Last week, I was lucky enough to see an incredible production of Songs for a New World, a “theatrical song cycle” with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, at Ithaca College, produced by Ithaca Theatre Collective. I found it really moving and was able to ask director Charlie Crawford, music director Patrick Young, and assistant director Kaylah Marr some questions about their connection to the show and the process of working on it.
Audrey Lang: What made you interested in putting up Songs for a New World? What speaks to you about the show?
Charlie Crawfordand Patrick Young: [We] were attracted to Songs because of its notoriety as a song cycle combined with its obscurity as a piece of theatre. Most musical theatre enthusiasts have listened to the cast recording, but it’s not produced very often, so most people have not seen it staged. We saw this as an opportunity to put up a piece about which an audience would have no prior expectations. It’s a show about persevering despite seemingly impossible circumstances, which we really need right now.
AL: The first time Songs for a New World was produced was more than twenty years ago. What do you think makes it continue to resonate and be relevant and important now?
CC and PY: In this infamous year of 2016, when many media personalities are drumming up sound bytes of “F*ck 2016” this show is a vitally hopeful work. Every character fights as hard as they can to survive their circumstances, and that’s what we all need to do as global citizens today. Rhetoric is collapsing, political institutions are being flipped upside down, and somehow we are all expected to keep going to work and to buy groceries. Somehow we need to figure out how to keep trucking, and Songs tells the stories of people who did just that.
AL: What are some of the main challenges of staging a show that is so music-heavy? How did you track and maintain character personalities throughout the show?
Kaylah Marr (assistant director): For me it was hard to really tell how the characters really fit together, because the songs didn’t initially appear to have much order, and are about many different people rather than the same four. Charlie explained his basic understanding of how it all works together, I was … able to figure out the various arcs the characters go through and the significance of each song.
CC and PY: [We] had a tricky time reconciling the often speech-like lyrics with the soaring melodies. We wanted to strike a delicate balance between dreams and everyday life with our staging. The characters needed to walk seamlessly from one reality, or world, to another, and those traffic patterns took a long time to put on paper.
AL: What song or character speaks the most to you personally?
KM: I consistently cry a wee bit at the end of “World Was Dancing” if that counts.
CC: If I were a soprano, I’d want to be Woman 1 on and off the stage. Her beautiful vocal lines contrast with her crunchy romantic life, and she’s constantly figuring out how to love and be loved while staying true to herself.
PY: I was drawn to Woman 2 in “Stars and the Moon” because of her story. The idea of not knowing what you have until you miss it is a narrative we can all sympathize with.
