We continued our New Musicals Month this week by showcasing Prospect Theater Company, CPA Theatricals, San Diego State University, Millikin University, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Goodspeed Musicals, the Fulton Theatre, the writing teams of Row and XY, and many more. Check out our week in review!
This month we chatted with Charlie Sohne and Tim Rosser, the writers of 2013 Festival Show The Boy Who Danced on Air. The show is about to have its New York premiere with Abingdon Theatre Company.
Winner of The 2016 San Diego Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Original Score, The Boy Who Danced on Air is a modern-day love story set in rural Afghanistan. Paiman and Feda have spent their young lives as dancers in the world of bacha bazi, where wealthy men take in boys from poor families, train them to dance at parties, and often abuse them. The two boys’ chance meeting changes the course of their lives and sets them on a journey to find their independence in this musical fable about love, tradition, morality and the strength of the human spirit.
The last time we checked in with you both, you were preparing for your world premiere at Diversionary Theatre in San Diego—what was the response to the show in California?
Charlie: It went well! It’s a terrifying thing to put something you’ve been working on for years in front of a paying audience for the first time—particularly for us, given the sensitivity of the subject matter in our show. So it was really wonderful that both audiences and critics responded well to it and seemed to get what we were doing. And the show received the San Diego Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Original Score, which was a wonderful bonus.
This month, we chat with Festival Alumni Charlie Sohne and Tim Rosser about their 2013 Festival Show, The Boy Who Danced on Air, which is heading to Diversionary Theatre in San Diego this May. This production of The Boy Who Danced on Air is supported by a NAMT National Fund for New Musicals Production Grant, and the show previously received a Writers Residency Grant at New York Theatre Barn.
What was the post-Festival response like to The Boy Who Danced On Air?
Charlie Sohne: I think the big response that we got coming out of the Festival was, “I want to see it with dance!” The world of the show features quite a bit of dance and, beyond that, dance is a fundamental element of how we tell this story — so it was really important to start developing what the choreographic language of the piece was going to be like. We were fortunate enough that right out of the Festival New York Theater Barn (which has long been a really wonderful advocate for the piece) put together a dance workshop for us. It was really exciting to see the work leap off the page and become something more heightened than just a script with music.
Tim Rosser: Since the dance element is so central to the show and was certainly going to require a special touch, we went on a bit of a quest to find the right choreographer. Charlie saw an ad for this piece that Nejla Yatkin was working on called “Oasis: Everything You Wanted To Know About The Middle East But Were Afraid To Dance.” I remember being taken by not just by the beauty of the dance, but by the fact that Nejla often uses clear linear narratives in her dance pieces, which isn’t always the case in modern dance but is, I think, a great advantage in musical theatre. We sent her the script immediately afterwards.
A guest blog entry from Tim Rosser, writer of The Boy Who Danced On Air to be presented at this year’s Festival of New Musicals.
Everything about making a demo takes an extraordinary amount of time. Writing the orchestrations, rehearsing the singers, doing take after take, mixing it all together. Hours and hours and hours of your life. And it can always take longer. It’s basically up to you – how many hours and dollars are you willing to put in. You want it to be perfect because in some cases you need to sell your show with a song or two and the better technology gets, the more perfect it can be. And if you are a product of the catholic school system like me, you never think you’re trying hard enough. It’s the perfect storm. And then there are the practical decisions that make me want to pull my hair out. Who should sing the song? Who should play? How many people does it take to sound like a chorus? Like an orchestra? Will a click track make this song sound super tight or squeeze the life out of it? To use computer generated sounds or acoustic? How much money are we really willing to spend on a track of a song that could very realistically be cut from the show in a month? I have a heart-breaking story (my heart!) for every one of these variables and even so I still don’t feel like I’m in control most of the time Charlie and I go into the studio. I’d like to think I’m a little better at recognizing when we have a real problem on our hands and knowing how to fix it efficiently. But even then, I don’t actually know how much people care when the drums aren’t tuned right or there’s a mysterious purring sound on the guitar track or the tempo is too slow. Maybe no one notices any of those things. Or only some of them. That’s the thing with writing music and recording demos, I guess. It’s all taste and guessing.
