High School Kids Stage Alien: The Play and You Can Now Watch It Online

in Film, Theatre | April 30th, 2019

Sev­er­al weeks back, Col­in Mar­shall told you about an enter­pris­ing group of high school stu­dents in North Bergen, New Jer­sey who staged a dra­mat­ic pro­duc­tion of Rid­ley Scot­t’s 1979 film Alien. And they did it on the cheap, cre­at­ing cos­tumes and props with donat­ed and recy­cled mate­ri­als. The pro­duc­tion was praised by Rid­ley Scott and Sigour­ney Weaver alike. Now, above, you can watch a com­plete encore per­for­mance made pos­si­ble by a $5,000 dona­tion by Scott, and attend­ed by Weaver her­self. Have fun.

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h/t aztecla­dy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

High School Kids Stage Alien: The Play, Get Kudos from Rid­ley Scott and Sigour­ney Weaver

Sigour­ney Weaver Stars in a New Exper­i­men­tal Sci-Fi Film: Watch “Rak­ka” Free Online

Rid­ley Scott Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­board­ing (and How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Project)

Rid­ley Scott Walks You Through His Favorite Scene from Blade Run­ner

Ele­men­tary School Stu­dents Per­form in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Orson Welles Presents Thorn­ton Wilder’s Our Town, the Most Pop­u­lar High School Play of All Time (1939)

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Trivial Pursuit: The Shakespeare Edition Has Just Been Released: Answer 600 Questions Based on the Life & Works of William Shakespeare

in History, Literature, Theatre | April 26th, 2019

“The stan­dard thing to say is that each age makes a Shake­speare in its own image,” wrote The New York­er’s Adam Gop­nik on the the Bard’s 440th birth­day. But over the cen­turies, the bio­graph­i­cal and crit­i­cal por­tray­al of the play­wright of Ham­let, Romeo and Juli­et, Oth­el­lo, and King Lear has remained remark­ably con­sis­tent: “He was a genius at com­e­dy, a free-flow­ing nat­ur­al who would do any­thing for a joke or a pun, and whom life and abil­i­ty bent toward tragedy.” He evolved “a match­less all-sid­ed­ness and neg­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty, which could probe two ideas at once and nev­er quite come down on the ‘side’ of either: he was a man in whom a tem­pera­men­tal timid­i­ty and cau­tion blos­somed artis­ti­cal­ly into the near­est thing we have to uni­ver­sal­i­ty.”

But today, on Shake­speare’s 455th birth­day, we might still won­der how uni­ver­sal his work real­ly is. As luck would have it, the Shake­speare Birth­day Trust has just come up with a kind of test of that propo­si­tion: an all-Shake­speare edi­tion of the pop­u­lar board game Triv­ial Pur­suit.

“Devised by the Shake­speare Birth­place Trust, the inde­pen­dent and self-sus­tain­ing char­i­ty that cares for the world’s great­est Shake­speare her­itage sites in his home town of Strat­ford-upon-Avon, in part­ner­ship with games com­pa­ny, Win­ning Moves,” Triv­ial Pur­suit: The Shake­speare Edi­tion (which you can buy on the Shake­speare Birth­day Trust’s online shop) offers “600 ques­tions across six cat­e­gories — Come­dies, His­to­ries, Tragedies, Char­ac­ters, Biog­ra­phy and Lega­cy,” all “care­ful­ly craft­ed by Shake­speare schol­ars Dr Nick Wal­ton and Dr Anj­na Chouhan.”

One might assume that Shake­speare buffs and schol­ars will dom­i­nate this game. No doubt they will, but per­haps not as often as expect­ed, since its ques­tions give any­one with gen­er­al cul­tur­al aware­ness a fight­ing chance: “As well as ques­tions about Shakespeare’s life and works, there are oth­ers that link him to pop­u­lar cul­ture such as the Har­ry Pot­ter film series, TV shows Dr. Who and Upstart Crow, as well as actors Sir Patrick Stew­art, Sir Lau­rence Olivi­er, and Keanu Reeves, and the Bard’s less­er known influ­ence on the likes of Elvis Pres­ley and even the clas­sic car­toon Pop­eye.” As Wal­ton puts it, “there are all sorts of paths to Shake­speare,” not least because of his work’s still-unchal­lenged place as the most drawn-upon texts, delib­er­ate­ly or inad­ver­tent­ly, in the whole of the Eng­lish lan­guage. As for Shake­speare him­self, he remains “the reign­ing poet of the lan­guage,” in Gop­nik’s words, as well as “the ordi­nary poet of our com­pa­ny” — and now we have a game to play to keep him in our com­pa­ny.

