Social Media Mischief at The Washington Times?

The Washington Times has an article on its web site about Thursday's Capitol Hill hearing on Don't Ask Don't Tell, the now-repealed policy that prohibits the service of open and honest gay and lesbian Americans in the military.

The headline and subhead read:

Services OK with ending ‘don’t ask’
No ‘push-back,’ brass reports to Capitol Hill

The first paragraph says:

Preparations for repealing the military’s ban on openly homosexual service members have proceeded very well — even among Marines, who have not demonstrated any resistance, the Marine Corps commandant testified Thursday.

If you click to share the story on Facebook, however, the headline reads:

Lawmaker skeptical of repeal of 'don't ask' - Washington Times

And the excerpted first paragraph, designed to appear on Facebook's feed, says:

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said on Thursday that he is troubled by the rushed way the Obama administration is moving to repeal the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the U.S. military.

Similarly, if you click to share on Twitter, you get this retweet:

RT @washtimes Congress skeptical of repeal of military's gay ban - Washington Times http://bit.ly/i1eqHq

However, if you click on a different Twitter icon, you get this:

Services OK with ending 'don't ask' - Washington Times http://t.co/la0otOW via @AddThis

(Note that the shortened URLs are different in the two different Tweets.)

And if you click on a different Facebook button, you get this:

Services OK with ending 'don't ask' - Washington Times
Preparations for repealing the military's ban on openly homosexual service members have proceeded very well — even among Marines, who have not demonstrated any resistance, the Marine Corps commandant testified Thursday.

Confused? I was.

It looks like somebody at the Washington Times -- I don't know who, but it's certainly not the reporter who wrote the story, Shaun Waterman -- is attempting to put a spin on the story through social media that is not borne out by the actual report itself.

I just noticed this by chance.  An important question to ask is, does the Washington Times do this with other articles, or is this a one-off phenomenon?  What are the ethics of changing the headline and the emphasis of a story when spreading it through social media sites?  Is this worthy of criticism?

Your thoughts are welcome in the comments space, below.

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366 Days at Examiner.com

April 6 marked my first anniversary as a contributor at Examiner.com.

In those 52 weeks, I have published 178 articles --almost one every other day, despite a few dry periods -- most of them interviews with public officials, authors, pundits, and educators.  According to statistics kept by Examiner.com, these articles have generated 25,274 page views.  Last year's page view count of 18,251 compared to a Charlottesville average of 1,617 -- that is, the average number of page views generated by other Charlottesville Examiners.

I became the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner on something of a lark.  I happened across another local Examiner's page and spotted the "write for us" link and followed it.

I'm glad I did, because it forced me to be a more aggressive reporter than I have been as a blogger.  I can't imagine so aggressively pursuing some of the interviews I did for this blog alone, which lacks the institutional support (and, dare I say it? credibility) that Examiner.com has.

Social Times reported at the end of December:

Local news network Examiner.com is closing out 2010 with two significant milestones: It posted article No. 1 million for the year earlier this month, and it set site records for monthly unique visitors and total page views in November, tallying 22.4 million and 63.1 million, respectively, according to Omniture.

And according to comScore, the site’s traffic rose 19 percent in November compared with October, making Examiner.com the No. 83 domain in the United States and No. 7 in the general news subcategory, ahead of brands including Fox News, BBC News, USA Today, and NBC Local Media.

I've noticed the site has had a makeover in the past few days, which gives it a cleaner look that seems easier to navigate.

Blogging is fine, in its way, and it allows me a more personal take on culture and current affairs, as well as a wide berth in terms of topics and voice.  Examiner.com requires more discipline and a more narrow focus, both of which I can appreciate.

We'll see if, by April 6 of next year, whether that results in more page views and lots of "likes."

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Guest Blogger: Tim Hulsey Reviews 'And the Curtain Rises'

Tim Hulsey, who recently completed a quest to see all of Shakespeare's plays performed on stage over a five-year period, accompanied me to the press performance of Signature Theatre's new production, And the Curtain Rises, the third in a series of original musicals commissioned by the American Musical Voices Project.

Here is Tim's review of And the Curtain Rises for The Metro Herald:

Signature Premieres ‘And the Curtain Rises’:

An Honorable Failure with Breathtaking Music

Tim Hulsey

Special to The Metro Herald

The world-premiere musical And the Curtain Rises, playing through April 10 at Signature Theatre in Arlington, is far from a great – or even a good – show. At the moment, it's an immensely promising rough draft, with some amusing knockabout comedy, a sweetly predictable central romance, and an uncommonly good musical score.

Unfortunately, the show also has a leaden, unfocused first act that sinks the story before it can properly begin. Many shows have “second-act trouble,” but And the Curtain Rises may be the only show I've ever seen with “first-act trouble.”

Playwright Michael Slade, composer Joseph Thalken, and lyricist Mark Campbell have combined forces – with varying degrees of success – to tell the story of The Black Crook, the 1866 song-and-dance spectacular that many scholars believe was the forerunner of American musical comedy.

