Sparks from the Fire

Bonnie Guidry, Linda Lawley, Marion Ramsey, Pamela Pentony

This is Part 6 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

London:

The plane ride to London was a blast.  An excited cast of twenty some gorgeous theatricals hangin’ over the seats, yellin’ and laughin’ back and forth and so excited about flyin’ to London.

I always kept my guitar in the overhead when I traveled and at one point I took it out and we serenaded the passengers for about a half hour with songs from the show.  At one point half the ladies were struttin’ up and down the aisle singin’ and doin’ their makeshift choreography to a bewildered, but totally entertained and enthralled audience of passengers.

A number of those people on that flight even came to see the show and came backstage afterwards to reminisce about that memorable flight.  Two months later on the flight back to NYC everyone slept the whole way home.

Theater in London is a whole different world than in the U.S.  There, there is history – a rich deep culture to draw from that the people – especially London’s theater lovers – are proud of and most knowledgeable.  After all we were now doing our classic show in the home city of one Will Shakespeare and this was a fact that meant so much to all the members of our cast.

Also at the time, Vanessa Redgrave was largely considered to be the leading actress in the Western world and everyone knew she lived in London, and on top of that her pictures adorned the walls of the Old Vic where she had starred in many of their productions.  So the girls were always a-buzz about Vanessa this and Vanessa that.

There was also some nervous speculation by all of us Americans as to how our show would be accepted in London, this great city of culture and theatrical history.  Would they put us down for being American and trivial?  Would they castigate us for turning Euripides masterpiece into a rock opera?  Would they turn up their British noses to us? (more…)

This is Part 5 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

 Casting:

The casting of Iphigenia would be problematic because Doug Dyer, the director, and I had decided that only three people could speak in the piece – Agamemnon, played by Manu Topou who had played the king in the movie “Hawaii” that at the time was so popular, Clytemnestra, played by Madge Sinclair, who you might remember from long-running stint in the 1980s as nurse Ernestine Shoop on the series Trapper John, M.D. opposite Pernell Roberts.  She received three Emmy nominations for her work on that show, or perhaps in 1988, she played Queen Aoleon opposite James Earl Jones‘ King Jaffe Joffer in the Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America.  Achilles was first played by a young Tommy Lee Jones.

All three were classically trained actors, perfect for the roles and would not sing in the show, but would handle the minimal Euripidean dialogue with aplomb.

The tough casting choice, however, was Iphigenia.  She would have to be a young, beautiful rock/pop/folk singer with powerful acting chops and she would have minimal dialogue, but a tremendous role to sing.  And we wanted a real authentic rock n’ roller – not some theater chick who thought she was hip enough to do it.  We also needed to cast 12 ladies in waiting to be the Greek chorus.

We saw some wonderful talent.  In that day everyone wanted to work at The Public, so the turnout was fantastic.  We easily cast our Greek chorus with 12 of the top twenty-something ladies in NYC.  I was absolutely thrilled with the potential of that chorus and could not wait to get into rehearsal.

But we could not find our Iphigenia.

Finally Joe Papp told us to go into rehearsal without our leading lady for he suspected that she would emerge in the course of our rehearsals from our wondrous chorus.  When Joe said it; you did it, and so that’s what we did.

In the first week of rehearsals I taught only the music.  At the end of each day Doug, Joe and I would meet and discuss our leading candidate for our starring role based on who had been our favorite that day.  And at the end of each day we had a different choice.  By the end of the week we were no further in casting our lead than we were on the first day of rehearsal.  Then Joe had a fascinating idea. (more…)

Joe Papp

This is Part 4 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

One afternoon about a year into my tenure as composer-in-residence at The Public Theater, Joe Papp called me into his office, sat me down and announced, “It’s time you did a work of your own – a musical.  As part of your education, I’m going to give you the works of three playwrights.  Read their plays and choose one that you think you can convert into a musical.”

He went on, “By doing this, you will have the opportunity to both study and work with the masters.  Have it finished in six months.”  Whew!  A rather heady assignment for a 26-year old man-child who was already pretty busy with everybody else’s works as well.