Pick up your copy of the game here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 55 Hours of Shakespeare’s Plays: The Tragedies, Come­dies & His­to­ries Per­formed by Vanes­sa Red­grave, Sir John Giel­gud, Ralph Fiennes & Many More

30 Days of Shake­speare: One Read­ing of the Bard Per Day, by The New York Pub­lic Library, on the 400th Anniver­sary of His Death

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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High School Kids Stage Alien: The Play, Get Kudos from Ridley Scott and Sigourney Weaver

in Film, Theatre | April 3rd, 2019

High school dra­ma depart­ments tend to work from a pret­ty stan­dard­ized reper­toire, which makes sense giv­en the strict lim­i­ta­tions they work under: short time frames, school-sized bud­gets, teenage actors. The elab­o­rate, Hol­ly­wood film-like pro­duc­tions staged by Max Fis­ch­er in Wes Ander­son­’s Rush­more speak to frus­trat­ed high-school the­ater direc­tors and their fan­tasies about what they could put on stage with a bit more in the way of resources. But just this month, a real high-school dra­ma club put on a show that out-Max Fis­chered Max Fis­ch­er, draw­ing not just the aston­ish­ment of the inter­net but the respect of one of the most emi­nent film­mak­ers alive.

“A New Jer­sey high school has found itself the unex­pect­ed recip­i­ent of online acclaim and viral atten­tion for its recent stage pro­duc­tion of Alien, the 1979 sci­ence-fic­tion thriller,” writes the New York Times’ Dave Itzkoff. “Alien: The Play, pre­sent­ed last week­end by the dra­ma club of North Bergen High School, starred a cast of eight stu­dents in the film roles orig­i­nal­ly played by Sigour­ney Weaver, Tom Sker­ritt, John Hurt and Ian Holm. Where­as the movie had a bud­get in the range of about $10 mil­lion, Alien: The Play had cos­tumes, props and set designs made most­ly from donat­ed and recy­cled mate­ri­als.” Or as North Bergen stu­dent Justin Pier­son put it in NJ.com’s video on the sur­prise hit: “This is going to sound real­ly fun­ny but (the set crew) used garbage essen­tial­ly.”

With that “garbage” — “just any­thing that was lying around, like card­board and met­al” — they built not only a set that con­vinc­ing­ly evokes the dark claus­tro­pho­bia of the space ship Nos­tro­mo, but a shock­ing­ly accu­rate-look­ing alien, the ter­ri­fy­ing crea­ture orig­i­nal­ly born from the mind of Swiss illus­tra­tor H.R. Giger.

The young cast and crew get into detail about how they did it on Syfy’s Fan­dom File pod­cast: “Much of the atten­tion has high­light­ed and embraced their DIY approach,” writes host Jor­dan Zakarin, and “they were end­less­ly cre­ative in build­ing the sets, with hand-pup­pet aliens, egg crate walls, a stuffed cat (the stand-in for Jones was a par­tic­u­lar­ly inge­nious idea), and oth­er swed­ed props.”

Respons­es to the video clips of Alien: The Play that have cir­cu­lat­ed on the inter­net include a per­son­al con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage from the orig­i­nal film’s star Sigour­ney Weaver as well as a let­ter from its direc­tor Rid­ley Scott, which Alien: The Play’s direc­tor, North Bergen Eng­lish-teacher-by-day Per­fec­to Cuer­vo, post­ed on Twit­ter. “Lim­i­ta­tions often pro­duce the best results because imag­i­na­tion and deter­mi­na­tion can sur­pass any short­falls and deter­mine the way for­ward — ALWAYS,” writes Scott, who has built his rep­u­ta­tion in the film indus­try on tak­ing firm and deci­sive action in the face of any and all pro­duc­tion dif­fi­cul­ties. He also offers both the funds for an encore pro­duc­tion as well as a sug­ges­tion: “How about your next TEAM pro­duc­tion being Glad­i­a­tor.” No doubt Cuer­vo and his enter­pris­ing play­ers are feel­ing pret­ty vin­di­cat­ed in their deci­sion not to do Our Town right about now.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rid­ley Scott Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­board­ing (and How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Project)

