The move went quite smoothly, despite our (Brandon and me) incredible fatigue. A giant weight has been lifted and we're super excited to start decorating! Throughout this entire moving process I have also been rehearsing for a musical that was to be performed in the West Village Musical Theatre Festival, notice the key word in this sentence is "was."Here's the scoop, or at least what I gather:
My friend, Teddy, chose to direct this musical for the festival to challenge himself both professionally and creatively. He had to choose out of quite a few shows that were to be performed and thought this particular play, "I Don <3 U NE Mor," was the least horrible. The musical's about a guy who is completely overwhelmed by the technological age and proceeds throughout the entire play to clumsily, annoyingly use, question, and denounce technology as if he's some baby boomer from the '50s utterly baffled by new advancements in social media and communication. Oh and I think he's in love with some girl, too. Because we only got 15 pages of the script, I can't say that I think the entire idea is vapid and uninspired. Nor can I say that the ENTIRE musical was poorly written and the characters are caricatures of people you couldn't, in your wildest dreams, bring yourself to care about. I also can't say that the play sounds like something I wrote in high school (mine was better obviously). However, I can talk about the process in which the musical was eliminated from the festival.
I know Teddy. He's a director with a plethora of ideas that are expressed in ways that not everyone would understand immediately, but are genius just the same. We started rehearsal and were cast to play multiple characters, and there was lots of movement and some liberties were taken with the text. All of this was done without communication with the playwright or anyone affiliated with the play... why? Obviously they didn't care. Our rehearsals went along without Teddy getting any feedback from anyone. So of course he did what he was suppose to do-direct. He took this poorly written 15 pages and made it as interesting as he possibly could. Then, at our last rehearsal, some woman who called herself "creative director" came in and watched our rehearsal. The moment this woman stepped through the doors I immediately felt uncomfortable, like I was under a microscope that not only looked into your body, but your soul. She scrutinized us all with unabashed pomposity, sitting on her pedestal made of embarrassingly shallow ideals. The play, she told us, was chosen by Fringe, which I'm beginning to thing is a lie, because I'm pretty sure only great plays are in that festival, not hollow garbage. She also wanted to let Teddy know her name would not be associated with this performance BEFORE SHE EVEN SAW THE REHEARSAL. I instantly disliked her. Throughout the rehearsal she was feverishly texting "home base," like a child. I knew it wasn't looking good for us from the get-go, what with Sazuki walking to a score of beautiful music from a movie I can't remember the name of, the change of the stupid names in the script that were referring to popular social networks like facebook and myspace (myface), gmail (pmail) and so on, and then Teddy chose not to sing one of the songs in the musical and replaced it with something drastically different. I suspected our fate after that rehearsal, but then to actually have it happen was shocking. I got the email yesterday stating the play was pulled from the show. This was not the smartest thing for them to do. Now they're team seems difficult to collaborate with and no one wants to deal with drama in theatre.
The playwright did not come to ANY of the rehearsals. Their team barely communicated with Teddy at all until this week because the spy ("creative director") was probably freaking out. How dare they pull this no name play that NO ONE cares about. Who are they trying to protect? Themselves? They're nobodies. They should be grateful that Teddy even considered to direct that childish, sloppily written, brain-melting, sugarcoated string of "words" and "music."
So we were pulled from the show. After weeks of rehearsing and time being consumed unnecessarily, not to mention the sleep deprivation I was lucky enough to experience as a result of doing overnights and having rehearsal the same day!
Though I understand that if I had a vision for my musical and someone directing it was totally off, I'd be upset too, HOWEVER, I would have come to rehearsals to make sure we were on the same page. I would NOT have sent a spy FOR ME to scope out the play a week and a half before it was to be performed. Not only is that unprofessional and childish, but it's insulting to the director and the actors- especially because it's a new playwright who has absolutely no standing in the theatre world.
Dear Cathy,
Not only was your presence a nuisance during that ONE rehearsal, but your audacity to criticize the way it was directed and the choices made to enhance a terrible script is astounding. Not once did you attempt to see us before a week and a half before the show, so whatever you said is futile. Your show is boring. It has it's moments, but not many. I can only imagine how bad it is in its entirety. Don't ever do what you did to us again as it is negative a reflection on your ability to "creatively direct." It just seemed like you didn't care until you saw your show was going in a different direction. None of this would have happened if YOU as a "creative director" had been more responsive, took initiative, and maybe even- gasp!- creatively directed. I hope your play fails miserably.
Cheers,
Chris
I'm out.
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