Jesus Christ Superstar will be the third musical I've directed. My first was The Wizard of Oz with Hansen High School 11 years ago. (Almost 12!!). My second was The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee just last fall.
Now I should have preluded that with the fact that I LOVE musicals. I grew up watching so many of the classics, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, The Pajama Game, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Fiddler on the Roof oh! I could go on and on with that list. And it doesn't even include the shows I listened to for years but didn't see a movie or performance. Les Miserables, Into the Woods, Evita, Phantom of the Opera...I love them. When my husband Jud and I started dating we had a very serious discussion about the validity of musicals. He firmly believed that musicals were not to be taken seriously because they were not "realistic" in nature. The strongest argument he had was telling me: "people do NOT spontaneously burst out into song and dance around about what they're feeling." I was crushed. The very thing he was describing was something I DID. All the time. When I gave him my feeble response of: "I do." His reply was simple, "Well, you're a crazy person." Considering the fact that he STILL calls me a crazy person (with various inflections) after all this time I guess my brand of crazy is all right with him. In the meantime, we have spent years debating the merits of musical theatre over "straight" plays. My argument is that music touches a different part of the human emotion than just dialogue. I believe that's why musicals are so popular. They touch people deeply on several different levels.
So the point of all that was I'm very familiar with a great many musicals, old and new alike, but I haven't yet directed a great many of them. As part of my preparation for directing a show I do a tremendous amount of research. For both the musicals I have directed in the last year one of my first lines of research was listening to the recordings of the musical. I downloaded the cd's and plugged in and listened to them over and over again. Picking apart some things, tuning into others. I like to rearrange the tracks and listen to them out of sync and see what sounds different, what pops out to me. With the Putnam County Spelling Bee the WEEK we started rehearsals I stopped listening to the broadway recording. It's not because I didn't enjoy it, it's just that the actors working on my production were bringing their own insight and inflection to the show and I was enjoying the process so much that I wanted to focus on their way of singing.
Jesus Christ Superstar started rehearsals (slowly) this week meeting with some of the actors who have a solo song in the show. We kept it light because all three of the directing team (myself, Susanna, and Autumn) had other show commitments this past week. The three of us will be jumping from one show to the next. Susanna and I had the privilege to listen to Johanna Stagge (playing Mary), Brandon Tesch (playing Herod) and Dustin Hobdey (playing Judas) rehearse their songs. I don't want to listen to the cd I downloaded all those months ago. I want to listen to the actors we have cast create a sound and a character independent of what has been recorded. They are all doing their research too. Listening to different ideas, thinking about motives, talking about their feelings on the music and characters.
We get to start with the whole cast on Tuesday. I am so excited. The cast has had the rehearsal music for over a week. I know for a fact many of them have already been singing along. We are all so excited to bring this story to life. To tell this story in a way that hasn't been done before. Each of us striving to put our own mark, our own experience, thoughts and feelings to the characters that have been written into this show. I have have such a good feeling about this show. Mark your calendars now. April 16, 17 and 18, 2015. At the Orpheum Theatre. Tickets will go on sale by mid-March.
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