Rid­ley Scott Walks You Through His Favorite Scene from Blade Run­ner

Ele­men­tary School Stu­dents Per­form in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Orson Welles Presents Thorn­ton Wilder’s Our Town, the Most Pop­u­lar High School Play of All Time (1939)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Leonard Bernstein Awkwardly Turns the Screws on Tenor Jose Carreras While Recording West Side Story (1984)

in Music, Opera, Theatre | March 15th, 2019

What have we here?

Evi­dence that the Mae­stro is a mon­ster?

Or a behind the scenes reminder that Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment’s wannabe actor Tobias Fünke is not too far off base when he says that to make it in “this busi­ness of show, you have to have the heart of an angel and the hide… of an ele­phant.”

Both? Nei­ther? Any way you slice it, the record­ing ses­sion above is not for your typ­i­cal cast album.

West Side Sto­ry, with a book by Arthur Lau­rents, music by Leonard Bern­stein, and lyrics by Stephen Sond­heim, opened on Broad­way in 1957.

The film, star­ring Natal­ie Wood and Richard Beymer as star-crossed lovers Maria and Tony, came along four years lat­er.

After which it’s been an end­less round of com­mu­ni­ty, col­lege, and high school pro­duc­tions.

Are you a Jet or a Shark?

The cel­e­brat­ed tenor José Car­reras does not make a par­tic­u­lar­ly believ­able Jet.

While untold num­bers of white kids have attempt­ed Puer­to Rican accents to play Maria, Bernar­do, Ani­ta, and Chi­no, that knife has sel­dom cut the oth­er way.

Per­haps a dialect coach could have trans­formed Car­reras’ thick Span­ish accent into Tony’s New York street punk ver­nac­u­lar, but the prep time for these Sep­tem­ber 1984 record­ing ses­sions was min­i­mal, and not tied to any actu­al pro­duc­tion.

Car­reras was also, at 38, a bit long in the tooth to be tack­ling the part.

But what might have been deal break­ers for a Broad­way revival were per­mis­si­ble for this week­long spe­cial event in which world-cal­iber artists, “whose main rea­son for exist­ing,” accord­ing to Bern­stein, was their singing, would be lay­ing down the score in the stu­dio, backed by a full orches­tra.

As he told his asso­ciate and even­tu­al biog­ra­ph­er, clas­si­cal music tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter Humphrey Bur­ton:

l’d always thought of West Side Sto­ry in terms of teenagers and there are no teenage opera singers, it’s just a con­tra­dic­tion in terms. But this is a record­ing and peo­ple don’t have to look 16, they don’t have to be able to dance or act a rather dif­fi­cult play eight times a week. And there­fore we took this rather unortho­dox step of cast­ing num­ber-one world-class opera singers. I sup­pose the only fore­see­able prob­lem was that they might sound too old—but they don’t, they just sound mar­velous!

Bernstein’s approv­ing mood is nowhere in evi­dence in the above clip, in which he hec­tors Car­reras for screw­ing up the tem­po, as the instru­men­tal­ists and sound engi­neers squirm.

Car­reras’ dis­com­fort and cha­grin is so pal­pa­ble that you can find the sequence on YouTube under the title “Tenor Keeps Screw­ing Up while Bern­stein Con­ducts—Awk­ward Sequence,” as if he were some weedy upstart, still wet behind the ears, when in fact, he had just flown in from Verona, where he’d been appear­ing as Don José in Car­men.

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Car­reras’ Maria, sup­plied a taste of what it was like to sing for the com­pos­er:

He’s a man of many emo­tions. You can see his moods, his frus­tra­tions, his hap­pi­ness, his want­i­ng to per­form to peo­ple. That’s the thing that makes the man inter­est­ing. One is con­stant­ly try­ing to read him, but he’s on anoth­er plan­et!

