Next To Normal

(This is Victoria's post.)

Next to Normal is a rock musical by Brain Yorkey and Tom Kitt. Directed by Michael Greif, it opened Off-Broadway in 2008 and then Broadway the next year. The show has received several awards including the Tony Award for Best Score and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The musical to win the Pulitzer the year before was Rent which was also directed by Greif.  It was nominated for 11 Tony Awards.

                  Brian Yorkey is a native of Issaquah, Washington and graduated from Columbia University where he met Tom Kitt. He served as the associate artistic director for Village Theatre for six years before Next to Normal.  Tom Kitt has composed and orchestrated many awarding winning musicals including High Fidelity and American Idiot. His new musical Bring it On recently opened on Broadway. He received the Frederick Loewe Award for Dramatic Composition for Next to Normal. Kitt and Yorkey’s most recent project is a new musical called If/Then starring Idina Menzel and directed by Michael Greif. The show is set to open on Broadway Spring 2014.

                  Next to normal began as a ten minute piece called Feeling Electric that Kitt and Yorkey wrote as a final project for the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. Their inspiration was a segment about electroconvulsive therapy on Dateline NBC. Yorkey has been quoted saying, “exponentially harder to write an original musical. Musicals that go wrong can be ridiculous because it’s a ridiculous art form. People bursting into song can be ridiculous. But musicals that go right can be sublime."

                  Next to Normal tells the story of a mother who struggles with several illnesses including manic depression, bipolar disorder, and delusional fits. Some symptoms of bipolar disorder are increased sex drive, disconnected racing thoughts, empty moods, feelings of guilt, worthlessness and helplessness, poor judgement, inappropriate elation, grandiose notions, and delusions.  It explores the effects of loss on a person and the effects that these illnesses have on a family. The musical addresses issues like suicide, drug abuse, and ethics in modern psychiatry.

                  The set is made to look like a doll house. There are doors that slide open and closed so we can see inside the home of this suburban family. It is also a symbol for Diana. For instance, Gabe’s room is in the attic/ Diana’s mind. When the musical begins it seems like the audience is about to watch a show about a typical suburban family. It is not until after the opening number that we realize Diana is not all there. I found it interesting that we do not realize Gabe is a vision until 30 minutes into the show. Up until that point we think the entire family can see him. You will notice if you chose to read the play and watch it on Youtube, that they are somewhat different. Some songs were cut from the show when it moved to Broadway.

                  I enjoyed the use repetition in this musical. Many times the word crazy was used but sometimes it was good and sometimes it was bad. Also the word perfect. In the song I Miss the Mountains Diana talks about the importance of feeling. At this point the doctors have taken away all feeling from her. But she would rather feel pain than nothing at all.

                  Throughout the show we learn that Dan never got to grieve his son’s death. He was too busy taking care of Diana. This show explores the effects of mental illness on a family. Natalie is constantly in the shadow of her older brother who does not exist. She is always afraid she will end up crazy just like her mother. This is why she is scared connect with Henry. I love the brief glimpses into Diana’s mind. One example is when she first meets the doctor and she sees him as a rock star.

                  I’m Alive  is when we get to see Gabe’s point of view for the first time. Diana cannot get rid of Gabe until she comes to terms with the fact that he is dead and grieves his death. The musical not only deals with the effects of drugs but also the effects of hypnosis and electric shock therapy.  “The aim of ECT is to induce a therapeutic clonic seizure (a seizure where the person loses consciousness and has convulsions) lasting for at least 15 seconds.”

Questions:

1.)   Which is worse, the symptom or the cure?

2.)   Is forgetting better than feeling pain? What was the effect of forgetting for both Diana and Dan?

3.)   What are the parallels between Gabe, Dan, and Henry?

4.)   Did you think the emotion was lost because the dramatic moments were sung instead of spoken?

5.)   Did Gabe live in Diana’s soul or her mind?

6.)   Why did Diana decide to leave and not Dan?

7.)   Why did Dan not admit to being able to see Gabe?

8.)   Do you think Henry was a bad influence on Natalie?

9.)   If Henry had not been in Natalie’s life, what do you think would have happened to Natalie?

10.)Why did Dan never talk to Natalie about Gabe?

11.)Do you think musicals like Next to Normal and Rent are the future of musical theatre? Is it possible to have a dramatic musical be as realistic as a dramatic play?

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety

(This is Jordan's post.)

