Performance Report 2

Introduction:
This second performance report is on the musical Side Show performed on April 8 at 8pm in the University Theatre. Book and lyrics by Bill Russell and Music by Henry Krieger.
The story is based loosely on the true lives of conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton born in England in 1908. They were exploited as financial potential, as they could both sing, until they sued for their independence. They continued performing but were abandoned and died of Hong Kong flu in 1969. This story attempts to address the idea topic of self-acceptance identity. What is normal? What is it to be normal? Why does it even matter?

Music:
The music of the show is obviously the main element to the acting and interaction of the performers. Since it is a musical, sentences are often sung and not spoken. The melodies are not as important during these times and the melodic phrase is usually pretty monotoned. There is a song for every situation/scene in the musical. When singing the words, it's pretty much one word per note. All vocals are sung in the traditional, western method or closely resembling that method. It is easy to tell who has more vocal ability from the quality of the voice as each performer sings. The human voice is the most important instrument during the show but live music is present in the form of a live pit which is quite small, consisting only of about 17 people. However, the volume was actually not bad.

Performers:
Performers interact with each other mainly within the context of the musical's story. They talk to/about each other in their characters. They also communicated through eye contact and cues when there is a scene change. Through the music and dance, performers are also able to tell what another performer is about to do. Since everything is in the context of the story, all performers are dressed as their character at all times. The actresses who play the twins are always together even when walking on and off stage. Each performer, with an important role or not, has a different costume, unless the scene calls for them to dress the same. This way you are able to differentiate each of the people.

Performers try to interact with the audience as well by speaking to them during their monologues and actually singing to the audience sometimes. During the start of the musical, the freak show is advertised to the audience as an introduction to the cast.

Audience:
This was the audience for the opening night. Most of the people there know someone on the cast or in the live pit or both, parents, grandparents, friends, family, etc. Some are there for reports. The room was fairly full. In terms of the "outsider", there are those who already know or have performed the songs in the musical so those are "outside" would be those completely new to this musical. Although that doesn't hinder you from enjoying the musical. In fact, it might have been better because these people would not be judging the performance based on a performance they previously attended.

Time and Space:
The size of the crowd is mostly due to the fact that not only is it opening night but it is also free night. Many people who are not UTD students came to see it. They were not the most responsive crowd though. The musical's entrance is with the performers on the side stairs next to the audience and the cannibal king runs around the audience at one point, so they do try to include the audience into the performance. The room was also quite small so the audience was very close to the stage, and very close to the performers making it feel like a very "close" performance, unlike huge stages where the audience is at least 15ft from the edge of the stage.

Conclusion:
In general, it was a good performance. The live pit was regrettably the most unsatisfying thing of the performance because it kept making mistakes which took away from the performance in general. The songs were still pretty interesting despite the fact that the musical is story oriented and less caring about the melodic or actual musical aspects of the performance. Although it is true most to the time, the audience was not always just the audience and the performers tried their best to pull the audience into the world of the story.

Sources:
*NOTE: italics used in place of underlining because blogspot doesn't have the underline option

Side Show. By Bill Russell/Henry Krieger. Dir.Robert Longbottom. Perf. UTD drama students. Cond. Robert Longbottom. University Theatre, Richardson, 8 April 2010. (Side Show).

Longbottom, Robert. Director's Notes. Side Show. 8 April 2010. Richardson: University Theatre. (Longbottom).

side show: what it shows about society now

The musical assigned as the 2nd performance report assignment:
Side show was written loosely based on the true happenings in the read lives of Violet and Daisy. When thinking about this musical, I thought of how fake everything is. Right now, in a college environment, it seems as through the people here are in their own world. The people here are still being sheltered from the true world. People are so fake in a college setting. Everyone is out to impress and make false promises of wonderful things and yet are unable to fulfill them since they were false to begin with. In addition to addressing the point that nothing is as it seems, Sideshow also addresses the point that people are essentially alone. There will be many people who will claim to never leave you or be with you forever, but it is truly false. In the college setting you learn that you meet people today that you may never see again starting tomorrow. However, there are those who can be found in this society that will stay with you. Those these are rare, they are not nonexistent. Mostly it is family. Many come to college relieved to finally be away from their families only to realize what their family meant to them. Without anyone, college is lonely place with nothing. Many students learn the value of family and gain much better relations with their family members.

College is also a time of new trials. With these new trials, one may see the true face of some people they thought they knew, just as Daisy and Violet saw the true face of people they thought they knew. This can be a good thing or a bad thing in that you may find that there is someone you never saw a someone you could have a relationship with or it could be a bad thing in that you may find there is a person who has been playing you this whole time.

