IMFourPlay

Three Lessons Learnt from FourPlay: Part Two

Due to much-needed SAK company party festivities (and particularly delicious Asian-themed nibbles) there was no rehearsal this evening. As I am trying to commit to near-daily entries, however, I will not disappoint my avid readers (all two of you!) and have decided to provide a second entry considering the lessons learnt from our first production last year. As noted in my earlier posting, there were several good lessons learnt from the first run in terms of what should be changed structurally. As a silver-lining pursuer, I should also note that the structure clearly succeeded in certain places as well. And so I offer for your discussion three elements of FourPlay that I found to be generally solid and worth repeating. (Feel free to agree or disagree by posting a comment of your own below.)

1. End you act with a bang (even if the act itself whimpered in places!)

I think most viewers from last season will agree that, generally speaking, act one was the more consistent act in terms of energy, drive and quality. This was often the case for many predictable reasons: it was the more rehearsed act so most of the company, myself included, were more comfortable with it; the structure for act one had a clearer thrust - namely, let's meet four characters and their respective acquaintances (act two, by necessity, was never quite so predictable in terms of structure for the company); lastly, the first act, by design, was largely about freely throwing out possibilities, while the second act required weaving those random threads together into a coherent whole. This second process proved to be the more formidable challenge overall. All that being said, I felt the song structure at the end of the first act proved to serve its purpose well - amping the energy up a notch right before the intermission. I personally thoroughly enjoyed this number (almost without exception) as it got the whole company singing full out together, typically had a fun percussion solo, and got the audience rocking and hopefully wanting more. The lesson learnt: just as in any improv scene, an audience will forgive a lot if you get out of the scene - or in this case, act - with a strong, energized button and exit.

2. Giving an audience a little of what they know goes a long way

As the show progressed in its run, we became a little more confident as a company in terms of pimping each other into parodies of other songs in the repertory. These moments were often a highpoint of the evening, receiving some of the most enthusiastic audience responses. Some parodies that I found myself in were "Maria" from Westside, "Send in the Clowns" (I know it's Sondheim, but I'm not sure of the source actually), "I Want to get Physical," and "Piano Man." I personally found that it was a lot more difficult to create new lyric for songs that were from popular sources rather than the musical theatre canon. That isn't surprising, perhaps, in that musical theatre numbers are (ideally) designed to move the plot forward, and so lend themselves to this type of storytelling. (It might be an interesting challenge to try to focus our parody offers for this reason.) Through it all, however, a lesson was clear to me: Audiences love it when you give them something familiar or recognizable so that they can truly be in on the joke and more fully appreciate the risk level of the game.

3. Stop to smell the proverbial musical flowers

The show has two "set" duets - one in each act. This, loosely speaking, means that each act pivots on a musical number where two characters' voices and ideas are musically juxtaposed. Again, the content, style and melody lines are completely improvised each evening (I promise), but the performers know when to move the energy of the journey towards these benchmark moments. In my opinion, these were often some of the most moving and rich musical episodes of the show, with soaring melodies, harmonies and passionate attack. (Charles Gray had some particularly memorable moments.) Many also resulted in the aforementioned awwwee that I so love as a performer. While act two was sometimes a little too duet heavy - something I'm striving to remedy this time around - these vignettes often encapsulated the more earnest energy that (I hope) creates a more fulfilling evening for the audience. In addition to the parodies discussed above, these songs were often those that I heard audience members discussing after the show. The lesson learnt? Earnest, soft, soulful songs have an important place beside the parodies, uptempo jaunts and patter songs.

Reflection done! I would love to know from those of you who are familiar with the show if these insider perspectives are in sync with your experience from the audience. Please feel free to post a comment below. I'd love to hear from you about what has remained with you, if anything, after all these months.

If you're reading this, you probably know about the "blog" link on the SAK homepage but there's also a new FourPlay musical link (thanks to Dave Russell) from this page too, with show dates, times and updates.

Also, I'm working to get some photos of the new company up on this site soon. I only have a few from last year (and I'm in them all - this is not deliberate on my part, I promise)!! Look for the first company interview and poster coming later this week...

Is that the time...? Oops...

Your slightly obsessive-compulsive Director, David C.