The three playwrights he gave me were William Shakespeare, Aristophanes and Euripides.  Fortunately, I had aced a terrific course in college on the works of Shakespeare, so I did not have to read all his plays, so I went back to my study notes and picked a few possibilities.  The trouble, of course, with Shakespeare was the language.  It would have to be a modernization of his language for a musical and who would want to mess with the master’s words.  It would be like writing pop songs from the works of Beethoven.

So I turned to the Greeks.  Long story short, after about a month of plowing through Aristophanes, I turned to Euripides who I had barely even heard of.  There I found not only a master playwright, but one of the great creators of the art of the playwright and a weaver of tales that have fascinated me since.

Weeks later I returned to Joe’s office and announced that I had, at last, made my choice.  It would be Euripides’ Iphigenia In Aulis, the classic story of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and how, when King Agamemnon, mired with his army on the shores of Aulis because he had no wind to sail his ships to Troy to bring Helen back, decided to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods to get his necessary wind.  He then plans a ruse and orders his queen, Clytemnestra, to Aulis with Iphigenia in tow for she is, he lies, to marry Achilles, his greatest of warriors.  Settin’ her up to let her down and definitely a tragedy!

But musicals are rarely tragedies – usually they have happy endings – so it was my choice to write the show as an opera, and a rock opera to boot. (more…)

This is Part 3 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

The summer before my senior year in college I, on a whim, auditioned for a job in the chorus of the St. Louis Muny Opera, the largest outdoor summer stock musical theater in America.  I don’t know why it was called “Opera”, as far as I know they never did anything other than musicals.

It’s an entirely different story, but, as luck would have it, I got the job.  There I learned about musicals, having the opportunity to play and understudy in 10 shows a summer for two summers.

I sat in between two male dancers in the dressing room in assigned positions for both summers and for the first time in my life, got to know and became fast friends with two gay men – one, Michael Shawn, who later became my choreographer for several shows that I wrote and directed in NYC and at whose bedside I sat as he died of AIDS.  The other, Nicholas Dante, like Mike, went on to be a working Broadway dancer and was always dabbling with playwriting.

One evening, after the show in St. Louis that first summer, Nick invited me to participate in a reading of one of his plays.  I gladly accepted, knowing that I would be attending the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater that next fall in NYC and I thought that I might get a little more experience under my belt.

I don’t remember much about the reading – the play was OK and the food was much better.  I do remember that we all got to play actors auditioning for a musical and that’s about it.

Years later, when I was Composer-In-Residence at The Public Theater, Joe Papp asked me to work with the director of a new experimental piece that was work-shopping in one of his theaters.  It seemed that the composer was in Hollywood finishing a film-scoring job and would not be able to attend auditions, so Joe asked me if I would help the director run auditions and sit in for the composer.  Of course I agreed.

The day of auditioning started and just before we saw our first victim, in walks my old pal Nicholas Dante.  I said, “Hey Nicky, what are you doing here?”  He answered, “Oh, this is my play – you know, the one we did the reading of that night back at the Muny in St. Louis.”  He had actually gotten that show on and now was work-shopping it at the most powerful developmental theater in America.  I was so happy for him to have such a lucky break.

In the ensuing years I was to become even happier for my old pal Nick, for the director of that workshop was Michael Bennett, the composer who I subbed for was Marvin Hamlisch, and the show was A Chorus Line. (more…)

Peter Link at the Delacourt Theater

This is Part 2 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

As a studied musician I never really had much formal training.  Oh, as a kid I learned my drum rudiments, I took a couple of years of piano lessons resisting nearly every practice session with dreams of baseball until my mom regrettably let me stop.

I picked up the guitar in college knowing that there just had to be more to music than just backbeat drumming.  I was the student choir director under my mentor, Jack Eyerly, throughout high school and college, and I also took a course while at the University of Virginia my freshman year in music composition from an extremely boring graduate student teacher that I nearly flunked because I rarely knew what key I was in.

So here I was suddenly serving as composer-in-residence at America’s greatest developmental theater in the 70s cranking out show after show and learning my theater craft on the job.

