"Sin" Scene 09

“Changes.”  Santana’s plan is underway and she waits eagerly in the wings, watching as Devlin prepares Faith for a meteoric rise in show business. Devlin does his best to prepare Faith while also doing some soul-searching, realizing that he’s setting her up for a fall, the same fall he himself took, and beginning to question his perspective—on Faith, someone he’s starting to care about, on himself, on the universe.  Faith has signed the contract that seals her fate and already is starting to have buyer’s remorse.  On the other side, Luis stands, watching the drama unfold, weary and somewhat depressed that this passion play is unfolding—the same thing he’s seen a million times before, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it or even interfere. 

“Changes” was a song that I put into “Sin” deliberately to push an EDM style, or at least a track with a 4/4 stomping beat and programmed, arpeggiated synth runs, into theatrical storytelling.  I’d seen it done a couple of times—the Broadway “Tommy” show did it, “The Wiz” has done it in different incarnations, the filmed version of “Hair” disco-fied many of the songs.  But I hadn’t seen any examples of someone fully embracing something approaching “rave” music but with musical-theatre crossover.  That you should or should not attempt to do this never crossed my mind, one of the nice things about my not having a musical theatre (or any kind of theatre really) background…or maybe that was actually the biggest problem with this show, depending on who you ask.  But I did my best with it and I never had any complaints—most people found the song catchy and the moment memorable, I’d get lots of comments about it in the lobby where we’d hang out and have a drink after the show was over. 

Once again, I was going with a model I got from the British 90s group “Sunscreem” and their song “Love U More,” with a quiet start leading to a bombastic, anthemic ending.  Or maybe Sunscreem got that from U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name”—I was aware of that song but never personally a fan.  I was also heavily influenced by the EDM music of Paul van Dyk.  I knew I couldn’t push too hard into the EDM aspect or I’d lose people who hate that kind of music…and, also, that kind of music doesn’t lend itself to lyrics at all, let alone expository lyrics in a musical theatre piece.  So I kept the “thump thump” and arpeggios as strong as I could without overwhelming the singers…it was a special treat to me to hear the show in a venue with a big sound system set up for that kind of music and the bass drum literally rocked the walls it was so heavy, a dream come true for me.  I also tossed in some “spaghetti western” guitar as much as anything because I had the sample, and it occurred to me to use it.

This is another song I sent out into the world as an instrumental at some point, and I actually got a lot of positive feedback—people contacted me out of the blue on YouTube over the years to let me know they really liked it as it was, an instrumental track, which I really appreciated.  Here’s the instrumental version:  https://youtu.be/Xj0o0vQdKs4

The lyrics are pretty obvious—it was another “story” moment, with a lot of exposition, but some action too, as Devlin actively pushes Faith to get dressed and into character for her big debut.  There was a lot of leeway for expository lyrics since the chorus is literally just the four members of the cast singing “Changes” over and over.  Still, I was going for a particular vibe musically and lyrically, a sense of melancholy resignation…I usually feel it myself in Autumn as another summer comes to an end and the end of yet another year approaches, bringing with it…well, changes, good and bad.  Enough people have told me they got that vibe from the song too for me to believe it works that way, at least for some…change can be good or bad, but it’s inevitable, whether you lean into it or not. 

In the three incarnations of “Sin” (the demo in 2010, live in 2011 and live again in 2015) I don’t feel we ever got the four-part harmony quite right…Saudia suggested it was because the notes needed to be held longer in some places and everyone needed to be physically closer together, and she’s probably right.  The best it probably ever worked was on the demo, but in that mix I split the four voices across the stereo spectrum so Luis is in your left ear, Devlin is next to him, Santana is centered and Faith is in the right ear, and that makes it hard to hear all four voices as one block of harmony, but it also helps keep each voice clear so you can more easily get the “stair-step” quality I was after in the song.  Well, just a little tech trivia there. 

But everyone on the demo did a great job of sustaining the “Changes” note even though none of the performers on the demo were ever in the same room with each other, and the similarity in timbre of the voices of Chris, Kehau and Tricia creates a nice triad against Sean’s baritone (which he decided needed to be an octave lower when we did it live, which was kind of amazing).  More musical theory that I’m certainly no expert at, but I know it when I hear it.  For that reason the demo recording is probably my favorite, musically anyway:  https://youtu.be/2IsK5h990Ew

Once again the 2011 sing-through was likely the best technical performance, considering Terri Olsen, Joe Sousa, Kehau Gabrial and Sean Hobday-Smith are all seasoned musical theatre pros.  This was yet another moment where Joe, singing a bit higher than his register, really did shine again, but everyone did a remarkable job, even incorporating some of Kay’s gentle body-sway choreography. 

