Our process to put on Leonard Bernstein’s 1953 musical Wonderful Town saw success and struggles like any other rehearsal process does. Having done much more recently written works for our previous performance projects, taking on a very traditional musical with musical influences from jazz, folk, and classical styles was a new challenge. For me as an individual performer, the project was an opportunity to explore style, refine my own process, and to explore how this applies to working on and developing new work. As a member of a company, I learned more about the rehearsal process and collaboration.

Conducted by Sir Simon Rattle (1998) “My Darlin’ Eileen.” Bernstein: Wonderful Town [Streamed]. Warner Classics.

One of my roles in Wonderful Town was in the song “My Darlin’ Eileen.” For this song and the corresponding scene I was cast as Eileen, one half of the sister duo at the centre of the plot. At this point in the show Eileen has been arrested, and the song is sung to her as a serenade from the officers at the police station. The punchline of the number is that the American “Irish” police officers have assumed that Eileen is also Irish due to her name. Bernstein consequently wrote the song to emulate Irish folk music. The score marking guides the Cops to sing “in Irish Tenor style,” and the libretto more specifically says “à la John McCormack.” Although I was not singing under that direction, in order to better understand the style of the song I did briefly research John McCormack so I could be familiar with the style. I also had guidance from Julian who was the musical director on this song. Earlier in the process I had been trying to lean for a more contemporary sound, not entirely abandoning the style of the show of course, but opting for a more balanced mix and contemporary diction. Julian suggested singing it more classically, and showed me the recording he had been referencing in his work on the song, which helped me strike a balance between our two visions. I settled on a lighter head-mix and some natural vibrato to create a more classical sound, which I feel provided a nice contrast from the Ruths, who sang with a speech-like quality more suited to the character. With a bit of guidance and collaboration I was able to create a final product on performance day that both I and the musical director could be happy with.

Video from March 9th rehearsal, company learning dance break of “Swing.”

Video from March 10th rehearsal, company rehearsing choreography for “Swing.”

Under the leadership of Kaz as our choreographer we explored some different movement styles in the show. Our biggest dance number in the piece was “Swing.” Kaz made clear from the very first rehearsal where we began learning the choreography that there was a particular style to the movement. She cited several points of inspiration including the style of Bob Fosse as well as Jerome Robbins’s choreography for West Side Story. This helped me to better understand her vision and on future projects I intend to draw similar stylistic parallels, even if just for myself, to help refine my own process. The style also required a unique combination of dynamic and sharp movement while still keeping the actual motion subtle and small. This is something that we as an ensemble had to explore throughout the rehearsal process in order to execute the movement quality in line with Kaz’s vision. The intention of the ensemble characters was also explained by Kaz and explored among the company, with the phrase “image you are being possessed by the spirit of jazz” being repeated often. This was essential to feeling the movement both as a dancer and an actor, and to give my character motivation for joining the dancing. Although this was our most dance-heavy number it was also extremely acting-driven which for me meant taking elements of my process when working through a song or monologue, like identifying objectives, and applying them to the dance. From this project I learned to combine my acting process with my dance process to create a more thorough approach to allow the execution of the choreography to grow beyond movement and have purpose. Our other substantial dance number was “Wrong Note Rag.” This consisted of eight individual moves that were done in succession of one another, with each partnered pair starting on a different move. When Kaz was choosing the eight dance moves, I was able to contribute by providing one of them. She explained that she was taking inspiration from social dancing and dance marathons from around the period during which the show is set. I contributed one of the three Charleston steps. We were also given the opportunity to come up with the eighth move within our own pairs. Annelise and I choreographed our eighth move together, keeping in mind Kaz’s vision and using our own background knowledge of dance to choose a move that was unique from the other seven but still felt period appropriate. I also contributed to the rehearsal process of this number by staying a few extra minutes to record the dancing for individual reviewing and for those who were unable to attend that rehearsal.

Video taken after March 20th rehearsal of Annelise and I demonstrating the eight dance moves for “Wrong Note Rag.”