Joe Papp introduced me to a strange, quirky young ex-Jesuit priest who had just started directing at The Public Theater named AJ Antoon.  He was to become my favorite collaborator and best friend for many years and together we were to create a surprising number of hit shows.  One of the first projects that we worked on together was Wm Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing which AJ set gracefully and brilliantly into the period of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

We staged the show first at the NY Shakespeare Festival’s Delacourt out-of-doors Theater in Central Park where it became the hit of the summer, then moved it to Broadway in the fall where it then got even better reviews and became the longest running Shakespeare play to ever run on Broadway.  It was also produced by Joe Papp for television in a 3-hour IBM special that has played perennially year after year since then.

I wrote a few songs for the show and over an hour’s worth of underscoring that gave the show an almost musical quality and, in fact, I was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Composer for a musical even though the show was definitely not a musical.

It was the most graceful and smooth experience I ever had in the theater.  It was, for me, my penultimate experience.  A great play, a terrific concept by a brilliant young director at the height of his powers and a wondrous cast led by a young Sam Waterston.

Working at Shakespeare in the Park was always the best of times.  The theater, sponsored by NYC, was hugely supported by the city and would sell out every night because the tickets were free, so whatever was produced would be appreciated by the astute Shakespeare loving audience.  The setting of the theater by the lake in Central Park is gorgeous and families would bring picnic dinners to the park and eat pre-show and enjoy the good ol’ summertime. (more…)

A Younger Peter Link

I have to blame my father.  He got me started on the drums at the age of 6.  It was my passion as a youth and I never had to be told to go practice.  So I grew up inside the rhythm.  A solid start.

And then there was Jack Eyerly, my first real mentor and our chorus director at Principia Upper School.  He grabbed me up and taught me, stimulated me, believed in me.  And he pushed me, though he never had to push hard.  He mostly helped me see that I could do it – that I had real talent.

And then there was Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, my life teacher, the man who taught me how to be a creator, how to get inside the character, how to stimulate the emotions, how to concretize the moments, how to hook on to the muse.  He was the best teacher I ever had – besides life.

And finally I was thrust out into the world – age 23, green, naïve, … extremely lucky.

I wrote, with a partner, named C.C. Courtney, an Off-Broadway musical called Salvation.  He wrote book and lyrics and I wrote the music.  We both starred in the show.  It was in the heyday of Off-Broadway when the real action was in the small theaters and Broadway was stale and confused.  Hair was pretty much the only thing happenin’ and the rock musical was very unrealized.  Salvation was an 8-character rock musical that was what one might call “anti-religious”.  Anti organized religion really.

The show was meant to be revolutionary, to slap the audience in the face following in the footsteps of Hair.  It did, and the audience and the critics loved it.  Looking back, it was definitely sophomoric and not a piece that I’m proud of.  But it was Off-Broadway’s biggest hit and ran for 2 years and played in 11 different countries.  Out of the show came a song that was a million-selling hit and #1 on the Billboard Pop charts in the summer of 1970.  It’s ridiculously long title broke all the rules, but also gathered a strange kind of attention – If You Let Me Make Love To You Then Why Can’t I Touch You?

It gave me my start.  It set me up immediately as a NY composer for the theater.  Suddenly I was a Broadway composer and I probably had not seen more than 10 musicals in my life.  I thought, “Boy, this is easy!  Write some songs, be a star, make lots of money.”

Then came the fall.  With my same partner I wrote another musical called Earl Of Ruston.  My partner and I disagreed throughout the experience and actually broke up before opening night, this time on Broadway.  I hated the show and walked away from it.  He was the star and the director, the book writer and the lyricist and held the power this time.  I wanted no part of what I thought was a mess.  The critics agreed.  It flopped and ran for just 4 performances.

My career looked to be short lived. (more…)

Snoopy, the famous dog, of Peanuts renown and brilliant creation of Charles M. Schulz, was famous, among many reasons, in particular for his writer’s block.  Who hasn’t giggled understandingly at the quizzical look on Snoopy’s face wondering what to write after his famous opening line “It was a dark and stormy night …” as he set out upon the writing of his novel perched upon his doghouse roof with his miniature typewriter?

