Studies in Musical Theatre - Volume 11, Issue 2, 2017

This editorial introduces issue 11.2 of Studies in Musical Theatre, a special issue focusing on international development opportunities for new music theatre. The editorial responds to the appointment of composers Daniel Ott and Manos Tsangaris as artistic directors of the 2016 Munich Biennale, an appointment that allowed them to introduce a curatorial approach to developing new work for the musical stage. The special issue itself proceeds to consider some of the work created for the 2016 Munich Biennale, alongside discussions of other comparable processes that have generated new music theatre work in various arenas.

The year 2016 marks the beginning of a new era in the history of one of the world’s leading festivals for new music theatre: the Munich Biennale. After Hans-Werner Henze (1988–94) and Peter Ruzicka (1996–2014), it will now be under the new joint artistic leadership of composers Daniel Ott and Manos Tsangaris. Their wide notion of what constitutes ‘music theatre’ and a radical rethinking of the conventions, hierarchies and chronologies of creating new original works forms an integral part of how they seek to innovate the festival and its artistic processes. This conversation seeks to explore their conceptual thinking for the festival and understanding of music theatre that drives them. The interview took place in November 2015, six months ahead of the launch of the Biennale 2016.

For the 2016 edition of the Münchener Biennale – Festival für Neues Musiktheater (‘Munich Biennale – Festival for New Music Theatre’), its new intendants Daniel Ott and Manos Tsangaris organized a series of preparatory workshops intended to promote the creation of new works. This essay explains the influence that this new form of curating process exerted on the gestation of the production The Navidson Records by Till Wyler von Ballmoos and Tassilo Tesche. Our focus is on investigating the working methods employed in the process of conception and rehearsal: the setting of The Navidson Records was from the start intended to avoid creating fixed performance procedures and instead to create an open space of potential. The author analyses the characteristics of that space with the aid of hypotheses derived from ritual theory. A central role here is played by the concept of liminality, which Victor Turner uses to describe the ritual borderline phase between two stable states. This article demonstrates the tendency of current composed theatre to undermine normative patterns of roles and organization by means of strategies of liminalization. The potential and the difficulties inherent in participant observation in a creative work process are also discussed here.

Teatr Weimar is a performing arts collective founded in 2003 and located in Malmö, Sweden. The group brings together playwrights, directors, actors, musicians and other artists to explore the boundaries and expressive potential of contemporary performing arts. The works of the collective are syntheses of traditional and experimental theatre, new music theatre, concert music, radiophonic art, video art and sound installations. The approach and practice of integrating different art forms and genres are vastly diverse. This article will discuss a number of terms, concepts and methods that have emerged out of the body of works as essential tools for the collaborative artistic processes.

This article offers an analysis of the function of listening in the musical practice of the Vietnamese/Swedish group The Six Tones, based on video documentation recorded between 2006 and 2011. A discussion of the function of openness, drawing on Gadamer, and the distinction between ‘musical’ and ‘musicianly’ listening suggested by Pierre Schaeffer provides the ground for an understanding of mutual learning in cross-cultural artistic practice. Östersjö and Nguyễn identify the same principles in the making of two music theatre works, Idioms (2010–11) and Arrival Cities: Hanoi (2014–15) together with the Swedish playwright and director Jörgen Dahlqvist. The authors, who are both performers in the group, argue that true listening must build on trust that also allows the participating artists to accept the opacity of the other. The ethics implied by the notion of the ‘right to opacity’ also become the ground for a discussion of a politics of listening. Here, the authors claim, following Attali, that the political dimensions of intercultural musical practice can be traced in the hybridity that characterizes the artistic output.

This article reflects on the idea of the music score as a wearable theatrical prop, an idea able both to envisage theatrical gestures as the outgrowth of music notation and epitomize the intangibility of music by means of ‘ostented’ dramaturgical objects. Through an exploration of Touch-less: Wearable Graphic Scores for One Acting Singer, a self-composed work, this article discusses the compositional and aesthetic processes that emerge from the combination of a graphically notated score and the idea of wearable-score-prop within the framework of new music theatre, a combination that eventually leads toward an appreciation of the score-theatre. The discussion takes into consideration relevant examples and concepts put forward by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio Kagel and Sylvano Bussotti. Similarly, it proposes connections between the idea of score-prop and the aesthetic properties of the calligram.

As a composer/performer with a background in practice as research, I propose a study of two works in progress, The Dressing Room (2014–) and Beyonsense (2015–), both of which are at different stages of ‘completion’ and ongoing in terms of their performance history. My approach combines perspectives taken from both the creative process and the performative experience, together with a more reflective position of analysis regarding their future integration. This discussion is placed within a context that argues for the vital role played by festivals, arts organizations and academic institutions in facilitating the presentation of new forms of music theatre that are at different stages of development. Drawing on my own experience of these, I evaluate the importance of a work’s exposure, as a work-in-the-making, to both colleagues and cross-disciplinary audiences alike.

This article considers alternative creative, collaborative and professional possibilities for the classically trained singer in current music theatre practice. Through the lens of three self-created, professionally produced music theatre pieces, the article examines the agential development of the performer/creator, both in terms of how creative responsibility intersects with creative agency, and with regard to how external industry factors can influence and affect creative and professional agency.

In this article, kungfu and jazz – performing art forms that originated from the racial Others – will be used as shorthand for two concurrent, interdependent and dialectically opposing cultural processes: one that prioritizes boundary formation or reinforcement, and one that favours boundary elimination or crossing. I analyse the processes of Kungfu and Jazz in the case of Ho’s Voice of the Dragon (1997–2006) and explore the paradoxical process of negotiating between the two, Kungfu and Jazz, in Ho’s creation of a new genre: ‘manga opera’. I propose that in a world of increasing global encounters, racial and ethnic multiplicities, and political and cultural complexities, Kungfu/Jazz provides a politically progressive and transgressive approach to the process of boundary-conscious musical theatre-making.

The Golden Apple, book and lyrics by John Latouche, music by Jerome Moross, directed by Michael Berresse, New York City Center, New York, May 2017

The Shuberts and their passing shows: The untold tale of Ziegfeld’s rivals, Jonas Westover (2016)

New York: Oxford University Press, 281 pp.,

ISBN: 978-0-19-021923-9, h/bk, £25.99

Her turn on stage: The role of women in musical theatre, Grace Barnes (2015)

Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 210 pp., ISBN: 9780786498611, p/bk, $45.00 (United States)

The Oxford handbook of the British musical, Robert Gordon and Olaf Jubin (Eds) (2017)

New York: Oxford University Press, 776 pp., ISBN: 9780199988747, h/bk, £97