Slade has clearly done his homework researching the period, cramming the book with references to 19th-century cultural arcana. Yet he seems uncertain about the story he wishes to tell. Campbell's lyrics are frequently marred by banality and triteness, as he invokes tried-and-true sentiments that showbiz folks are “family.”

Thalken, however, emerges from this show as a major new presence in American musical theater, providing an innovative, emotionally resonant musical score that invokes the best Broadway traditions while forging ahead with fresh-sounding melodies and compelling harmonies. (It doesn't hurt that Signature Theatre has graced this score with a lush fourteen-piece orchestra, which director Kristin Hanggi shows off at every possible opportunity.)

Thalken's score, glorious as it is, is yoked to the most clichéd of inside-showbiz plots: First-time producer William Wheatley (Nick Dalton) attempting to stage a hopelessly hackneyed drama written by pretentious Civil War army buddy Charles Barras (Sean Thompson). With the help of his over-the-hill leading lady Millicent Cavendish (Rebecca Watson), a ragtag group of actors, and a stranded crew of French ballerinas, Wheatley has less than two weeks to turn a surefire flop into the toast of New York. Anyone who doubts the outcome for even a split second has probably never heard of Mickey, Judy, or the old phrase “let's put on a show.”

This story has been told once before as a musical, in the 1954 Sigmund Romberg flop The Girl in Pink Tights. (The title comes from a theater legend in which French ballet dancers turned The Black Crook into a full-blown succès de scandale by dancing in pink tights that resembled bare skin under the limelight.) Perhaps in an effort to avoid cliché, the creators of And the Curtain Rises have chosen to present the genesis of The Black Crook as an ensemble piece, with several possible storylines vying for attention and no clear protagonist.

The entire first act feels diffuse and unsettled, rather like a Robert Altman film, though without Altman's subtle technique for bringing different scenes and stories into a narrative framework. A gay subplot between an underemployed composer (Brian Sutherland) and an elderly aspiring classical actor (Erick Devine) feels both extraneous and wrong for the period, as do the various entanglements of a scheming, manipulative, sexually promiscuous ballerina (Anna Kate Bocknek).

Although the second act is clearly focused and much tighter than the first, unresolved strands from the first act frequently intrude and distract from the main story. And, as one might expect, budgetary constraints prevent Signature Theatre from displaying Wheatley's most extravagant scenic effects, such as live flames and a waterfall. Even the infamous pink tights get short shrift, as a sort of coda that winks at the earlier musical that told the same story.

As William Wheatley, Nick Dalton is disappointingly bland. His second-act solos “Think ...” and “Stay“ allow him to show off his pleasant baritone, but for the most part, Dalton reacts to more colorful supporting characters instead of steering the action. Rebecca Watson makes a firmer impression as Wheatley's leading lady, and Thalken gives her a doozy of an eleven-o'-clock number with “Enter Love.”

No backstage drama would be complete without a mustache-twirling ham to play the villain, and although And the Curtain Rises breaks with tradition somewhat by assigning the role to a playwright, Sean Thompson fills it marvelously. His comic solo “The Words” is one of the few bright spots in a dismal first act. But supporting actress Alma Cuervo, as the headmistress of a French ballet troupe, seems to find the show's true heart, with her winningly low-key rendition of the show's inspirational anthem, “A Little Pretend.”

At a time when American theaters are overrun with jukebox shows and kitschy spectaculars, any attempt to revive or rejuvenate the Broadway musical is welcome, and a story about the origins of musical comedy might not be such a bad place to begin anew. Unfortunately, And the Curtain Rises is not the right story, nor indeed is it much of a story at all. Although the show must be judged a failure, it is at least an honorable one, with lofty ambitions and some breathtakingly beautiful music.

And the Curtain Rises (directed by Kristin Hanggi; book by Michael Slade; music by Joseph Thalken; lyrics by Mark Campbell) began previews on March 17, with an official opening on March 29. Performances continue through April 10. Show times are Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:30 pm, Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00 pm, Saturdays at 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm, and Sundays at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm.

Tickets range from $55 - $81 and are available by calling Ticketmaster at (703) 573-SEAT (7328) or visiting www.signature-theatre.org. Group discounts are available for parties of ten or more by contacting Bethany Shannon at shannonb@signature-theatre.org or by calling (571) 527-1831. For more information please visit www.signature-theatre.org.

Photographs:

Top left - Erik Altemus (as George C. Boniface) appeals to Rebecca Watson (as Millicent Cavendish) in And the Curtain Rises. At Virginia's Signature Theatre through April 10, 2011.

Center right - Nick Dalton (as William Wheatley) shows his theatre company how to ward off evil demons in And the Curtain Rises. At Virginia's Signature Theatre through April 10, 2011.

Bottom left - Alma Cuervo (as Mme. Grimaud) speaks on behalf of her French Ballet Troupe in And the Curtain Rises. At Virginia's Signature Theatre through April 10, 2011.

All photos by Scott Suchman; courtesy of Signature Theatre: www.signature-theatre.org.

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Happy Birthday, Doris Day!

I am hosting the 66th Book Review Blog Carnival at my other blog, Book Reviews by Rick Sincere.  The carnival features reviews of fiction, non-fiction, history, and books on writing from bloggers across the United States and around the world.  (I think at least one entry came from Australia.)

