by Kirk Woodward
[On
16 July 2023, my friend Kirk sent me an email from his family beach vacation
down south and told me his daughter, who’s taught theater in the New York City
school system and directed it in New York and in her New Jersey home area, had
brought Musical Theatre For
Dummies with her.
Kirk read the book, which had just been released, and pronounced it “to
my surprise . . . remarkably well done.”
[In
my reply, I tacked on the question of whether the book might be worth a post on
Rick On Theater. Kirk confirmed that it was. His report on Musical
Theatre For Dummies arrived in my inbox on 19 July, before he even got
back from the beach.
[I
had had the idea of writing my own report, from the perspective of a musical-theater
devotee who cut his theatrical teeth on Broadway musicals (see my bio-post “A Broadway Baby” [22 September 2010]),
to go with Kirk’s article from the point of view of a musical actor, director,
and librettist-composer.
[So I held back Kirk’s
report so I could read the book and write my own assessment. My idea was to publish both posts either simultaneously
or one right after the other. Unfortunately,
I kept having to put the book down because things kept coming up to interrupt my
reading—until I just couldn’t put my friend off any longer. So now, at long last, here’s Kirk Woodward’s
report on Musical
Theatre For Dummies.]
My
daughter Erin, a performer and educator, brought with her to the beach the book
Musical Theatre For Dummies (2023), one of the “Dummies” series of books
published by John Wiley & Sons, and I read the book during our
vacation.
The
“For Dummies” series began in 1991 and has maintained enormous popularity.
Because there are several related series of the books, it’s hard to say exactly
how many have been published, but I have seen a figure of 339 books for the
“For Dummies” series itself.
A
list of series titles is extremely entertaining, ranging from C++ for
Dummies (the series began with computer instructional books) to The
Origin of Tolkien’s Middle-earth For Dummies (by Greg Harvey; 2003), with
many stops in between.
When
I first glanced at Musical Theatre For Dummies my immediate reaction was
dismissive. I’ve done theater work for years, I’ve directed a number of
musicals, and I feel I have a pretty good background in musical theater. I
couldn’t imagine that a general audience book would have much to offer me.
I
was (not for the first time) wrong. Musical Theatre For Dummies is a
fine source book on the subject. It covers the field thoroughly, and it has
taught me a great many things I hadn’t known before.
The
“For Dummies” books, in line with their instructional purpose, share a number
of features, starting with the typography, which is easy to read, well spaced,
and easily followed through its section headings, which are set off from the
text and bolded. Icons help emphasize different kinds of information, for
example, “tips,” points that are given additional emphasis.
The
writing style is slangy and informal, but well focused on the topic at hand. If
it’s useful to repeat something at several places in the book, it’s repeated.
An introduction tells the reader how to read the book, from several angles; the
text itself gives a comfortable feeling of being in good hands.
(The
only criticism of the book I’d offer, and it’s extremely minor, is a tendency
to use an excessive number of exclamation marks!)
The
author of Musical Theatre For Dummies is Seth Rudetsky (b. 1967), who
has a remarkably wide and appropriate background for the book. He trained as a
musician and played in a number of orchestras for Broadway shows, eventually
also becoming a conductor. He has acted, and he co-wrote the off-Broadway
musical Disaster! (2013), which received mostly favorable reviews. (Disaster
is featured in the 8 July 2016 posting on Rick On Theater called “‘Anatomy of a Broadway
Flop’”
by Michael Paulson from the New York Times of 23 June 2016.)
He
also hosts Seth Speaks, a regular show on SIRIUSXM Satellite Radio, as
well as a series of live discussions with people in theater. The latter have
been the source for the numerous comments on musicals spread liberally through Musical
Theatre For Dummies, adding a great deal of interest to the book, since the
stories reflect real experiences in the field.
After
a useful introduction, the book is divided into four of what it calls “Parts.”
The first, “Getting Started with Musical Theatre,” thoroughly lays out what the
genre is and isn’t, gives a concise and up-to-date history of the musical,
describes its parts, describes where musicals are performed (meaning physical
types of theaters, and also countries around the world where musicals are
performed), and what attending a musical is like for an audience member.