In the end, Bern­stein declared him­self pleased with what had been accom­plished, or at least with the endur­ing pow­er of the mate­r­i­al.

But read­ers with an anti-author­i­tar­i­an streak may not feel sat­is­fied until they’ve seen the clip below, in which a rogue BBC Orches­tra trum­pet isn’t quite so def­er­en­tial in the face of the Maestro’s crit­i­cism.

Lis­ten to the 1984 record­ing of West Side Sto­ry for free on Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces the Moog Syn­the­siz­er to the World in 1969, Play­ing an Elec­tri­fied Ver­sion of Bach’s “Lit­tle Fugue in G”

Watch Leonard Bern­stein Con­duct the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic Using Only His Eye­brows

Leonard Bern­stein Presents “The Great­est 5 Min­utes in Music Edu­ca­tion”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain in New York City this April. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda Perform the Earliest Version of Hamilton at the White House, Six Years Before the Play Hit the Broadway Stage (2009)

in History, Music, Politics, Theatre | March 4th, 2019

Anoth­er immi­grant comin’ up from the bot­tom

His ene­mies destroyed his rep, Amer­i­ca for­got him… 

Holler if you can remem­ber a time when few Amer­i­cans were well-versed enough in found­ing father Alexan­der Hamil­ton’s ori­gin sto­ry to recite it in rhyme at the drop of a hat.

Believe it or not, as recent­ly as the sum­mer of 2015, when Lin-Manuel Miran­da’s Pulitzer Prize-win­ning Hamil­ton: An Amer­i­can Musi­cal explod­ed on Broad­way, Hamil­ton the man was, as the Tony award win­ning lyrics above sug­gest, large­ly for­got­ten, a rel­ic whose por­trait on the $10 bill aroused lit­tle curios­i­ty.

Back then, Hamil­ton was per­haps best known as the hap­less soul embod­ied by Michael Cera in the web series Drunk His­to­ry.

Ron Chernow’s 2005 biog­ra­phy served up a more nuanced por­trait to read­ers with the sta­mi­na to make it through his mas­sive tome.

That’s the book Miran­da famous­ly took along on vaca­tion in the peri­od between his musi­cal In the Heights’ Broad­way and Off-Broad­way runs.

The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.

As is the above video, in which a 29-year-old Miran­da per­forms The Hamil­ton Mix­tape for Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, the First Lady, and oth­er lumi­nar­ies as part of a White House evening of poet­ry, music, and spo­ken word.

There’s your Hamil­ton (the musi­cal) ori­gin sto­ry.

Its cre­ator ini­tial­ly con­ceived of it as a hip hop con­cept album in which cel­e­brat­ed rap­pers would give voice to dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ters.

Music direc­tor Alex Lacamoire’s jubi­lant expres­sion at the White House piano con­firms that they had some inkling that they were on to some­thing very big.

A few months lat­er, Miran­da reflect­ed on the expe­ri­ence in an inter­view with Play­bill:

The whole day was a day that will exist out­side any oth­er day in my life. Any day that starts with you shar­ing a van to the White House with James Earl Jones is going to be a crazy day! I was the clos­ing act of the show and I had nev­er done this project in pub­lic before so I was already ner­vous. I looked at the Pres­i­dent and the First Lady only once and when I looked at him he was whis­per­ing some­thing to her and I couldn’t let that get to me. After­wards, George Stephanopou­los came up to me and said, “The Pres­i­dent is back there talk­ing about your song, he’s say­ing ‘Where is (Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury) Tim­o­thy Geit­ner? We need him to hear the Hamil­ton rap!’” To hear that the Pres­i­dent enjoyed the song was a real dream come true. 

The Oba­mas enjoy­ment was such that they appeared in a pre-taped seg­ment to intro­duce the Hamil­ton cast at the 2016 Tony awards (a tough year for any oth­er musi­cal unlucky enough to have debuted in the same peri­od as this jug­ger­naut).

They also host­ed a Hamil­ton work­shop for DC-area youth, for which the Broad­way cast trav­eled down on their day off, per­form­ing the open­ing num­ber out of cos­tume. Biog­ra­ph­er Ron Cher­now was in the front row for that one, as Oba­ma remarked that “Hamil­ton is the only thing Dick Cheney and I agree on.”