Published biweekly on various blogs, I chose to subtitle this one the "Doris Day Edition."  Why?

Today is the 88th birthday of actress, singer, animal-rights activist, and America's sweetheart, Doris Day, who herself has been the subject of several books in recent years, including Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door, by David Kaufman (2009); Doris Day: The Illustrated Biography, by Michael Freedland (2009); Doris Day: Sentimental Journey, by Garry McGee (2010); Doris Day: Reluctant Star, by David Bret (2009); and Considering Doris Day, by Tom Santopietro (2008). All in all, that's a lot of attention paid to a film star who hasn't made a movie since 1968.

Doris Day started making movies in 1948 and for twenty years was one of the top box-office draws. She earned one Academy Award nomination but probably deserved more.

Severely underrated by a reputation for bubble-gum wholesomeness, not only could she play serious dramatic roles (the climactic scene in Hitchcock's 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much is illustrative) but some of her comic turns in movies like Pillow Talk were subversively transgressive. (Maybe the way her scenes with Rock Hudson were coded just went over the heads of critics and audiences alike, but those who were in the know knew.)

What a remarkable movie career Day had, even if judged only by the leading men she played against.

In addition to Hudson, she appeared on screen with Clark Gable, James Stewart, James Garner, James Cagney, Jack Lemmon, Cary Grant, Gordon MacRae, Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, Ronald Reagan, Danny Thomas, Ray Bolger, Jack Carson, David Niven, Rex Harrison, John Gavin, Rod Taylor, Gig Young, Arthur Godfrey, and Tony Randall, among others. The list of her castmates reads like a Who's Who of 20th century movie stars, especially if you add some of her female costars like Lauren Bacall, Ginger Rogers, Virginia Mayo, Thelma Ritter, and Arlene Francis.

Speaking of Arlene Francis, on an episode of What's My Line? in 1957, Doris Day was a "mystery challenger" facing questions from the panel that included regulars Bennett Cerf, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Francis, as well as the father who knew best, Robert Young.  She was in New York to promote her new film, The Pajama Game.  Let's go to the tape:

Day was equally adept at playing comedy, drama, or in musicals. She introduced the great lesbian anthem, "Secret Love," as well as her own theme song, "Que Sera Sera," and -- in her earlier career as a girl singer -- Les Brown's wartime hit, "Sentimental Journey." Any one of those things would have established her as an institution on its own.

Although she has avoided the public eye for most of the past three decades, movie star Doris Day is firmly embedded in popular culture. It's only appropriate to wish her a happy birthday.

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Ford’s ‘Liberty Smith’ Evokes Laughter, Delight from Audience

On Wednesday evening, Nigel Ashford, Tim Hulsey, Richard Morrison, and I were able to see the world premiere of Liberty Smith at Ford's Theatre. Before the show and during the intermission, I was able to chat with the show's composer, Michael Weiner, who spoke to me by telephone a few weeks ago.

Here is my review of Liberty Smith, intended for next week's edition of The Metro Herald.

Romance! Danger! Comedy!

Ford’s ‘Liberty Smith’ Evokes Laughter, Delight from Audience

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

If your weekend plans include seeing the new musical Liberty Smith at Ford’s Theatre, you don’t need Rebecca Black to tell you to expect “fun, fun, fun, fun” on Friday, Saturday, or the Sunday that comes afterwards. If you don’t yet have tickets for Liberty Smith, why not? You should.

Ford’s latest production is a wholesome family musical, appropriate for theatregoers of all ages. That said, it is neither sedate nor anodyne. Instead, the rollicking show offers all the romance, danger, and comedy that another new musical across the river fails to supply.

Liberty Smith is historical fiction set in the time of the American Revolution. Far from a docudrama, however, it takes liberties (no pun intended) with the facts so that sticklers for chronology might be puzzled or offended. No matter, since it’s all in good fun and serves the purpose of entertaining the audience.

The story opens, Cyrano-like, when an old (132 years old!) Liberty interrupts a clumsy stage production of Parson Weems’ story of George Washington and the cherry tree, saying “that’s not how it happened. I know, because I was there.” The year is 1859 – not incidental, since that was the eve of the Civil War, an event that would change the prism through which American history is observed. The story proceeds as a series of flashbacks, with Old Liberty (Drew Eshelman) narrating here and there but not obtrusively so.

As the narrative begins, the young George Washington (Gregory Maheu) has befriended the eponymous Liberty Smith (Geoff Packard), an orphan farmhand living near Mount Vernon in Virginia. (These types of heroes are nearly always orphans, perhaps because family ties would anchor them to a specific place and prevent their free spirits from wandering where the story needs to take them.)

Enamored with neighborhood belle Martha Dandridge – played by Lauren Williams with all the tact and charm of a middle-school Queen Bee -- who mockingly bids him to free the colonies from British rule, Liberty sets out on a knight errant’s quest (like the role model in his favorite book, Don Quixote) that takes him to Philadelphia, Boston, Paris, and more.

