NYMF, rehearsals, and the evolution of a song

So, I recently attended a snippet of a rehearsal for the upcoming NYMF show, Love Sucks. It is a sexy, new, punk rock musical, which uses the premise of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost as a springboard for this modern day story. The musical is set in the burgeoning underground scene of the 1970's East Village. Two competing rock bands, The Molotovs (all-male), and The Guttersnipes (all-female), swear off love because they've lost too many musicians to jealous lovers. In order to stay focused on the music, each band member can have sex with someone only three times. But when the guys and girls meet up, their rule comes back to bite them in the ass.

I watched them rehearse one of the songs that the Guttersnipes perform, “Rare Find.” The song takes an interesting twist, and it was fascinating to watch the song evolve in just half an hour. As a classical musician, if music is altered, I usually can’t play the new music until I am given a re-written copy of it. But on the guitar, the music can be altered simply by watching the new music being played. It was quite fascinating.

Moreover, as much as all musicals are collaborations, it seems as though there is unique pressure on everyone involved with a NYMF production to join forces and work extremely well together to create and tweak the piece. This certainly happened for the evolution of “Rare Find” in Love Sucks. It was great to see such changes in about half an hour, where everyone was contributing in one way or another. The director watches the song performed, and suggests tweaks and small changes that will encompass more of the characters and be a truer reflection of what is happening and what they are feeling. The actors are asked to improv a bit, and the composer comes up with some new chords to fit with what is being changed, and ensures that the song still works, sounds good, and fits its punk genre, and does not get too pop or heavy metal. And this all happens in the course of about half an hour. The time crunch seems to have a positive effect on everyone, as they are very much aware of how much they need to work together to allow the show to come together in such a brief time.

Shakespeare has been adapted to many mediums – movies, classic musicals, etc. But I can’t think of too many punk rock musicals that have been adapted from Shakespeare. It’s perhaps a bit of a risky move, but certainly has the potential to be very successful. It’s always fun to see how Shakespeare’s characters and situations get transformed to modern time (or in this case, the ‘70’s). However it turns out, one of the classic themes of Love’s Labour’s Lost certainly seems to stay intact:

“There is no evil angel but Love.”