By Special Request...

By special request, here is a picture of LeRoy Lehr, our illustrious Mikado. That is Myrna Paris, our Katisha sitting is his throne behind him. She is flanked by The Dominicks, the Mikado's personal bodyguard.

Today was our last run-through in the rehearsal space. That is our male coro after Pish-Tush's aria.

Below are a few members of the female chorus, singing "Braid the Raven Hair" while getting some tips from Titipu Bride magazine. (This issue includes "5 Patter Songs That Will Drive Him Crazy!" and "Is He a Prince in Disguise? 10 Ways to Tell.")

Overall the run went quite well. It certainly pointed up some of the architectural peculiarities of the piece. Mainly the differences between Acts I and II. Act I is jam-packed with big choral numbers and upbeat action, ending with a finale that can only be described as splendid. Act II begins at a much slower pace, and has several mellow numbers in a row right at the top. It makes it hard to match the vim of Act I. Act II problems are legendary in the theatre, the musical theatre especially. The good news is we know where we need to work over the course of the next two weeks.

Tomorrow is a day off, but there is an event in the evening called Spotlight on Opera, where a number of the Gerdine Young Artists will perform numbers from Mikado, and our set designer Mikiko Suzuki and I will be speaking as well. Then Tuesday we begin in the theatre--very exciting. More then.

This afternoon was our first sitzprobe. For those of you not in the business, a sitzprobe is the first time the conductor works with the orchestra and the singers together. In the staging rehearsals, we work with a piano. The conductor works with the orchestra a few times before the sitzprobe (or sitz) and then they are brought together. Sitzprobe basically translates as "sitting go-through". In other words, the singers sit (or stand) and go though the show. There is also a cousin to the sitz, called the wandelprobe, where the singers move about the stage (or wandel) and go through their blocking. The sitz is always interesting to me, and important as well. After 2 weeks of listening to the score on the piano, it is important to be reminded of the subtleties of the orchestration. This is especially true in comedy, which needs to be so closely aligned to the music. It is all too easy to create a comic moment that relies on a strong "sting" in the music only to realize that what sounded like a nice, strong percussive sound on the piano is actually soft winds, or gentle pizzicatto strings. This happens a lot in Rossinni and Donizetti which have a lot of very audible and articulated chords.



That is our conductor, Mo. Illick at the head of the wonderful St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. They're rehearsing in Powell Symphony Hall in downtown St. Louis--a beautiful old theatre built in 1925, to which these pictures do not begin to do justice. I was especially gratified to learn that it had hosted vaudeville performances early in its history, due to the close ties between G&S, Music Hall, Vaudeville, and early TV and Film. Obviously each is a distinct art form, but there is a definite flow and intermingling between them.

I'm blogging in the afternoon today, because tonight is the Opera's spring gala, which I'll be attending. Apart from good food and good company, I'm looking forward to hearing an audience's reaction to the lyrics of Ko-Ko's little list, as written by our Ko-Ko, David Kravitz. The biggest ingredient to any comedy is the audience, and any hint one can get of the comic potential of a scene of a bit of business is very useful. When I tell my theatre friends that we open a comic opera without a week of previews to learn what is funny, they are horrified. Somehow we make it work, but it is always a bit touch and go.

Tomorrow is our first run through of the entire opera, and our last rehearsal in the room before moving to the theatre.

I've Got Three Little Lists

Today is a day off from staging. To celebrate I stayed up much too late last night watching most of Memoirs of a Geisha, then the last half hour or so of The Shawshank Redemption. So when I got woken up after 4 hours of sleep by the alarm I had forgotten to turn off, I was in the midst of a remarkable dream. I was on vacation in some sort of state park along the Mississippi. Most of the cast was there with me, and we were all fishing, and wading in the water. I went into some sort of house boat that we were staying in, and once inside I realized it was actually the house where all the geishas from M of a G lived. I was met by several members of the OTSL staff as well as Morgan Freeman, who told me it was not actually my day off, and that I needed to stage them into the Act 1 Finale. So I did. I was in the middle of giving them some notes when the alarm went off.

I am starting to think one day off may not be enough.

I blame Sir Arthur. I always dream about the show I am working on to some extent or another. Sometimes this is not pleasant, as when I directed Turn of the Screw. That show gave me VERY unpleasant dreams. Speaks to the effectiveness of the show, but I didn't get a good night's sleep for weeks--creeping, fluid, dark, abstract anxious dreams filled with formless, nameless dread. Fun stuff.

In this case the tunes are so absurdly catchy I can't get them out of my head, even in my dreams. If a passing truck rouses me, "Here's a Howdy-Do" immediately invades my brain and starts step-dancing it's way up and down my neurons. There's no escaping it. Better than Peter Quint lurking over my shoulder, but still...

So I'm posting three new pictures of the set model as an amuse-bouche for the pictures I'll be able to post next week of the actual set. The first one is what we'll see during the overture. The second is a view of downtown Titipu. The buildings in the background are all based on actual buildings in Tokyo. Below that is Yum-Yum singing "We're very wide awake, the moon and I". Have I mentioned how much I love this set?

