Festival Show Update: BEATSVILLE

Logo from NAMT Fest '08

Last month, we caught up with alumni Wendy Wilf and Glenn Slater about the development of their 2008 Festival show, Beatsville, and their upcoming production at NYU-Steinhardt this spring.
    

  

Greenwich Village, 1959—Playground of bohemians, beatniks and jazzbos. Tragically square Walter Paisley finds that his clay figures, sculpted nudes and papier-mâché busts bring him the acceptance he desperately yearns for. But what if the world discovers that Walter’s body of work consists of actual bodies? A bebop-inflected black comedy/satire.

Beatsville was very well-received after the 2008 Festival so many people would be shocked to hear that it has taken this long for it to finally be seen in the States.  Do you want to talk a bit about why it took a while to get the show off the ground over the last few years? 
We were extremely pleased with Beatsville’s reception at NAMT, but as exciting as the response was, we also knew that we had a lot of work to do before we were ready to move to the next step. Then we hit a unexpected roadblock: a number of Glenn’s other projects all moved towards high-profile productions simultaneously. Every time we began to make real progress on our rewrites, another project demanded his time and attention.  It took a few long and frustrating years before we were able to regain our momentum as a team, but fortunately I was able to keep moving forward on the music and lyrics, writing several new numbers and reworking some of the old ones. When Glenn’s schedule finally eased up, we were able to hit the ground running.

How has the show grown and changed since being at the Festival? 
We loved the version of the show that we brought to NAMT, but as we began our next draft we started running into second-act problems, most of which stemmed from our faithfulness to the source material.  We had to take a big step back and reassess which elements of the original property were integral to our story, and which needed to be rethought and, if possible, improved upon. We also wanted to find ways to heighten the stakes—the story is a sort of whodunit, but since the audience already knows who the murderer is, we realized the tension (and hence the comedy) instead needed to revolve around the mystery of who would catch him, and how. Finally, we had always seen our 1959-set piece as having some satirical points to make about today’s culture, but while our first pass worked as a comedy, we felt the satire wasn’t jelling the way we had hoped. To get to where we wanted to be, we spent a long time looking for ways to make Walter, our main character, feel less passive and to give Carla, our female lead, a strong story arc of her own.  We’ve drawn the supporting characters with much more sharply-etched motivations, and jettisoned a lot of the original source’s second-half story to give our piece a tighter plot and a broader scope. In the process, we’ve also cut a few songs we loved—but added several new ones that we love even more.

New Work in Progress: POOL BOY at NYU: Steinhardt

An interview with John Simpkins, faculty member at New York University's The Steinhardt School and director of Pool Boy by Nikos Tsakalakos and Janet Allard, which NYU will produce in March at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City.

A young singer-songwriter from New Jersey lands a job as a pool boy at the Hotel Bel-Air. Trying to parlay his interaction with celebrities into his own dreams of fame and fortune, he encounters people who see him only as a servant. As he learns “the game” and the lifestyle around him, he falls for the one other “real” thing poolside—a girl named April. Nick must choose between ambition and love—and struggle with how this fake, material world might even give him what he never knew he needed—something to write about.


NYU Steinhardt has been developing new musicals every spring for over 10 years now. Tell us a little about the program and its goals.
This facet of the NYU Steinhardt program [in Vocal Performance] is dedicated to working on shows that we feel we can help to the next phase of life in whatever way seems most beneficial to the specific project and writers. In some cases, we have provided a workshop-type experience with rewrites every day, the first chance for writers to see something out from behind music stands and “on its feet.” In other cases, the show has already had productions and we can offer the chance to implement any large changes the writers may want [...] in a low-pressure environment.

What benefits do the writers get from working with students?
Our students are in class every day asking questions about characters, analysis of songs as an actor, strong choices they can make, etc. Having that kind of critical and process-based thinking involved in the rehearsal room can only benefit the development process. Our students have also (hopefully!) not yet learned any of the political side of being an actor—it is as utopian a situation as one can expect with regard to the personalities in the room! We are also able to offer a long and luxurious (over 6 weeks) rehearsal process, which allows for constant exploration and experimentation in rehearsal and in the writing process.