Pippin – Final Reflection
The show has closed now after our six performances, and the last week has been mostly a really positive experience.
Confidence Is Key
While I was conducting my first show I made many playing errors, which I blamed on not being able to hear the piano well enough. In reality though I just needed to know the score better. So I spent many hours working up the songs I was less confident with over the following days. I wanted to make sure I was confident enough with the score to be able to play it even without hearing the notes I was bashing.
This work really paid off and during my second performance I decided to stop worrying about my mix and worry more about playing musically. I found myself playing with more feeling and dynamics because I was not concerned with hearing the piano. Interestingly, the confidence that this inspired in me came across in my conducting too and I was much bolder with count-ins and conducting cues. The band really reflected this and the music sounded drastically better than during my first performance. There were many positive comments after the show too, and the performers were happy.
My third and final performance almost measured up I think. I would say it wasn’t quite as strong as my second run but almost. I suppose this consistency is what comes over a week of shows or whatever – preview week perhaps. For us however we were done at three shows, but still this was enough for me to learn a lot about how to prepare for this kind of gig, and how to execute it too. When I feel confident I can remain more calm, which makes my playing better and my conducting more clear. Actually it generally makes me more personable all around. This confidence comes from really knowing what I’m doing though, so I’m glad that I had such an intricate show on which to learn this kind of confidence in an MT environment.
But How Was The Production
In all honesty I think our production was pretty amateur. Here are some aspects where I think we missed the mark…
- I think we mis-read a lot of the comedy in the writing as well as the contrasting darkness. Setup lines and punchlines were all delivered as though the actor was telling a joke. This literal approach assumes that your audience lack understanding and underestimates their intelligence. The audience likes to feel intelligent, and therefore delivering these key lines in a more ‘straight’ or natural way would’ve allowed the nuances of the writing to come through. and it would’ve allowed the audience to draw comedy from the scene rather than just watching a bunch of comedians. In our show, everyone was a comedian.
- Character relationships were not very present. In fact the characters that I saw in the final production were pretty much the characters that showed up to the audition room. I realised that we had done very little work in terms of building character relationships, especially given that there was a royal family to portray. Some actors did well to present these kinds of connections through their own intuition, but in general most performers were acting solo throughout.
- Choreography took up a huge amount of rehearsal time, but the result was that we ended up with dances that were unpolished and in my onion didn’t really relate to or further the story very much. It became about ‘looking nice’, which maybe because many of the numbers were re-choreographed by students in our cast. This is not their fault as they are not pro choreographers, in fact our dance captains did really well to re-work so much material, but the end result was choreography that was a little irrelevant and quite messy.
- There is a lot of symbolism within the show – references to the Sun, items like the flute and characters like Otto the duck all carry meaning greater than their textual existence. I feel we missed a trick with all of these concepts as we just took everything on face value. There’s symbolism in the songs too which on reflection I could’ve done more to discuss with the cast. Why so many “ooo’s and hmm’s” for example? What do these symbolise or represent in this context?
- Lighting seemed uninformed, and there were a couple of moments in particular where lighting could’ve been used to create focus or enhance the story. When Charles dies for instance the entire set was well lit, which allowed the audience to see clearly when Charles stood up to exit. Same with the severed head scene – the exit strategy of putting the head in a bag was a great idea, but then right after that we saw the ‘head’ actor walk offstage. Lighting could have been used to enhance the magic of these theatrical moments, and also to create focus during the song/dance numbers. There was a lot going on all over the stage during some of the numbers and it was confusing to know who/what to focus on as there was no guidance or enhancement from the lighting.
Although this just sounds like a laundry list of imperfections, it actually represents my learning about some of the elements that go into a focussed, well-directed production. I have no desire to direct theatre but I feel as though I can now make better choices as an MD because of my understanding of how music fits among other elements into the ‘bigger picture’ of a musical production.
…and after it all
This project pushed me the furthest outside of my comfort zone that I have felt all year. It made me very stressed, not just because of the size and complexity of the task but because of my inability to execute it perfectly. It was this stress that made it difficult for me to stay positive in the moment and led to a lot of self-negativity about whether I’m ‘good enough’ to pursue this as a gig. On reflection I am really pleased with the progress I made throughout the production and I feel 100% more confident now in carrying out this kind of role going forward. I’m sure this means that on future gigs this confidence will lead to more focussed preparation and less stress, which in turn will allow me to be a personable MD and a more effective leader.
Regardless of the quality of our production of Pippin, I am hugely grateful for this opportunity to learn and further my own understanding and skillset within music and the theatre – thank you RCS!