| THE AMERICAN DREAM @ NEXT
by Jason Loewith on 6/27/2007 06:13:00 PM
I've just gotten off the phone with some of the country's most talented and exciting music theater composers - two-time Tony nominee Michael John La Chiusa (Marie Christine, The Wild Party, and many more), Obie-winner Michael Friedman (whose production of Gone Missing was just reviewed in today's New York Times; he also scored the starry Romeo and Juliet in the Park), Jeff-winner Kevin O'Donnell, and our own Josh Schmidt of Adding Machine fame.
We were talking about the American Dream in preparation for our February '08 show, The American Dream Songbook. We'll be producing Leonard Bernstein's little-heard short opera Trouble in Tahiti as the first act of the show; the second act consists of four new songs on the subject of the American Dream by those amazing composers.
Why the American Dream? Bernstein's 40-minute opera was written in 1951, and is a sharp and sassy satire of what he saw as the American Dream. As the trio snappily sings in the show:
Lovely day! Lovely life.
Happily married; sweet little son;
Family picture second to none.
It's a wonderful life!
Up-to-date kitchen, washing machine,
Colorful bathrooms, and LIFE magazine,
And a little white house in Brookline!
(You can watch a clip of this on YouTube from the 2001 movie of Tahiti.)
If this was Bernstein's vision of the American Dream in 1951 - a vision he ultimately found to be a hollow sham - how has the dream changed in 50+ years?
Surely, individuals from across the globe still flock to the U.S. for a shot at the American Dream, but just what is it nowadays? Some of the interesting points our composers brought up this morning were:
-When asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?", a majority of 17-year olds now answer, "Famous"... and 70% of those think they will be.
-Starting in the late 80s and early 90s, most Gen Xers believed they'd end up less prosperous than their parents.
-Suburbia as a safe haven was created by the light-rail system in the post-war years; today, the internet is our railroad, and our "communities" are virtual.
Where will these thoughts lead musically?
And more importantly, what do YOU think the American Dream is today? (Who knows... your answer might end up in song!)Labels: American Dream
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As we know it, of course, the classic American dream has long disappeared. It is now, I think, a much more intimate and individual concept, where the priority for happiness is very personal and, unfortunately, very materialistic. And those in my own generation, the Boomers, have no one to blame but ourselves... So how can we really be surprised?
Now having said that, there is one thing within our "Dream" that we all have in common -- the desire to be in a better place than those who came before. Songs that really flesh this idea out will be the ones that reflect accurately the mores of the moment in which they are written. We ALL have dreams; what we often forget is the price we sometimes have to pay to see their realization. There, to me, is where telling that story in musical terms will go.
Ronald Keaton
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