The
second “Part,” The People Who Make Musical Theater Happen,” goes into detail
about the people who write musicals (“book” or script writers, composers,
lyricists), the people who flesh them out (such as directors, designers,
builders), the people who perform them (such as leads, ensemble players,
understudies), and the people who support the shows (such as spotlight
operators, hair supervisors, and conductors and musicians).
The
third “Part,” “The Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Theatre Life,” tracks the process
of developing a musical, the details of actors’ lives as the show progresses,
the skills required of a performer in a musical, and the details of maintaining
a career in musical theater.
The
fourth “Part” is characteristic of the “For Dummies” series, “The Part of
Tens,” a sort of wrap up of the book’s subject that organizes its materials in
lists. In the case of Musical Theatre For Dummies these include “Ten
(Plus) Songs You Didn’t Realize Came from Musical Theatre” and “Ten Celebs Who
Started in Musical Theatre.” One can see in those chapter titles both the light
touch of the book (typical of the “Dummies” series) and the kind of comprehensiveness
it aims at.
In
each of these sections there were things I didn’t know, often because they come
from personal stories. Here is the sort of thing I mean, a story about the
actor Chip Zien (b. 1947) when the show Into the Woods (1987, book by
James Lapine, score by Stephen Sondheim) was in pre-production and holding
auditions. The producer Ira Weitzman
called to tell him he
was being considered for the role of the Baker but added that if anyone called
and asked him to audition, he should say no! Weitzman felt the creative team
didn’t know what they wanted, and if Zien came in, they would find a reason why
he wasn’t right. If he didn’t come in, they would just offer it to him.
Well, Zien was asked to come in and audition, and he said he wasn’t able to
make it. Cut to: They offered him the role! Weitzman knew what he was talking
about.
That
story is one that perhaps wouldn’t have wide circulation, and there are many of
them. The book however also contains a great deal of public content that I
didn’t know.
Sometimes
books about musicals emphasize what’s often called the “Golden Age” of musicals
(which Rudetsky defines generally as shows written between 1940 and 1960). That
happens to be the period I’m most familiar with, but Rudetsky shines the
spotlight on more recent shows as well, so I now have a wider perspective on
the field as it is today.
There’s
a thin line, I’d say, between clarification and trivia, and I find plenty of
both in Musical Theatre For Dummies. Here’s a sample:
Waitress
(2016) is notable not only because it was a big success of the decade, but also
because composer/lyricist Sara Barielles wound up taking over the leading lady
role, thereby being one of the few creators to star in their own show. Yes,
Comden and Green did it in the ’40s in On the Town [1944], but it hasn’t
been done that much since. (Most notable, Sting took on a role for a limited
time in his musical The Last Ship [2014], Peter Allen starred in Legs
Diamond [1988], John Cameron Mitchell starred in Hedwig and the
Angry Inch [2014], and of course, Lin Manuel-Miranda has starred in two of
his musicals [In the Heights, 2008; Hamilton, 2015].)
That’s
not a particularly consequential piece of musical theater history, it’s a sort
of throwaway, but it shows the depth of information in the book and it
certainly might help one win a trivia contest.
For
another example, I was fascinated to find the answer to a question I never
thought to ask: how are orchestra members of Broadway shows supposed to dress?
Here’s Rudeksky’s answer (he was, you’ll remember, a “pit musician” for a
number of shows):
Because the audience
can often see into the pit, the musicians are told to wear black so they don’t
distract from the stage.
However, not all black
outfits are deemed acceptable. Each orchestra pit has their own requirement. I
could wear a black T-shirt in many shows I played in the orchestra for, but at The
Phantom of the Opera, my black shirt had to have a collar. #Fancy
On the flip side was The
Full Monty. The score had a pop feel and because the music wasn’t
highfalutin, we were allowed to wear whatever we wanted. I’d be in that
pit in a tank top and shorts! I loved coming right off the street in whatever I
was wearing and planting it in the pit.
Again,
not consequential, but informative. But as repeatedly happens in the book,
Rudeksky continues by adding a detail that might easily be overlooked: “For
your information, one of the things I don’t love about playing in a pit is
having to change into a black outfit.” Where would orchestra members
change their clothes? They wouldn’t have their own dressing rooms in the
theater!
