She's the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - with something to say

I am a huge fan of the show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the fourth (and final) season of which I'm watching on Netflix right now. The star and creator and producer and writer of the show is the multi-talented (as well as multi-tasking) Rachel Bloom, who plays the title character, Rebecca Bunch.

Each episode of the show features one to two musical numbers (also co-written by Ms. Bloom). They can be about mistakes Rebecca has made in her relationships (which are legion), about the men in her life and their reactions to her, her friends, her family, etc. They vary greatly in style, from

• big, showy musical theater numbers, complete with Broadway-level choreography; 
• intimate cabaret-style solo performances
• dance music videos

I just happened upon this video of an interview Rachel Bloom did with Seth Meyers about a year and a half ago, and in it, he asks her about using songs to tackle some pretty significant issues, particularly regarding mental health. I loved the way that she describes how a song is structured (this comes in nearly 4 minutes in). She refers to them as musical essays, with the thesis statement the chorus, and the supporting paragraphs the verses and bridges.  She says, "It's a great way to distill something down,  to be like, 'this is what we're trying to say.'"

What are you trying to say in your songs? What is the main point? What is in the supporting material? 

Let's take the song "Someone like you" from Jekyll & Hyde. It's very clear what the point is: If I had someone like you in my life, it would be better. That's the chorus. You sing it three times (and the last time, higher).

The supporting material:
The beginning: I'm an outsider. Nothing has ever worked for me. I've never had any hope.
The second verse: I'm feeling things I never felt before and I think there might be a way out. I know what that is now.

Watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on Netflix, if you haven't seen it already (caveat: adult content). 

Spring Forward!

UGH, it's Daylight Savings Time. I hate the transitions both in and out of DST. I feel like I gain nothing in the fall because I wake up too early, and I definitely feel the loss of the hour in the spring. (Spring? It's spring?)

But I do like the idea of "spring forward." Of finding some new things to do and thinking outside the box.

For example, at my church job today, I decided that I was going to put the emphasis on all the prepositions in the hymns and responses. At first, it was a source of amusement (which pretty much sums up how I approach almost anything new), and then I realized it was a way to be really aware of the words I was saying. Too often, responses are on autopilot, and so are hymns (if you're just singing the melody to something you've known for years). But if you put the emphasis on a different word, you have to think about all the words before and after it.

"And also with you."
"Our Father, who art in Heaven."
"Make you to shine like the sun."

I did something like that recently in a cabaret performance of the song, "As if we never said goodbye" from Sunset Boulevard. I have always sung the lyric, "Has there ever been a moment?" with the emphasis on "ever." But in my last performance, it just felt right to put it on "been."

Now, I realize that emphasis is kind of Chandler Bing-esque, but it felt right to me in that moment. It seemed like it made all the other words in the line even more important.

There's an acting game to take a phrase and change the emphasis to get a different point across:

"I didn't say she stole my money."
"I didn't say she stole my money."
"I didn't say she stole my money."
"I didn't say she stole my money."
"I didn't say she stole my money."
"I didn't say she stole my money."
"I didn't say she stole my money."

How would you interpret each of this lines with the different emphasis? Which one might be defensive? Sad? Evasive?

How could you apply this to a song you're working on? Or a song you've known for years? How would it change the interpretation? What works? What doesn't?

Try this and see what happens. And remember....

Cabaret as Personal Musical Theater

I was looking through my past blogs to see if I've defined cabaret before and couldn't find anything.

This past Friday, I was thrilled to reunite with Ryan Cappleman to perform a revised version of my first cabaret, "Oh! To Be a Movie Star!" at Germano's in Little Italy (the revision includes the addition of the exclamation point after "Oh!" where there had previously been a comma). We had a terrific turnout, unlike the performances that Ryan and I did back in Milwaukee, and it was extremely well-received. It's nearly a week later and I'm still re-living moments that I felt went particularly well and not moments that went badly (this never happens).

There was one friend who had planned to come but didn't because he said he had a hard time getting his fiancée to go to concerts on Friday night, which is their date night. I was surprised that he said that, because he's a musician and actor as well. He thought that the performance was going to be something along the lines of a recital, rather than - well, what it was.

