More Like "Memory"

I met with Professor Bowers the other day for coffee, and he was hugely inspirational.  I knew that he was writing an Alice in Wonderland Musical (I would paraphrase the desription as a cross between "Finding Neverland" and "Big Fish," both of which are awesome) but what I hadn't heard was that he once had a show that he helped create go off-broadway.  This is a guy that knows all of the things that I really want to know, apparently.  

He told me a lot about how his show got picked up, the fickleness of New York audiences, the importance of marketing (score one for the marketers!), and how he had tons of friends up there and if Usher gets into the Fringe he'll help us get some contacts.  Knowing more people is always good.

Brent liked the song I sent him the other day, though (and he points this out correctly) there are some sections in the song that don't "stick in the mind" in the way that others, for example, "Memory," does.  

I wrote him back asking if he realized that the guy who wrote "Memory" has been doing this for forty years and has written maybe three or four songs that are almost on par with "Memory" in a melodic sense.

He replied that he did realize this and he did not think it was too much to ask.  

So I suppose I'm working on that, then.

New Song

The final song that made it into this draft of Usher is one called "My Love" and is sung by Annabel to demonstrate the source of the influences on her flute composition.  The lyrics are a poem written by Robert Burns, whom you may know as the writer of Auld Lang Syne.  You can sing this poem to that tune as well.  It was a challenge to write something that sounded similar and yet different enough to be unrecognizable.  It's just a short little song, but I like it very much.  I'm meeting with my soprano who sang as Annabel for the concept CD on Monday to ask if the notes have been written reasonably well.

My Love

My love is like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June:

My love is like a melody,

That's sweetly played in tune.

So fair are you, my handsome lad,

So deep in love am I;

And I will love you still, my love,

'Til all the seas go dry.

'Til all the seas go dry, my love,

And the rocks melt with the sun:

And I will love you still, my love,

While the sands of life shall run.

Back to School

My new schedule features my first 8:00AM class since high school.  In order to wake up at 7, I've downloaded Hugh Jackman singing "O What a Beautiful Morning" onto my phone and set it as my alarm.  I'm not sure how it motivates me, exactly, but it seems to work.

I had my first meeting with Professor Serghi today.  She's been my advisor all four years here, but she's been gone for the past year and a half on sabbatical.  I played her some of the music for Usher, and she seemed to really like it.  She asked what Dr. Bower thought of it, and I said "who is Dr. Bower?"  She proceeded to grab my arm and lead me downstairs because I apparently should know this person.  While he wasn't in his office, she demanded that I immediately write him an e-mail, because he is currently writing a musical version of Alice in Wonderland and he would be a big help as far as tips about how to get your musical produced go.  So I did that.

Beyond that, I have a meeting with her again in two weeks where I am to show her whatever more work I've done on the musical between now and then.  We've set the date of March 12th for auditioning and securing musicians, and I'll start rehearsing them for the concert right after spring break.

Worst Blogger Ever

OK so here's the rundown of what has happened since the last time I posted... over a month ago...

I wrote a song that I actually like for "I Cannot Love You."  I have to revise it heavily, but the idea of it no longer makes me want to beat my head against my laptop.

We updated to Draft V!  Or Draft V.2, I suppose.  Here's what we changed (I'll put a star next to things I mentioned wanting in my last post):

1.  Two more full cast numbers *

2.  Creepification of the ghost scene *

3.  No more doctors * 

4.  New lyrics and a pretty song for Annabel

5.  More tension between Roderick and William

6. More uncertainty regarding the insanity of Madeline

and 7.  Madeline now gets the following line: "As it turned out, the crow didn't really love me.  So I killed it."  ***

I don't know why I wanted that last thing so much- it just seemed like the kind of line that, were I given the chance to act it, I would love.  

After getting the new script, I set to work on one of the full cast numbers near the end, which Mr. Cirves calls "Serenade" but I call "Music of a Dream," because the word "serenade" is not uttered once in the song.  I came up with a reasonable draft, but it needs heavy work.

The real accomplishment of the past few days has been getting all the material together to send to the Fringe!  I am happy to say that I sent it UPS this morning, just inside the deadline for early application.  I leave you with the cover letter that sits on top of the application.  Normally I would say "if you see any problems with it, let me know," but since I already sent it in, I really would prefer not to hear that something is terribly wrong.  

COVER LETTER for THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

            Roderick Usher wants to live forever.  He intends to do this, as he explains early on in the show, through music.  We have the slightly less megalomaniacal goal of producing the story of Roderick Usher in the New York International Fringe Festival for all to see.  We intend to do this through a musical: a dark, vibrant, soul-searching musical based on Edgar Allan Poe’s brooding tale of a man at the end of the line (in every sense of the word).

 

            Most people can guess that at the end of The Fall of the House of Usher, a house falls down.  Many, too, have read the story and know that it begins with the arrival of an old friend who has come to comfort Roderick Usher in his sickness.  But why are these men friends?  What does the story tell us about the nature of friendship?  And further, how do our early influences affect who and what we become?  We attempt to answer these questions by creating a first act that gives a dramatic--and at times, comic--back story to the tale.  We add Annabel Lee, the title character from Poe’s famously eerie and tragic poem, as the beautiful wife of a young and confident Roderick Usher.  Our narrator, William, is invited to Usher’s house due to his musical talents.  What happens in that house between these three and Roderick’s twin sister, Madeline, sets the stage for the horrifying and tragic conclusion.

 

            We frame the entire musical in the form of a story being told by William to a stranger, some ten years after the house falls.  Since each of the four main characters in the show is a talented musician, every song is played organically by the characters.  In other words, they are playing their own music and they play only when (with the exception of dream sequences) it would make logical sense for an actual musician to share a song.  Because of this, we learn about the interior thoughts of the characters through more than just their lyrics-- we understand them through the music that they write and through the way they choose to play it.  We can hear, as the show continues, the influences that the characters absorb from one another’s music and personalities. 

           

            Life is complex, beautiful, and occasionally tragic.  We want to put this complex view of life on stage with a unique and edgy (and sexy) Poe adaptation.  What The Fall of the House of Usher can bring to the Fringe is a passionate testament to friendship and music and the potentially destructive powers of the past.  We wrote this show because we saw in the original story a world that would look and sound spectacular on stage.  Now that it is written, we want nothing more than to see it performed on stage.  Since Brent Cirves is a high school drama teacher and I am an undergraduate student of music at William and Mary, the summer-- specifically around the time of the New York Fringe Festival-- is when we would be most able to throw all of our time and energy into a production.  If you give us the chance, we will make this show every bit as incredible as it demands to be, and we will happily work until we collapse like Usher’s House. 

 

Thank you very much for taking the time to read through our application materials.  We hope you enjoy our House of Usher as much as we enjoyed creating it.