This
kind of detail put an end to the skepticism about the book I’d had before I’d
opened it, but if it hadn’t, the following would have. This paragraph appears
in a section about acting schools and training:
Just make sure you
don’t go to the kind of acting teacher who thinks they have to break you down
to build you back up again. And avoid the know-it-all Svengali who won’t allow
discussions to happen. It’s best to remember: if you’re feeling bad about
yourself after a few classes, this isn’t the right teacher for you.
I
have said exactly the same things to every acting class I’ve ever taught, and
they are crucially excellent, important, even vital pieces of advice. Acting
teachers come in all types. Some are helpful; not all are right for a
particular person; some are fakes, crooks, or worse. In case of doubt, get out.
I
could continue to cite examples of things I’ve learned from this book – the
difference, for example, between the Outer Critics Circle Awards and the Drama
Desk Awards (the Outer Critics write for newspapers outside New York, as well
as for electronic platforms, the Drama Desk is more traditional New York
“theatre critics, editors, journalists, and broadcasters”).
Or
the box seats one sees in older theaters – is there something particularly
wonderful about them for a contemporary audience?
Today, box seats may
still seem to exude power and privilege, but on a practical level, they usually
aren’t constructed at the best angle to experience a performance compared to
orchestra seats. Basically, one half of the stage is blocked so you miss a lot
of the action, but at least your amazing outfit gets to be admired, right?
It’s
difficult to stop giving examples from this enjoyable, easy to read book. I’ve
learned a great deal from Musical Theatre For Dummies and urge anyone to
read it who wants to fill in gaps in their theatrical knowledge, to enjoy the
company of a friendly theatrical companion, or to satisfy a completist
urge. It offers all three, quite a bargain at the price.
[I have a number of posts
on ROT that touch on different aspects of musical theater. Some are by other authors, including Kirk,
and there a quite a few from Allegro, the magazine of the American
Federation of Musicians’ Local 802, the union that represents most of the pit
orchestra musicians that play the Broadway shows.
[Several are my own
posts, and the most pertinent here is “A Broadway Baby,” an autobiographical
narrative outlining my introduction to the love of theater. As I allude above, my life as a theatergoer
began with musicals.
[My theater life really
began with musical theater. Actually, I
think my first experience with the musical stage was opera: my parents took me
to a performance of Gian Carlo Menotti’s one-act Amahl and the Night Visitors. I must have been about 8 or 9; Amahl is
a Christmas story, so it would have been at Christmastime, which is my
birthday. I remember the performance,
but I have no recollection of who produced it or where it was presented. (I do remember that after the show, I got the
autograph of the young singer who played Amahl—the first of only two autographs
I ever collected.)
[I saw a number of kinds
of theater in my early days, including Shakespeare (a production of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream in the outdoor Carter Barron Amphitheatre in Rock Creek Park—I’m a
Washingtonian), but what I first fell in love with was Gilbert and Sullivan,
including performances by the world-renowned D’Oyly Carte Opera Company.
[Soon, however, I was
seeing Broadway musicals at the National Theatre—either shows on the way to
Broadway because Washington was on the try-out circuit, or on their post-première
National Tours. In “A Broadway Baby,” I
wrote of this time in my life:
I grew up loving what
used to be called musical comedy. . . . I
literally grew up on that music—and when I was little, I knew (and could
actually sing) all the words to all the songs. I’d actually come out of the theater singing
the score. [M]y first Broadway
experiences, when I came to visit my grandparents [in New York City], were
musicals. Fiorello!
was my very first show on Broadway; I saw My Fair Lady a little later,
but it still had the original cast. . . . Those great performances I saw as a boy have
become enduring: Harold Hill is always Robert Preston, Maria von Trapp is
always Mary Martin—not [Julie] Andrews, by the way; besides Guenevere and Liza
Doolittle, she's always Cinderella
(from the original 1957 television broadcast)—Fiorello is always Tom Bosley,
Don Quixote is always Richard Kiley, Pseudolus and Hysterium are always Zero
Mostel and Jack Gilford, J. Pierrepont Finch and Bud Frump are always Robert
Morse and Charles Nelson Reilly, Fagin is always Clive Revill, Fanny Brice is
always Barbra Streisand, Charity Hope Valentine is always Gwen Verdon; and, of
course, Mrs. Lovett will always be Angela Lansbury.