I’d like to think that you can’t make a bad song sound like a good one with a good demo or a good song sound like a bad one with a bad demo, but I don’t believe that. I don’t necessarily believe that
the average listener can tell when a piano/vocal performance of a song has potential to be extraordinary in the future with a full band and a killer singer — probably because I don’t necessarily believe that I can tell. Especially now with contemporary musical theatre, where musicals can look and sound like virtually anything. I think musical theatre lovers are pretty adapted to imagining a full orchestra when they hear a pianist play Rodgers and Hammerstein — we know when a piano lick is meant to imply a woodwind solo or a lush string passage. Guitars and active drum parts are game changers. Pianos often don’t do good, clear impressions of these things and they can impact the nature of a song in a gigantic way. Nothing is more bland than a pop-rock score played on solo piano. It’s a style that relies much less on the rich harmonies and variable dynamics that pianos are fantastic at producing and much more on timbre and overlaying of parts. Pianos sound like pianos and overlaying lines on top of other lines with one hand is generally out of the question.
The Boy Who Danced On Airhas been an adventure as far as figuring out the most effective and basic ensemble needed to get the songs across. When we first started writing the show, I would send Charlie demos of me singing over a large array of electronic sounds. Faux-rubabs and domburas, a multitude of drums, auxiliary percussion, harmonium, piano, flutes, loads of things. I was experimenting, trying to see what worked and what didn’t. Looking for something special and transportive. We recorded our first set of demos over those original tracks with professional singers because it was less expensive and time–consuming than writing charts and bringing in players. Then, every time we performed any of the songs in concerts, I had to soul-search to decide what instruments we needed to re–create the essential sound. At different points I had a synthesizer playing dombura parts, strings pizz-ing to meagerly simulate rubabs, a real dumbek, a djembe pretending to be a dumbek, glock, electric bass, acoustic bass, no bass, a tambourine, leg strap jingles that I still don’t know the real name of… After lots of experimenting, it boiled down to an acoustic guitar (because the amazing Eric Davis proved to me that it’s actually possible to play the lute stuff I wrote on an acoustic instrument. And it sounds way better than synth. Surprise, surprise.), an assortment of percussion instruments and a hybrid hand drum, a piano and maybe harmonium. Admittedly, we probably need a bass. And maybe an actual rubab. Or maybe not. All subject to change with the wind… We eventually made new, acoustic, demos because we think they come across better — again, and ever, that question of what comes across better. I still listen to my original demos sometimes and wonder if anything has gotten lost in all paring down and acoust-ifying. And then, sometimes I wonder if I can save myself a lot of trouble, and just perform the songs with a piano. I can’t tell you the answer, but I’m functioning under the belief that a solid demo really matters and it’s better to leave as little as possible to the imagination.
An interview with Charlie Sohne and Tim Rosser, writers of the upcoming Festival show The Boy Who Danced on Air, about the careful process of writing a show about the Afghani tradition of Bacha bazi, which literally translated means “boy play,” a practice where wealthy men take in poorer boys and train them to dance. Interview conducted by NAMT’s Program Intern Audra LaBrosse.
NAMT: Bacha bazi is not a well-known practice to a Western audience. How did you learn about this tradition and what about it inspired you to write a musical centered on it?
Charlie Sohne: We saw a documentary about bacha bazi called The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan and it kind of smacked us in the face. The access that the filmmaker got to both the men and boys involved was really amazing and the existence of the practice brought up so many questions that to us felt universal to all cultures, including our own. The discussions we had afterwards about religion, the different ways sexuality expresses itself and the intersection of tradition, morality and a community’s power structure made us feel like there was a lot there to be mined.
Tim Rosser: We were also very interested at the time in finding material that “demanded to be musicalized” – as in, it would feel like a let down to tell this story without music because music and dance are essential to this subject matter.
NAMT: Was there a moment of this documentary that stuck out most, that you saw and imagined a dramatic moment immediately?