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety was written by Kristoffer Diaz.  It premiered at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre on September 25, 2009.   Since then, it has been performed off-Broadway and at regional theatres in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Washington, Dallas, Louisville, and Charlotte.  The play received the Obie Award for Best New Play, the National Latino Playwriting Award, and the New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award.  It was also a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, but it lost to Next to Normal. 

Kristoffer Diaz holds a BA from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, an MFA from NYU's Department of Dramatic Writing, and an MFA from Brooklyn College's Performing Arts Management program.  His full-length plays include The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety, Welcome to Arroyo’s, and Guernica.  He is a playwright-in-residence at Teatro Vista, and he is a recipient of the Future Aesthetics Artist Regrant and the Van Lier Fellowship for New Dramatists. 

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety is about the inner-workings of a fictional wrestling organization known as THE Wrestling.  The main character is Macedonio Guerra, a Latino jobber who goes by the moniker of “The Mace.”  He is at odds with his ignorant boss and the hyper-charismatic African-American Chad Diety, who is a terrible wrestler.  Macedonio attempts to bring in a highly charismatic local Indian pick-up basketball player named Vigneshwar Paduar, but the boss of THE instead teams Macedonio and Vigneshwar together as a group of mysterious, silent terrorists, with Vigneshwar as the wrestler and Macedonio as the manager/speaker.  However, Vigneshwar freezes up every time he is in the ring, and he eventually quits THE Wrestling.  At the end of the play, Macedonio unleashes a venomous monologue about the current state of wrestling and how he only wants to tell a beautiful story, and the THE boss tells Macedonio to say this on camera.  In the epilogue, Vigneshwar Paduar narrates this event to the audience as he watches on television with a lady.  After Macedonio’s inspired statement, Chad Diety comes onstage and defeats Macedonio in near-record time, and the audience cheers, to which VP’s girl friend says, “Why are they rooting for the bad guy?”

1) What is the significance of Macedonio’s extended monologue at the beginning of the play? He even states “None of this is even the point of the story.”  Why is that?

2) How does this play benefit by the highly presentational narration?  What would the play be like if it weren’t led along by Macedonio’s snarky asides?

3) There are many real-life representations of characters similar to these in professional wrestling.  The wrestler most often referenced in the play is Muhammad Hassan, an Arab-American stereotype who debuted in the WWE in 2004 but whose career was destroyed after a controversial “terrorism” storyline.  Chad Diety himself is modeled after The Rock (although don’t start thinking that The Rock couldn’t wrestle), and Macedonio’s early career is very similar to the early careers of Latino wrestlers such as Rey Mysterio and the late Eddie Guerrero.  What do all of these modern allusions to actual wrestlers add to this play about fictional wrestlers?

4) Is this play more scathing satire of professional wrestling?  Or does it exist more as a satire of race relations in the United States? 

5) Why is the epilogue narrated by VP? Throughout the play, Macedonio has been the only narrator, so what has changed by the end?

(This is Jordan's post.)

Clybourne Park

(This is Jordan's post.)

Clybourne Park was written by Bruce Norris.  It premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on February 21, 2010, where it was directed by Pam MacKinnon.  It premiered on the West End at the Royal Court Theatre in August 2010 (with Martin Freeman as Karl and Steve).  Finally, it premiered on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on April 19, 2012.  The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and the Theatre World Award, and it was nominated for many others.

Bruce Norris graduated from Northwestern University in 1982.  As an actor, he performed on Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter and Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues.  As a playwright, almost all of his plays have been produced at the Steppenwolf Theatre, where Norris has also acted.  Some of his other plays include The Actor Retires (his first play), Purple Heart, and The Low Road, which just premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in March.

Clybourne Park is an unofficial sequel to the 1959 Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, which was about black Younger family attempting to move into the all-white neighborhood Clybourne Park.  The first act of Clybourne Park takes place during the events of A Raisin in the Sun, but from the perspective of the white family who is selling their house.  The characters are Russ and Bev, who are attempting to sell their house while grieving over the death of their son, Francine and Albert, Russ and Bev’s black housekeeper and her black husband, Jim, the clergyman, and Karl and Betsy, the neighbor and his deaf wife.   Karl is the exact same character as the minor white character in A Raisin in the Sun, Karl Lindner, who attempts to convince the black Younger family into not buying the house; in Clybourne Park, the same character tries to convince Russ and Bev into backing out of the deal.   In the second act, all of the actors change characters, as the events of the play take place in the same house in 2009.  Over those fifty years, Clybourne Park has become an all-black neighborhood, the black characters represent a neighborhood organization, and the white couple is seeking to buy the house.  After lengthy discussions of housing codes, the conversation eventually turns to racism, to which both parties respond poorly.  At the very end of the play, a nearby worker finds an old trunk with some of Russ and Bev’s stuff, including their son’s suicide note.  We are transported back to 1959, and Bev catches her son, Kenneth, late at night. One of the very last lines of the play is “I really believe things are about to change for the better. I firmly believe that.”