Along the way, Liberty encounters Betsy Ross, Ben Franklin, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, James Otis, Thomas Jefferson, King Louis XVI of France and his consort, Marie Antoinette, and dozens of other patriots and knaves (including a villainous Benedict Arnold).

Like Zelig or Forrest Gump, Liberty Smith finds himself in places where history is being made and, in fact, inadvertently makes it himself – though others invariably end up with the credit. And throughout, his story is told through song and dance.

The songs are all Broadway-style, many pastiches of familiar forms. Composer Michael Weiner draws not only on colonial-era tunes (“Yankee Doodle,” for instance) for atmospherics but also on 20th century standards and showtunes for his inspiration. In combination with lyricist Adam Abraham, the team becomes a latter-day Stan Freberg.

There’s a comic list song (“The Art of Wit”) that catalogs proverbs, quips, and clichés. “One Shocking Moment” not only shows the protagonist’s state of mind but makes wicked fun of over-the-top Ziegfeld Follies-style dream sequences. “Declarations” uncovers a less-than-ideal process of writing the Declaration of Independence.

A feminist anthem (“A Better Tomorrow,” sung by Kelly Karbacz as Emily) echoes Ragtime’s “Back to Before” while the first-act finale (“The World Turned Upside Down”) is a de rigueur spoof of Les Miserables, the sort of send-up we can trace at least to 1999’s South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. It is to the creative team’s credit that they can poke fun at meta-musicals like Urinetown and Avenue Q with subtlety and wit while avoiding the snarkiness of the “originals.”

Liberty Smith’s conventional musical style is no disadvantage – when you see two young people disdain each other in Act I, you know wedding bells will ring by the end of Act II – and instead extends and reinforces the overall entertainment experience. Predictability, in this case, enhances the comic twists that pop up like Whack-a-Moles every five minutes or so.

While the subject matter may be the stuff of the 18th century, Liberty Smith is peppered with contemporary pop-culture allusions. Although the writing team responsible for it has been working on the script and songs off-and-on since the mid-1990s (and in earnest since 2006), which might have resulted in stale creakiness, Liberty Smith is as current and fresh as a headline from The Onion or a “Funny-or-Die” viral video.

Some dialogue echoes the scene, oft-repeated late at night in dorm rooms, from Monty Python’s Life of Brian about the “Judean People’s Front, People’s Front of Judea,” etc. One song’s lyric mentions “George W” and the “coalition of the willing.” There is even a reference to Johnny Tremain, the main character of the Newbery Award-winning book of the same name, whose similarity to Liberty Smith is winked at by Mrs. Paul Revere, who says “that’s another story.”

The 20-member cast is made up mostly of Washington-area actors, including at least six Helen Hayes Award nominees and winners. (Music director Jay Crowder, who leads an 8-person ensemble with a richer sound than its size would indicate, is also a Helen Hayes recipient while fight director Brad Waller and director Matt August have both been previously nominated.)

While funnier than most in a genre characterized by self-important sobriety, Liberty Smith would not be out of place as an outdoor drama (for example, the Outer Banks’ venerable pageant, The Lost Colony) and, with a trim to about 80 minutes from its current two and a half hour running time, could easily become a successful fixture at Colonial Williamsburg or Busch Gardens. As it is, many tourists visiting Washington as well as school groups will be able to take advantage of the show’s presence at Ford’s through May 21. (The “Child Actor,” played on opening night by grammar-school-age Noah Chiet, is on stage in almost every scene, a compelling presence to keep the attention of kids in the audience.)

Liberty Smith could also be easily adapted for performances by high school or college theatre groups, even without the elaborate, eye-popping costumes designed by Wade Laboissonniere and the multi-leveled set (which fits nicely into Ford’s narrow performance space) of scenic designer Court Watson.

It is hard to think up enough complimentary terms to praise Liberty Smith. Totally unpretentious, the creative team – book writers Marc Madnick and Eric R. Cohen in addition to librettist-lyricist Abraham and composer Weiner – achieve precisely what they set out to do: to deliver an enjoyable, entertaining romp into America’s revolutionary past.

While it does not “advance the form,” Liberty Smith is a delightful throwback to the sort of Broadway revue one might have seen in the 1950s. This is not an Adam Guettel-style cerebral challenge. As a matter of fact, too much thinking might detract from the overall enjoyable experience: just sit back and let flow its life, “Liberty,” and the pursuit of happiness.

Liberty Smith: music by Michael Weiner, lyrics by Adam Abraham, book by Marc Madnick, Eric R. Cohen, and Adam Abraham; choreographed by Denis Jones; directed by Matt August, continues through May 21, 2011, at Ford’s Theatre, 511 Tenth Street, N.W., in Washington. Performances Monday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (except April 25), matinees on Fridays and Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. (except April 1 and 15 and May 6 and 13); noon matinees on May 6 and 13. Ticket prices: $15 to $55 with discounts available for groups, senior citizens, military personnel, and those younger than 35. Tickets available through Ticketmaster at 800-551-7328 and www.fords.org.

If you've read this far, you should know that I really liked Liberty Smith. I strongly recommend it and may even go to see it again myself before it closes next month.

