BOP Scenes Concert – fieldnotes 10/4/2008
I attended the Brown Opera Productions board meeting today. I am currently serving a double role—although I am a member of the board, I am also directing one of the scenes for the scenes concert. I will not conduct fieldwork on the piece on which I am working and consequently will be an observer during rehearsals and not a participant-observer.
Doug, a sophomore, has been put in charge of this evening of scenes as a sort of producer. The board was careful to make the distinction that it is the BOARD that produces the show and not Doug; Nick, who is a co-chair of the board wanted to make sure that no one person had too much power and that instead all of the decisions were made democratically. Although there is another co-chair, Charlie, it seems that Nick holds all the power and all of the board members really defer to his decisions and opinions. He has also been on the board the longest (since his freshman year, which coincided with the inception of BOP). This creates an interesting power dynamic.
The concert is scheduled for the weekend of November 7-9, but the board had not made much progress on its planning on Saturday. It seems like the kind of event that will come together quickly, even though they want it to have a lot of rehearsal. Last year, according to Ben Skerritt, his group only rehearsed twice before their performance. I am certain that the quality of the work will be high, but I worry that my fieldwork may be constricted. I will have to conduct some preliminary interviews with cast members and directors before the rehearsal process starts. I am curious about the preconceptions of the actors and the director. I would like to see how these thoughts play out during the rehearsal and performance process.
Doug has been emailing directors this week to arrange auditions for the scenes. There are (tentatively) 6 directors. Directors will hear all the singers and then split up the singers according to needs/fairness/distribution. I will have to be in contact with other directors as soon as plans are finalized so that I can arrange to be at their rehearsals and schedule interviews. Auditions will occur next Tuesday and Wednesday.
I hope to do my fieldwork on the scene directed by Melissa Kagen. She will choose an excerpt from Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. The board has been worried about drawing an audience with opera scenes because the genre is outdated. Charlie talked about “crossover” shows, between musical theater and opera. Last year, a scene from Bernstein’s Candide was performed, and this year, Threepenny Opera seems to be filling that void. It will be interesting to see who comes to see which scenes and why. I don’t know how best to investigate this other than to gauge the audience reaction (laughter, poise, applause) at the concert.
I will focus primarily on the relationship between the dramatic action and the music (embodied in the roles of the director and the music director, if Kagen chooses to employ one). I will refer to my research questions and try to explore the possible conflict in this relationship.
3 comments:
It sounds like there is a lot of drama (no pun intended) at the onset of this project already. You should certainly have a lot of material to draw on between relationships of the members.
I think the worries of drawing an audience with opera scenes is relevant, and the opinion that the genre is outdated is interesting. Would the board or the performers feel like they are cheapening the genre of opera with "crossover" shows?
You tackled the initial fieldwork really well. Although you weren't able to sit in on the rehearsals, you described very well the politics of the group. I've read other posts with smaller groups that aren't as organized and, although most of them have leaders, there isn't a board that rules over the performances. Furthermore, this is the first musical group where there is a pseudo-democratic ruling over the group.
I really want see how this power struggle will come into play once rehearsals start and directors are denied certain decisions by "the board." How will this dictatorial power affect the diversity of having 6 different directors for different scenes?
So, it should now be apparent that your concerns about whether these would be appropriate "fieldnotes" were unnecessary -- your classmates have confirmed that these notes reveal fascinating aspects of institutional organization and behind-the-scenes concerns about musical values (what does it mean to be an opera advocacy organization on a college campus at this particular moment in musical/cultural history?). I would encourage you to actually engage in conversation with audience members to gauge their responses to the Threepenny scene (and perhaps determine why they chose to attend that scene in particular; my guess would be that personal connections to performers might play a bigger role than anything else, but that doesn't mean this experience couldn't also be a gateway to future opera performances).
Post a Comment