Norton Street Finally Found Its Cast
For more than fifty years, Norton Street existed as a script. The characters were there. The dialogue was there. The ideas were there. What wasn’t there was a cast.
Over the years, actors came through the community. Directors came through. Producers came through. Musicians came through. Everyone seemed interested, but nobody actually took on the challenge of staging the play.
Then something unexpected happened. The cast arrived.
Not all at once. Not from Hollywood. Not from Broadway. It arrived one song at a time.
Last night I generated fifty musical versions of a single scene. Fifty different interpretations. Fifty different emotional readings. Fifty different productions. Twenty-five of them were strong enough to be presented in today’s Zoom meeting.
That’s when it occurred to me that what I’m doing is not simply converting a play into songs. I’m auditioning casts.
One version gives Mike the feeling of an old radio philosopher. Another makes him sound like a carnival barker. Another turns him into a blues singer. Another into a gospel preacher. Bornless changes too. Sometimes frightened. Sometimes comic. Sometimes bewildered. Sometimes almost enlightened. Sometimes Crystal or Audrey speak up.
The dialogue remains the same. The cast changes.
For decades I thought I needed actors. What I actually needed was a way to hear the possibilities.
The technology didn’t write Norton Street. The play was already written. What the technology did was allow me to hear fifty productions of the same scene in a single evening.
For the first time, the play is showing me what it wants to become. And that may be the most surprising part of the entire experiment.
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Hoy, here’s the Bardo bus now!
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See You At The Top!!!
gorby