No, I haven’t suddenly decided to switch our production to Twelfth Night…although our cast and their families are going to see a performance of it this summer at the Idaho Repertory Theatre! We saw their Much Ado last summer, and I saw A Comedy of Errors there the summer before, and they always do a fantastic job! But as I considered the subject of this post (music), I couldn’t help but use that particular quote from another of Shakespeare’s wonderful comedies!

I have started working out the soundtrack for our play. Now, let me explain first that I’ve NEVER done this before…can you feel the tension in those words??? Last year I had a choreographer who taught the kids their Italian Renaissance court dances, and as long as she was finding music for the masked ball scene, she volunteered to go ahead and create music for the entire production. Prior to talking to her about the dancing, it hadn’t even occurred to me that we would need music in our play. Then I realized how blah it would be WITHOUT music! Can you imagine movies without music? Other theatre productions without music? Man, was I grateful to her for the suggestion and for the hard work she put into it!

This year, I’m trying it on my own (said choreographer is unavailable this summer). I have some CDs of Italian Renaissance music, and I think I can do this. I have a computer that will rip and burn music…I have blank discs…I clearly have the technology, but do I have the know-how? The gift for choosing the right music to suit the mood of each scene?

My vision for Shrew is different from last year’s Much Ado, even though they are both set in the Italian Renaissance. I’m picturing our Shrew as having more grit to it…more slapstick humor…and I want the music to reflect that. The music last year (courtesy of “Early Music Festival,” the CD pictured above) was very courtly and full of pageantry - perfect for the entrance of Don Pedro and his men and for scenes like the masked ball. But Shrew has a different feel to it - a much more rough and tumble feel that I’m hoping to enhance with the soundtrack I create.

I have a couple more CDs on order, hopefully arriving tomorrow or the next day. As I listen to them, as well as the tracks I have picked out from “Early Music Festival,” I will be reading my script yet again, trying out various pieces to see how they fit with the text and the action of the scene. Most of the music is used to introduce a scene, rather than having music actually playing throughout the scene (difficult for the actors to project over), and so it has to introduce the right mood and set the stage correctly.

This will be yet another learning experience for me, and I hope to have fun with it while also making sure that the music suits the play as a whole, the individual scenes, and the hard work the actors and actresses are putting into this production!

A recent sports item calls the 1950s musical Damn Yankees the most stirring drama since Shakespeare. I believe the statement was made with tongue in check, but still my initial response was, “Really?” Don’t misunderstand me; I have nothing against the show—a little Satan, a little baseball…lots of fun. Still, I am not sure it is the best thing since Shakespeare. In fact, I’m not sure what is. Despite this, I was intrigued that the writer selected a musical for this honor. After all, this is a form that is too frequently written off as lightweight family entertainment (as though it takes no artistry to create that kind of thing, anyway).

Focusing on the musical genre, how could we find a work that compares to Shakespeare? While The Bard’s plays have certainly served as the inspiration for musicals (The Boys from Syracuse, West Side Story), is there one that could equal the measure of his plays. Perhaps the best way to approach this question is to name something that has the potential to last as long as his works have. Some musicals, like Hair and Rent, become sensations because they so accurately capture the zeitgeist; yet that very timeliness often means they won’t age terribly well, except as period pieces. For me, the musical answer to Shakespeare would have to fall somewhere between the culty critical popularity of Stephen Sondheim and the mass appeal of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Sweeney Todd by way of Cats may sound like a curious mix, but melding styles was one of Shakespeare’s defining talents.

You’ll have to bear with me this week…My daughter just turned 11, and so my focus is, of course, on her!  But in thinking about this blog and my daughter, it occurred to me that I had a few things to say about children and Shakespeare.