I am also posting a few lists. Many people have been asking me about the influences and inspirations for the production. It's hard to narrow it down, because once I start thinking about a show, I tend to see everything around me in terms of how it relates to the show. I love nothing better than finding connections between works of art that seem to have not much in common. For instance, Scrubs is on the list because of the way they use dance on the show. They either show the characters dancing as themselves in situations where they would naturally dance (usually victory dances of the "in-your-face!" sort) or they choreograph elaborate dance scenes that riff on various Broadway/Hollywood dance tropes. I like the first type in particular, because dance is often used in a fairly aggressive or teasing way in The Mikado. (Witness "So Please You Sir We Much Regret" and "The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring") The second type is also useful because it does with dance idioms what G&S did with operatic ones--it simultaneously makes fun of the cliches and revels in them. All parody requires a certain love and respect for what it parodies (witness South Park: The Movie, The Producers or any musical parody from The Simpsons, such as "Streetcar!" or "Stop the Planet of the Apes-I Want to Get Off!")

Other items listed had direct influences on the costumes (Fruits in particular) or just on the general sense of humor of the production (Court Jester, Black Adder, etc.) If anyone is interested, I'll get into more specifics of each influence in later postings. I just added a feature that lets me see from where people visit (Hello Singapore! Hello England!) and how many of you there are, so now that I know there are a few hundred of you, feel free to let me know if there are things you'd like me to talk or show photos of. And please leave comments--it's nice to know you're out there.

The whole show today, from soup to nuts. Tomorrow is the day off, so having a chance to go through every moment, review, finesse, polish, edit, and such is a very comfortable way to end the week. That is Cat, one of our intrepid Assistant Stage Managers checking out all the props before we started. There are a lot of props, provided by our fantastic props department (I need some pictures of them, I know.) It has been such a luxury being able to say in rehearsal "What if he had a big cigar, or a samurai sword, or a left handed flugelhorn?" and the next day have a choice of several cigars, swords, or flugelhorns. They don't just find and buy, though--they build as well, for instance a few dozen beautiful origami temples for use during the overture.


Our other pictures are our male coro singing "Right as right can be" and one of the buildings for the first act (the simian visitor is not strictly a part of the show, but he seems to be enjoying himself up there.) Below that is Katie Jolly, our Yum-Yum, singing her Act 2 aria.

So I promise that I will address the whole "updating shows" issue soon. It keeps coming up in one way or another. The problem is that a decent examination of this issue is something that will take pages and pages. But soon, I promise, soon. One thing I will ask of those who hate updating: What PRECISELY do you hate about it? If I did the show with no set at all, would you hate that? If I set a show written to be set in 1724 in 1824, would that bother you? How about 1725? How about 1721? The Eskimos have 27 words for snow (or whatever) but we, sadly, have only the one word for "traditional", and I am guessing that there are at least 27 shades of different definition for what people mean when they ask me if this production if "traditional". (Because the answer is yes, a most definite yes! It is a part of numerous comic traditions! It is utterly jam-packed with classic comic moments inspired by Danny Kaye, Groucho Marks, Bob Newhart, Woody Allen, Monty Python, Benny Hill, Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, and many, many more!) But more on all of this soon...

There Is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast

So we did it. As of the end of today's rehearsal we have staged the entire opera. Puh-lenty of review and polish and drill to be done, but it is always a wonderful day when you finish the first draft. We spent most of the day working on the Katisha/Ko-Ko stretch from "O Living I" through "There is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast". A little bit of everything, from high drama to Scottish Reel. Plus a fantastic stretch of dialogue (almost Shakespearean) from Ko-Ko. That's the set model to the left. You can see Katisha's wagon SL, and the cherry blossom tree has our tit-willow perched on it. That's Ko-Ko in the pseudo zoot suit, and Katisha is the flaming Kabuki demon to his right.

Tomorrow we head back to the beginning and start to review. This is when the fun really begins.

A More Humane Mikado...

Sadly I forgot my camera today, so I have no photos of our Mikado, the indelible LeRoy Lehr. Instead I offer his costume sketch to the left.

It was a VERY long day today, but worthwhile. We worked out the entrance of the Mikado, the Mikado's song, and "The Criminal Cried" in the afternoon, and spent the evening working on the Act 2 Finale. 3 hours of rehearsal for a 2 minute piece, but talk about dense! It needs to top off the whole show, which is a real task, especially with the work the cast has been doing the past week. It was a long process, but the final product was really satisfying. Satisfaction--a very underrated end goal for a finale, but one I am very keen on.

We spent the morning working on the overture and a few random bits of dance. 12 hours of rehearsal, and at the end I could have put in another 3. That's G&S for you. Of course the 7 shots of espresso probably helped my energy level, but I'm attributing most of it to G&S.

Tomorrow we double back and finish the bits of Act 2 we haven't addressed. By the end of the day in theory we should have staged the whole show. ALWAYS my favorite day. I always sleep better once the show is staged. Though I've been sleeping pretty well with this one in general. Nice to wake up at 3 AM thinking of a bit of business for Ko-Ko rather than ways to dig one's self out of a hole.

Good Night, and Good Luck.