Tuesday 16 November 2010

Chris Port Blog #1: Marty Gull - Open Invitation for Collaboration on a New Musical Art Form - Link to Central School of Speech and Drama

© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk
All rights reserved 

I'm currently writing a first draft for a musical. It's called Marty Gull (Marty[r] Gull[ible]). It's a surreal, satirical, tragicomic piece of musical political theatre.

Please see: 

Blog #56: Marty Gull Concept Pictures
Blog #57: Marty Gull Complete Libretto 
Blog #61: Marty Gull Playscript Extracts 

Marty Gull is an idealistic teacher at odds with the system. He tries to help a talented student who seems to be timid and drifting, but she seems troubled by something she won't talk about. She and her friend may be having an affair with their music teacher, Bob Ratner, who is constantly luring her away from her exam studies. Marty tries to help her get into Drama school, but his good intentions are maliciously twisted by the gossips. Cost-cutting management take advantage of this and he is isolated, exhausted and bullied into a near breakdown

While recovering, an apparent chance meeting leads him deeper into a dark underworld of paranoia. Once normal people seem to behave strangely, as if concealing a sinister secret. No-one will talk about what has been going on behind his back. Has he stumbled into a conspiracy? Abandoned by his friends, betrayed by his colleagues, lied about by his students and spied upon by the management, slowly but surely he is bullied into suicide by the starry-eyed bitchiness of musical theatre.

A cautionary tale of school politics, backstabbing egos and the state of the nation...

I'm writing the first draft lyrics using a medley of melodies in my head from well-known musicals. Where possible, I have left clues as to the original source material. As I get started on the (hopefully) witty and lacerating dialogue, I would like to extend an open invitation to all budding musicians and composers to submit their own musical interpretations. I would also welcome interest from actors (age 20-25) who can sing and dance (no starlets need apply, thank you!).

The plan is to develop a new collaborative form of musical theatre. Once we get a good working team of lyricists, composers, musicians, actors and designers together we can decide on the final evolution of the piece and arrange copyright accordingly. I would like to submit or even take the piece to my alma mater (The Central School of Speech and Drama) as a work-in-progress and, from this, publish a 'guerrilla handbook' on How To Write A Revenge Musical containing drafts, notes, problems and suggestions for other teachers and students who may wish to try something similar. Ultimately, I would be interested in using all of this as a springboard for a thesis on new art forms and musical theatre. But, most of all, I would love to have the opportunity of working with kind, creative and talented people.

If you like the sound of any of this, please post a comment on my blog at http://martygull.blogspot.com/ or get in touch with me through one of the following methods:

Facebook

email
I'll post notes as draft stuff occurs to me (please feel free to skip the academic intellectual stuff.) 

Keywords 

Academic
Act
Acting
Actor
Actress
Architects
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Art form
Artistic
Audition
Backstabbing
Betrayal
Bitchiness
Bully
Bullying
Central School of Speech and Drama
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Management
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Music
Musical
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Musicians
Pastiche
Paranoia
Parody
Perform
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Poem
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Poetry
Political
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School
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Sing
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Stage
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Student
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Underworld
Writing


'...And Marty never understood her
He always said she was good and kind
And he can see no evil
‘Cause there is no evil
What evil lurks within a girl’s mind...'?

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