Sideshow addresses the more realistic side of human relations, the side that isn't shown often since it is obviously not appealing nor very entertaining to talk about but is nonetheless a necessary to be discussed since it is real and happening back when the real Daisy and Violet were alive, now and will continue to happen in the future.

post 12

The subgenre of rock and roll (or just rock) is probably considered to be it's own genre rather than a subgenre by many. There are a few characteristics that make a this subgenre what it is. Things like the use of the electric guitar which was originally for making a guitar more quiet, but ended but ended up being used to amplify it, the small ensembles just as in jazz or bluegrass groups, singing in almost all of the songs, different from the instrumental pieces of previous times, which means the singer always tries to put his/her own individualism into the song. It seems that song lyrics usually consist of love lost, love found, breakup lyrics, etc., usually things about this type of relationship. Also, lyrics tend to repeat themselves many many times. Songs often have 4 beats in a cycle with many strong beats so the rhythm is usually simple and easy to follow. The drum set is responsible for keeping the beat and various rhythms. As technology is getting better, artists of this subgenre are using the many tools coming out to help with their performance. Things like, monitors for live performances, multitrack recording for studio performances, and vocoding for fixes in pitch reference. Unlike those that came before it, this subgenre stresses on being loud and a rebellious statement against the previously very traditional reserved type music. It has a very raw energy. Not only is the rhythm simplified but the chords from which the harmony and melody come from are also very simple. Songs will only use a very standard set of progressions that change rather slowly.

"Suspicious Minds", Elvis Presley listening guide
0:00 instrumental start with guitar
0:06 verse 1 starts, vocals start and instruments become accompaniment, other instruments, like the drums and harmonization, come in
0:23 second part of verse 1 starts, melody of first part of verse 1 starts again
0:41 chorus begins for the first time.
0:48 chorus melody repeats for the second part of the chorus
0:56 verse 2 starts, repeating same melody as in verse 1
1:13 second part of verse 2 starts, repeating the same melody as in verse 1.
1:27 you can hear the back-up singers
1:30 chorus starts again, same as the first time chorus is sung
1:47 music slows down, drum is key to changing the tempo
1:49 bridge part starts
2:15 music speeds up again, drum set is key to changing the tempo
2:17 repeats verse 1
2:48 repeats verse 1 again, you can hear more drums in the background
3:24 repeats verse 1 again
3:37 repeats verse 1 again
3:54 repeats verse 1 again
4:10 repeats verse 1 again
fades out.

post 11

The music of the Gullah come from the mix of cultures from the rice coast area of Africa. As these cultures mixed there was nothing impeding them from developing further as these Africans were imported into the states and left with little interaction with the whites. In this way, their culture, heritage, traditions were preserved.

Music of these people consist of melodies that may not even be called melodies. The singing portion of this culture are with words that are just made up by the singer. The melodies, are also primarily decided by the solo singer, and everyone follows this person. There are songs that are set on how they are played/and/or sung but in general, the people follow the lead singer. Also, working as a salesperson for the things they grew, they would sing things like "strawberries" or such things. In general, songs and such were very simple because they were remembered and sung by those who had no education in music. All they knew was the songs taught to them by ear and what they had grown up hearing. After many years, these people no longer sing in their language from African but in English. Now there are few that can actually recite things in the original language. Music is now mostly drum beats that are played with multiple hand drums (and multiple people). Everyone is part of dancing to the drum beats, very much like other African drum beats.

Their music was about the community. It was about being who they were. They were all performers with their drums, sticks, bead gourdes, etc and they were all the audience as well. The music was very well integrated into their lives for themselves and to others and for their God as well.

international week talent show

Last week was international week. In all honestly, I'm a big fan of international stuff. Not that anything here is bad but it's just less interesting and less creative sometimes. Plus, it's always good to feel the pride of the people of the other side of the world. Oh and how much pride they have!

It was a very loud experience to say the least. There were many people there. Performers were dressed in traditional clothes of their culture. Some even had traditional instruments of their culture. It was very amazing to see all the people gather with their fellow countrymen even though many didn't know each other. In the auditorium, it sounded more like a festival than a performance. Everyone was talking or cheering but still paying at least some attention to the performers on the stage. People cheered when their country was being represented or when they liked the performance with yells, hollers, whistling, etc. It was amusing to hear the guys cheer for the girl performers very loudly.

The music consisted of a lot of dancing and a lot of music for dance. Everything was very fast paced most of the time and had good rhythm. The music wasn't live of course, everything was played on the speakers. Practically all the music had drum beats to it since that would be better to dance to. The music also had chants or words as in actual singing with a melody. It was amusing here too to hear people in the audience singing with the music.

You could obviously tell that the performer was talking with the audience of his/her people. They spoke in their language and actually talked with the audience. Performers made eye contact and even spoke to each other during the performances to communicate because of the casualness of the whole thing. Like a festival, as previously mentioned.