(“Dick Cheney attend­ed the show tonight,” Miran­da tweet­ed after Cheney’s vis­it. “He’s the OTHER vice-pres­i­dent who shot a friend while in office.” Cur­rent Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence also took in a per­for­mance short­ly before his swear­ing in, though his appear­ance was met with a much less pithy response.)

As for The Hamil­ton Mix­tape, many of Miran­da’s dream rap­pers turned out for its record­ing, though the tracks they laid down diverge from the one per­formed live for the Oba­mas in 2009, which legions of ador­ing fans can chant along to thanks to the musi­cal’s over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty. Instead, this mixtape’s con­tribut­ing artists were invit­ed to reimag­ine and expand upon the themes of the play—immigration, ambi­tion, and stubble—placing them in an explic­it­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry con­text.

Lis­ten to The Hamil­ton Mix­tape and the orig­i­nal cast record­ing of Hamil­ton for free on Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lin-Manuel Miran­da & Emi­ly Blunt Take You Through 22 Clas­sic Musi­cals in 12 Min­utes

A Whiskey-Fueled Lin-Manuel Miran­da Reimag­ines Hamil­ton as a Girl on Drunk His­to­ry

Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miran­da Cre­ates a 19-Song Playlist to Help You Get Over Writer’s Block

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She has yet to win the Hamil­ton lot­tery. Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this March. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch a New Virtual Reality Production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Modern Take on a Classic Play

in Literature, Technology, Theatre | January 29th, 2019

Often com­pared to The Tem­pest, Samuel Beck­et­t’s Endgame may have as much of Shakespeare’s Ham­let in it, though the author was unwill­ing to acknowl­edge the influ­ence to Theodor Adorno. Beck­et­t’s cen­tral char­ac­ter, the blind, aged Hamm, spends all of his time in a throne harangu­ing the oth­er three, in a gloomy place, The New York Times’ Brooks Atkin­son wrote, “some­where between life and death.” Hamm might have been the Dan­ish prince grown old and bit­ter, left with noth­ing but what Beck­ett called Shakespeare’s “fat greasy words.”

In any case, Ham­let has long been thought of as a pro­to­type of the absurd, a play where lit­tle hap­pens because its pro­tag­o­nist is too haunt­ed to have rela­tion­ships with the liv­ing or make deci­sions, a con­di­tion he com­plains about in scene after scene. Trau­ma, exis­ten­tial paral­y­sis, crip­pling doubt punc­tu­at­ed by fits of rage and violence—these are the mak­ings of the 20th cen­tu­ry anti-hero. If the play has a clas­si­cal hero, a man of action and resolve, it is, absurd­ly, a dead man, Hamlet’s father, who testi­ly declares his pur­pose in his final speech, “to whet thy almost blunt­ed pur­pose.”

Should Ham­let be turned into an immer­sive VR and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ence, allow­ing view­ers to inhab­it a char­ac­ter’s point of view, they might not opt to see things as the moody, depres­sive, speechi­fy­ing prince. In Ham­let 360: Thy Father’s Spir­it, we instead get to inhab­it the ghost, who only appears in the play a hand­ful of times but still fills every scene with his glow­er­ing pres­ence. The 60-minute VR “mod­ern adap­ta­tion” is a co-pro­duc­tion of Boston’s Com­mon­wealth Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and Google.

“Both extreme­ly long by the stan­dards of vir­tu­al real­i­ty and extreme­ly short by the stan­dards of Ham­let,” writes Eliz­a­beth Har­ris at The New York Times, the film “can be watched in 3‑D using a V.R. head­set or in two dimen­sions on a desk­top or mobile device” (see it above). On a vast, dark­ened set clut­tered with fine but shab­by fur­nish­ings in heaps, glow­ing lamps, a bath­tub, and a car, actors per­form con­densed scenes while we, as ghost, freely roam about, view­ing the action in three dimen­sions, a device intend­ed to give the view­er “a sense of agency and urgency as an omni­scient observ­er, guide and par­tic­i­pant,” the pro­duc­tion notes.

