Acting and Interpreting a Song- BTW

Broadway Teacher’s Workshop

Acting/Interpreting Song

Susan Frank

http://www.peterflynndirector.com/about/

Peter Flynn has had a long career working with actors and singers interpreting songs.  I appreciated the fact that he did not stand and lecture to the group.  He brought four singer/actors, and an accompanist to demonstrate his techniques.  He brought a duet to be interpreted by two seasoned performers and a duet to be interpreted by two young student performers.  When I saw them waiting for him to introduce them, it brought me right back to my time in graduate school when I was studying opera, and we would attend workshops for interpreting song.  I remember how nervous I used to be when it was my turn to perform, and how wonderful it was to work with someone like Peter Flynn, who had a wealth of knowledge and experience, but who created a safe space in the room for experimentation.  

The first duet was from “City of Angels” and called “The Tennis Song”.  I was interested that Peter Flynn did not give us the score of the song, he gave us the book with the stage directions in it.  He explained that he writes in stage directions just in case the performers have no idea what to do in a certain place.  It would have been more helpful for me to have the musical score for the songs as my focus is always the music and how it relates to the action and moving the story forward.  Again, this comes from my background in opera, so it was a slightly different take on interpretation of song.  These artistic pieces we are talking about are called “musicals” for a reason.  They are not called “plays with songs”, because the music is instrumental in carrying the emotion and pathos of the story.  

The singers sang the song twice, and Flynn did not give them very much direction the first time.  He told them where to stand at the beginning, but then let them see where the song would go.  The song plays many jokes on tennis being a metaphor for sex.  I found the song dated and sexist, and the singers were not always on pitch or even all that committed to the piece.  Flynn was completely in the moment, and invested in sharing his work with us, but this couple was disappointing and stilted.  It was early in the day, so they might not have been warmed up, but that was what I was thinking about throughout this section of the workshop.  Flynn shared that it would be a collaboration about specificity and authenticity, but in my mind, for these two performers, there was nothing authentic about this duet, or their portrayal of it, it was just tawdry and uncomfortable.  

The second piece, on the other hand, was from “The Fantasticks”.  The song that these young performers sang was “Soon it’s gonna Rain”.  They were singing a song about two people who are only fifteen, and they were quite young, only in their early twenties.  Again, Flynn allowed them to sing the song together and interpret it first their own way.  It was sweet, they were committed and poignant in their portrayal, but not polished.  

Flynn then began to ask them questions.  Why did you do this?  How old are you?  What is the story?  What is your ultimate goal?  What do you want?  He was insistent if he thought the students were evading the questions.  He got them to find their way in a true, emotionally generous and authentic way.  She is fifteen, she wants him to hold her, she wants him to protect her from all the ills of the world.  He wants her to allow him to kiss her.  This was about proximity, which is a huge element in stage direction and in singing, a complicated but essential dichotomy.  It reminded me how important it is when I am directing a song to ask leading questions, that push the performer to move organically, not from the outside.  Flynn kept coming back to authenticity and specificity, which stayed with me, and will stay with me from now on in my stage directing.  

When the young performers sang the duet the second time, I cried.  They were so much more committed, their tone was better, the young man sang with much more conviction.  The transformation was almost immediate.  Her expressions and hand gestures became motivated completely from within, and when they came together at the end, it was perfectly awkward, as two fifteen year-olds in love would be.  This experience made me realize how important it is to ask questions, to allow experimentation, and to support my young performers in their quest for their own interpretation of a character.  Less is more:  Flynn only needed this duet to drive home how to create an emotional moment in an authentic, collaborative fashion.