Music and theatre collaboration experimentation

By Raven Lirio

Copy Editor

After six years, Pacific Lutheran University’s music and theater departments have teamed up once more for the annual spring musical— Sweeney Todd.

Back in October, the cast for Sweeney Todd was released, featuring students from various departments but mainly theater and music. This production joins together the two departments in wake of the new musical theater BFA program offered through PLU’s school of theater.

“Theater and dance became its own department for the first time,” said Tom Smith Artistic Director of Theater and Dance and professor of theater. “We wanted to reach out and work more closely with other departments for interdisciplinary collaborations.”

The last collaboration between these two departments in particular was back in 2013 during the production of “Kiss Me Kate” right after renovations for Eastvold Auditorium were completed.

“Since the debut, theater has done its own thing but we really wanted to collaborate on a big project in honor of the new BFA musical theater degree,” said James Brown Chair of Vocal studies and professor of music. “The music is fairly complex so we thought it would be a good chance for music and theater to collaborate.”

Both Smith and Brown are currently in charge of the production of Sweeney Todd, with theater handling all theatrical elements like lighting and costume design, props, and other production elements and music handling accompaniment and the orchestra.

Despite the idea of collaboration, an anonymous group of theater students felt that the audition process was very music centric. The audition process differed greatly from what most students in the department were used to and some believed that casting decisions were made mostly on music alone. The most notable differences were the lack of callbacks, the use of music from the musical for vocal auditions and the lack of a monologue which most productions at PLU request.

Junior Gunnar Johnson said that he felt the casting process “definitely felt more like a PLU opera audition.”

“I got the impression that there was a bias towards selecting more operatic performers, but I think this is an understandable bias,” said Johnson. “This show, Sweeney Todd, is nested in that gray area between musical theatre and opera.”

In response to these changes, Smith said that the auditioning process was tilted more heavily towards music for a couple of different reasons.

“The biggest challenge in the show was the on the difficulty of music,” said Smith. “Although the audition focused on music and less so on reading scenes, it makes perfect sense to have done that given this particular show compared to other shows where the music is easier. We sometimes change up audition based on the style of the show.”

Brown added that both theater and music decided in advance to take an operatic approach to auditions by asking students to sing songs from the musical itself, which is an operatic practice more than theater.

“In one way, the audition process was necessarily music centric since Sweeney Todd is almost operatic in its construction,” said Brown. “In the opera world, the auditions are through music from the show. Tom and I conferred because I wanted to make sure that something they wanted to do. After discussing, we decided for a more operatic casting approach because of the operatic music demand of Sweeney.”

Sean Kilen, a sophomore musical theater major, argued with some of his peers and believed the process to be “pretty normal.”

“From my experience, there was not many differences minus no dancing but Sweeney Todd isn’t very dance heavy,” said Kilen. “Because Sweeney todd is a more song heavy show, I understand why there was no monologue.”

Smith said the lack of monologue was a result of the amount of auditions we received.

“We had almost 70 people audition,” said Smith. If we had done singing and monologue work, we would have not had enough time to see as many students given the two nights of auditions.”

Smith also said that “most of the character is told through music versus dialogue” and they didn’t choose to do callbacks since they felt that they would not get anything extra from reading as opposed to their ability to act through song. He doesn’t anticipate that this will be the new norm, “it was just how it worked best for this particular production.”

Both Smith and Brown confirmed that casting for them remained extremely consistent with casting choices matching up perfectly between the two.

“In the casting process, I very purposefully kept quiet initially and asked Tom who do you see in this role,” said Brown. “100% of the time, I agreed. Theater really led the way in casting.”

While many students may have been disappointed with the results, Brown fully believes that collaboration in the future will be of benefit to both departments.

“The music students will learn more about performance and acting from theater students and that theater learns more about musicianship from the music students,” said Smith. “We all value collaboration and what I love most about PLU is the ability for anyone to be involved in any project on campus.”

Johnson, who is neither a music nor theater major, agreed with Brown.

“We are lucky at PLU to have a large talent pool from which to draw for shows,” said Johnson.

Kilen further adds that for musical theater, this collaboration is extremely important for the program.

“I hope that people will blend together and teach each other things,” said Kilen. “We should recognize that we are all artists and performers and we are all trying to make the world a happier place. As long as the audience is happy, we should be happy”

While rehearsals have not yet started, both Smith and Brown expressed their excitement to see how collaborations unfold for this production and in the future.

“Sweeney is really a groundbreaking piece in style and tone in its conception. It’s incredibly exciting we are rising to the challenge of producing such a piece like this and I’m excited about the future production,” said Brown.

There are currently no plans for collaboration beyond Sweeney set in stone, but both departments have expressed a great interest in further projects.

“What I hope in the future is that students recognize the importance of working with people outside of their own home department and that we can all learn from each other by all working on the same project,” said Smith.

“The only improvement I would like to see for the future is for collaboration to happen more often,” agreed Brown.

Editor’s Note

This group of students has chosen to remain anonymous in order to protect their identities within their department(s).

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