[Dixielandjazz] How to Develop an Audience - Parallel

[Steve barbone]

CAVEAT - NOT OKOM CAVEAT - HOWEVER It points to how a couple of artistic
people took Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona", and made it an updated
musical that beame quite popular with the regular audience in NYC.

Say . . . could this be a way to popularize OKOM? :-) VBG

Yeah, just modernize it a bit and make it swing and/or sing and/or zing.

Yeah, yeah, I know. "We can't mess with "Dixieland"?"

Why not? We been messing with it since the revival. :-) VBG

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Age of Aquarius Returns in Shakespearean Romp By DINITIA SMITH 8/16/2005

It was like lightning caught in a bottle, done in a flash, a boisterous,
anachronistic, multiethnic musical version of Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen
of Verona." There were soap bubbles and Frisbees and yo-yos. There were
mandolins and marimbas and rock and mangled Shakespeare and all sorts of
made-up lines, and when it was produced at the Delacorte Theater in Central
Park and on Broadway in 1971, it was a hit.

Tonight, after a hiatus of more than 30 years in which the show has not been
performed commercially in New York, "Two Gents" as it is known fondly around
the Public Theater, begins performances at the Delacorte, where it
originated, kicking off the Public Theater's 50th-anniversary celebration.
The show, adapted by John Guare and Mel Shapiro, with lyrics by Mr. Guare
and music by Galt MacDermot, is directed and choreographed by Kathleen
Marshall. 

"Two Gentlemen of Verona" was a musical created with all the blithe
confidence, the haphazardness and the dumb courage of the era. Mr. Guare's
play "The House of Blue Leaves" had opened off Broadway to high praise; Mr.
MacDermot had written the music for "Hair." Mr. Guare called "Two Gentlemen"
a play "written in a bolt." There was the joy of total creative freedom,
with Joseph Papp, the director of the New York Shakespeare Festival (now
known as the Public Theater), going off on vacation and paying little
attention to what the creators were doing.

"We just didn't care," Mr. Guare remembered. "We did it for nothing." He had
been watching rehearsals of the revival recently in the very same hall at
the Public on Astor Place in which the musical was originally conceived. "It
was great to be living in New York and having a hit play off Broadway - why
not?" said Mr. Guare, who is 67. Mr. Shapiro is 69 and Mr. MacDermot is 76.

"Two Gentlemen" was born of the social and political turbulence of America
in the late 1960's, including racial friction and divisions over the war in
Vietnam. The year before, in 1970, said Mr. Shapiro, the show's original
director, "kids were throwing cans and bottles at 'Macbeth,' " which had
toured the city in the Public's mobile van. "I thought, Omigod, how are we
gonna do this?" 

At first, the intention was to add just a couple of songs to the original
Shakespeare. But at rehearsals, the songs multiplied and the script changed.
"I would say, 'We're going to be doing Act II tomorrow,' " Mr. Shapiro
remembered, "and John would say, 'I think I have an idea for Act II.' And it
worked." 

Meanwhile, Mr. Guare would leave new lyrics with Mr. MacDermot's answering
service so he could compose the music for the next day. "I realized a lot of
the music should be black, or West Indian - my favorite thing," recalled Mr.
MacDermot, who drew upon reggae, calypso and Latin beats. "We ended up with
about 37 songs, I believe."

Together, the three men turned one of Shakespeare's earliest plays into a
multiracial love story, while preserving its exuberance and sweetness.
Perhaps only a play so full of inconsistencies - for instance, why is the
Duke of Milan sometimes referred to as the Emperor of Milan? - could lend
itself to such bold tinkering.

The basic story was intact. Proteus and Valentine are two gentlemen of
Verona. Proteus initially loves Julia and Valentine falls in love with
Sylvia. But then Proteus falls for Sylvia too. All repair to a forest, where
Julia is disguised as a boy. And as in other Shakespeare comedies, love
finds its way in a remote setting when a heroine dons men's clothing.

"Verona, in our minds, was San Juan," Mr. Guare said, and "Milan was New
York." In the original production, Raul Julia, who was Puerto Rican, played
Proteus and Jonelle Allen, a black actress who vibrated with energy even
when she was standing still, portrayed Sylvia. Carla Pinza played Julia;
Clifton Davis, Valentine; and Jerry Stiller, a Yiddish Launce, the
manservant.

As they worked, the script became sprinkled with slang and Spanish phrases.
At one point, Mr. Guare said, Ms. Pinza was having difficulty with her
speech when her character picks up torn pieces of Proteus's love letter.
"Mel said, 'Just make it your own.' And she said, 'I'll kiss each several
paper for amends. Aye, mira, here is writ 'kind Julia.' Mel and I just
looked at each other - 'There's the show.' "

Somehow, part of Shakespeare's Sonnet 57, "Being your slave, what should I
do but tend/ Upon the hours and times of your desire?" ended up in "Two
Gentlemen of Verona" too. The result was a victory with audiences and
critics, and as had happened with "Hair," Papp was petitioned by producers
who wanted to take the show to Broadway. "Hair" had been eventually licensed
to Michael Butler. "Over the years," Helen Epstein writes in "Joe Papp: An
American Life," the theater "would receive more than $1.5 million in
revenues" from that show. But this time, Papp, at the urging of his
colleague Bernard Gersten, decided that the Public would take "Two
Gentlemen" to Broadway itself and reap all the profits. He persuaded
LuEsther T. Mertz, a patron of the theater, to underwrite the cost of moving
it. It won two Tony Awards - for best musical and best book of a musical.

At first ticket sales were poor. But reviewers took to it, sales grew and it
ran for 18 months, the first nonprofit show to move to Broadway and retain
all its rights, Ms. Epstein wrote.

Tonight, Oscar Isaac, who graduated from Juilliard in May, will play
Proteus; Norm Lewis will be Valentine; Rosario Dawson, Julia; Renee Elise
Goldsberry, Sylvia; and David Costabile, Launce. If the weather allows, "Two
Gents" will be played out against the backdrop of a city that the play
celebrated and infused with hope at a time of chaos and uncertainty.