1) The structure of this play is quite odd—it’s essentially the same very long scene twice, with no rising action between the acts.  What is the effect of the structure of this play? Why is the 1959 coda necessary at the very end?

2) Perhaps the most interesting character choice in Act 1 is Betsy.  Where does her deafness fit in with the grand scheme of this play? Is it played for laughs? Isn’t that bad?

3) Long periods of this play are comprised of dialogue about seemingly irrelevant subjects, such as the capitals of foreign countries and housing codes.  What do you think of this?  Is there an underlying point here?  Is it a reference to the mundaneness of institutional racism?

4) This play exists in a sort of highly specific modern genre of “civil conversation turned uncivil” in the same vein as Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage or Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit.  What does it say about our current society and the state of our theatre that this has become such a common theme in well-received modern plays?  Does it suggest a growing distrust of the politically-correct?

5) How do you feel about Swine Palace producing this play in the fall? It is being directed by Femi Euba, so, of course, it will be a successful production, but what exactly is there to be gained from this play in Baton Rouge? Will audiences enjoy it? Clybourne Park was written by Bruce Norris.  It premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on February 21, 2010, where it was directed by Pam MacKinnon.  It premiered on the West End at the Royal Court Theatre in August 2010 (with Martin Freeman as Karl and Steve).  Finally, it premiered on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on April 19, 2012.  The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and the Theatre World Award, and it was nominated for many others.

Bruce Norris graduated from Northwestern University in 1982.  As an actor, he performed on Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter and Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues.  As a playwright, almost all of his plays have been produced at the Steppenwolf Theatre, where Norris has also acted.  Some of his other plays include The Actor Retires (his first play), Purple Heart, and The Low Road, which just premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in March.

Clybourne Park is an unofficial sequel to the 1959 Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, which was about black Younger family attempting to move into the all-white neighborhood Clybourne Park.  The first act of Clybourne Park takes place during the events of A Raisin in the Sun, but from the perspective of the white family who is selling their house.  The characters are Russ and Bev, who are attempting to sell their house while grieving over the death of their son, Francine and Albert, Russ and Bev’s black housekeeper and her black husband, Jim, the clergyman, and Karl and Betsy, the neighbor and his deaf wife.   Karl is the exact same character as the minor white character in A Raisin in the Sun, Karl Lindner, who attempts to convince the black Younger family into not buying the house; in Clybourne Park, the same character tries to convince Russ and Bev into backing out of the deal.   In the second act, all of the actors change characters, as the events of the play take place in the same house in 2009.  Over those fifty years, Clybourne Park has become an all-black neighborhood, the black characters represent a neighborhood organization, and the white couple is seeking to buy the house.  After lengthy discussions of housing codes, the conversation eventually turns to racism, to which both parties respond poorly.  At the very end of the play, a nearby worker finds an old trunk with some of Russ and Bev’s stuff, including their son’s suicide note.  We are transported back to 1959, and Bev catches her son, Kenneth, late at night. One of the very last lines of the play is “I really believe things are about to change for the better. I firmly believe that.”

1) The structure of this play is quite odd—it’s essentially the same very long scene twice, with no rising action between the acts.  What is the effect of the structure of this play? Why is the 1959 coda necessary at the very end?

2) Perhaps the most interesting character choice in Act 1 is Betsy.  Where does her deafness fit in with the grand scheme of this play? Is it played for laughs? Isn’t that bad?

3) Long periods of this play are comprised of dialogue about seemingly irrelevant subjects, such as the capitals of foreign countries and housing codes.  What do you think of this?  Is there an underlying point here?  Is it a reference to the mundaneness of institutional racism?

4) This play exists in a sort of highly specific modern genre of “civil conversation turned uncivil” in the same vein as Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage or Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit.  What does it say about our current society and the state of our theatre that this has become such a common theme in well-received modern plays?  Does it suggest a growing distrust of the politically-correct?

5) How do you feel about Swine Palace producing this play in the fall? It is being directed by Femi Euba, so, of course, it will be a successful production, but what exactly is there to be gained from this play in Baton Rouge? Will audiences enjoy it?  

(This is Jordan's post.)