Hair at MSU

I'm currently serving as dramaturg for MSU's upcoming production of the musical Hair.  Here are some links I sent to the cast a while back, to give them some resources for immersion in the 1960s counterculture. 

General 1960s History:

There’s some good stuff here:  http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/us/the-sixties 

Also: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/1964/player/

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1965.html

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/28/opinion/hayden-sixties-political-change/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

Literary/Spoken Word Sources:

Timothy Leary: “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMAH1vwSu7I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i979CTkj5k0

Alan Ginsburg, reading “Wichita Vortex Sutra” over music by Philip Glass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Di1zoVFQo

Ginsburg’s poem “Howl” also seems relevant: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381

Arlo Guthrie, “Alice’s Restaurant”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIz8f3b1KqQ

1960s Music:

Here’s a playlist someone created on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBmAPYkPeYU&list=PLuK6flVU_Aj5EJ9Pp-C9N7XA0YJr_GrJI

You could also create your own 1960s station on Pandora or Spotify.  Some things to consider:

Harmonies in groups like We Five; The Mamas and the Papas; Simon and Garfunkel; Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Folk-rock singer-songwriters: Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins. 

British Invasion: The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Herman’s Hermits

Girl Groups: The Angels (“My Boyfriend’s Back), The Shangri-Las (Leader of the Pack), Lesley Gore, the Shirelles, the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas.  Here’s a documentary about Girl Groups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyzL6D-5znY

Also check out http://hairdramaturgy.blogspot.com/ which was created for a production at UC Santa Cruz in 2010.

Films to Consider:

Days of Wine and Roses (1962)

8 ½ (1963; dir. Federico Fellini)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

Blow-Up (1966; dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

The Graduate (1967)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Barbarella (1968)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968; dir. Roman Polanski; Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth is also interesting, as is  The Ninth Gate)

Wild in the Streets (1968)

Yellow Submarine (1968)

Easy Rider (1969)

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Hair (1979); dir. Milos Forman

Hairspray (1989)

A Mighty Wind (2003)

Across the Universe (2007)

Some of these are suggested by Scott Miller’s book Let the Sun Shine In: The Genius of Hair (2003); others are just things I thought might be interesting.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Opening Night!

Last night was our final dress rehearsal.  It went very well.  I think the only thing missing is an audience.

Daniel Hobbs took some photos at last night's rehearsal, and so did a student from the State News.  One of Daniel's photos is posted above.  Below is a preview video made by Jennifer Swanchara.

Today is a day full of meetings for me, so I won't really have time to be nervous.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Tech and Dress Rehearsals

We have had a relatively painless tech process; there are not a huge amount of light and sound cues in the show.  Last night was our first run-through with full costume, make-up, and hair.  The costumes really add to the characters.  It was exciting to see what a big step forward the show has taken. 

Here's a picture of the floor and the Arena Theatre columns.  The set was designed by Daniel Hobbs and painted by our scene shop:

In our early design meetings, we talked a lot about rococo style and interior decoration for eighteenth-century French aristocrats.  There are many examples of walls and ceilings that are painted, gilded, and/or hung with tapestries in this period (Here is a video of the Boucher room at the Frick Collection: http://www.frick.org/visit/virtual_tour/boucher_room and this article in French has great pictures of eighteenth-century rooms in the Louvre.)  It would not have been typical to paint a floor in this way, but doing the show in the round means we have no walls! 

Here is a picture of the floor in the scene shop, before it was loaded into the Arena (photo by paint charge Dan Huston):

You can see the putti better in this version.  Putti are the little cherubs that show up almost everywhere in rococo art. 

We have two more dress rehearsals before we open on Friday.  The show is coming together very nicely!

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: A Publicity Photo, Some Acting Exercises, and a Duel

Here is our publicity photo, with Danceny, Merteuil, and Valmont.  Photo by Stephanie Pickard. (L to R: Andy Head, Carolyn Conover, Kirill Sheynerman, all MFA Acting Candidates)

The photo shoot was a lot of fun. These are not their actual costumes, and neither the sofa nor the screen is an actual piece of furniture used in the show.

