on Broadway in 2001 with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. It closes in April after about 2,500 performances, 18th on the all-time longest running list, according to the New York Times. (with free membership)

For August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean” to work its magic, you’ve got to believe that the assortment of people onstage are a family. From the ageless matriarch Aunt Ester, who claims to be centuries old, to the others who protect her and help extend her influence into the community where she “washes souls” on Tuesdays… these men and women must create a believable and tightly knit world.

(Jimonn Cole, Pascale Armand, and Lynnie Godfrey, photo by Scott Suchman for Arena)

In Paulette Randall’s staging of the play at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., we don’t believe that Solly Two Kings and Eli worked together for years in the Underground Railroad; we miss the secret looks and signs that would alert us to the love and dependencies these characters have for one another. And the outsized, and histrionic behavior of the individual characters never allows them to quite mesh with each other, but merely calls attention to their individuality. The play glows with wonder and pain, especially in the second act, but the lack of connections is felt throughout, and stops the performance from engaging and devastating us, as this work might clearly do.

August Wilson, who died in October, 2005 left behind a towering achievement. He wrote a play for every decade of the 20th Century, based on the life of the Black community in his native Pittsburgh. Many critics agree with hometown writer Christopher Rawson, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who says “For scope and power, the Pittsburgh Cycle is a coherent, focused achievement unmatched by any other American playwright.” That said, the first act of Gem of the Ocean builds slowly and fitfully. We meet Aunt Ester (Lynnie Godfrey) when Citizen Barlow (Jimonn Cole) knocks at her door seeking absolution from an unspecified crime. Eli (Clayton Lebouef) and Black Mary (Pascale Armand) live under Ester’s roof, and traveling salesman Rutherford Selig (Timmy Ray James) is a regular visitor, treated as another family member, even though he’s white.

We soon meet Caesar (LeLand Gantt), the local enforcer, and Solly Two Kings (Joseph Marcell), a former slave with family left behind down South. Before we know it, we’re caught up in the politics of the local mill, and the mysterious death of a man pursued by the law for stealing a bucket of nails – a crime of which he is innocent. As we wait for the plot to jell, and for the true meanings to be revealed in Act Two, we start to know the characters and their distinctive tales.

Arena’s stage presents at least one challenge to a director, one which artistic director Molly Smith usually solves creatively. With a theater completely in the round, actors must always be moving, so that only a word or two, but never a whole sentence or beat is lost. Too often in this show, beats are thrown away, as actors deliver a series of lines to two thirds of the house, without awareness that their backs are not expressively telling the same story.

It’s in Act Two, when we finally realize that this show contains a powerful heart, that the production nearly redeems itself. It turns out that Aunt Ester’s secret ceremony of cleansing and renewal involves an exorcism of sorts. She conjures the history of slavery, from the first passage across the Atlantic to the last broken shackle. Aunt Ester’s magic is the ability to recall that black history, and use it to redeem souls, shooting them forward into the 20th Century and new possibilities for African American lives.

In staging this ceremony, Paulette Randall brings the theater alive with ghosts and pain. The circular stage no longer fights the actors and hides the action, it becomes a slave ship, groaning and creaking, howling with the screams of millions of Africans lost at sea on their way to the new world in slave ships. When things return to normal, it’s all the more disappointing that the ensemble, briefly having risen to this peak, once again fritters our attention away on posturing and missed connections. But for a moment, we glimpse the play’s shattering core, and we can understand how it fits in to August Wilson’s memorable cycle of life and pain for Black America in the last century.

I didn’t get the second act of Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” when I saw it on Broadway in 1987. The show wrapped everything up tightly at the Act I curtain. All the fairy tales colliding on stage arrived at a happy ending and there seemed nowhere left to go. I used to tell people that the show had a great first act, but not much of an Act II.

And — spoiler alert — what was all that in the second act with a Giant shaking the scenery and killing off half the cast?

Lauren Williams as Little Red Riding Hood, James Moye as the Wolf, photo by Carol Pratt

Now I’m twenty years older and I understand that fairy tales don’t always have happy endings and that loss and disappointment are part of life. I know from personal experience that “Once upon a time” and “I wish” and “Happily ever after” all rub against each other in unpredictable ways, just like Sondheim and James Lapine (who wrote the book) insist they do.

I wasn’t ready for “Into the Woods” when I first saw it. But the fabulous new production which opens Signature Theatre’s $16 million home in Northern Virginia makes sense all the way through, and delivers the show’s heart-rending, and ultimately heartwarming, message. Act II? Maybe it still drags a tiny bit. But that’s life.