Scott wrote a recent post - http://www.enotes.com/blogs/shakespeare/2008-03/kinder-bard-en/ - which discussed an article about exposing children to Shakespeare at the age of 4.  I agree completely with this premise.  Why not get kids interested in these wonderful stories while they’re still young enough to love fairy tales?  Why can’t they understand The Tempest if they can understand “Rapunzel”?  And language experts say that the younger a child, the easier it is for them to learn a new language.  Now, far be it from me to say that Shakespeare is another language!!  But I know it presents difficulties to some people when they are first trying to handle the Elizabethan poetry, and so if it works better for little kids whose brains still have all those wonderful firing synapses, then why not go for it?

I started the Shakespeare Festival at our school because I figured out that getting Shakespeare “off the page and onto the stage” is critical to students’ enjoyment and understanding of these plays.  People scoff when I say that I added Hamlet to our 7th grade reading list.  Of course it’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s nothing they can’t handle, particularly when we get up and starting reading aloud and acting out the story.  Last semester I worked with a group of students who ranged in age from 5 to 15 on a scene from The Tempest.  This exercise that I did came from a great book called Teaching Shakespeare, by Rex Gibson.  In it he suggested using Ariel’s story of the shipwreck and dividing lines amongst all of the kids, except Prospero, who is a single actor/reader.  So I took one of my older girls and gave her Prospero’s lines, and then divided Ariel’s lines among the rest of the kids.  The lines were divided, too, so they were manageable for younger kids.  Our littlest boy had a line with four words, and then we just worked on up to more and longer lines for the oldest kids.  They had so much fun with this - We even added sound effects so that there were ocean/surf crashing noises in the background while Ariel is telling his story, as well as thunder bolts at “Jove’s lighting, the precursors O’th’ dreadful thunderclaps”!  This was a great experience that led several of the kids to ask me, “When can we do more of this?”  In addition, they really wanted to know the entire story of The Tempest, which gave me the opportunity to do more teaching and sharing of Shakespeare.

Another great way to get younger kids involved in the plays is by having them be extras.  Our Much Ado last summer included the masked ball scene in Act II, complete with a choreographed 16th century Italian court dance!  It was SO neat to see these actors (yes, even the teenage boys!) get into this and want to learn these dance steps to bring even more dimension and life to our production.  Altogether we had 20 dancers - five groups of four dancers each - and the majority of them were extras - younger kids without lines in the play but who really wanted to be involved in the production in some capacity.  My daughter was one of these, as well as the Noble Lady who sings at Hero’s tomb in Act V (yes, I just had to mention my cute kid again!)!

So what exactly is the point to this post, other than to talk about my adorable birthday girl?  I want to encourage all teachers out there - elementary and secondary, public and private schools, and homeschoolers - to not be afraid to tackle the Bard and bring him to life with whatever group of kids you get to teach.  It never ceases to amaze me how much kids can do when they’re encouraged and loved through the process!

Shakespeare opens his charming comedy Twelfth Night with the oft-quoted line, “If music be the food of love, play on.” Though spoken by the romantically challenged Duke Orsino, the line has taken on a life of its own. Given how often people discuss the musicality of Shakespeare’s verse, perhaps it is appropriate that this particular quote has become so famous. Apparently, some have taken the sentiment to the next level. Cello phenom Matt Haimovitz is currently performing “After Shakespeare,” a collection of musical pieces directly inspired by different Shakespearean texts. Many of the big guns are included, such as Othello, King Lear, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The pieces are designed to reflect the emotions of specific scenes, characters and moments from The Bard’s classic works.

Combining music and Shakespeare is nothing new. Aside from the ballets, operas and other musical adaptations that the plays have inspired, the originals themselves often had musical components. The Fool in Twelfth Night sings and Ophelia’s madness in Hamlet is conveyed through song. Like the soliloquies, these musical interludes create moments of transcendence when the characters can communicate more directly with the audience. Given the lyrical nature of Shakespeare’s writing, the plays are as close to music as another form can be. Haimovitz approaches these qualities from the opposite direction, by finding the music without leaning on the words. Still, it is the words that are the root of the inspiration for these pieces. In The Bard’s hands, music is not only the food of love, but also pain, fear, pity and a host of other human emotions.