The Day the Dogs Began to Talk

Music and libretto by Dick Turner
Thompson Street Opera Company, October 2025 (World Premiere)

I don’t think I’ve ever apologized this much in the rehearsal room before, but my team was blessed with talent and open minds. Dick Turner's wild piece brought us a chance to create an equally charming and disturbing series of unfortunate events in a short period of time.

When I first read this piece, it clicked with me relatively quickly as a prime example of a text in the lineage of théâtre de l'absurde, Theatre of the Absurd. The recurring themes, both musically and dramatically, the breakdown of interpersonal communication, the shades of nihilism in some of the dialogue - it all rang true. I first encountered absurdist theater in college, when I saw my first production of The Birthday Party, by Pinter.  It took a while for me to process that theatrical experience. As I continued to reflect, the building blocks of the genre began to appeal to my sensibilities. Of particular note to me was the use of language itself as a weapon - not necessarily the literal meanings of the words as spoken, but the use of the very idea of language as a blunt object. These new ideas locked in with me immediately - after all, my favorite pieces of art are the ones that make you think. I approached the piece from this perspective, and some of the staging elements began to fall into place.

Before I could delve too deeply into specific staging choices, we had a tough nut to crack. This show centers around a trio of genuinely unlikable characters. They have their moments where they can connect with the audience, but the narrative requires these people to behave in pretty reprehensible ways. When building a narrative around folks like these, it's deeply important to find any common ground you can with the audience. In many shows, I do everything I can to lock in a "first laugh" with the audience. Whether you're building a comedy, a tragedy, or anything in between, getting that audience buy-in from a good laugh is paramount to gaining audience consent. This gets the audience to pay closer attention to the action onstage, hungry to get the seeds of the next bit of humor. However, in this piece, the first major interaction onstage is unmistakably one motivated by anger.

So, how do we create this first laugh when the score and script don't afford it to us? This piece runs about 47 minutes, and 10% of it is an orchestral opening before the first text is sung. With that in mind, we have a few options. The most common choice, reinforced via stage directions in the score, may be to include some pantomime storytelling to establish the setting and the character relationships. I, however, wanted to take a different approach by presenting two contrasting stories. First, the arrival of two characters at their favorite bar with a dog, playing out over the music without dialogue. Second, a series of slides in our supertitle deck to prime the audience. I'm a strong believer in expanding the role supertitles can play in operas, and this was a great opportunity to explore that. This taught the audience that the supers themselves are storytellers in addition to the actors - later on in the show, multiple characters would acknowledge the supertitles, showing the characters are aware that the things they say are being transcribed. I also wanted to take the opportunity to plant a few intellectual seeds with the audience - the literal joke of the whole show (the idea of dogs speaking and understanding human language), which was in and of itself a bit of a red herring, and a hook for the allegory of the show (how certain types of people may react to news about change). By presenting this in a humorous way, I believe we were able to get a hint of that first laugh without changing any of the music or text.

The show was a wild ride. Making this kind of thought-provoking humor work, a balance of whimsy and disgust, is a challenge. I think the team did well - leaning into their characters and the absurd (or surreal) world they're living in, with a tight budget and timeline. I look forward to seeing the next piece Dick Turner publishes.