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An Interview with ‘And the Curtain Rises’ Playwright Michael Slade

Tonight is the press preview of And the Curtain Rises, a new musical at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia. Here is an interview with the show's playwright, Michael Slade, which I wrote for The Metro Herald.

Recreating the Birth of the American Musical Theatre:

An Interview with ‘And the Curtain Rises’ Playwright Michael Slade

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

The curtain rises officially on And the Curtain Rises, a new musical at Signature Theatre in Arlington, on Tuesday, March 29.

The play tells the story of The Black Crook, a spectacular originally produced in 1866 that is often identified as the first American musical play. At a time when a run of two or three weeks was considered exceptionally long, The Black Crook was such a sensation that it had 475 performances in its first run, plus two revivals in 1870-71 and 1871-72 totaling 193 performances, according to the Internet Broadway Database (ibdb.com).  It also toured the country for years.

The story of The Black Crook has been told once before on the musical stage, in The Girl in Pink Tights by composer Sigmund Romberg, lyricist Leo Robin, and librettists Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields. The Girl in Pink Tights took its title from the phenomenon that made The Black Crook so racy: under the sharp limelight, the pink tights on the dancing girls made their legs look nude, a shocking sight in the 1860s.

The Girl in Pink Tights had a tepid run of 115 performances over three months in 1954, but it marked the Broadway debuts of Maurice and Gregory Hines, who were then 11 and 9 years old, respectively, and featured in its cast Marni Nixon, later known for her dubbing the silver-screen singing voices of Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.

Signature’s take on The Black Crook is part of its American Musical Voices Project, which has previously commissioned the new musicals Giant (by Michael John LaChiusa and Sybille Pearson) and Sycamore Trees (by Ricky Ian Gordon and Nina Mankin).

The creative team behind And the Curtain Rises consists of director Kristin Hanggi, composer Joseph Thalken, lyricist Mark Campbell, and playwright Michael Slade, who spoke at length with The Metro Herald about the project, its origins, and the production process.


From actor to playwright
Slade is a New Yorker by birth, having grown up in Syosset, Long Island, and earning a BFA in theatre from Ithaca College. Although he always had a love of writing dating from his childhood, he began his career as an actor, appearing in “hundreds of commercials, a couple of TV pilots, a couple of national tours, and a couple of off-Broadway plays,” he said.

'And the Curtain Rises' playwright Michael Slade / Photo courtesy Signature Theatre

Growing tired of the business of acting – with the many cattle-call auditions, quickly-disappearing jobs, and all the stresses and strains of the profession – Slade, with the encouragement of friends, turned increasingly to writing even though his “agents were disappointed.”

His first play, a one-act called Thanksgiving, was produced by the Manhattan Class Company (now the MCC Theater at The Lucille Lortel Theatre) in New York about 20 years ago.

“It was a wonderful, wonderful production and I got a lot of notice from it from people and that was a great experience,” he explained.

“That was validation for me,” he said, because until a play is performed on stage by actors, “it’s not fully finished.” This is unlike a novel or short story, which can be read in any form even if they are not published. “Production and performance are the components of a finished piece” of theatre, however.

After the success of his first play, Slade went on to write about ten “family musicals” for Theatreworks/USA including Superfudge, Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, The Great Brain, The Three Pigs, as well as a Radio City Music Hall production of Pokemon Live!. In addition, he has written teleplays for the long-running soap opera, Days of Our Lives, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for writing episodes of One Life to Live.

The idea of basing a musical on the making of The Black Crook originated with Joseph Thalken, whom Slade had met in New York. The two of them had been discussing possible projects to work on together for some time.

“It felt like a great match,” Slade said. “We both were intrigued with each others’ way of working. We started kicking around ideas.”

He reacted favorably to Thalken’s idea in part because, he explained, he had had “a theatre history professor who was obsessed with The Black Crook. I don’t know how many weeks of the semester he spent talking about the show.”

When Thalken received the commission from the American Musical Voices Project, they brought on Mark Campbell as lyricist and poured themselves into researching the story, the principal characters, and the era (post-Civil War New York City).

Campbell and Thalken had collaborated on some songs together, but not an entire score. “That felt like a really right third component in terms of personality,” Slade noted. “We jumped into the pool together.”


Beginning in the library
Since And the Curtain Rises is basically a piece of historical fiction, the writing process began with research trips to the library.

“I love the process of researching,” Slade said.

“I was not the best student in school, but afterwards I discovered how much fun research was. One can do almost everything on line these days but there’s something about going places and handling real books and articles.”

To find those “real books and articles,” Slade said he “spent a good deal of time at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. I read first person accounts by people who were involved in original production. No two told the same story,” which added a twist to the creative process.

“We really didn’t want to write a docudrama. We were more interested in fictionalizing the story and using elements from it but really telling the story we wanted to tell about collaboration and how the theatre builds audiences and artists,” he explained.

“We decided very early on that what we would be doing is taking a lot of the facts and using our own imaginations to create and imagine what was going on at the time.”

Slade found more documents and artifacts at the New York Historical Society, which he calls “amazing.”