CS: The most striking moment for me was when one of the boys talks about growing up and owning boys of his own. It was absolutely fascinating to hear how matter of fact it was and how much of an inevitability it was for him.
TR: And that moment was actually the basis and inspiration for the song “When I Have A Boy Of My Own” that ends Act I. (Editors note: listen to a clip from this song on the Festival info page)
NAMT: Historical and cultural accuracy are important in the writing of any show, and especially one with a sensitive subject matter like The Boy Who Danced on Air. What has the process of writing the show been like, keeping this in mind?
CS: Our first step was
to do as much reading as we could. We started with overviews about the political history of Afghanistan and then delved into more specific aspects of Afghan culture – firsthand accounts of people who had actually lived there proved most useful in giving us a picture of the world. We also watched a bunch of documentaries which served us not only as far as getting more information about Afghanistan but also to sort of root us visually in what contemporary Afghanistan looks like. Once we had a draft, we asked that Zarina Maiwandi, who’s an academic with experience in Afghanistan read the piece for accuracy – and she was very kind in making herself available to consult not only on that first draft, but as we developed the piece.
TR: I bought a bunch of CD’s of Afghan folk music when we began working. Beyond that, I learned about the instruments that were local to the region and experimented with those sounds. I’m not too interested in writing music that could be mistaken for actual Afghan folk music, just as I’m not interested in writing music that could be mistaken for Sondheim. I do want to borrow the beautiful sounds, rhythmic patterns and tone I’m hearing on my CD’s but the most important part for me is working them into an expression that feels special and new to me.
NAMT: Tell us a bit more about the musical stylization of the show.
TR: We both agreed pretty early on that we wanted to find a hybrid sound for this show, a mix of east and west. It’s one of the ways we respond to the challenge of giving the story a sense of place while creating something that feels unique to this particular show. It’s also a way to acknowledge that this isn’t just a story about Afghanistan, it’s a bigger picture. I thought it was important to have at least one strummed string instrument in the band. Lutes have played a major part in music of the Middle East. I wanted a piano for warmth and a sense of magic. Western audiences have a lot of associations with the piano. And percussion is the wild card. Percussionists can play anything; they know no borders! Lots of shows begin with a piano reduction, but because this palate is so unusual and not meant for a full orchestra or other familiar kind of treatment down the road, I’ve relied heavily on the program garageband to work out the arrangements as I write the music. It can be incredibly time consuming to work this way, but who knows what a dombura, harmonium, piano and snare drum are going to sound like together? I have no point of reference for this kind of combination. And that’s the fun!
NAMT: Given American involvement with Afghanistan in the past decade, the content and context of the show feel very relevant. Do you think it is important for musical theatre to comment on current events?
CS: I think writing about contemporary topics in musical theater presents its own unique challenge in that musicals take so long to come into being that you risk that the situation you’re writing about changes by the time you’re done. So while the setting of the piece is contemporary and it feels very relevant to us in this country because of our political involvement in Afghanistan, the show is not about the war or even Afghanistan as a whole. While being rooted in a particular place and time, the show deals with something pretty universal: the intersection between a society’s power structure and its views on morality – and at the show’s heart is a timeless and romantic love story.
I do think that musical theatre has an almost magical ability to remind us of a common humanity – if done right, it’s a medium that allows us to empathize with, connect with and understand characters who otherwise we’d hold at a distance. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I really do think that’s the power of song. Because of that, I think it’s wonderful when a musical explores something that an audience might initially feel distanced from or unable to understand – there’s nothing better than walking out of the theater and feeling an unexpected sense of empathy or connection that wasn’t there before.
NAMT: After an audience leaves The Boy Who Danced on Air, what do you hope they are left with?
CS: I think this is probably an area where I come off as annoying, but I worry about saying too much – just because the topic is so rich, and I know what I’ve used to help me organize and clarify the piece, but I want people to have that same flood of feelings and thoughts that I had when I first saw the documentary.
TR: Basically, it’d be great if people are moved enough to talk about the show during the ride home.