We laugh because we so understand the moment.  It’s a moment that has happened to each of us as we set upon a creative task.  It is a problem of great renown for writers and creators the world over.  For most it’s very real and very much a mystery.  “Why, when I so want to create, does nothing come?  Where is the muse?  On vacation?  How do I get started?

Well, I’m here to tell ya’ that if you’ve suffered from this before, your problems are now over because writer’s block is simply not real.  It’s nothing more than a misunderstanding of the creative process.

A dear friend wrote me just the other day seeking help on just such a thing only he called it “writer’s cramp”.  No matter what you call it, cramp, block or just creative anxiety, it’s all the same big nothing.

Wikipedia states, “Writer’s block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some “blocked” writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers. Throughout history writer’s block has been a documented problem.^[1] Professionals who have struggled with the affliction include author F. Scott Fitzgerald^[2] and pop culture cartoonist Charles M. Schulz.^[3]It can manifest as the affected writer viewing their work as inferior or unsuitable, when in fact it could be the opposite. “

Writer’s Block

Interesting that Charles M. Schulz is one of the famous sufferers.

Causes: Again from Wiki, “Writer’s block may have many or several causes. Some are essentially creative problems that originate within an author’s work itself. A writer may run out of inspiration. The writer may be greatly distracted and feel he or she may have something that needs to be done beforehand. A project may be fundamentally misconceived, or beyond the author’s experience or ability.”

I say, “Bah!” (more…)

American Songwriter Magazine’s music critic and blogger, Paul Zollo, has just thrilled us all with his comprehensive and beautifully written rave review of our CD, Goin’ Home – On Heaven and Beyond. 

It appears in American Songwriter Magazine and is most easily found at their website.  You can go here: http://www.americansongwriter.com/category/blogz/paul-zollo-blogz/
to read it, or read it below printed in its entirety.

Having such a powerful review as this will certainly give us tremendous impetus going forward.  It’s long, but incredibly fulfilling.

I just thought that each of you would like to catch up and hear the good news.

REVIEW: Goin Home

AmericanSongwriter.com
BlueRailroad.com

•May 11, 2012

 Goin’ Home
On Heaven And Beyond
Peter Link

By PAUL ZOLLO

It’s a rare and timeless moment, a moment of grace, a drive-off-the-road-and-stop-the-car kind of moment. A time to turn off the engine and listen. It’s not something people do a lot of anymore; even when people listen to music nowadays, usually it’s while doing many other things. But music like this – and sung by singers like this – well, it’s worth taking a moment. This is something inspirational, something brave and new. It’s called Goin‘ Home. 

It sounds wrong, somehow, to characterize this as a celebration of death, but that is what it is: a celebration of the natural grace of death in our lives. It’s about rising above the fear all humans share regarding this final transition. It’s a cycle of songs about the enduring spirit of man, the spirit that lives on beyond our bodies do, the eternal spirit that exists beyond the easy grasp of words, but lives always in music.

The brainchild of Tony Award-nominated songwriter-producer-singer Peter Link, Goin’ Home is a phenomenal celebration of life really, more than death itself – but within this cycle there exists an elegant and inspirational acceptance of death, and ways by which we can realize a true acceptance of death. It’s an album which crystallizes the idea that death is not the end, but a birth into the beyond. Bravely creating a whole song cycle on a subject that few, with the exception of Lou Reed and Jacques Brel, have approached so fully, Peter Link has created a remarkable exploration of human finality, reflecting musically the full gamut of emotion experienced by those approaching death and those caring for and ultimately losing loved ones. There are sad songs here and  joyful ones, and it’s in that span of emotion that the genuine experience of death comes alive. This is not an easy road to walk, but Link’s songs and spirit go a long way in making you feel less lonely walking it.

Because as well all know, no matter how progressively spiritual one’s ideas about death might be, when the time comes – either for a loved one or for yourself – it’s frightening. It’s more frightening than anything, an encounter with the unknown in the most extreme way humans experience. This collection of songs is directed at those at death’s door, forced to integrate lifelong beliefs with an acceptance of the inexorable reality of this transition, and also directed at those forced to confront one of life’s toughest challenges: helping loved ones make a peaceful, fearless transition. (more…)