He found out less there about The Black Crook itself “than about the times,” the 1860s and ‘70s.

The historical society has “a whole collection of menus from restaurants of those years. There were accounts in newspaper articles about those immediate post-Civil War years in New York -- what people did, where they went, how they interacted.”

Slade was not unfamiliar with the era, having previously written about Ned Buntline, the creator of the dime novel and inventor of a gun known as the Buntline Special.

Buntline, Slade explained, had been involved in the Astor Place riots, a now-obscure episode in American history in which fans of rival actors (one British, one American) each playing Macbeth, showed their support through violent demonstrations. “There were literally riots as Americans stormed the theatre” where the British actor was performing, riots stimulated by xenophobia. There were, according to Slade, “cannons in the streets” brought out to quell the demonstrators.

A lot of “the passion about theatre at the time,” Slade said, “was stirred up by Know Nothing Party. The public perception is that it was all about the passion about who was starring in shows in New York,” but as in the culture wars today, politics was not far beneath the surface.

In addition to what he found in libraries, at the historical society, and the Museum of the City of New York, Slade discovered “a wonderful online site about 19th century actors and actresses and about what their lives were like.”


The collaborative process
Early in the process, all three collaborators did research individually and got together to talk. At about the same time, Campbell had been working on a song cycle set in the Civil War.

“I don’t think we started to put anything on paper for the first six months,” Slade said, immersing themselves in the material, and asking themselves “who were the characters, and what were we trying to say?”

After this initial period, “we started writing,” Slade said, explaining that “the way I like to work is, having hashed things out together, I came out with a fairly strong treatment, where we’d already talked about certain places where there’d be songs. Then I wrote a messy first draft of the script where there might be long monologues or overwritten scenes that could be turned into songs.”

Eventually, he said, came the tailoring and incorporating the two.

Working with his collaborators, Slade said, has “been really fearless. It’s been a really terrific collaboration. There’s been great respect between the three of us since day one. We all have been willing to really listen and take it to heart. Sometimes we have an argument but it’s been a healthy and positive collaboration that has continually made the piece better and better.”

While Thalken decided to listen to the score of the earlier musical, The Girl in Pink Tights, Slade chose to stay away from it.

“I made a distinct choice not to listen because I didn’t think it would help. I didn’t want something to unconsciously come into this play.”

In contrast to The Girl in Pink Tights, “our piece is much bigger” and more ambitious.

“I really think about this piece as a Robert Altman movie. We’ve got 16 characters with lives on stage and off. We tell our story through all of them.” And besides, Slade noted, The Girl in Pink Tights “was not a big hit” – something not desired, naturally, for And the Curtain Rises.


Historic but ‘unproducible’
For all of its legendary status, The Black Crook could not be produced today.

It was, Slade discovered, “scheduled for a third revival within the past 50 years. But they realized it’s unproducible. The original production was back in the day when you could have hundreds of people on stage because you weren’t necessarily paying them all.”

What’s more, the original production’s stagecraft was unprecedented.

“British designers came in and brought on scenic events like nothing before seen on stage. There were fires of hell, a waterfall, and a lake with boats floating on it -- not to mention the March of the Amazons.” It would, Slade pointed out, “be cost prohibitive today.”

Yet despite all the special effects, the crew consisted of “a bunch of ex-sailors pulling ropes.”

Neither was The Black Crook a very good play.

Instead, Slade noted wryly, “it’s almost deliciously bad. It borrows from melodrama and Shakespeare and Faust, all thrown into one. What made it its enormous success was the spectacle and the girls’ legs” in those notorious pink tights.

While Slade and his partners were developing the show, a staged reading of what became And the Curtain Rises was put on at the Human Race Theatre Company in Dayton, Ohio. By coincidence, “there’s an old theatre in Dayton that had been a stop on The Black Crook tour,” which traveled around the country “for decades.” While the tour did not have all of the amazing special effects of the original production, “it was a fair approximation of what had played in New York.”

Coming upon that old Dayton theatre was amazing in itself, Slade said, because the 19th century “was a perilous time for theatres, since they were wood structures using flames as lights.”

As a matter of fact, the legend goes, the way The Black Crook came together was when a theatre hosting a troupe of Parisian ballet dancers burned down and its manager lent them to William Wheatley, The Black Crook’s producer.


Changing the name
Wheatley’s pivotal involvement explains the originally announced title of And the Curtain Rises: “Wheatley’s Folly.”

This was, Slade noted, “a working title but we weren’t in love with it. It always felt like it took a lot of explaining.”

Change came when Kristin Hanggi was added on to the team as director. She asked if they could come up with a better title, so they considered alternatives.

“’And the Curtain Rises’ is the name of the finale in our show,” Slade continued, “and one day we said, ‘How about that? It talks to everything we’re doing here.’”

They took the proposed change to the leadership at Signature, who “graciously” agreed to it, even though the company had “printed quite a bit of promotional material with they other title. They said: ‘We’ll take care of it,’” and they did.

Slade is effusive with his praise of Signature Theatre itself.

“Signature and Maggie Boland and particularly Eric Schaeffer have been incredible with this,” he said.

