We Actually Stage Our Staged Shows
Today and yesterday I've listened to the announcers on my local radio station interviewing one or another conductor whose group is presenting a "concert version" of a Broadway show. "Oklahoma!" was one, "Follies" was the other.
They explain that their productions are "fully staged", but done without sets and costumes. Oh, and without most of the dialogue, at least for "Follies". In what way is that "fully staged"? I guess it means that the singers and the orchestra are on the stage, perhaps. Entirely, fully on the stage, of course.
The "Oklahoma!" conductor made a few assertions that I wish to contest. One was when he described the title song of "Oklahoma!" as "very difficult" writing for the chorus. Well, that's a lot of bunk unless his chorus is really not very good. It's written in a few parts–harmony!–but they are very far from difficult to sing. Our theatre troupe (that is, St. Matthew's Musical Theatre Troupe: our Facebook page) managed it quite easily several years ago, in fact, and we've sung some far more challenging arrangements than those.
While touting his full orchestra (for his "fully staged performance"), he remarked that most musical performances these days had "a couple of guys on synthesizers back stage" playing the music.
Excuse me! All of our shows are actually fully staged, you know, with costumes and sets and spoken dialog, and with actual orchestras of actual musicians playing actual live music during the performances.
Sheesh. We are indeed an amateur group of performers, but we've been doing two shows every year for 14 years, and we've learned a thing or two by now thank you. We also can sing songs with more than two parts and tap dance at the same time!
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on Thursday, 11 February 2010 at 09.54
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Oh your post is SO right! Amateur performers (amateur in the sense that we have a day job and don't get paid a salary for entertaining an audience) get a raw deal sometimes from those involved in professional theatre. I am fortunate enough to belong to three groups whose productions are more often than not raved about by our audiences, and yet there are always those who hark back to comments such as 'they were so professional' – why on earth shouldn't we put as much effort as a paid performer would into what is just our hobby – after all, we're doing it for fun, it's not just a job! And you're right about Oklahoma! It's not at all hard to sing, even the challenge of Sondheim, widely regarded as 'difficult' by some groups, has been presented by us to an appreciative audience (Company, Sweeney Todd, Follies and A Little Night Music). Keep up the tap dancing!