Mother Courage and Her Children

For the past 12.5 months, I've been working on a score for a show at UCI.  Mother Courage and Her Children is a staple of the Western canon, written in the early 20th century by Bertolt Brecht. The play takes place during the 30-years war, and it primarily concerns one women's life as she tries to survive the war as a merchant. Over the course of the play, she has success and failure, but ultimately (surprise, surprise), the war takes its toll on her.

Brecht is synonymous in the theatre world with the phrase 'alienation effect,' which, briefly, means that the theatre makers should take steps to ensure that the audience remains aware that they're watching actors in a room, not real humans named Mother Courage, Kattrin, etc. Brecht wanted the audience to have to juggle sympathy for the characters with an objective analysis of the theatrical mechanisms by which they're being manipulated.  One of the ways that Brecht achieves this goal is by writing about a dozen songs into the text (the theory being that the break with reality caused by actors breaking into song will remind the audience that they're watching a play, not real life).  Thousands of pages have been written on alienation effect, and I'm just touching the surface.

At any rate, our production, directed by 2nd-year MFA student Ryanne Laratonda, ran last weekend, and during tech rehearsals, I made some videos of the songs.  I'm posting them here for you!

If you want to read more about this production, head on over to the UCI Sound Design page, where I'm cross-posting this post with a good deal more information about the process and the songs.

Mother Courage Theme:



The Song about The Soldier and His Wife:



The Song of Fraternization:



The Song of the Hours:



The Song of Great Capitulation:



From Ulm to Metz:



The Cook's Song



The Anonymous Song



Eia Popeia



Finale

USITT & an award

Yesterday, after a long half-week of exhaustion and many months of planning, the USITT conference wrapped up in Long Beach, CA.  USITT presents an annual conference for theatre designers and technicians, and the Sound Commission is a subgroup that I'm particularly involved with.  This year, in addition to helping to plan parts of the conference, I also chaired a panel on intermediate/advanced applications of multi-channel audio.  Brad Berridge and Davin Huston worked with me as a group called Push The Button, and director/dancer/artist Maya Gurantz helped out as well.  We created two new dance pieces, one of which used data from two wii remotes to control the sound, and the other of which used an xBox kinect to control the sound. The dance pieces were accompanied by a short lecture about some of the techniques used to harness the sound delivery system of the room. The presentation went well, I thought. A little short, with a few bugs, but overall, a nice start down a new path of research.

In other news, my recent design for Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's production of Tigers Be Still won a League of Cincinnati Theatres Award for outstanding sound design. You can read about it here!

This week has been exhausting. I'm taking today off. Mostly.

Took this this morning. Love the colors.

Catalina!

Three years ago, my folks gave S and I some money to take a little trip to Catalina Island, off the coast of LA. We booked a trip, but at the last minute, we had to cancel b/c S got a job.  I was able to get credit at the hotel, and this last weekend, three years later, we finally made the trip out.  We were just gone a few nights, but it was good to get away for a few days.


The iconic casino stands over town.


We took a raft trip out into the water to try to see some whales. We saw no whales, but we did see some sea lions.


And some dolphins!


Sunset over town.


Yea, buoy!

The depth of winter...

Okay, so I suppose I can't really talk about the 'depth of winter' when I'm living in LA (today, sunny, high in the mid 60s), but there is less sun, more clouds, and I've been being pulled in many different directions.

Here are some projects I've been working on (in order of completion):

* Mounting HIGH in Florida for the second leg of its national tour.

* Designing TIGERS BE STILL for Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.

* Chairing a panel at USITT on Multi-Channel Sound.  I'm bringing in the Push The Button gang, and we'll be creating a few pieces to demonstrate some concepts.

* Writing a score for MOTHER COURAGE at UCI.  Six-piece band, plus singers!

* Designing JITNEY at South Coast Rep.

* Creating, designing, and scoring WAR OF THE CLOWNS for The National Theater of Romania.


That'll take me through mid-June.  In addition, I'm teaching a full load, researching and prepping a new class for next year, interviewing candidates for our MFA program, and trying to be a good husband.