“They’ve also been incredible in that we did two readings of it with Eric as director in New York. At one point, he said, it needs another character, it needs a stagehand.

“‘Eric,’ I said, ‘I completely agree, but we’ve already got 15 actors. It costs money.’”

But Schaeffer replied, “‘It’s right for the show. Don’t worry about it.’”

Slade explained: “You so seldom hear that. More often it’s, ‘Can you cut three of the characters?’” Yet Signature is going full-bore with this production.

“We have a fourteen piece orchestra,” Slade gushed. “I’m told that the revival of How to Succeed, with Daniel Radcliffe, doesn’t have 14 pieces. I’ve heard it has just 12, For Signature to give us a fourteen-piece [musical ensemble] is amazing and --because of the intimacy of the space -- it’s just terrific.”

And the Curtain Rises (directed by Kristin Hanggi; book by Michael Slade; music by Joseph Thalken; lyrics by Mark Campbell) began previews on March 17, with an official opening scheduled for March 29. Performances continue through April 10. Show times are Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:30 pm, Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00 pm, Saturdays at 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm, and Sundays at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm.

Tickets range from $55 - $81 and are available by calling Ticketmaster at (703) 573-SEAT (7328) or visiting www.signature-theatre.org. Group discounts are available for parties of ten or more by contacting Bethany Shannon at shannonb@signature-theatre.org or by calling (571) 527-1831. For more information please visit www.signature-theatre.org.

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An Interview with ‘Liberty Smith’ Composer Michael Weiner

Liberty Smith is a new musical having its world premiere at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., beginning next week.  Here is an interview I did for The Metro Herald with the composer of the show's score, Michael Weiner.

Bringing Early American History to the Musical Stage:

An Interview with ‘Liberty Smith’ Composer Michael Weiner

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

After he spent part of his childhood and teen years acting on iconic TV shows like The Wonder Years, Beverly Hills 90210, and Hanging with Mr. Cooper – with a brief recurring role as the earnestly clueless Kellogg “Cornflake” Lieberbaum on Fresh Prince of Bel Air – Los Angeles native Michael Weiner went on to study history at UCLA, a choice that prepared him well for his current job as composer of the score for a new musical about America’s founding era.

Once at UCLA, however, his love of music took over. He had started playing piano at age 7 and by the time he reached high school, he was practicing every day and beginning to compose music. Upon leaving college, he knew he wanted to write music fulltime.

His acting career behind him, Weiner is now in Washington working on the world premiere of the musical play, Liberty Smith, which previews at Ford’s Theatre on March 23, leading to an official opening night on March 30.


‘Forgotten Founding Father’

With a book by Adam Abraham, Eric R. Cohen, and Marc Madnick, lyrics by Abraham, and music by Weiner, Liberty Smith is set during the American Revolution and tells a behind-the-scenes story of the nation’s founding.

As Weiner explained in a telephone interview with The Metro Herald, “Liberty Smith is about a guy who grows up being friends with George Washington, who is the ‘forgotten founding father.’”

The big names – Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin – are people we all remember, said Weiner, “but under them were all these other names who had major roles. This show is about one man who sets out to do something great with his life and, although he doesn’t get credit for it, he achieves it.”

The theme of the show, he added, is that “everybody can be Liberty Smith, because they have the potential to achieve their dreams. What matters are the journey and the dream.”

That, he said, is “how America was founded. It’s about achieving a dream.”

Long creative process
Weiner and Abraham discovered the original script for Liberty Smith in the mid-1990s, when they were working as readers for a Hollywood studio. (That is, they reviewed screenplays for movie producers and made recommendations.)

“It had been floating around Hollywood but had never been made as a movie,” he explained.

When they first saw the unproduced screenplay, he said, “it originally was seen as an animated movie musical,” since it had been circulated “around the time of Beauty and the Beast.”

He and Abraham, however, “always thought that it would be great on stage.”

That was because “it had a couple of components we thought would be great for a musical: a strong central character with a clear goal,” plus “it has a great love story” as well as “a palette of music we don’t get to see very often in the theatre,” the kind of songs heard in the 18th century, he noted.

Weiner thought that, by translating Liberty Smith into a stage musical, he could “explore more musical styles.” The period of the show, he said, “can be musically colorful and the 18th century can be portrayed on stage in a very theatrical way.”

To write the show, Weiner and his collaborators “went on research trips to Colonial Williamsburg, Monticello, Boston, Philadelphia.”

He collected and listened to recordings of colonial music, he said, because “I wanted the show to feel true to that era and take it back there as well, but also appeal to today’s audience, so it doesn’t feel like museum piece.”

The aim, he said, was “not to create something so faithfully,” that it would seem stale and dated, but to get the feel of the 18th century while bringing a “contemporary edge to the music.”

The process of taking Liberty Smith from original concept to its debut at Ford’s Theatre was a lengthy one, Weiner explained.

“Musicals take years” to create, he said, especially original musicals.

Unlike recent Broadway successes – Hairspray, The Producers, Billy Elliot – Liberty Smith is “not based on a hit movie. Original musicals are really challenging. There’s no road map.”