Trivia—this incarnation was where we realized I’d really created a problem for the staging…at some point “Faith” needs to disappear to go put on her “Lady Gaga” costume backstage for her next song.  Along with handling all the vocal acrobatics I came up with on this piece, the performers put up with some tough staging too…Kehau had to run back stage (in this case, the backroom of “Skinny’s” bar in North Hollywood, a glorified closet) the second “Changes” was over, slide into a slinky, skin-tight, sparkly silver 70s costume left over from when she wore in “Ecstasy” two years prior, flop on a silly wig and oversize glasses and prepare to come out for a big solo number.  I don’t honestly know how she did it, but she did it in rehearsals several times and nailed it in the show too.  Again, these were seasoned professionals and I was incredibly lucky to work with such talent.  https://youtu.be/yyhQuu2gZLg

At the Fringe Fest version in 2015, once again we backed off adhering to the music a bit in order to push the entertainment of the story where necessary, and focus on the acting as much as the singing. 

I was thrilled to see everyone really acting their parts and bringing drama to the story—by this point, in this incarnation of the show, people in the audience were really getting invested in these characters/actors and it was an exciting vibe. 

You can see how irritated Sarah gets and maybe some of that was legit…the scene of the “Greek chorus” dressing her down a bit was actually put in place to assist her with her costume change but watching it 10 years later it comes off a bit malevolent, like an assault of some kind…it fits the moment well and is a hint of the more serious second half of the show to come but always made me a bit uncomfortable (Sarah never complained, and told me over and over it was just 'acting').  Chris is wonderfully sensitive as Devlin, conflicted as he is…Rich is stoic and sad as he watches the moment unfold and Saudia attacked the scene with her usual delightful mix of evil glee and heart. 

Then Sarah, as Faith, runs off without finishing the final chorus of “Changes” and not completing her last, wistful note as on the demo...  We had to do it that way because she needed every second available to get in costume “backstage” (there wasn’t even a dressing room at “Three Clubs” in 2015, she had to get in “drag” with only a shower curtain between her and the audience) and a couple of performances she either didn’t make it on time or, when she did make it, was so disheveled and flustered she got pulled out of the character/moment.  I know she was always glad when she could get out of that ridiculous get up and play it more “real” for the rest of the show. 

The audience really got into this stuff and it was a powerful moment I was incredibly proud of, another of my favorite show moments: https://youtu.be/6AKQNlQHKuo

“Changes” marks the end of a chapter in the show, the completion of the lighter and more comedic first half of “Sin” where everything is being set up.  If the show was longer in duration it might have worked as a stopping point for an intermission, but after watching my show “Ecstasy” play out night after night I saw how you can sometimes lose people if you stop the show for an intermission as we did…truly, “Ecstasy” had a great end-of-first-act show-stopping moment with the title song that most people who know me associate with me, to comic effect…it was natural to finish with the key song in the show that everyone ended up loving, but Kay’s frenetic choreography, the costumes and the eye-popping lighting design helped make it the showstopper it was…most people were breathless when the lights came up and very happy to come back for act 2. 

With “Sin,” I wanted to keep the show to one act—and I felt anything much more than 70+ minutes was going to push the endurance level of an audience.  A wall of music can be a lot to take, especially if you don’t LIKE the music (and some reviewers did not although, strangely, the audiences consistently seemed to love it and came back for it, or so I was told, just so they could hear the music again, like a concert). 

Kay thought “Sin” would actually have been better around 60 minutes and maybe she was onto something—I do believe less is more—but I also wanted audiences to leave my show exhausted as they had with “Ecstasy”—the best shows, I think, feel like a full evening and leave you both sated and wanting a little more, like some kind of (healthy) drug. 

So “Changes” shuts one chapter but wasn’t a place for an intermission—in fact, the song ends without an opportunity for applause, by design.  It jumps right into Santana’s reprise of her first song and that, too, could’ve worked as a showstopping act-1-ender.  But then that leads directly, without pause, into Faith’s big showstopping moment, which leads quickly into the fastest and most frenetic, possibly show-stopping, moment in the whole piece right after (more about all that in the next blog entries). 

There really isn’t a “breakpoint,” so the whole middle of the show is the “intermission” I guess, or a palate cleanser.  I don’t know if that was the right or wrong thing to do—it worked, but maybe it could have worked better, I don’t know. 

I do know some people took issue with how the show gets serious and rather humorless for a long stretch after all the action and humor that has happened up until the middle of the show, and again, maybe they were onto something.  But one thing I teach all the time in story class—you can’t keep an emotion sustained in stories, if you build up  the energy too high there’s nowhere to go but down, and the best stories work up to something, plateau or move back a little, move up some more, plateau and then finally reach an apex and come down.  “Sin” does that, by design, and I could sense in audiences they were with it all the way (the supportive ones anyway) and were really happy at the end of the show, feeling they’d been taken on a satisfying journey.  I’m unlikely to ever mount this show again but if I did, or someone else did with me looking over their shoulder, the whole middle section would be worth looking into further…and potentially initiating some…changes… (oh, so sorry about that, ha ha).