At 6:52 PM -0400 5/24/10, Christopher Smith wrote:
On Mon May 24, at MondayMay 24 5:42 PM, John Howell wrote:
The movie versions are ALWAYS too different to do you any good.
Hah! I wish you could have had that conversation with this one
choreographer, who watched the movie for several of our semi-pro
productions and insisted that the dance routines (including hits) be
altered to match the movie. She even insisted that entire numbers be
added or excised to match the movie.
Been there, done that! There's also just a SLIGHT difference between
community theater actors and the best freelance dancers in Hollywood!
(Even the 9-year-olds, and they must have used every one in Hollywood
for a couple of the scenes in "Annie"! Our choreographer asked for
15 orphans and she got 'em, and those kids stopped the show in their
two numbers every performance!!
Strangely, this group had a curiously low opinion of musical
directors. His opinion was completely ignored during casting, in
fact, they didn't even invite him to the auditions for one show,
presenting him with the casting as a fait accompli at the first
rehearsal.
The closest we ever came was having an absentee stage director. He
got things started and then sort of disappeared and left things to
his 15-year-old assistant! (Who did a very decent job, actually, and
recently graduated from NYU in Theater.) But he arbitrarily recast
our Sky Masterson in "Guys & Dolls" without asking the music staff,
and we got an air-head who couldn't come close to his notes with
radar!! And he was incapable of learning "My Time of Day," so I had
to rewrite it.
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[email protected])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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