{"id":9109,"date":"2010-12-26T03:58:26","date_gmt":"2010-12-26T10:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=9109"},"modified":"2010-12-28T10:26:19","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T17:26:19","slug":"michael-mayer-at-the-stage-center-theatre-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=9109","title":{"rendered":"Michael Mayer at the Stage-Center Theatre Workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Michael Mayer in Nachmani Hall, Tel Aviv\/Photo: Ayelet Dekel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\u2019m as gay as they come, but I\u2019m not interested in camp,\u201d said Michael Mayer, the director who has been making waves with the sexy, hard rocking tsunami of Spring Awakening (2007) and American Idiot \u2013 the musical adaptation of the Green Day album currently showing on Broadway. Mayer was in Israel to conduct master classes at the Stage-Center International Theatre Workshop in Tel Aviv from December 22 \u2013 25, 2010. The classes were open to the press and public for observation \u2013 Midnight East was thrilled to be there as Mayer shared his work methods and perspective on musicals with Israeli actors, directors and other theatre professionals.<\/p>\n

Mayer began the day by discussing his recent experience bringing the Green Day album American Idiot to Broadway (Mayer is the musical\u2019s director and co-book writer with Billie Joe Armstrong), as part of his \u201cattempt to bring contemporary music into an old fashioned form\u2026to invest in the kinds of songs that real people listen to in their cars, on their iPODs and computers, not just theatre geeks who love show tunes.\u201d Mayer said he wanted to take \u201ccontemporary music and infuse those songs with a narrative impulse\u201d \u2013 later in the workshop, as he worked one on one with each participant, one could see this idea put into practice, as he searched for, and analyzed the threads of narrative within the songs.<\/p>\n

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Michael Mayer's master class at the Stage-Center Theatre Workshop in Tel Aviv: educational and fun too!\/Photo: Ayelet Dekel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAmerican Idiot was based on a 2004 album by Green Day, t\u201d said Mayer, \u201cthe album was inspired by 9\/11 and the dark, dark days of the G.W. Bush presidency. Green Day as a band was very much rooted in punk sensibilities, songs about masturbation, smoking pot and looking for pleasure in an unpleasant world \u2013 which all of us could relate to. [after 9\/11] They grew some kind of political balls and wrote some kind of response album, a battle cry and anthem to inspire a generation that had been completely neglected by the rest of the culture. I found it very moving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayer, who was working on a film at the time, said that he would listen to the album while driving to the set each day, \u201cexcited by the concept \u2013 I could basically stage an opera. There is one very thin story, it\u2019s easy to miss, but I spent a lot of time on it. It had a tensile strength that could incorporate other stories that related to it. I spoke to Billie Joe Armstrong, he was very taken with the fact that Spring Awakening did not look anything like Fiddler on the Roof or South Pacific. He was encouraged by the fact that I was doing something different and allowed me to start imagining.\u201d<\/p>\n

Billie Joe will join the cast of American Idiot for 50 performances as St. Jimmy, from January 1 to February 27, 2011 (details on the show\u2019s site), as Mayer says, \u201cto have a rock star of his caliber on the stage is unprecedented.\u201d\u00a0 The libretto of the musical, co-written by Billie Joe and Mayer, is essentially composed of the song lyrics. Mayer says that he went over the songs, \u201cseparating lyrics and giving them to different characters. Jesus [the song Jesus of Suburbia] became a dialogue as opposed to a monologue\u2026Billie Joe and I texted each other and collaborated on very little spoken dialogue, about two minutes in the whole show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Initially, says Mayer, \u201cBig Green Day fans were very skeptical. Green Day had been accused of selling out for going to a big label with Dookie. The band has a history of doing what they feel is the right thing for them artistically. They keep following their artistic impulses and sure enough fans keep coming along.\u201d When American Idiot came out as a musical on Broadway, Mayer says, \u201cLike or not, the fans knew they had to be there,\u201d adding that the success of the venture was that \u201cthe fans got it!\u201d and realized that the musical was not violating the integrity of Green Day\u2019s songs. Mayer was also happy to share the news that \u201cGreen Day started performing our version of their songs,\u201d performing in concert the arrangements that Tom Kitt created for the musical. Kitt worked as arranger on Green Day\u2019s most recent album, 21st Century Breakdown, won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album in 2010.<\/p>\n

When Mayer opened the discussion to the audience, he was asked by actor Natan Datner \u2013 Why haven\u2019t Broadway songs become hits in recent years? \u201cThis is my big mission,\u201d replied Mayer, \u201cRock made Broadway feel old hat from the 60s on\u2026Broadway is getting older and older, the old white people are starting to die. Today there is more of the population that grew up with rock music than any other point in time. The mission Mayer has already very successfully begun is to \u201cStart to tell our stories in the music we grew up on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayer mentioned other similar ventures, like Bono and the Edge teaming up to work on Spiderman, something that would have been \u201cunheard of ten years ago\u201d and said that Billie Joe has expressed interest in writing a musical. While it could signal a change in direction for Broadway, Mayer is not starry-eyed, saying, \u201cor, it could be just another blip on the screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The amazing Assor Elkayam provided the master class participants with musical accompaniment, moral support and inspiration\/Photo: Ayelet Dekel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The workshop participants were asked to prepare one song of their own choosing, and one from the Eagles\u2019 album Hotel California. Asked to explain the choice and whether this indicated a direction for a future project, Mayer replied, \u201cI wanted to work with material that is a little bit familiar and not completely contemporary. I found some stories, it felt more narrative\u2026[with] potential for different points of view\u2026It\u2019s high school for me, takes me back. I can imagine stories coming from the songs rather than fitting a story to the song.\u201d As for a potential future musical, he says, \u201cAfter Spring Awakening \u2013 you can imagine the crazy phone calls I\u2019ve gotten over the last few years, anybody jerking off, they come to me for that\u2026I could imagine Hotel California as an environment [for a musical].\u201d Mayer added that Glenn Fry came to see American Idiot and the two have had some discussions, saying, \u201cso that was a little seed planted in my brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayer\u2019s aim to make musicals that \u201cspeak to a new audience\u201d so that when they line up outside the theatre, they don\u2019t look like people who come to see a musical, \u201cthey just look like people – these are people going to have an experience that might challenge them, like the amazing dance piece called Bill<\/a> that I saw last night. Art that challenges you and doesn\u2019t just make you feel good about the status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Rivi Feldmesser-Yaron\/Photo: Ayelet Dekel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Stage-Center International Theatre Workshop was founded and is run by Rivi Feldmesser-Yaron, Mayer\u2019s visit was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m as gay as they come, but I\u2019m not interested in camp,\u201d said Michael Mayer, the director who has been making waves with the sexy, hard rocking tsunami of Spring Awakening (2007) and American Idiot \u2013 the musical adaptation of the Green Day album currently showing on Broadway. Mayer was in Israel to conduct master […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}