So I've done some more musings on exactly what cabaret is. And the title of this article is from something that was said to me by Amanda McBroom at a cabaret workshop I attended in Brookfield, Wisconsin, when she was asked to define cabaret. She thought a bit and said, "Cabaret is personal musical theater." It's taking pieces that mean something to you and developing a narrative from those pieces. It might be that you have a theme in mind, or it might be that a theme comes from the pieces you've selected.

In the case of this week's show, my theme was movies and movie stars, and the songs I chose reflected that. And more important, what movies have meant in my own life.

Another definition that I came up with was that creating a cabaret was like writing a script for a jukebox musical. A jukebox musical is a bunch of songs by one artist or composer around which an often-lame script is written. Now, I generally hate that genre. My own personal idea of hell would be sitting through endless productions of Rock of Ages, Jersey Boys, and Pump Boys and Dinettes. But a cabaret is picking songs - perhaps by the same composer, perhaps based on a theme or an era - and putting them together with a narrative of some kind.

However, in a musical, there's a full cast of characters. In cabaret, all the characters are played by a single performer (or a small group of performers) who might have some specific lines that she wants to say to introduce a song, but the songs are the script. They are what tell the story, through the singer's interpretation.

In Oh! To Be a Movie Star!, Ryan and I told stories of wanna-be actors, both from a humorous and a tragic perspective, of fans who admire and obsess over the object of their affection, of up-and-coming stars and those fading into obscurity. It wasn't a single narrative following one person from beginning to end. That's a different kind of show. And maybe it's one I'll do someday.

All I can say right now is that cabaret continues to be one of the most rewarding and creative outlets I have as an artist these days. It's not the only outlet, which it was in Milwaukee (and why not having an audience was so demoralizing to me), but it's the one that makes me feel the most like myself. It's personal. It's musical. And it's theater.

"A creative adult is the child who survived."

Two blogs in one day!

Last night I did a cabaret show at Germano's Piattini in Little Italy - "The Not Here Cabaret" with Michael Tan. This was a reprise of a show we did at Spotlighters in June. It went, very, very well. I felt so at home in the format, with the audience, and with the music I'd selected.

This morning I saw this posted on Facebook:

89-Year-Old Japanese Grandma Discovers Photography, Can’t Stop Taking Hilarious Self-Portraits Now - Japan Inside

One of the comments I read (and I know, you're not supposed to read the comments) was: "A creative adult is the child who survived."

That's how I feel about doing cabaret. Creative. Fulfilled. Happy.

Oh, and I made a tidy little sum doing it last night, which was even better. #MakingMoneyAsASingerFTW (do hashtags work in blogs)?

Attend the Tale of Lea DeLaria

I had the great fortune of going to see Lea DeLaria at Blues Alley in DC last night.

[quick aside - why on earth are women with beautiful Italian names pronouncing them so Americanized? Lea DeL/ae/ria --- Laura Ben/ae/nti? Seriously, folks, people would be able to wrap their mouths around the taller /a/ vowel without any problem; pronounce your names the way they're intended]

I have seen Lea DeLaria on TV since the 1990s, when she started doing stand-up as the first openly lesbian comic on late night and cable TV programs. And then I saw that she was doing Broadway, doing roles like Hildy in On the Town (with Jesse Tyler Ferguson as her love interest) and Eddie/Dr. Scott in Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

But my fascination with Lea DeLaria came when she played the psychic Madame Delphina on One Life to Live. OLTL was a bizarre soap - it used a lot of New York actors (who were often doing double duty in roles on Broadway) and was much more socially conscious than your average soap. Yes, there were people returning from the dead, evil twins, multiple personalities, etc., but there were also storylines about equal marriage and antiwar sentiments. It was quirky. And then she played a drag role, Professor Del Fina (you see what they did there?). As Delphina, she would hear voices and randomly turn around and converse with them, usually in a somewhat irritated fashion.

Of course, since then I've seen her in things like Orange is the New Black, where she plays Boo.

It was an amazing show. She's raunchy. Very raunchy. But her voice is capable of so much inflection. She can purr, she can growl, she can yell, she can croon.

I thought of Barbara Cook last night, even though vocally they could not be more different. Lea's carrying on the tradition. She's still telling the story, she's true to the text, she's authentic. There are still people out there who can tell the tales.