Shakespeare Scholar Comments

Irene Dash, author of the brilliant new book, Shakespeare and the American Musical (Indiana University Press, 2010), recently spent a snowbound Manhattan afternoon watching Ariel’s Way. She even watched the DVD twice! Ms. Dash’s background equips her to be an ideal audience for the play, and her response to it is more than just satisfying to me. I hope (as does she) that her endorsement might encourage others to make room in their busy lives for Ariel’s Way.

Dear Jim Henderson,
Thank you so much for sending me the video of Ariel’s Way. I tremendously enjoyed the great variety in your songs and the way they helped define character. Ariel was captivating. Her song, "I’m on my way. . . . My job is done and my dues are paid" was beautiful. Clearly she was eagerly anticipating leaving Prospero, here called Victor.
I liked the way you took her line from late in Shakespeare’s play, about her feeling sorry for Prospero’s victims ("I would, were I human") and used it near the close of Ariel’s Way. It opened up the possibility for Prospero’s changing. Also I liked your decision to translate Caliban into an actual child of Prospero’s, rather than just a metaphor for the evil in all of us. You gave a literal meaning to Shakespeare’s line, "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine." It worked well.
Of course one of the astounding things you do is your handling of the storm visually. How exciting and wondrous–all created by Prospero in his studio.
Good luck on this brave new adventure.
Warmly,
Irene Dash

The Tradition that Includes "Ariel's Way"

Three decades of teaching the Shakespeare canon to young adults has given me a chance to revisit major works many times, and a lifetime of theatre going has let me see most of Shakespeare’s dramas on stage. In years past I’ve enjoyed reading the scholarship of Frank Kermode, Stephen Greenblatt, and Marjorie Garber. Chantal Zabus’ Tempests After Shakespeare (Palgrave, 2002) was especially helpful as the concept of Ariel’s Way began to take shape. Most recently I’ve devoted dozens of well-spent hours to James Shapiro’s A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, Germaine Greer’s Shakespeare’s Wife, and Charles Nicholls’ The Lodger Shakespeare. I recommend all of these books, especially Nicholls’ eminently readable “history mystery.”

As the creator of Ariel’s Way (a musical adaptation of The Tempest), more important and useful to me than all of the fine studies I just mentioned is Irene Dash’s masterful work, Shakespeare and the American Musical (Indiana University Press, 2010). The germ for Ariel’s Way was planted as I worked one winter with middle school students on a production of The Tempest, and the following spring with high school students on West Side Story. Was there a musical version of The Tempest? I wondered. I found several operatic versions, and incidental music by Mendelssohn, Arthur Sullivan, Sibelius and others. But, with the possible exception of the “juke-box musical,” Return to the Forbidden Planet, I found no Tempest musicals, and so I set about creating one. In the process I investigated the same five musicals that Ms. Dash discusses so well: Boys from Syracuse (The Comedy of Errors), Kiss Me, Kate (The Taming of the Shrew), West Side Story (Romeo and Juliet), Your Own Thing (Twelfth Night), and Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Ms. Dash carefully and engagingly charts the development of a tradition of American reprisals of Shakespeare plays during the twentieth century. She brilliantly uses primary sources (such as Leonard Bernstein’s annotated copy of Romeo and Juliet, and letters written by Bella Spewack and Cole Porter about their Kiss Me, Kate collaboration) to show how American writers, composers, choreographers, scenic designers, and producers brought their own creativity and social circumstances to bear upon the proven power of Shakespeare’s texts. An inveterate adaptor himself, Shakespeare thrived on re-telling familiar tales to suit his own talents, tastes and times. His twentieth-century American admirers did him exactly the same service, and Irene Dash shows us how, and sometimes even why.

Shakespeare loved spectacle and music, and his collaborations with Thomas Morley and other leading composers of his day, are well documented. (The Tempest and As You Like It are plays especially rich with songs.) Had he lived in our time, would Shakespeare have worked on Broadway or in the West End? No doubt he would have sought the widest possible audience for his work, and the most talented collaborators. Wouldn’t that search have taken him to Broadway?

Such speculation is much less interesting, to me, than the sort of careful, empirical analysis that Ms. Dash conducts in the course of her study. She knows the Shakespeare “originals” and their musical adaptations equally well, and as she moves back and forth, between and among them, brilliant social and aesthetic insights emerge from her analysis as petals unfold from flowers. Her range and depth as a scholar are as impressive as her prose is delightful to read.

Shakespeare and the American Musical defines a living tradition in twentieth-century theater. Ariel’s Way finds its center of gravity just there (it is set in the 1970s), even as it continues that tradition into the twenty-first century. Grateful for the intelligence and imagination that Irene Dash focused on her task, I hope that my own creative efforts might swell the sails of that tradition, propelling it in the direction of a brave, newer world.

Drums Over Durham

Now that the "Ariel's Way" video is in the can, I'm completing and correcting the score, sound effects, incidental music, and rehearsal CDs for inclusion in the performance package. This week, Beverly Botsford, Tony Bowman and I got together at Tony's studio to record the drum parts for the "Lime Grove" piece that spans the show's two acts.

Beverly brought a beautiful array of African drums and bells, and we had fun hearing the thunder and designing a clear way to present the parts to musicians who might have little experience with the rhythms of Mali and Guinea.

One of the strengths of the "Ariel's Way" score is how much musical territory it covers, with careful attention, at every turn, to stylistic detail.

Ariel's Way Video Premiere

Carolina Friends School will host a premiere of the "Ariel's Way" video on Sunday, October 10, 2010, at 2:00 PM. With Mark Goodwillie of Pelican Pro Productions and Hubert Deans of Snow Hill Music, I have been working steadily but joyfully, since February, on the video editing and sound mixing. The video is now in its finished and digitally polished form, ready for chapters and duplication. Copies will be available at the premiere. Then, let the marketing campaign begin!

Viewers will be impressed with the quality of the video--and performers will perhaps be surprised by just how good they look and sound. I am deeply appreciative of the effort, commitment, talent and creativity of the 40+ people who gave up their winter vacations to bring this show to life. Together, we created something wonderful and fun, meaningful and memorable, in a remarkably intense week or two. Now, after months of squinting at the video editing screen, and patiently refining 48 audio tracks, I keep finding details of the show that tickle and astound me. I never get tired of it!

As this project moves into its eighth year of life, I believe in it more than ever. I'm ready to release it to its fate, feeling the same giddy confidence that Victor and Ariel, Miranda and Freddy and Carib all grow to sense by the end of the show. "We're living large, I tell you what!"

The Tempest According to Taymor

When Jan and I were in Venice this summer (2010), we were surprised to learn that a new feature film version of The Tempest is slated to close the Venice Film Festival in September. Later, I was delighted to discover that the film stars Helen Mirren (as "Prospera") and is directed by Julie Taymor. I can't wait to see it! Disney is releasing it in American theaters in December.

You probably know Julie Taymor as the director of Frida, Across the Universe, and the Broadway version of The Lion King. (Her credits in the opera world are equally impressive.) Isn't it thrilling that an artist of Ms Taymor's stature is tackling this text? I feel taller just having a similar ambition!

No doubt Julie will bring praiseworthy wit and imagination to the play that Shakespeare's literary executors considered "first among equals." (It opens the First Folio.) Shooting the film in Hawaii brings this latest production both closer to and farther away from the America that Shakespeare never saw but invested in with both his imagination and his savings. Would that he were alive today to behold the lives his characters continue to lead--and the productions his plots have spawned!

The Artistic Value of "Ariel's Way"

"Ariel's way": An Educational Experience for an Entire School