REVIEW: Conduct Us

Even though mornings are always rough, especially on Fridays, attending Conduct Us made waking up worth it. Contrary to what I assumed in my preview, the weather was very warm: suitable for the festive and relaxed atmosphere at the event. Warm cider and donuts were provided too, so I even got free breakfast with the free live music (not to mention the free “Ono. Oh, Yes!” stickers)! I’m sure it was a very welcoming sight for the students heading to and leaving the MLB as well. Surprisingly, though, most of the audience was actually adults: most likely because it was a Friday morning.

Out of the many song choices, I recall hearing the Carmen Suites and In the Hall of the Mountain King the most. To those not well-versed in classical music, these titles may sound very unfamiliar, but trust me that if you look it up you’ll definitely recognize the tunes. Although I myself didn’t get to conduct, if I had the opportunity to I would have chosen In the Hall of the Mountain King too for its fun and exhilarating melody (in addition to The Victors of course). It’s a piece that starts quiet and slow like you’re sneaking inside the halls of a castle before rapidly speeding up when the king spots you! It was a lot of fun to listen to the giggles of the conductor and musicians accompanied by the sight of the conductor aggressively waving the baton (which at Conduct us, was a clothespin).

One of my favorite performances had two friends take upon the challenge of conducting the Michigan Pops Orchestra as a duo. It was very creative and inspiring to see people so interested in participating and enjoying the event: it really emphasized the point that the event is simply to create good vibes. It’s hard not to say, though, that Ono’s conducting was the highlight. Saving the best for last, the event ended with The Victors. To be honest, it was funny to watch him be flustered about conducting. It was also very endearing that afterwards the cellists invited him to play their part on The Victors, which unfortunately Ono declined. I’m sure we’ll see him play the cello one day though (he does actually play cello and pretty well too).

If you didn’t have the opportunity to attend this Conduct Us or want to attend once more, there will be another one coming up soon. Unfortunately, I don’t think Santa will be coming to town again. You can also support the Pops Orchestra at their end of semester concerts!

PREVIEW: Home

Come see the interesting and ambitious idea to build a house on stage. The advertisement that this play will feature the making of a real house on stage was enough to make me get the ticket. However, there’s a deeper intention behind why this is being done: the play is supposed to be a question about what makes our home.
A home is an interesting place: it’s people’s most intimate place to rest, yet it doesn’t have to be a fixated area – remember the strange feeling you felt when you haven’t been to a place long but felt so relaxed and comfortable when you’re there. It’s also a reflection of taste-imagine the diversity of dorm rooms. Also, it can be threatened as well, because of social, political reasons, gentrification, or various reasons. Musing about the idea of home shows that it’s an interesting concept with lots of debates to be done on it- come see it done on the stage this Friday and Saturday(April 22th, 23th), at the Power center.

More information about the tickets can be found here.

REVIEW: Somebody’s Children

Somebody’s Children, a tale of children who lives just next door to the land of the fairy tale, Disney land, but whose life isn’t so fairy-tale-like, asks the audience whether it’s really ok that some people are actually living in sucn unstable homes and clearly provides the answer-it’s not Ok. The play is written by José Casas, assistant professor at the University of Michigan, and the actors were consisted of students in SMTD. The setting takes place in a run-down motel just outside Disneyland, and while their personal stories are told in beautifully and powerfully written vignettes, the sorrows in characeters’ lives expands into a problem of social structure by the contrast of their unsafe living place and children who laughs happily in Disneyland, which is so close to where they are living. The stage design made this interesting setting even more clear – there was a huge and gorgeous sign that spells out ‘Disneyland’ on the right side of the stage. Glowing white, the sign had an aura that made sure that the audience was not missing it, but the actual shape of Disneyland was not shown; as if symbolizing that the real Disneyland did not existed to children living in the motel. With this direct contrast, the deprived feeling and anger that the characters are feeling is strongly delivered while raising the point that they could have also been the careless children who have a great time in Disneyland, and highlighting the brutallity of reality in which the children were pushed into. They were somebody’s ‘Children’. Their sorrow is valid and raw, but they are children, who should be kept away from those things. Who are to protect them? the play asks.

I want to highlight the actor’s amazing performances – as mentioned before, the play mainly consited of vignettes, so the lines were symbolic and poetic, rather than straight to the point. The actors expressed out the emotion that the children is reciting the vignette so well; the sad but happy, nostelgic look of a girl who danced with her imaginary quinceañera dress, how two boys exchanged roles to between a police man that stopped them on a night’s walk to get some ice and the boys who got pinned down even though they did nothing wrong swiftly was just awestrucking. Production was amazing as well – using sitting actors as poles to put up police line was not only visually intersting but also symbolized that the children in the motel were deeply embedded in all the tragedy happening in the place.

In all, Somebody’s Children was a beautiful and socially-conscious play that used experimental lines-vignettes-to deliver the theme and did it, not over-dramatically but emotionally affluently. Highly recommend to anyone looking for performances that speaks about the modern world.

REVIEW: Hair

I love the musicals where the ensemble comes out to perform multiple numbers. ‘Hair’ was one of the musicals where they made fantastic use of the whole cast. Colorful, wild, and energetic, ‘Hair’ was an exciting and dramatic performance. The actors’ wide-ranged, fast movements that filled the stage throughout the whole performance created the vibrant, dizzy, and youthful vibe that the hippie community (“tribe”) was sharing.

