This section links into teaching the craft.
We shouldn’t be teaching the craft. We should be learning it. Critical difference: the second one uses open space technology.
In a foreword that was added to his published diaries in 1999, Sir Peter Hall says:
“All innovative work throughout theatre history has been done by companies. Companies mean cohesion, a shared style, developments that came from failures as well as from successes.”
This links into the talk we had at D&D4 about how to train an actor. Someone said that one of the great benefits of drama school is that you get that rare and wonderful opportunity to be part of an acting troupe within your year, and you stay with them throughout, which offers you unique opportunities for learning.
Should a musical theatre writing course be linked to a performance course? I tend to say no, because one needs experience in order to guide the other. Drama students are guided by the text of the established plays and musical they do. There are reasons why those works were successful, and they can learn from what’s on the page.
Likewise, writers learn from professional actors who have instincts that they may not be able to explain, but that’s why you have a director. Not to come between writer and actor, but to facilitate the process more objectively than either of those can.
Except I think in a company, everyone should be so familiar with what everyone else does that it all merges into one.
So a musical theatre writing course should have access to a company of actors. The same company. The same director? Maybe a small pool of directors, one who prefers trad book musicals, one who likes rock opera, one for comedy. I don’t know. Just three different ones, who can also work together to guide the whole group.
And designers. The same designers too.
And they should all be involved, from day one. A company, period. When you learn about AABA, you do it in the room with your actors, so everyone learns how it works, what it does, how it feels to perform, how it feels to write.
Peter Hall goes on to say:
“But here’s the paradox: in order to justify their resources, both the RSC and the National have had to grow too big. The organisations could only have the necessary facilities by being large – but they are now too large for an intimate theatre company to thrive in.”
This is the perfect argument for the course being at a university, which already has all those facilities at its disposal.
He goes on to say:
“The British support institutions, never individual artists. And institutions are judged on quantity, not quality.”
But in this way, a university could say, “And we’ve also got a musical theatre writing course to add to our list of cool course, and we’re the only people in Europe who have got that!”
It becomes judge-able in that quantity way.
But intimacy within the course itself, within the company, is very important for a shared sense of safety and therefore freedom.
Look, see, Peter says it himself:
“I had that same sense of freedom and support…”
I have a bazillion other thoughts about the teaching of the craft, some of which are in my latest confession, connection, catharsis post.
There are other sections prompted by the intro to Peter Hall's Diaries:
- a section about ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’.
- a section about the appeal of the ‘old’ arts to the young.
- a section about freedom.
- a section about the social value of the arts.