After first reading the screenplay in the mid-‘90s, Weiner and his collaborators spent nine or ten years working on it off and on, “as a secondary job to other projects.” Since 2006, however, they have focused on it almost exclusively and, in the past four years, it has taken the shape the Ford’s audience is going to see.

‘Eye-opening experience’
Although two of the leads are New York-based actors, most of the cast members – whom Weiner describes as “phenomenal” -- come from the Washington area and their names (and faces) will be familiar to D.C. theatergoers: Gregory Maheu as George Washington, Christopher Bloch as Benjamin Franklin, Donna Migliaccio as Betsy Ross, as well as Drew Eshelman, Tracy Lynn Olivera, Harry A. Winter, and others.

Working with the cast during rehearsals has been “an eye-opening experience,” Weiner said.

The rehearsal period, which began about six weeks ago, has been “a great time to see material up on its feet for the first time,” Weiner explained. “We get to see how the pacing is working,” for instance.

Or not working: “We cut a song in rehearsal process that we thought wasn’t moving the story forward,” he pointed out.

“Seeing [the actors] on their feet, moving around, oftentimes we see something is overwritten” – too many lines to get an idea across – and it becomes clear “the audience is going to get it” without having it explained to them, Weiner noted.

Rehearsals are an eye-opener, he said, “because you’re able to make changes right away” and the cast “can implement them” on the spot.

One of the things Weiner learned as the musical took shape on stage is that “probably the most surprising thing is seeing things you write on the page in a way that you least expect.”

For instance, he said, “you might write a scene but decide that the actor’s look or move expresses things the way they need to be expressed” and that words are not necessary at that point. The effect of rehearsals is “learning to clarify and economize the writing [because] when it’s all up there on stage,” it makes more sense than it does alone on the page.

Liberty Smith is a good fit for Ford’s Theatre, Weiner explained, because it’s a show about American history. It is also, one might say, a good fit for the erstwhile UCLA history major, composer Michael Weiner.

Directed by Matt August, the world premiere production of Liberty Smith plays March 23 though May 21, 2011 at Ford’s Theatre, 511 Tenth Street, N.W., in downtown Washington, D.C. Tickets can be purchased by phone through Ticketmaster at (800) 551-SEAT (800-551-7328) or online at Ticketmaster.com.

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Josh Radnor Talks About 'happythankyoumoreplease'

Actor Josh Radnor is probably best known for his role as Ted Mosby on the hit CBS-TV series, How I Met Your Mother, but he is also a film director and screenwriter.

He may become as well known for those latter two jobs if his new film, happythankyoumoreplease, which goes into limited release in U.S. theatres today, becomes a hit.  Happythankyoumoreplease (read that as "happy thank you more please") marks Radnor's debut as a screenwriter and as a director; he also stars in the film as Sam Wexler, a harried New York novelist who takes an abandoned child into his home with resulting chaos and pathos.

The film's cast also includes Malin Akerman as Annie, Zoe Kazan as Mary-Catherine, Pablo Schreiber as Charlie, and Kata Mara as Mississippi, as well as Michael Algieri, in his big-screen debut, as Rasheen.  (There is also a cameo by Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins as Sam's potential publisher.)

Last November, Josh Radnor was the featured guest on the closing night of the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville.  He appeared on the stage of the historic Paramount Theatre after a screening of happythankyoumoreplease, fielding questions from the audience and from Glenn Williamson, a University of Virginia alumnus who served as executive producer of the film and moderator of the evening's discussion.

I was at the Paramount that night (November 7) and captured the entire exchange on video.  Here it is (also available on YouTube), in four parts.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Part IV:

My own assessment of happythankyoumoreplease? It's a pleasant film, good enough to rent through Netflix on a quiet evening at home, but not compelling enough to drive me to a theatre on a Saturday night. For a freshman effort, it's well-directed in an elementary manner -- Radnor admits in the Q&A above that he was not sufficiently confident in his own skills to write dialogue scenes that involved more than two characters at a time -- and a good product for a quick (23-day) shoot that often involved some guerrilla filming on the streets of New York.

As  Radnor put it in an interview with the film's publicist,

New York is the best and worst place in the world to shoot a movie – the best because you can’t beat the production design, the worst because the city doesn’t respond all that well to “quiet on the set.” (I started to get the feeling whenever we were shooting outside and called “action” Mayor Bloomberg said, “Cue the sirens.”) ... I very wisely surrounded myself with people who knew how to shoot a movie quickly in New York (I certainly didn’t know how to do it.) A lot of people try to tell you it can’t be done, that you’ve got to shoot in Toronto or Pittsburgh or somewhere. But they’re wrong. You can do it. If you get the right people on board.

Josh Radnor did win an audience award for his performance at the Sundance Film Festival, so I suspect the movie might have greater appeal than I'm willing to give it credit for.

According to Fandango, happythankyoumoreplease is not scheduled to screen in Charlottesville or near Washington, D.C., anytime soon, but it does open on March 4 at the Angelika Film Center on Houston Street in New York and at The Landmark on West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles.

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