[For years, I kept a mental
list of the best individual performances I’d seen. It included both non-musical and musical
performances, but the musical ones included Zero Mostel in A Funny
Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (which I saw at the National where it
premièred in 1962), Gwen Verdon in Sweet Charity (1966), Ben Vereen in Pippin
(1972), and Virginia Capers in Raisin (1973).
[I also had favorite
actors whose overall stage work I just liked a lot, even if they didn’t fit on
my List of Great Performances. I first
saw Jerry Orbach in Carnival! (1961) with Anna Maria
Alberghetti and he became a special favorite of mine. Also in that cast was another favorite: Kaye
Ballard, who sang the maddest love song on any Broadway stage: “Always Always
You.” Her character was a magician’s
assistant and she sang of her devotion to him while in a box into which Marco
the Magnificent was thrusting swords! An
image like that tends to stick with you.
[Other favorites
included Kay Medford, Stubby Kaye, and Howard da Silva—I tended to go for the
character actors, it seems. They all had
personalities that shone through in all their appearances and there are lines I
can still hear them saying, like Kay Medford: “Don’t worry about the coat. Three mink stoles you’ll have when the train
pulls out.” (That’s from 1960’s Bye Bye
Birdie in which she played Albert Peterson’s (Dick Van Dyke) mother, Mae. She was lying across railroad tracks at the
time.)
[Now, a couple of comments
about some of what Kirk reports above. In
a piece of advice Rudetsky offers to acting students, he rightly warns them
that “if you’re feeling bad about yourself after a few classes, this isn’t the
right teacher for you.” Kirk says he’s told
students the same thing in every class he’s taught. So have I.
I’ve heard some scary stories from students on various studios and
conservatories, though I’ve been fortunate not to have experienced any myself.
[But I’d add an
additional admonition. Running into a “Svengali,”
as Rudentsky labels them, who makes a student “feel bad” isn’t the only bad
omen that should make a student look for another teacher. This, I did experience myself—twice, when I just
starting out.
[I’d gotten out of the army
in February 1974; I’d been overseas and returned to the States with the idea of
training for the stage. I’d been
accepted at a well-known conservatory in New York City for the fall term. After taking some time off, I decided to come
to New York for the summer and take some classes—my first professional training
experiences—at a famous studio, on the recommendation of my former college director
and his actress wife.
[I didn’t know any of
the faculty at the studio, of course, though many had names I recognized and
some I’d even seen on stage or in films.
I picked classes that seemed like good starting places, and chose
teachers that fit the schedule I was forming—but it was all pigs in a poke. I lucked out, it turned out, and most of the
teachers I chose remained mentors, teachers, and guides for years after.
[But one teacher, whom I
actually liked, turned out to be a problem.
He wasn’t threatening or controlling, and not only did I enjoy the work
I did in his class—it was acting technique—but he obviously liked what my scene
partner and I did because he kept inviting us to repeat our work in his other
class. I was immensely complimented. (He even started to recommend some auditions
for Off-Off-Broadway shows he thought I ought to go to, though I hadn’t planned
on auditioning yet. My practical
experience at that point was only college and amateur productions.)
[The problem was that I
had no idea what the teacher was trying to impart to us. What were we suppose to be learning from the
exercises and scene adjustments he was giving us. They were fun to do, but I was at a loss
about what his point was. (He was a
working actor with film credits and a current gig on Broadway in a comedy in which
I went to see him. He had one of those
parts that has a single, boffo scene in the middle of the play that actually
steals the show, and he was terrific!)
[I never confronted the
teacher about my confusion. I never considered
that I had the right to, or that it was even possible. I’m not even sure I’d have had the words with
which to ask the questions. I was a rank
amateur not just in the business, but in the training aspect of the business.
[I left the studio at
the end of the summer session to start at the conservatory. Many of my studio teachers, particularly my
scene study teacher, who would become a guide and mentor, advised me not to
make the switch. I stuck with my plan,
however, because I didn’t see any reason not to, and that college director had
recommended me to the conservatory, to whose board he’d been appointed (and
whose director had been a grad school classmate), and it to me.
