Towards the end of this past summer, Theatre Department Chair Ben Dicke and I met to talk about potential collaborations for the school year. You see, this year is officially the “Year of Collaboration” for the Music Department and I was hoping to find partnership opportunities between my department and Ben’s. Already, the Music Department has grown accustomed to partnering with Musical Theatre and we shall be doing so again for Into the Woods next month. In addition, plans were already underway to include Media Arts students in our annual spring show, Without Genre. But a union of regular theatre and music? The options weren’t so obvious.
Going into our meeting, I had not an inkling of an idea as to how our departments could collaborate. But after I finished my very fancy iced-taro-matcha-lavender-oat-milk-latte and Ben finished his iced-chai-that-was-actually-supposed-to-be-hot-even-though-it-was-ninety-degrees-out, we had a plan: together, we would stage Peter and the Starcatcher!
Peter and the Starcatcher, the play The Academy had planned to stage in the Spring of 2020, is a special work in that it includes a few sung numbers. Plus, it has incidental music and sound effects throughout, written for piano and percussion. (Quick music appreciation lesson: incidental music is, “music used in a play as a background to create or enhance a particular atmosphere.” You are likely familiar with the incidental music written by Felix Mendelssohn in 1842 for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream!)
Now that we had selected a play, our collaborative plan seemed straightforward, right?
Wrong. The school year started late because of the DNC. The scripts arrived late. The scores arrived late. The theatre students were not entirely comfortable singing in public. The instrumentation called for 40 percussion instruments, many of which we didn’t own (including “Chain and Metal Bucket” and “Boxing Ring Bell”) and most of which (like a marimba plus xylophone plus timpani) would not fit onto our 8’x8’ portion of the stage. Nevertheless, we persisted.
We began our preparation in separate departments. Theatre students memorized lines, learned the subtle nuances of British dialects, and blocked fight scenes. Meanwhile, in the Music Department, we rewrote the percussion part, condensing it to just a drum kit with a few auxiliary instruments. We watched performances of the play on YouTube, following along with the score. We worked with our piano instructor, Marianne Parker, and our drum set instructor, Jonah Lazarus, to master the techniques of the more challenging numbers. We swapped out bits of the score for similar-sounding excerpts of standard repertoire (so keep an ear out for Mozart and Charlie Parker.) At the same time, I spent a few hours on the fourth floor with the actors (and baby Thornton) to aid in learning the vocal numbers.
At the start of this week, the real work began. This past Monday, while students across the city were enjoying a three-day weekend, Peter and the Starcatcher saw its first tech rehearsal. Even though the band and the cast came well prepared, nothing is truly knowable until one is on stage. In musical theatre or opera productions, the music is scored to fit with measured, sung text. You can anticipate where a certain word will fall because it is notated precisely in the sheet music. In a play with spoken dialogues, monologues, set changes, and action…anything can happen! To be sure, the musicians have short text cues in their scores to indicate when to begin and end certain musical segments or sound effects. However, we cannot predict the precise speed of an actor’s delivery or the pacing of an on-stage sword fight or the flash of lighting in a thunderstorm. Aligning live sounds with a live story is a monumentally difficult task, one that feels daunting even to professionals.
And yet, this bunch of youngsters can navigate such a challenge because they aren’t regular-degular teenagers; they are Academy students. In most high school arts programs, students are trained in a narrow area of study: they are classical violinists who play in orchestra and read music, or they are jazz pianists who play in band and improvise, or they are musical theatre singers who participate in one show a year and can belt. After all, Academy students are immersed in their art daily; they master these disciplines from all angles.
Our theatre students learn to direct, improvise, analyze a script, design lighting, design scenery, and, most recently, sing in four-part harmony. Because of this training, cast members are master storytellers and fantastic memorizers who apply corrections quickly and move around the stage with power and control. Our music students can improvise, compose, analyze harmony, conduct, follow, read music, and listen deeply to one another. They learn these skills daily through jazz combo, chamber ensemble, music theory classes, private lessons, and new music ensemble. Thus, in rehearsals, the band is able to compose, rearrange, repeat these four bars, invent sounds on a broken violin, be a giant crocodile’s gnashing teeth, follow Peter’s footsteps, etc. While this project is certainly not easy work for the band or the cast, because of their schooling it sometimes seems that way.
The Academy is why these teenage artists are able to bring their diverse artistic skills together into an exciting performance. Just the same, The Academy is also why Ben Dicke and I are able to collaborate. In part, there is the simple fact that, since we study the arts every single school day, we arts faculty members are consistently in the building together. In the faculty lounge, we bond as we take turns brewing coffee and we build friendships as we fight with the copier. Perhaps more to the point is this important tenet of The Academy Method: Hire Experts and give them the Authority and Autonomy to be Experts. I don’t mean to toot our own horns, but Ben and I are definitely experts: our professional credits support the guidance we provide in putting together large-scale works. I mean, just read our bios: I have played in plenty of pit orchestras, Ben has done plenty of musical direction! Our experience and training provide us with insight into the standards and expectations of professional-level art; this is why we are able to lead students through the challenges of artistic collaboration!
The collaboration between our departments for Peter and the Starcatcher couldn’t happen in just any school. As Academy teachers, we have the autonomy and authority (and friendship) to create these types of meaningful partnerships; as Academy students, you have training and guidance (and friendship) to bring shows like Peter and The Starcatcher to life.
Rachel Brown
Music Department Chair