The film’s cre­ators, Har­ris writes, “hope that beyond the fresh expe­ri­ence it pro­vides, it will also serve as a tool to bring great the­ater to wider audiences—and bring big­ger audi­ences to the­ater.” It may have that effect, though one might feel it priv­i­leges dig­i­tal effects over the tru­ly immer­sive, full expe­ri­ence of Shakespeare’s “fat greasy words.” It’s hard to think the “great Shake­speare­an” Beck­ett would approve, but he found lit­tle to his lik­ing.

Younger, less can­tan­ker­ous audi­ences might, how­ev­er. “Many young people’s first expe­ri­ence of Shake­speare is not all that great,” says direc­tor Steven Maler. Ham­let 360 allows the Com­mon­wealth Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to “scale up” their mis­sion to “tru­ly democ­ra­tize Shake­speare and the­ater.”  Expe­ri­ence it for your­self above or on YouTube and learn more at Boston’s WGBH, who recent­ly pre­miered the film. The actors “deliv­er pow­er­ful per­for­mances,” the PBS sta­tion writes, “that bring the play for­ward to today, mak­ing it both cur­rent and time­less.”

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Per­form­ing Arts, From the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to the Paris Opera Bal­let

30 Days of Shake­speare: One Read­ing of the Bard Per Day, by The New York Pub­lic Library, on the 400th Anniver­sary of His Death

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Lin-Manuel Miranda & Emily Blunt Take You Through 22 Classic Musicals in 12 Minutes

in Comedy, Film, Music, Theatre | December 24th, 2018

Watch­ing James Cor­den, Lin-Manuel Miran­da, and Emi­ly Blunt don­ning bad wigs to mug their way through a 12-minute salute to 22 movie musi­cal “clas­sics” is a bit rem­i­nis­cent of watch­ing the three most pop­u­lar coun­selors ham it up dur­ing an over­long sum­mer camp skit.

Their one-take per­for­mance was part of Role Call, a reg­u­lar fea­ture of the Late Late Show with James Cor­den. Usu­al­ly, this fan favorite is an excuse for Cor­den and a megas­tar guest—Tom Han­ks, Julia Roberts, Samuel L. Jack­son—to bum­ble through the most icon­ic moments of their career.

These kinds of larks are more fun for being a mess, and the live stu­dio audi­ence screams like besot­ted campers at every goofy quick change and wink­ing inside ref­er­ence. Blunt and Miran­da are def­i­nite­ly game, though one won­ders if they felt a bit cha­grinned that the film they are pro­mot­ing, Mary Pop­pins Returns, is giv­en pride of place­ment, while the orig­i­nal 1964 film star­ring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke is strange­ly absent.

As is Thor­ough­ly Mod­ern Mil­lie, Victor/Victoria, and even The Sound of Music.

Maybe Corden’s sav­ing up for a Julia Andrews-cen­tric Role Call.

What did make the cut points to how few orig­i­nal movie musi­cals there are to res­onate with mod­ern audi­ences.

Of the 22, over 2/3 start­ed out as Broad­way plays.

And “You Can’t Stop the Beat” from 2007’s Hair­spray was born of the 2002 stage adap­ta­tion, not the grit­ty 1988 orig­i­nal star­ring John Waters’ main­stay, Divine.

Is it wrong to hope that most view­ers hear­ing “Your Song” will think, “Elton John!” not “Moulin Rouge”?

And Beau­ty and The Beast is per­haps not so much a movie musi­cal as a children’s fea­ture-length ani­ma­tion, so why not The Lit­tle Mer­maid, The Lion  King, or hell, Snow White or Pinoc­chio?

Alas, 1953’s Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes is as far back as this skit’s mem­o­ry goes, pre­sum­ably because the audi­ence has a greater like­li­hood of rec­og­niz­ing Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe than say, Howard Keel.

More inter­est­ing than the jokey horse­play with Into the Woods and The Mup­pet Movie is the choice to blithe­ly cast white actors in roles that were writ­ten for black women (Dream­girls, Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors). I don’t think any­one would try to get away with that on Broad­way these days, even in in a spoofy char­i­ta­ble event like Broad­way Bares or East­er Bon­net… though if they did, get­ting Lin-Manuel Miran­da on board would be a very good idea.

