So I don't take up huge space on a blog post in the Stage by the lovely Mark Shenton, here are my responses to comments left on this post of his, which refers to the musical theatre conference I'm doing with LIPA:
http://blogs.thestage.co.uk/shenton/2010/06/the-state-of-british-musicals-and-beacon/
@ Laurence Kupp, who said:
“… who are the people mentoring this next generation? What were they raised on? What are their standards? If the people that teach and guide in these organizations are not smart and knowledgeable enough themselves - how much hope can we have that they will challenge and inspire a new generation to keep the British musical theatre alive?”
I’m one of them. I teach musical theatre writing craft in several places in the UK. You can find out more about me here: www.acompletelossforwords.com
I don’t know what you’re looking for in terms of being smart and knowledgeable enough to teach and guide and be a mentor. You can see my musical theatre writing experience on my website, but that won’t show you the way I guide and mentor other writers, it will only show you the way I write. I don’t want to teach anyone else to write the way I write: I want to help them find the way THEY write. So my guiding skills are – hopefully – not entirely connected to my writing skills.
Laurence also said: “Frankly, the Tisch School, and the BMI Workshops and The ASCAP Workshop in New York are run and taught and mentored by (arguably) the best musical theatre writers in the musical theatre”
I’m a graduate of the Tisch course too, and what the lovely Mr Blackmore did not say in his post here was this: a lot of the amazing people you mention, who have indeed visited Tisch, joined us for one session. Yes, Michael John LaChiusa comes in fairly often, as does William Finn, but the majority of the guidance there is done by writers of whom you have likely never heard.
Sarah Schlesinger, the Chair of the programme, has had shows produced in the UK (“The Ballad of Little Jo” at the Bridewell Theatre, for example) but most Brits will not know her or her work. Yet she has been one of the greatest influences on me as a writer.
I’ve learnt more about writing musicals from being in a room with Fred Carl, Robert Lee, Martin Epstein, Sybille Pearson, Mel Marvin, Mindi Dickstein, Polly Pen than I ever have from being in a room with Sondheim, with Strouse, with Guettel, with Ahrens and Flaherty, and I have been in a room with all of the latter.
It’s not their fault: I only met them once. They talked about their careers, their shows. They didn’t look at my work, or help me try to find my writing voice, because they didn’t have time. And maybe they didn’t have interest. Not everyone gets something out of mentoring. Frankly, not everyone is good at it, and even if they are, just being good at it is not enough.
Mentoring in the creative arts is a creative collaboration like any other: you have to hook up with the right partner in order for it to work for both of you.
I agree with you on many levels, Laurence. You’re right, we have no list of musical theatre writers that can compare with the USA, but let’s bear in mind that traditional book musical theatre as we know it, the one you’re referring to when you mention Sondheim et al, is an American genre. We have yet to discover what British musical theatre could really be.
Even Lionel Bart wrote in the American book musical form, as did Stiles & Drewe in both Mary Poppins and Honk. It’s hardly surprising that we have fewer people who can ‘get’ that genre, any more than it’s surprising that the pub-piano knees-up song I wrote for my thesis at Tisch was the most challenging moment for the American performers.
You said: “Until that high level of guidance and involvement is a standard part of these organizations then my hope for them is, sadly, pessimistic.”
I couldn’t agree more that mentoring is vitally important. However, I think it’s also vitally important that we identify what the mentoring process might be, and how to keep the definitions of it as broad as possible to accommodate all kinds of creative relationships so we have a hope of finding the right person for everyone.
(The right person for mentors too. Because without a mentee present, mentors fall over, and make no sound as they're doing it.)
