Adam Guettel: Myths and Him

In conversation with Ian Nisbet and Matthew Lockitt.

Multiple Tony® and Drama Desk® award-winning Adam Guettel, composer of Myths and Hymns, Floyd Collins,andThe Light In The Piazza, is coming to Australia for the first time this June. Guettel will be performing concerts in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, as well as holding master classes on song and lyric interpretation. Australian audiences will be among the first to hear songs from his new shows as well as highlights from his critically acclaimed catalogue. In anticipation of his arrival, Ian Nisbet and Matthew Lockitt discuss his writing process, Star Trek and The Princess Bride.

Stage Whispers: What is your writing process - Lyrics first? Music first? Both simultaneously?

Adam Guettel: I almost always write music first. In fact, I usually do nothing first, for quite a while. It's sort of like on the original Star Trek when they beam someone up. A sense of what a character wants to sound like begins to pixelate in my mind. Then it starts to take form in sound, music, formless music. The pixels multiply, the resolution grows. Eventually I have a person who wants to sing about something. Lyrics follow.

SW: Further to the first question, what, in your mind, is the point at which characters break in to song?

AG: I try to avoid breaking into song. Good book scenes already feel like music.

SW: What is your relationship to the book writer?

AG: I'm a top. Music needs to drive a musical. I try to choose projects which absolutely require music to be told. The alternative is a play with songs which is usually like putting a sail on a car. In a musical, music is the oxygen. Music is the verb. But story is even more important. Good story enables the songs. Without it we have nothing. Notes for no reason.

SW: How do you approach defining character in a song?

AG: In one of the projects I'm currently writing, MILLIONS, there are three leads: Damian, 9, Anthony, 13, and their father, Ronnie, who's in his late thirties. I want them to be distinct from each other. Their music and lyrics should be their own and yet they are part of a family and a shared predicament. So, while I want them to sound like themselves, I want them to sound like each other. The tools are tempo, meter, register, feel, melodic profile, harmonic density, etc., and of course, I try to give them each their own kind of lyrics, their own signature.

SW: How, if at all, has your grandfather, Richard Rodgers, influenced you? He unfortunately died while you were in your mid-teens but was it anything like Sondheim's relationship to Hammerstein?

AG: Sadly, I never got to talk about composing or making theater with my grandfather. He would have been happy to, I'm sure, I just wasn't ready. His work itself, though, has been a steady and stern taskmaster and a great influence. His rhetorical power in particular, the way he builds and lands a song, is incredible. Among all his other gifts.

SW: What have been your favourite and most challenging writing experiences?

AG: Whatever I'm writing now is always the hardest and the one that I love and hate the most. To feel something I'd already done was my favorite would feel like giving up.

SW: What do you think of the state of the art in an ever-dying industry?

AG: Live musical theater is never going to die. It can't even catch a cold. It's too uncommon an experience for an audience, increasingly so. Even when it's bad.

SW: What's the one best thing you've learnt along the way?

AG: Don't walk away from The Princess Bride over money.

AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES

SYDNEY

Adam Guettel in Concert

Thursday 6^th June at 7.30pm

Slide Lounge: 41 Oxford St, Darlinghurst NSW

Tickets and full details: www.slide.com.au or (02) 8915 1899

Public Master Class

Sunday 9^th June at 1pm

The Australian Institute of Music: 1-51 Foveaux St, Surry Hills NSW

Tickets and full details: www.moshtix.com.au or 1300 438 849

ADELAIDE CABARET FESTIVAL

Adam Guettel in Concert

Saturday 22^nd June at 2pm

The Banquet Room: Adelaide Festival Centre, King William Road, Adelaide SA

Tickets and full details: www.adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au or 131 246

Public Master Class

Saturday 22^nd June at 11am

The Artspace: Adelaide Festival Centre, King William Road, Adelaide SA

Tickets and full details: www.adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au or 131 246

MELBOURNE CABARET FESTIVAL

Adam Guettel in Concert

Saturday 29^th and Sunday 30^th June at 7.30pm

Chapel Off Chapel: 12 Little Chapel St, Prahran VIC 3181

Tickets and full details: www.melbournecabaret.com or 03 8290 7000

Public Master Class

Sunday 30^th June at 12pm

Chapel Off Chapel: 12 Little Chapel St, Prahran VIC 3181

Tickets and full details: www.melbournecabaret.com or 03 8290 7000