As to why Hamil­ton isn’t one of the titles below … it’s not a movie musi­cal—yet!

Readers—what glar­ing omis­sions leap out at you?

Cabaret

Chica­go

La La Land

Beau­ty and the Beast

Guys and Dolls

Evi­ta

Sin­gin’ in the Rain

Mary Pop­pins Returns

The Mup­pet Movie

The Wiz­ard of Oz 

Hair­spray

Dream­girls

Annie

Fid­dler on the Roof

Into the Woods 

Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors

Les Mis­er­ables

Moulin Rouge 

Once

Fame 

Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes

Mama Mia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hair: The Amer­i­can Trib­al Love-Rock Musi­cal Debuted on Broad­way 50 Years Ago: Watch Footage of the Cast Per­form­ing in 1968

David Bowie Dreamed of Turn­ing George Orwell’s 1984 Into a Musi­cal: Hear the Songs That Sur­vived the Aban­doned Project

Alexan­der Hamil­ton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poet­ry Evening

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City this Jan­u­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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Living Paintings: 13 Caravaggio Works of Art Performed by Real-Life Actors

in Art, Theatre | November 12th, 2018

Michelan­ge­lo Merisi da Car­avag­gio, the father of Baroque paint­ing, shocked the upper class aes­thetes of his day by draft­ing pros­ti­tutes and pro­le­tari­ats as mod­els for his pri­mar­i­ly Bib­li­cal sub­jects.

Ten years ago, under the direc­tion of founder Ludovi­ca Ram­bel­li, eight mem­bers of the Ital­ian com­pa­ny, Malathe­atre, dis­cov­ered first hand the insane­ly rig­or­ous pos­es Car­avag­gio demand­ed of his mod­els, cre­at­ing 23 tableaux vivants inspired by the master’s oeu­vre.

The com­pa­ny sought less to repro­duce the paint­ings than the scene Car­avag­gio would have gazed on from behind his easel.

The 13 stag­ings in the video above make one aware of the intense phys­i­cal­i­ty evi­dent in Caravaggio’s work.

All those extend­ed arms and inver­sions are agony for a mod­el. After 30 sec­onds or so, even a sharply inclined neck or bent back can serve up a small taste of what it’s like to be cru­ci­fied.

The result is exquis­ite. The eight play­ers are not just extra­or­di­nar­i­ly fit spec­i­mens, they have clear­ly devot­ed much thought to the emo­tion­al life of each char­ac­ter they embody, sus­tain­ing the moment with great focus and deter­mi­na­tion.

The action unfolds in the suit­ably ancient set­ting of Naples’ Church of San­ta Maria Donnaregi­na Nuo­va.

When not called upon to mod­el, the per­form­ers become stage hands, help­ing each oth­er to arrange the sim­ple, well cho­sen props and flow­ing man­tles.

(I enjoyed the small joke of a female Bac­chus.)

Per­formed live to selec­tions from Mozart, Bach, and Vival­di, this com­pa­ny has set­tled on the Lux Aeter­na sec­tion of Mozart’s Requiem to accom­pa­ny their archival footage.

The next oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the show per­formed live will be in Naples on Decem­ber 28.

Have a look at the video below, for some com­par­isons between the orig­i­nal paint­ings and the 13 tableaux vivants seen in the video:

The Entomb­ment of Christ

Mary Mag­da­lene in Ecsta­sy,

Cru­ci­fix­ion of Saint Peter

The Behead­ing of St John the Bap­tist

Judith Behead­ing Holofernes

Fla­gel­la­tion of Christ

The Mar­tyr­dom of Saint Matthew

Annun­ci­a­tion

Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Nar­cis­sus,

The Rais­ing of Lazarus

Saint Fran­cis of Assisi in Ecsta­sy

Bac­chus

via This Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

Bat­man & Oth­er Super Friends Sit for 17th Cen­tu­ry Flem­ish Style Por­traits

Why Babies in Medieval Paint­ings Look Like Mid­dle-Aged Men: An Inves­tiga­tive Video

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a for­mer artist’s mod­el turned author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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