Overture? Entr’acte? Bows?

How good is your pit? If your pit rocks, do the Overture. It sets the stage, it gets everyone in the mood, it’s cool. If your pit can’t handle it, or if the show is running as long as the Ring Cycle, cut it. It’s as simple as that. Balance your need to be faithful to the score against your need to make the people around you sound good. The overture, the bows, and the entr’acte are normally things I don’t rehearse with my pit until the last night before we open. By then we all know the tunes that are in those pieces, and the excitement of winging it keeps things hopping on opening night. The bows is a great place to let your pit open up a little. Keep the tempo hopping, and let your players take some liberties with it. All three of these pieces sometimes benefit from judicious cuts.

Some Broadway Bows are meticulously written so that the music matches the people bowing. I believe Seussical is an example of that. So is Millie. Take a peek and see if that’s the case for your show. If it is, tell your director ahead of time so that you can take advantage of it as you stage the bows. It’s really a blast to see people bowing to their theme music, and it keeps people from complaining about the order they’re bowing in, because you didn’t come up with it, it’s from the original production. (by the way, I think professionals complain about bows order more than amateurs) Using the character specific bows also keeps people from dragging their personal bows out, because the next group has to come out 8 measures or so from the time you came out.

Sitzprobe/Wandelprobe

What are these things? A sitzprobe is a rehearsal with the orchestra and no blocking. It is usually done toward the end of the staging process, near the time when you move into the theatre and when the set is coming together. It’s a chance to work out the coordination between the orchestra and the singers without the distractions of blocking and set and what have you. I try and put it on the schedule, and the other directors rehearse other things at the same time with the people who are not being used.

A wandelprobe is the same thing with some minor blocking involved. You do this when:

a) your group is good enough and you feel like standing still is an unnecessary waste of time.

b) You are running out of time and you need all the stage time you can get.

c) Most of your pit doesn’t/can’t show up for the rehearsal and you want to make good use of the time.

There really should be a time when the group can focus on the issues involving the orchestra. “Are the trumpets going to be that loud?” “Where’s that part I use to remember where I come in?” “That’s faster than I remember it.” All these things can’t come out with an orchestra-alone rehearsal, and they probably will get lost in a rehearsal involving lots of other things.

When your time at the Sitzprobe is running short, consider skipping scene changes and reprises and saving them for a later date. The most important things at the sitzprobe are to run everything that has singing in it and to give the pit a sense of what they’re up against.

Live Musicians/Prerecorded Accompaniment

I realize I’m going against the tide of the future, but I am against pre-recorded and synthesized music, and in favor of live musicians. The only excuse I can think of for not using live musicians is if your budget does not allow you to even do the show otherwise, or if you live in such a remote area that even a competent pianist is simply unavailable. (and in truth, I think both of these are cop-outs)

The arguments for using pre-recorded or synthesized musicians usually run along these lines:

1) Nobody can tell the difference between the sampled sounds or the pre-recorded versions and the real thing. Why spend such an inordinate amount of money to hire people who don’t sound as good when you can spend less for something that sounds far more like professional musicians?

2) The musicians in this area are not good enough to play this music, so we need to get something that will make the show sound good.

My answers to those concerns are that the issue is really a matter of principle, not expedience. When you put on a musical, you are jumping into the stream of theatre itself and the live performance experience. That stream consists of infinite and subtle connections between live human beings. The reason you go to the theatre is to see a live person; and in an age of pre-recorded, edited, broadcasted, homogenized perfection, live theatre of any sort is a terrifying and thrilling high-wire act. As you introduce young people to that stream of live performance, you are teaching them the whole ethos of the experience, including the give-and-take from performer to performer, live person to live person. The nuances of an actor singing with a musician even in substandard conditions are infinitely more alive and vital than a live actor singing with the simulacrum of a frozen, pre-packaged accompaniment. Removing that vitality, that communication, reduces one of the most crucial elements of Musical Theatre, the score, to the role of a painted flat, an inanimate object. There may come a time when we can convert Christopher Plummer’s performance in the film of The Sound of Music to a holographic projection, and he could appear in your junior high school production in all his glory, projected on the stage next to your other 12 year old cast members. What a treat it would be for them to act with Christopher Plummer! Of course the idea is ludicrous, for the very same reason a pre-recorded pit is ludicrous. You’re not really onstage with Christopher Plummer, because he can’t react to the other actors. It’s not real theatre.

Imagine for a moment, (and we all have had this experience) a karaoke machine cranking up a string arrangement for the beginning of a pop song, or perhaps a musician singing to a taped accompaniment at a church function. The strings build to a held, high chord, and the bouncing ball announces to the singer that the time has come for her to begin. After carefully counting the invisible 1, 2, 3, of the dotted half rest, the singer comes in, and the piece continues. Now compare that to the same singer standing in front of even 4 or 5 musicians, playing an arrangement of the same song, less flashy and grand, less reverbed, less ‘perfect’, and that same singer reaches the chord before she begins singing, and she takes a breath. And then the music begins when they all choose it to begin. Now I know there are people who can’t hear the difference, who don’t know that one of these things is true and real, and one of them is a substitute, a fake, a party game, a stop-gap measure when nothing else is available. But such people simply haven’t heard enough real live music to know the difference. Exposure to your production with live musicians will be a step in their education.

Furthermore, you as an arts professional also have a responsibility to the future of your art form both to employ working musicians where they are needed and to further the experience and education of the musicians of the future. A world where the only gigging musicians work in a recording studio in Los Angeles or Nashville is not a world with a healthy artistic life, plain and simple. And if you live out in the sticks somewhere, then it’s even more your responsibility to find the guy who plays bass or the girl who plays piano in your community and throw them a few bucks to accompany your production. If you don’t believe that amateur and semi-professional musicians are important, then music education is the wrong field for you. And if you should find yourself in an area where your musicians are not quite good enough, you have just discovered an opportunity to create a space for young people to learn to do it.

Conducting The Pit From The Piano

Conducting from the piano can be really great, or really really awful. If you’re a pianist, conducting from the piano allows you to use your best skill to its highest advantage: if everything goes south, you can still salvage it by just PLAYING SOMETHING! But a pianist with no skills DIRECTING from the piano is a nightmare for the other pit players. I have had many a conversation with drummers and guitarists in particular who are driven nuts by pianist MDs who give them nothing to guide them through their tempos. You need to master a couple of techniques in order to be an effective piano MD:

1) The Head Nod: It’s just like the conducting pattern you learned in music school, except you’re using your head. Upbeat is always a nod up, Downbeat is always a nod down.

2) The Sniff: Breathe in just before the entrance. Particularly effective when combined with the head nod.

3) Conduct with your non-playing hand. If you have measure after measure with only a left hand part, for goodness sake, pick up your right hand and conduct! It’s hard to do, so try it at home first.

4) If there are tempo changes, please go through them thoroughly with your group before hand, and use head nods to get through them.

5) Look around and make eye contact 2 or 3 seconds before you start. Try and make a little visual contact with everybody so they know you’re about to begin the next number.

Put yourself in your player’s shoes. They don’t know this show like you do. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, they’re starting, it’s speeding up, it’s slowing down, am I in 2 or 4? Where do I come in? And you look up for guidance and the piano player is glued to the music and the head is just motionless. It’s maddening! Don’t be that guy (or gal).