And here's an excerpt from the press release (a collaborative effort between me and Dave Wendelberger, our department publicist and musical accompanist): "Featuring two graduate students in their culminating thesis roles (Carolyn Conover as La Marquise de Merteuil and Kirill Sheynerman as Le Vicomte de Valmont), Les Liaisons Dangereuses is sure to delight audiences with its manipulative characters who use love and passion in a twisted game designed primarily for their own pleasure. Originally a 1784 novel by Choderlos de Laclos, these iconic characters have inspired multiple screen and stage versions including Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Valmont (1989) and Cruel Intentions (1999). This stage adaptation by Christopher Hampton focuses on the romantic and sexual gamesmanship of the libertines and how they use others as pawns."

I have worked with Carolyn and Kirill this week, as our stage management team and all the undergraduates in the cast are working Haunted Aud, which is an enormous fundraiser that takes over the whole building and turns it into a haunted house experience.  (This year it is a haunted hotel, called "The Hostile.")  This also meant we didn't really have space to rehearse, so we rehearsed in my office.  On Wednesday they sat in armchairs and played the Merteuil/Valmont scenes as an Oscar Wilde play. Kirill said that this helped him figure out where the witty jabs and pokes are.  On Thursday the sat together on the sofa and played the scenes in close proximity to each other. We also went through the play backwards.  Both Carolyn and Kirill felt that this exercise helped to establish an intimate, light-hearted relationship between Merteuil and Valmont at the beginning of the play that is lost by the end of the play. 

Last Sunday we worked on transitions and fight choreography.  I took some pictures, but most of them did not turn out well.  Here's the best one:

One problem we have been having with the duel between Valmont and Danceny is that the script gives no reason for it.  We can assume it is a duel over Cecile, orchestrated by Merteuil.  (Valmont warns Dancency to beware of the Marquise de Merteuil, saying, "in this affair we are both her creatures.")  In the novel, Merteuil shows Cecile's correspondence about Valmont to Danceny, and this is what precipitates the duel.  In the play, Merteuil declares "War" on Valmont, and the duel immediately follows.  Our fight director Zev Steinberg has created some choreography that should help to clarify the characters' investments in the duel.

It was great to dig into the text with Carolyn and Kirill this week, and I'm looking forward to seeing our run-through in the space on Sunday, which is our last time in the Arena before load-in! The show opens two weeks from today.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Transitions

Today's rehearsal is mainly devoted to our transitions.  One ongoing conversation throughout the design process has been about using furniture to distinguish among the various settings of the play.  Many scenes take place in Merteuil's salon or Rosemonde's salon, but there are also scenes in several bedrooms, and in Valmont's and Tourvel's homes.  My position from the beginning has been that I don't want this to be a play about furniture, and I think our scenic designer Daniel Hobbs has been successful in this regard.  Today he is here, and choreographing the scenic transitions.

Actors playing the servants are moving the furniture. The script names four servants: Azolan (Valmont's valet), Julie (Tourvel's maid); Adele (Rosemonde's maid); and Majordomo (Merteuil's majordomo...named only by his title, like most of Karen Walker's staff on Will and Grace).  I have added Victoire, one of Merteuil's maidservants in the novel. In the novel, Merteuil discusses sending Victoire out dressed as a footman to deliver letters.  I was interested in this idea of a drag role, since women in breeches show up frequently in libertine novels and on the stage in eighteenth-century France.  But it looks like we won't have a moment to show this, because all the servants need to be involved in all the transitions.

We will also have music during the transitions; our sound designer is negotiating for rights to use a recording of Rameau.  But if we can't afford that, we are looking into creating midi files of pieces like "Plaisir d'Amour" by Martini.

Our stage management team has done a great job keeping things organized.  The initial spike tape has worn down, so Sarah and Laura did a little bit of re-spiking today.  The floor will have an intricate painted design, so we have talked about trying not to have spike tape on it. But we will see what happens. 
  

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Fragonard and Greuze

Our rehearsals are being interrupted this week by auditions for the Department of Theatre's Spring Productions.  Last night we did some work on intimacy and focus with Merteuil/Valmont, Merteuil/Volanges, and Valmont/Tourvel.  I asked the actors to sit in chairs across from each other and do their scenes without the blocking, but just to connect with their scene partner.  Carolyn Conover (Merteuil) pointed out that this slowed down the pace of the scenes, and really allowed her to think about the language.  One scene between Merteuil and Volanges became much more volatile, and we decided that it makes sense for those cousins to be close cousins who interact like siblings. We also tried a few of the scenes with the actors sitting in chairs back-to-back.  The face-to-face versions tended to make the scenes sexier, while the back-to-back versions made them more theatrical.  It was a fun exercise, and I think the actors all found it useful. It is great to have them off-book, and the show has really been growing now that they don't have scripts in their hands.