Welcome Home

First, the jaw dropping new space for the D.C. area’s best theater company is another kind of fairy tale. (New Signature lobby, photo Scott Suchman) That’s the one where hard work and penury are rewarded, and creativity and pluck triumph. The theater began in 1989 as part of the Arlington, Virginia arts incubator program. The loyal audience, which got used to dodging traffic along the industrial strip where the theater lived in an old bumper plating factory, now numbers more than 4500 subscribers, and the operation has an annual budget of $4.5 million, which still seems absurdly low for what they accomplish.

The theater’s artistic director and co-founder, Eric Schaeffer, has developed a personal style that depends on honest, unamplified voices, and performances big enough to be appealing, but intimate enough to experience from inches away. You entered Signature’s old space, fondly called The Garage, for each production through a hallway designed to introduce you to the ambience, colors, and feel of the set. Even with the $16 million upgrade, that’s one of many touches they’ve brought to their new home, just around the corner from the old. (Hear WETA-FM’s Deb Lamberton on the new theater space.)
More to the point, the new spaces (there are two theaters now, one seating 299, and a 99-seater for smaller shows) are still “black boxes.” That is, infinitely malleable for designers who can decide where the audience, the orchestra, and the action will go in response to each script. It’s clear that Robert Perdziola, who designed the set and costumes for “Woods,” was out to give the big space (called the MAX) a real workout. And you get a sense of exploration, of every trick being pulled out and tested for effect. (Set under construction, photo Scott Suchman)

Fairy tales for grownups

In some ways, “Into the Woods” is like one of those clever kids’ movies that appears to tell one kind of story, but signals by its language and attitude that it’s speaking over the heads of its purported audience directly to their parents. “Once upon a time…” it begins… “I wish…” — and off we go, into the worlds of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and the Baker and his Wife.

Which of these, you may ask, is not like the others? It would be easy to watch “Into the Woods” and assume that the last story, of a childless and bereft baker and his wife was one of those you were out of the room for when the teacher read them in third grade — but actually, that one is new, slipped in among the others to amplify the themes of love and loss, of hope for the next generation, and sadness inevitably mixed with that hope. (See NYT 11-1-87, with registration)

And that’s not to say the other stories are played quite straight. Little Red Riding Hood is a bit more annoying than you remember her. Rapunzel, too has her quirks. Cinderella is actually running away from her Prince, and with good reason. And Jack was always a little greedy with his loot from the Giant — but here, his greed is nearly biblical in scale, and causes a world of pain to all the other characters in that corrective and restorative Act II.

A flawless ensemble

As the Baker, Daniel Cooney is earnest, sympathetic, though he seems to take a few moments to settle into his quest. It’s not long before it’s our quest, too. The witch has challenged him and his wife to a cosmic fairy tale scavenger hunt, demanding they gather a token from all the other characters: it’s the thing our story’s protagonists are least likely to want to part with (Cinderella’s golden slipper, Rapunzel’s hair). But if he can win the game, the baker and his wife will be rewarded with a child. The Baker’s Wife (April Harr Blandin) is in many ways at the center of the story. Her quest is not only to gather the tokens, but to convince her husband that she’s an equal partner in the hunt, and in their lives. Finally, late in Act One, the couple sing “It Takes Two.” They’ve figured out that way beyond biology, it takes two to make and raise a child. (photo by Carol Pratt)

At intermission, the quest is done, the couple is to be rewarded with a child, Rapunzel and Cinderella have met their mates, and Jack and his mom are thriving, growing rich with loot from the Giant’s lair. Oh, sure, there are losers, as there always are, like Cinderella’s ungainly sisters, and the Wolf, now a lovely wolf coat for Little Red Riding Hood.

But that troubling Act II brings complications we mightn’t have expected. Another loser, who shakes the scenery and booms over the theater’s loudspeakers like the voice of God, rejects the idea that happiness lasts forever. The Giant’s disembodied wife is out to settle some scores, and before we know it, everyone has lost what they so eagerly sought. But then, through the magic of Sondheim’s harmony, the characters find each other (No One is Alone) and point the way to the future (Children Will Listen).

Stephanie Waters as Cinderella is a sweet and conflicted foil to Lauren Williams’s acid-tongued Little Red Riding Hood; Rapunzel’s Prince, Sean MacLaughlin, and Cinderella’s Prince, James Moye, are perfectly matched airheads (think Luke and Owen Wilson in some of their lower IQ roles) as they gallop hither and thither, win the affection of their ladies, and wonder if they couldn’t have done better (Agony); and as Jack’s mother, Donna Migliaccio, a Signature co-founder, carries with her the 17-year history of direct emotional connection she’s brought to roles big and small from the theater’s inception to its full flowering.