“I Didn’t Make This War” by Jason Wolff, performed by Hayley Festeryga

During this project I had the privilege of working on a new song written by Jason Wolff. Jason composed a hypothetical addition to Leonard Bernstein’s unfinished musical based on the play The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder. When working on Jason’s song, “I Didn’t Make This War,” much of my process was the same as usual, and in a few ways it was entirely different. I first did my research on Thornton Wilder’s play, which required multiple rereadings of the synopsis as the plot takes many turns and makes commentary on several subjects. It was crucial to understand the plot as the new song was to take place at the end of the show and thus required the entire plot as context for what came before it. It was also important to understand the character, Sabina, and her state of mind as well as her relationship with Mr. Antrobus who is mentioned in the song. All of this research is something I integrate into my process as a standard step in my preparation, and would be conducted when working on previously existing work as well. For this process, since the song was brand new, there were other additional steps. When it comes to new work, a performer does not usually have the convenience of other recorded versions of the material to look to for inspiration for their own interpretation, but they do have the invaluable opportunity to discuss the work with the creator. Jason made it clear at the very beginning that there was a genre shift part way through the song, which would require from me another layer of nuance in my performance. The song was bookended with the same melodies at the beginning and end, which were to be sung in a more classical style, but mid-way through there was a transition into a jazz section. 

“I Didn’t Make This War,” beginning and ending parallel sections.

“I Didn’t Make This War” jazz section.

This required a lot of experimentation with my technique to ensure the song was stylistically accurate to the composer’s vision. Although the beginning and end were sung more classically, the song is still musical theatre, so I had to find a negotiation between two very different techniques to find a sound that fit the song. I kept the staple qualities of classical style, singing in head voice and with vibrato, but with gentler, more colloquial diction and slightly brighter vowels for a more musical theatre quality. The jazz section was a challenge. I have performed jazz very few times and most often as a saxophonist, so I really had to work hard to create a vocal sound that fit the stylized accompaniment. The writing of the song certainly helped in that section in particular as the piano part and vocal melodies were very evocative of the style, which supported my navigation of my own voice. I opted for a mix which I tried to imbue with the warmer colours that suit the style and that I recognize in the jazz singers that I am familiar with, such as Ella Fitzgerald and Diana Krall. Although it was somewhat out of my comfort zone, the opportunity to experiment always leads to interesting discoveries, and I was reminded that I would like to explore jazz singing more in the future. The final challenge of learning Jason’s song was what I can only call the Bernstein-isms. I have sung Jason’s music before, but in this particular instance he was writing in the style of Leonard Bernstein, which is very unique. I have sung Bernstein before as well, but since Jason captured his style so well it felt as though I was learning a brand new Leonard Bernstein piece with no history attached to it to support me. Difficult passages with accidentals and changes in tonality required me to exercise all of my musicianship skills to learn the piece accurately. The rehearsal process for this song was a whirlwind, which was yet another exciting challenge. A few days before we were set to rehearse the song for the first time, Jason sent me the sheet music and a track to learn the song with. Even after learning it over the weekend and thinking I had it solid, when I came to the first rehearsal nerves got the best of me and I made several mistakes. However, rehearsing it with Julian and Jason made me realize that I could really feel the difference between singing it with the track, which had both the piano accompaniment and the vocal line, and singing it with just Julian playing. I was then able to ask Jason to send a track with just piano that I could rehearse with. The main challenge was making myself familiar enough with the music that I could hear my notes within the piano part and create an understanding of the shifts in tonality. The next time I rehearsed with Jason and Julian the piece was much more solid. There was still a little bit of finessing I wanted to do on my own, such as finalizing my stylistic shifts, but I feel that once I had reached the performance day I had accomplished what I had wanted. I consider it a triumph that Julian and I each only made one mistake, and even more so that we were both able to stay together as a team in spite of them. The final performance also required an understanding of the acting style. During Thorton Wilder’s play the fourth wall is broken several times, and in this song the character Sabina speaks directly to the audience. In the performance I got to do what I could not quite do in rehearsal, which was sing directly to several audience members during the lines “It’s up to you to write the play, all of you who watched the play, you are all part of the play.” It was such a privilege to be asked to perform Jason’s piece, and I learned so much from working on it together.