I mention some art history in the director's notes, so I thought I might elaborate on that.  In a lot of ways Les Liaisons dangereuses depicts the sexy rococo world of a Fragonard painting.  For example, The Swing:

The usual narrative of this painting is that a clergyman is pushing a woman on the swing while her lover, concealed below, is positioned for the voyeuristic experience of seeing up her dress.  A menacing Cupid looks on, with his finger to his lips.  (I have been referring to this trope as the "shushing Cupid," which isn't really the technical term.)  The play of shadow and light, the tactility of the leaves, and jaunty pink shoe casually flying through the air all contribute to a sense of play combined with danger. 

Another Fragonard painting is The Bolt, which is practically an illustration of what the scene of seduction between Valmont and Cecile might look like:

This was the illustration on the cover of the version of Les Liaisons dangereuses that I read as an undergraduate.  (The cover of the French paperback I'm currently using has an illustration of Valmont writing a letter on Emilie's back.)  Elspeth Williams, our costume designer, used The Bolt as an image of inspiration and placed it on the front cover of the binder where she is keeping her script and renderings and research materials.  Again we see the play of light and shadow, with a sense of touch imbued to the fabric.  The woman's dress merges with the fabric of the bed, which is the clear destination of where the scene is heading. The woman's gestures tend to be understood as pretending to fight off the man's advances.  It is unclear whether her left hand is trying to keep him from locking the door or helping him close the bolt.  This painting raises an issue of consent that is uncomfortable for us today.  The eighteenth century had a far different expectation of what constituted consent.  Both Cecile and Tourvel submit to Valmont, but the "consent" he elicits from them would now leave his actions open to being considered sexual assault.

The sexual dangers and pleasures depicted in these two paintings by Fragonard, which date from the 1770s, contrast with the domestic melodrama of paintings by Greuze from the same period:

In this painting, The Father's Curse (1778), a son is going off to war against his family's wishes. Amy S. Wyngaard has specifically compared the financial situation of the family in this painting with the family helped by Valmont in Les Liaisons dangereuses (Wyngaard, From Savage to Citizen, 2004, pp. 108-109).  Tourvel is moved by the scene of domestic charity staged by Valmont as a spectacle for Tourvel's servant who has been spying on him.  In this sense, I see Tourvel as partaking more in the world of Greuze, while Valmont and Merteuil prefer the world of Fragonard. 

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Director's Note

My director's note is due for the program copy, so I am posting it here:

Director's Note

I first read the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses as a senior in college. I remember discussing the epistolary format, and particularly the narrative positioning of the novel’s two contradictory prefaces.  One preface states that the letters are found objects; the other calls that assertion into question, assessing the contents that follow as “merely a novel.” I also recall intensive analysis of Letter 81, in which the Marquise de Merteuil explains to Valmont how she created herself as a woman who displays vastly different public and private versions of her identity. 

Christopher Hampton’s stage adaptation of the 1784 novel by Choderlos de Laclos mostly dispenses with the epistolary format.  Though the characters discuss writing letters, only a handful of letters are read or written on stage.  Instead, Hampton focuses on romantic and sexual gamesmanship.  The Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil are libertines who use love and passion in a twisted game designed primarily for their own pleasure.  Other characters are generally pawns in their game, but some are players in their own right.

Our production draws on the idea of games in multiple ways.  The designers have incorporated imagery of playing cards, as well as the playful spirit of the rococo.  The actors’ rehearsal process included developing moments of game-play within the scenes.  In addition to metaphors of games that existed in the eighteenth century, such as chess and tennis, we incorporated contemporary games like Hearts, “Mother, May I,” and “Red Light, Green Light.” 

As a significant text of the Enlightenment era, Les Liaisons dangereuses plays on tensions between reason and sentiment, public and private, the classical and the rococo.  The visual art of eighteenth-century France offers an apt point of contrast.  Merteuil and Valmont might best fit into the world of sexual danger represented in paintings by Fragonard (whose The Bolt was the cover art of the paperback version I read in college), while Tourvel finds more affinity with the domestic simplicity of works by Greuze.  Though the story is steeped in the eighteenth century, Hampton’s play uses modern language, encouraging us to think about the destructive qualities of desire as they exist in the world today.