Show Blog: in the park
David Hudgins, Associate Artistic Director of Studio 58 and Associate Artist with the Electric Company, takes us behind the scenes of The Park a one-act musical he is directing as part of STEW.
A mini-festival of short-plays, STEW presents new work written by Studio 58 students and directed by professional directors. The Park written by Benjamin Elliott, Hannah Johnson and Anton Lipovestsky is the first ever musical submission in this popular series.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Is it legal to have this much fun at school? There has been a lot of celebrating as the gorgeous score and audacious book take shape in the room. It’s inspiring to see Team Park working at such a high caliber of artistry, considering they are all in their early twenties, and enrolled at Studio 58 primarily as acting students.
Though Studio 58 lost the one-of-a-kind musical director Lloyd Nicholson this year, I continually see flashes of the next wave of talented teachers, coaches and directors “coming into bloom”, like the lyrics from the opening number “Springtime Happening”. Our dynamic duo Anton and Ben are not only the composers, but the high energy musical directors who have spent two weeks now, in every spare moment, pulling groups of the cast into small rooms to get every song note perfect. When she’s not rewriting another of her plays for STEW, Hannah has been in the room observing the script and offering changes or cuts at a moment’s notice. Kayla Dunbar (who I recently observed has already won an Ovation Award for Best Newcomer in Musical Theatre 2007) is already a fully-fledged choreographer. Her sense of humour and impressive dance vocabulary shine in The Park.
Of course, not every day has been a party…. We have slogged through script changes, character description makeovers, musical debates, and transition headaches, as one does in any new and evolving original piece of musical theatre. But good instincts and a collaborative spirit run strong in this group. The actors and stage managers have been wonderfully flexible and patient. They bear the immediate brunt of the changes, re-learning lines, blocking and choreography, and recopying their notes into a new draft of the play.
Today I had a wee freak out when I realized it was our last day in the theatre until Friday, our last day before going into Tech. With scenic transitions that involve pushing columns into place, and sprawling dance numbers that cover the entire floor space of Studio 58, I imagined it would be challenging to nail it all down in our rehearsal hall.
As a result I pushed the group to work through each scene in the play, so we could have as much time in the real space with as much of the set as we could get. At the end of the day, I realized I had shortchanged the actors some break time. Public apology to the cast, and note to self duly taken. Of course, missing breaks never helps the work, only hinders it, as I’ve learned.
Day off tomorrow after seven full on. The cast needs a rest, and so do I. Week three is often exciting because the details start to arrive. We are certainly lucky that we have the new room to replace the old room in the student union building as an alternate rehearsal space. Not only does it have natural light and a sprung floor, it covers the full length of the theatre. It’s probably only half the depth, but the actors can accommodate for that quite easily.
Looking forward to the next chapter.
DH
