Chicago Currents
This project ended up being an excellent exploration of how I hope to continue programming concerts in the future. At the heart of the event were 24 pieces selected by Bridget Skaggs, all thematically tied to moments in Chicago’s history and the city's relationship with the waterways that define it. We could have easily just presented the selected songs and had a successful evening of music, but Chicago Fringe Opera wanted something no one had seen before. While I can’t confidently say no one has ever done exactly this before, I sure haven’t seen it, so… off we went.
Our varied repertoire included a piano/violin duet, a handful of ensemble choral reductions, a pair of duets, and a bevy of solos. Unlike simple themes like "19th Century Art Songs", it could be difficult for a careless observer to understand exactly why these pieces were selected, so it was our duty to inform them. A natural dilemma that comes with casting talented singers is that their schedules can be a nightmare due to their existing performance opportunities and other obligations. This meant that our rehearsal time was going to be limited, so whatever I built had to accommodate that variable. We were operating with the fundamental challenges of a short rehearsal process and a structural need to contextualize the music for our audience.
Meet #operamentary
My solution to this problem was to lean into the ways a lot of folks have been habituated to intake media over the last few years. I feel like I can't go a week without a friend or colleague telling me about some neat documentary they found on Netflix. Many of my peers also joke about how we all watch TV nowadays with the subtitles on - we can generally hear perfectly well, it's just that once you get used to them... well, they become indispensable.
Drawing from the mechanism I developed for Tosca of having the supertitle projection itself be a character in the show (and potentially inconsistent/biased narrator), I settled on the idea of communicating with the audience via some of the tools of documentary filmmaking - "operamentary". Or, as I originally pitched it, "MTV's Pop-up Video, but 25 years older with a glass of wine." Specifically, projected text, video, and images used to tie the experience together and narrate the concert. This would meet the constraints of our limited rehearsal time - there'd be no need to have the singers introduce their own songs, or talk about the importance of the Chicago Portage in establishing the region as an indispensable trading hub. The singers could focus on what they do best, and I could present audiences with easily digestible context for every section and song. A cohesive narrative that wouldn't require significant additional rehearsal time.
Making this work was a balancing act. Every second counts when you've got a program as long as this one, and deciding on how long every text slide is visible for between songs really matters. The presented information had to not only be engaging, it had to serve the audience experience - thorough enough to inform, brief enough to make sure we never lost momentum. The show's projection designer, Patrick Starner, worked with me to build a visual language for section headers to break up the evening into digestible chunks, song title cards so the audience wouldn't have to consult their programs, supertitles, and text slides that were distinct enough from the supers that the audience would never confuse our narration with the text of the songs. Brenden Marble's lighting helped keep the flow, giving our singers the freedom to move about the space as they saw fit, and pulling the event forward with tight transitions into and out of songs.
Doing the thing
The sheer amount of paperwork required to envision this piece was hysterical. Bridget did a lot of research on the history of the city to inform the rep selection, and I took that initial research and got to work building a cohesive narration from it. I paced it so some text could be delivered between numbers, and reviewed the music to see where it would be appropriate for us to communicate with the audience during songs. Once the basic work was done, the text had to be given a consistent voice, to connect the audience to this setup - it's always better to feel like someone specific is talking to you rather than an omniscient narrator reading off a page. So, we introduced the projection text as being from our stage manager, Shelby Krarup, in the booth (with her consent). Suddenly, the text was more than regurgitated facts - it was a confederate, an ally to the singers and audience members alike, who had a sense of humor. Dozens of spreadsheets later, we had song charts, movement tracks, lighting cue sheets, projection content, cited research, and schedules ready to go.
The evening began with Ambe, by Andrew Balfour, as a cold open with the singers spread throughout the audience. Once the choral piece picked up some steam, a projection came up with the title card for the song (song name, composer/librettist, performers) letting the audience know that we've got a system here, and it's not what they're expecting. After that, I wrote a 2 page curtain speech to be delivered by the singers, each of them being introduced to the audience along a slide with their name and voice type as they explained how this experience was going to work. We included CFO's land acknowledgment (the seed idea that led to this project), the reminder to silence your cell phones, and explained how Shelby would be taking up the mantle of educator. Before the second song began, the audience knew who all the musicians were, had names to match with faces, had heard the voices of our sensational cast, and a good laugh or two. They knew they didn't need to rely on paper programs for information - we're doing it live. That is how you start a concert.
Art is communication
I plan to write more on the idea of what I consider "postmodern concerts" - how we, as artists specializing in live performance, can leverage the way people have been ingesting media for the last decade to elevate the centuries-old concert experience. From an audience perspective, what they expect from an evening of “Songs from Romantic Comedies” or “Songs About Oppression” would be identical save for the repertoire selection. I think we can do better through the use of technology, whimsy, and education. This program was put together to use accessible, contemporary storytelling techniques to craft a more engaging, meaningful, and memorable experience.