I also want to applaud the stage design and the set. While the actor’s vibrant moves were supposed to be the main part of the show, the set was there to back the actors up and make their moves even more dramatic. The colorful lighting design and stage set design served different purposes depending on the scenes. The orange/green colored one with squiggly patterns added to the vibrant energy of the show, while the skeleton concrete building which was the main structure of the stage design shifted from imaginary homes to a spotlighted platform for people that needed emphasis by the spotlight during Claude’s hallucination where George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Scarlett O’Hara were introduced. The concrete-looking structure was designed neutrally enough to be perceived as a different location in each scene. It was a marker of space separation, which was highly necessary for this musical where the focus had to shift from one actor to another in a quick beat, and imagination and real-life interacted in the same space.

The most interesting moment for me was when Claude expressed his dilemma between his hippie identity and the call of the military after his hallucination. After he went through the hallucination passively, he, for the first time in the performance, got rid of the confidence of his hippie self and showed his vulnerability by being torn between his faith and duty. The change was most dramatic when he listed all the ‘practical’ and ‘proper’ job names such as lawyers and dentists. This is the part where he connected to being a real person in the performance, not a single-sided hippie-persona who is mercifully away from all the worries and woes of living. The actor playing this part made the change very clear.

Another interesting feature was how every actor nailed the expression of excitement and jolliness but added so much diversity to it. The people on stage felt like real people, not just people pretending to be constantly happy, which is impossible. If I ever get to see this performance again, I’ll be focusing on the actor’s expressions to catch the details of their actions.

Lastly, about the message: I think this musical spoke about how the ‘normality’ appraised by society could be dangerous. Through the dramatic contrast between the Hippie “tribe” ’s life and the ‘normal’ life of the audience, ‘Hair’ is speaking about how the dangerous concepts and urges could be appraised by being framed as ‘normal’.

REVIEW: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower

Concisely told a non-cliche, non-overdramatic tale of the apocalypse with a real and rich cultural background.

Parable of the Sower was a visually and sonically satisfying opera. Based on the Science fiction novel written by Octavia Butler, Toshi Reagon had created an apocalypse opera that tells the story concisely with limitedly-selected stage designs. The story follows a young teenager, Lauren, who questions the belief of her father, who is a professor and a figure in Baptist, while she lives in a protected community in her neighborhood and later set out on an uncertain journey to find a new home after an attack that destroys her community. Even though the story has quite a drama in it, it is not reflected in the stage design. Instead of visualizing the dramatic events in the plot on stage, the stage focused on three designs: a bench and a structure covered in white cloth to symbolize the peaceful, secure, closed area where Lauren and her community are staying, blackout with the spotlight only on Lauren’s face, drawing all attention on her and her tragic expression, when she sings that her father had not returned after going to work, and later on, an empty stage where people wondered all around it to emphasize the people’s wandering after they lost their community with an abstract painting that changed the shades according to the beat of the scene.

My main interest in viewing this production was 1) how the traditional genre of opera had connected with the new modern theme of Apocalypse and 2) how the musical heritage of African-Americans was integrated into the performance. For the first question, the production team has proven that operas do not have to be combined with traditional themes and with dresses with ruffles. Moreover, the emphasis on the songs was made clear with the limited stage designs. If the production team had tried to bring too much of what was going on stage to stage design, that would have diffused the audience’s attention, not to mention that those explosions and violence would have been hard to create satisfactorily. Instead, the production team went beyond by pointing out the resemblance between the Apocalyptic world and the current society – during the part where Toshi broke the fourth wall and invited the audience to sing along, the mention of some real and very familiar companies’ names made the connection clear. For the second part, some music definitely made clear the reference to Gospel and Rap. However, they went beyond to integrate different formats of music – rock, folk, and R&B, making this performance a culturally interesting work.

In all, this performance tosses an interesting food of thoughts and was visually and sonically satisfying in itself. I hope more performances like these will fill our stages.

REVIEW: Blue Bop Jazz Orchestra Winter Concert

When a band says they only rehearsed their set for two months, I do not expect the level of quality and pizzazz that I heard at the Blue Bop Jazz Orchestra’s Winter Concert last week.

The Blue Bop Jazz Orchestra is a student-run swing band at UM! As they warmed up in the Hussey Room at the Michigan League before the concert, I marveled at how they got the whole band to fit in such a tiny space, music stands and elbow room and all. The rhythm section was tucked away behind the piano so sadly from my seat I couldn’t see them very well. The advantage was that their sound truly filled the whole room.

They alternated between classic jazz pieces and holiday songs, lending each one a great interpretation of swing and mood. Complicated, syncopated rhythms are one of the trickiest parts of playing jazz music. The student leader/conductor of the band was also playing guitar, so the players only got a quiet count off at the beginning and then had to find their own way without a conductor for the rest of the piece. They did a fantastic job of it and had such a strong sense of rhythm with each other.

Improvisation is another defining element of jazz. I could never do improv but it’s one of my favorite things about jazz. It involves players spontaneously coming up with melodies over the chord progressions and accompaniment lines played by the rhythm section. It’s basically music composition on the spot!

The improv soloists were all so impressive. When a player was about to solo in the middle of a piece, they would stand up from their chair and rock the room for anywhere from a few seconds to a minute while the other sections backed them up, then sit back down to wild applause from the audience.

Overall I’m so glad I discovered this group and I cannot wait for their next concert. Their last piece of the evening was my favorite. I included a short clip of the beginning of it down below…let me know if you recognize the tune in the comments 🙂