Reworking Art

If you watched the Oscar’s this year, you might have heard about a woman named Adel Dazeem, or rather, Idina Menzel. Since just after the broadcast, Menzel has been starring in a new musical on Broadway called, If/Then, a show about the different paths that we take in life and how the choices we make now will affect us in the future. Shortly after the show opened in March, I was reading audience reviews of the show, and I found a similar theme among all of them. Many people said that the show had issues when it had its out-of-town tryout (a test production of the show before it goes to Broadway) a few months prior, and those issues were not addressed to the extent that they needed to be before coming to New York.

                                                                                          (Idina Menzel in If/Then - Source: Broadway.com)

                                               

Similarly, when I was home in Boston over the summer, I saw a show called Finding Neverland, which is currently having its out-of-town tryout there. I walked away from the show, which is based on the movie of the same name, thinking that it was a great concept, but a poor execution that will need a lot of work if it ever hopes to have success on the Great White Way. I worry that if the show does not undergo some major changes before its planned Broadway opening, it will suffer reviews very similar to If/Then.

 (Finding Neverland in Boston, MA - Source: Broadway.com) 

What I’m trying to get at here in discussing both of these shows is: how do the people most closely involved with a show - that is producers, composers, designers, etc – rework and improve it?

I know that when I write papers for school, at first I am able to make some large revisions that are fairly obvious. But as time goes once bigger changes have been made, I start to believe that my paper is damn near perfect to the point where my professor should give me an A without even reading it. But the more I make big changes and the more I think my paper is great based on those changes, I start to miss the little things that might still need tweaking. Speaking of that, I’m sure there is probably at least one grammatical error in this post that I missed that someone else will see.

My point is that one or two little weaknesses might not be a big deal, but a lot of little issues can collectively create large issues. I think the same phenomenon happens in creating theater. The creative team and producers get so involved and passionate about what they are doing, that they can’t see some necessary changes that need to be made. I am not at all blaming them for this, because this phenomenon is what I fear most in becoming a producer. I mean heck, if I do it when writing a three-page paper, I will most certainly do it when producing a full scale Broadway musical. So how do creative teams and producers avoid this trap, or at least try and overcome it?

                                                     (The creative team makes changes to Beautiful during rehearsal - Source: Broadwayworld.com)

Most importantly, the creative team needs to constantly bring in fresh eyes throughout the process of putting a show together. No more than students are urged to have a variety of people proofread their paper, creative teams should always have people who aren’t as invested on a day-to-day basis as they are, see the show and provide feedback. Feedback leads me to my next point, which is that the creative team needs to be open to feedback and accept criticism. Artists in particular have the most trouble with this because they feel so passionately about their ideas, which are often deeply personal. But if people don’t understand a scene, or certain jokes aren’t getting laughs, the creative team needs to appreciate the merit behind these criticisms and in some cases, act on them. I explore this, not only in the hope that people will listen but more so that one day when I am in their shoes, I will remember these principles myself.