[Well, the school turned
out to be a bad fit for a couple of reasons.
One was, after a summer at the studio, I’d apparently learned too much, about
the art, but also how to study the art.
The school was also geared to a junior college level student, so my
classmates were almost all 19- and 20-year-olds, while I was 28, a college graduate,
and a veteran of five years in the army.
(I’d been a military intelligence officer having just returned from a 2½-year
tour in West Berlin as a counterintelligence Special Agent. None of that, though, had been the topic of
any conversations.) I was older than some
of the teachers.
[Nonetheless, I applied
myself to the work, using what I’d been learning over the summer as a guide for
how to comport myself in the classes and rehearsals. Things seemed to be going along nicely in all
respects, except that I began to see the same problem that I had with the acting
tech teacher at the studio developing with one of the class’s instructors at
the conservatory—I couldn’t see what he was getting at.
[The man was a
well-known actor, veteran of many film and TV roles and several stage performances. I approached him after class one day and
asked if we could talk. He agreed and we
set a tentative appointment. The next
day, however, I was summoned to the director’s office. I had no idea of the reason, but when I got
there, the director told me that I was being asked to leave the school at the
end of the term. I asked why, and the
answer he gave me was that I asked too many questions. He said I didn’t take enough on faith. I was flabbergasted.
[He didn’t mention the
teacher with whom I’d asked to talk, and he wasn’t in the room. I hadn’t had any problem of any degree with anyone
else at the school, so I assumed he was the reason for the dismissal. He must have taken my request to talk as some
sort of challenge, though I hadn’t made, or even implied, any.
[So, my addendum to
Rudetsky’s and Kirk’s advice about suitable acting teachers is, in addition to
being made to feel uncomfortable, also consider being made to feel confused. I went back to the studio and then followed
my scene study teacher to a new MFA program at Rutgers that was just starting
up where she’d be heading the acting program.
[One last comment, one
that’s somewhat less dramatic. Rudetsky
states that box seats in theaters aren’t constructed at the best angle to
experience a performance. He’s absolutely
right. Except, in my experience, in one
instance.
[My mother was coming to
New York for a visit in the spring of 1999.
I don’t remember what day she was arriving, but she’d be here for Sunday,
9 May, which was Mother’s Day. Her
birthday had been the previous 7 April, and I hadn’t gotten to Washington to be
with her that year, and she’d been a widow for three years after looking after
my father’s final years with Alzheimer’s.
I wanted to do something special for her visit.
[A new restaurant had
opened on Restaurant Row in the Theatre District in 1997. It was called FireBird, a Russian-themed
restaurant decorated like an upper-class mansion of 1912 and a menu to
match. I made a dinner reservation—without
telling Mom where—and bought tickets for The Lion King at that
day’s matinee—also a secret.
[Both my parents were
theater buffs. Mom’s family had seen Carousel
on its second night (which happened to be her younger sister’s 18th birthday)
and on one of their early dates, Dad had taken my mom to Oklahoma! When I revealed where we were going, Mom
asked, “Isn’t than a children’s show?” I
explained that I wanted her to see the costumes, masks, and puppets Julie
Taymor had designed for the stage version of the Disney animated movie.
[The show had been running
for a year-and-a-half already and tickets were scarce. All I could get for that night were box seats
down near the stage on the house-right side.
Ordinarily, as Rudetsky warned, these would be terrible seats for a
show. But, as it turned out—for our
purposes—they were the best seats in the house. So much of Lion King is performed in
the aisles and around the auditorium, and even in the boxes, that from
seats in the house, a theatergoer would miss a lot of the spectacle. We got a bird’s-eye view of all of Taymor’s
creations!
[Mom quickly forgot the
kiddie-show narrative, and we reveled in the visual spectacle at our feet. For months, Mom didn’t stop talking to her
friends about this marvelous theater experience. The next year, the National Museum of Women
in the Arts in Washington housed an exhibit of Taymor’s work, Julie
Taymor: Playing With Fire (16 November 2000-4 February 2001), and Mom insisted
that a group of her friends accompany her to the show to experience this fantastic
artist’s work.]