One of the unique challenges of this project was that we are all peers working together with different levels of authority in the rehearsal room. On previous performance projects we have had the MA Directing students to lead rehearsal rooms, and although they were also our peers, there was a clearer delineation of who was running the rehearsal rooms and who had the last word on decisions regarding the piece. For this project we had Molly and Lucy as our directors and Kaz once again as choreographer. I feel that having worked with Kaz as our choreographer already on Our House, the dynamic was familiar and we fell easily into comfortable working patterns. There were a few instances where I was frustrated in rehearsals when Kaz was not given the company’s full attention, and when questions were asked repeatedly as people were not attentive to the answer the first time. This is an emotion that I had to reconcile with myself, being that despite my own particular way of working, this is a collaborative process and it is not my place as a member of the company to correct my fellow cast members, and it is important to trust that those in charge are capable artists and leaders. Working with MA Company as directors was a new experience. Luckily we had already been building an understanding of how to interact with student directors on previous projects, and any hiccups I found were very minute. I did have to remind myself a couple of times to give the directors space to work and be conscious of how I was contributing. I tried to put forward offers respectfully without undermining their authority. The running of a room isn’t only about the skill and authority of the person in charge, those in the cast must also be active participants in how they listen and respond.

As with any project there were successes and there were pitfalls along the way. Company members were once again very committed to using our independent rehearsal time to work through scenes and songs that needed the attention. At the end of the day, the show went on. Although I’m sure we all felt we could have done better, I feel that it is important to remember that I usually feel that way no matter what. That being said, it is also important to recognize what could have gone better. Unfortunately, we had two weeks at the beginning of the process without the leadership of our module coordinators. This of course was unavoidable, but left us without guidance at the very beginning of the process, which was something we had not experienced before. This led to some confusion about who to look to for leadership and led to the early tasks of casting and cutting the material taking far longer than expected. Due to a slower start and some uncertainty about what material we would be doing and certainly about who would be playing which parts, we ended up learning and practicing the songs “Wrong Note Rag” and “My Darlin’ Eileen” for several rehearsals. While both numbers were then well rehearsed, there were large portions particularly in “Wrong Note Rag” that were only sung by the characters Ruth and Eileen which meant that many people had been rehearsing material they did not need to know, and had not touched, nor were they conscious of, the material they did need to know. This also led to these two songs being put down for a while as they had been rehearsed so heavily, and needed to be partially re-learned later due to time being allocated to other songs that hadn’t yet been looked at. In future, a more balanced rehearsal schedule would be much more beneficial so that no songs feel overdone and need to be put aside, and also so that all the material can be worked on an equitable amount. I have come to realize through this process that not all rehearsal blocks are created equal, and it is very important that rehearsal plans are targeted and specific. We as a company would have benefitted from having a more secure plan for what we wanted to accomplish on Tuesday rehearsals where we had the benefit of the module coordinators perspectives on the project. I feel we may have been too focused on those rehearsals being the ones where we were in the performance space and had musical directors at our disposal, and made decisions on what we wanted to accomplish based on that rather than considering whether we needed help from our module leaders. In the end, it felt like we did pay for a misstep in the planning process, as it ended up feeling like we were running out of time and there was blocking, choreography, and music that received less attention than it ought to have. 

Through the music of Wonderful Town I was able to explore different styles and how to apply my knowledge to reach a shared vision between a performer and a music director. Through the dancing I learned to apply an actor’s lens to the choreography to create more dynamic, character driven movement. In working on Jason’s new song I learned some of the challenges of working on new work, and had the opportunity to work one-on-one with the composer of a song. This performance project also taught me more about the collective process when mounting a piece as a company. In future I know what I have learned will come in handy, and I also expect that I will discover much more as I continue my career.