For Filter Theatre, “combining music and drama was always the intention” (Dorrington 2014), and as you may have seen from previous, early blogs, this is also true for No Added Sugar. One of the things that made us want to work together was our mutual interest in live music and how it can really enhance a piece of theatre, or a story. Our chief musical director Gabby will be commenting on this in more detail in her next blog.
Of course, our plans and idea have changed throughout the course of our creative and rehearsal process. Our concept lends itself to the idea of love songs, so we originally suggested using snippets of songs (as said in a previous blog). What has changed is that, we have been a little more brave than I expected with how far we have gone with music. I am by no means a particularly skillful guitarist, in fact, I have only been teaching myself for less that a year. However, Gabby and I have worked closely together, each bringing our our bits of experience and skill to the table, and in doing so I have learnt a great deal. Gabby has, of course, been the true master and taken charge of the truly technical things like finding and transposing sheet music, working our what harmonies should be and more; but I have helped translate to the singers and work out guitar and ukulele parts.
Musically, our process hasn’t only been about utilising what skills we have, but about pushing ourselves and learning new things all together. In fact, while we said in the first place that we wouldn’t be capable of writing our own songs or music, our show does now in fact include one completely original song (lyrics written by Sam, and music put together by Gabby and I), a well known tune which I wrote new lyrics to and then quite a lot of back ground music/ transition music, which Gabby, Tom and I have composed ourselves. I certainly think that to keep moving forward and be successful and innovative with a theatre company, you should not just use what you have but learn and gain, and I have certainly gained a great deal and will be able to take away new skills from my experience creating ‘Three Words’, especially musically.
While part of our influence here was Filter, where we have differed from them is that we do use more singing. Most of the cast sing in some way during the show, and we also sing together, so there have been difficult harmonies to teach and work on. We have mostly worked on these outside of studio rehearsal time, having evening sessions in my bedroom. Of course, we never intended to make a musical and that isn’t what we have done. What we have created is a piece of theatre utilising a mixture of diciplines, including music, puppetry, acting, some stylised movement, and multi-media. Music is just one part of it, but an integral part.
Reference:
Dorrington, J (2014) ‘Review: Filter’s Twelfth Night’, The Boar, 28 February. Available at: http://theboar.org/2014/02/28/review-filters-twelfth-night/#.U4B9H_ldV-4 [Accessed 24 May 2014]