music theatre

Currently I work both in London and on the Dingle Peninsula, on the west coast of Ireland, where a local theatre company recently commissioned a site-specific piece in the Irish language. Premiered as part of the May festival in Dingle, it’s led to an idea for a 2009 collaboration on a new music theatre piece combining traditional Irish song, music, and poetry.

My first music theatre work was for The Garden Venture at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It was an exploration of two things - the physical requirements/possibilities of live performance; and the dramatic possibilities/pitfalls of combining music, words and sung voice.

Combining music, words and live dramatic presentation can produce layered, structurally-driven work with unique possibilities for surprise and for simultaneous communication on different levels, conscious and unconscious, intellectual and emotional.

But get it wrong and you get unfocused story-telling, inaudible word-setting, self-conscious lyricism, and minimal intellectual content.

I believe that what’s needed is effective communication between writer and composer, or –as in the case of my upcoming piece - writer and musician. You don’t need to duplicate each other’s skills. You do need to understand each other’s intentions. You also need awareness of the technical complexities you’re setting up for singers, and the practicalities of production .

Ultimately, music theatre reaches an audience through heightened experience, which makes it one of the most potentially powerful of art forms.

I love its blending of disciplines and skills.