Overall, it was a very interesting and actually, quite a fun experience. You can help but walk out of there with pride in your country.

peformance report 1

Introduction:
The event is the Shakespeare in Song concert held on March 26 and 27 at the Jonsson Performance Hall at 8pm on the 26th and at 2pm and 8pm on the 17th directed by Kathryn Evans. The singers are from the UT Dallas Chamber Singers. The music consisted of pieces from various plays by Shakespeare including The Tempest, Hamlet, Cymbeline, Othello, and Twelfth Night. The plays themselves didn't really have any music but rather, there were some authentic songs written during the time of Shakespeare, some solo songs written by a British composer named Roger Quilter and choral arrangements of the songs of Shakespeare by Matthew Harris (director's notes in program). Both these composers have outstanding reputations in the music world.

Music:
As stated previously, the music is pulled from authentic songs of Shakespeare's time, from British composer Roger Quilter and from choral arrangements of Shakespeare songs by Matthew Harris. The music is mostly vocal (well..of course..it's singing afterall) in that there is only a piano to accompany a medium sized group of singers. The main focus is the voice in that there is little else to hear. Most of the songs are fairly quick and have a pretty quick tempo. It makes it a sort of "happy" song which means it's mostly in major keys. The texture consists of mostly vocals with there being a good balance between male and female voices. The vocal parts are split into the SATB parts for the singers. There are times when they might sing in unison (males/females in unison or male and female in unison but the latter is less) which is when the texture is a little bit thinner but not any softer or less full. The arrangements are fairly simple with no crazy runs or insane leaps. This shows the music's time in the choral/solo singer music world. Rhythm is also pretty simple. There aren't any passages in the music that sounded too challenging rhythm-wise. It was mostly very simple rhythms of 8th notes,quarter notes and maybe the some 16th notes but there really wasn't any tricky combinations.

Performers:
The first thing to take note of is that the performers were dressed like the people during the times of Shakespeare, including the director. Everyone had something different on but they were all costumes designed after the clothing worn by the people during Shakespeare's time. Everyone stood on a choir stand with the male voices on the right and the female voices on the left (if you were looking at the stage). Another thing to note is that everyone had a score. This takes a lot of the interaction between performers and the audience out because they have to look down all the time. Besides, the vocal exchange portions of the performance in which performers would come out of the choir stand and speak specific lines, the performers would communicate to each other with glances, hand motions, whispers, etc. The director, of course, conducted and held everyone together. During solo portions there was good communication between the pianist and the soloist since the director does not conduct theses portions. It was more like the pianist did a good job following the singer. During the parts where everyone sings together, the pianist is in good communication (with eye contact and nods) with the conductor who is in good communication with the choir using hand motions and eye contact and perhaps silent words as well (not clearly seen as you can only see the back of the director).

Audience:
The people who showed up to the performance, as far as I could see, were parents/friends/relatives/etc of the performers. Other than that, the next biggest group were those who were there for class. During the second and third performances, there were fewer and fewer people. The performance is open to outsiders. outsiders as in, people who have either never heard of Shakespeare in song or have never been exposed to this or just aren't very familiar with this music culture. In general, they are the people that don't know Shakespeare as much. You could go just to enjoy the singing and never get anything about it being Shakespeare. Since the performers are performing for the audience there is some communication in that. But, even if the audience didn't show up, the performers would still perform the same thing, although perhaps with less gusto. The performers may have been looking out into the audience but the audience has little to do with their performance nor is there much communication between the two parties.

Time and Space:
There was a pretty significant difference in the number of people in the audience for each of the performances. The first performance had the most people but even then, there weren't that many. Most people were there for the sake of class or because they knew someone who was performing. The performers were also visibly excited and nervous from perhaps the fact that it was the first show. I was told my a performer that, in the second showing, one of the solo performers was switched for another because the original one had failed to make the call time.
The substitute performer was noticeably more nervous but it didn't affect her performance a great deal. The excitement of the performers obviously died down as the performances continued.

Conclusion:
This was a rather interesting experience. The music is obviously not what most people are use to. It's surprisingly written by people who are very well established in the music world and is still being written today since Matthew Harris isn't dead yet (director's notes in program). The audience may not have been the best since most of them were there for class, but the performers were performing for themselves as well although it may have been discouraging for the performers to practice for something and no one shows up to listen.

Sources:
Shakespeare in Song. by Matthew Harris, Robert Johnson, Roger Quilter, Franz Schubert, Anonymous. Dir. Kathryn Evans. Perf. UT Dallas Chamber Singers. Cond. Kathryn Evans. Jonsson Performance Hall. Richardson. 26 March 2010.

Evans, Katryn. Program notes. Shakespeare in Song. 26 March 2010. Richardson: Jonsson Performance Hall. (Evans).

*Note: italics are used for sources because the underline option cannot be found in blogspot.