No One is Alone

In a role played on Broadway by Bernadette Peters, Eleasha Gamble as the Witch makes the switch from crone to diva, and stirs the plots to keep them simmering. (Gamble and Erin Driscoll as Rapunzel, photo, Carol Pratt) When she realizes that not even a witch can have it all — magic and beauty, feelings and a fire-shooting staff — we sympathize almost despite ourselves. After all, aren’t we supposed to fear and hide from the evil witch character in these stories? Not in the world of Sondheim and Lapine, where personal responsibility and community trump evil.

But one character can have it all, and that’s composer and lyricist Sondheim. With wit and spirit, he keeps us shaking our heads at his endless creativity and bottomless store of awful puns and sparkling wordplay. You might want to shoot a songwriter who wrote, about a milk-less cow, that “We’ve no time to dither/while her withers wither with her.” Or, of Jack and his beanstalk, “If the end is right/it justifies the beans.” But no, celebrating, rather than shooting is what’s called for.

Because if all this cleverness were not in service of deep, human, emotional connections, we’d simply write it off as meaningless. Here, the opposite is true. Through quicksilver language and mellifluous song, in a production that melds the extraordinary talents of everyone involved, “Into the Woods” opens Signature Theatre’s own second act with a show and a production worthy of its storied history and its boundless future. Take that, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

In what universe are posts about musical theater on Broadway and gang activity in our neighborhood part of the same conversation? Well, not to be too fancy about it, but let’s start with graffiti like the drawing at left on some trees a few miles from our house.

Now, sometimes graffiti is art, displayed at the world’s finest museums, and sometimes it’s a federal crime. It seems to me that culture encompasses both uses or interpretations, and it’s certainly worth talking about in any case. At least that’s what I would hope to do on WashCult.

I got to learn about MS-13, the gang of choice in my Takoma Park/Langley Park neighborhood while doing a feature story for NPR’s Justice Talking, the show I used to produce with some very talented folks who are still there. Here’s a link to my feature story on their site, and here’s another straight to the RealAudio version on my site.

There’s immense frustration, of course, in boiling down everything you learn about a subject into a six minute radio report. I wanted anyone interested in more information to be able to hear more.

Here, for example, is the voice of Mario, a former gang member I talked with in the Langley Park offices of the Youth Opportunity Center. He pleads with the Anglo community not to automatically fear young Latinos.

Mario on fear, mp3

“Another thing I want to tell the community is that I see that many white people are afraid of young Latinos. Don’t be afraid of them because they don’t bother anyone. In many ways the young Latinos are afraid of white people. Why? Because if they don´t like the way we look at them they call the police right away. They are protected by the police. I see that many white people are afraid of Latinos and it shouldn’t be like that.”

And here Mario talks about finding God, and a job.

Mario on his new life, mp3

“Right now, thank God, it has been 6 years - since 2001 - that I have been on the right track. I’m not getting into trouble. I left my past behind. I have been in church. I have been a leader with the word of God, then I found the [Youth] Center which I’m part of it. Thank God now my life is different. I have a job in construction. I make good money working as a carpenter and now people look at me with love they don’t see me as they did in the past, as a challenge.”

But, for now, the most poignant bit of sound I had to leave out of the story was the first person reminiscence of Sergio, displaying his tatoo, above, who recounts his initiation into MS-13 in L.A. in the 1980s.

Sergio on being “jumped in” to MS-13, mp3

It’s exciting to arrive in New York City, hear about a Broadway show that has critics panting with excitement, and then to be able to get a ticket without any contortions, bribes or special dispensations. What’s even better is if the show lives up to its hype.

Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff, photo by Joan Marcus

So, why all the fuss about Spring Awakening, probably the best-reviewed musical of 2006?

It’s all about hope for the future of Broadway. Spring Awakening is not going to save the musical single-handed, but if you were to sit down and list the elements that point to tomorrow’s worthwhile musical theater, you’d be listing everything that’s great about this show.

Hear my mp3 PODCAST on the music from Spring Awakening. (warning: explicit content)

Story

There is no older or more powerful story than this one, because it’s a story we all live. Spring Awakening, based on a play by German author Frank Wedekind, tells about a boy and a girl who find each other as their hormones surge. She becomes pregnant and dies mid-abortion. His best friend is hounded to death for being different and curious.

No less astute a critic of society than Emma Goldman said of dramatist Wedekind, “FRANK WEDEKIND is perhaps the most daring dramatic spirit in Germany… More boldly than any other dramatist Frank Wedekind has laid bare the shams of morality in reference to sex, especially attacking the ignorance surrounding the sex life of the child and its resultant tragedies.”

Anarchist Goldman gets to the point of why she’s turned on by Spring Awakening, the play: “Never was a more powerful indictment hurled against society, which out of sheer hypocrisy and cowardice persists that boys and girls must grow up in ignorance of their sex functions, that they must be sacrificed on the altar of stupidity and convention which taboo the enlightenment of the child in questions of such elemental importance to health and well-being.” Who knew that “taboo” was a verb, and a useful one at that?

Thinking about this show, Romeo and Juliet come to mind, of course. But Wedekind has dispensed with Montagues and Capulets. Sex and life itself, as owned by the young, are one clan; repressive society – every grownup – is the other clan. And that clan is evil and wrong about everything.

Spring Awakening is the story of our bodies changing, of first arousal, of the first time we notice the opposite (or same) sex, and it’s all imbued with intoxication and terror, just like we remember it. It’s a story where everything is at stake.

Music

Listen to my mp3 PODCAST on the music from Spring Awakening. (warning: explicit content)

What’s the difference between a great pop song, and the songs that make up a great pop score for a musical?

For one thing, a great pop song tells a whole story; maybe it creates a self-contained world. A great musical score exists in service to the story. Each song needs to stand out, but not too much.

There are hit-like pop songs in this show that provide immense pleasure. “My Junk,” “The Bitch of Living,” and “Totally Fucked” could all be pop hits, although that last one wouldn’t get much radio airplay. The show’s anthem, “I Believe” carries echoes of “Rent” and Laura Nyro’s hits for the Fifth Dimension, like “Stoned Soul Picnic” or maybe it’s the Dimension’s rendering of “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In” that’s brought to mind, and cements the show’s lineage back to “Hair.”

But here’s the thing. Nearly every time an actor opens his or her mouth to sing, melodies and harmonies capture the ineffable feeling of being on the brink of sexual maturity. That’s a neat trick.

Cast

Before the audience was even seated at our matinee, the usher pointed out a couple of understudies who were joining the group of audience members seated on each side of the stage. These performers love their jobs so much, the usher was implying, that they are willing to supply extra voices to the chorus while they continue to learn their parts.

It’s not surprising that the usher would find this extraordinary, or want to point it out, or engage with us in a way beyond telling us where our seats were. But it points to the excitement, all the way down the line, of being involved with a hit.

Jonathan Groff is Melchior, with a voice clear and pure, and a heart to match. Lea Michele is Wendla, the young woman we first meet begging her mother to impart the facts of life before it’s too late. It’s hard to avoid clichés when talking about these two actors. Fresh faced, innocent, energetic and persuasive, without being cloying, they drive the story forward to its inevitable tragedy.

Choreography

Gesture and dance are embedded into this show from the first seconds to the frenzied climax. How often do you go the theatre and feel like you’re participating in the creation of a new language of movement?

That’s the feeling of watching the choreography by Bill T. Jones and seeing the gestures of these boys and girls as their bodies sprout and their first tentative self-caresses become an inward and outward manifestation of who they are. By the second act, each of the young performers dances the streaking hormones and dripping juices besieging their morphing bodies. If there’s one too many cute Teen Beat jumps in the air by the guys, so be it.

Youth appeal

An adult musical that talks openly, directly, scandalously to 13 year olds – that’s a miracle, and even more so because the live theater, not being mass entertainment, doesn’t need to protect young people from their own lives, hormones, and bodies, as television and film do.

A father sitting next to me with two daughters in their mid-teens, refused to rise to their bait. After the simulated sex, the bared breast, the pantomimed masturbation, they asked – “Were you uncomfortable in the theater with us?” “Why?” he replied, and meant it. I think he was glad for all the conversations this show will start.

This is the kind of show that will draw young people to see it more than once – and whether it’s in an onstage seat for $38.50 ($31.50 online), or something in the back of the house at half price for $20. Kids will leave this show muttering, “I want to do that” (make theater, and make love) and they will.

And, OK, so lots of shows these days probably have MySpace pages and Facebook friends, but this one seems to earn the right to hang with teens in their own universe. And if you’re 13 or 31 you have to think that’s great.

Appeal to the rest of the Broadway demographic

For the older Broadway crowd, the ones who have the $250 per couple for orchestra seats, the show is still a viable commodity. When a 60-ish couple passed by talking about how they liked the show, but didn’t “get” all of it, it was good enough. They don’t hear fast enough to get all the lyrics. No doubt, they might miss some of the allusions to young sex, masturbation, and other activities that they were more likely engaged in 50 years earlier, but the reviews, and the insistence of the critics that this is the next big thing help make it so…

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