"Sin" Scene 14

Recording the cast album of "Sin" after the show closed, first in my old apartment (above) and then in our new condo (below).

“Losing My Mind.”  Faith walks in on Devlin just in time to catch a glimpse of Santana leaving and she’s confused by what she sees…still, she’s been through a “dark night of the soul” and has come out the other side stronger for it.  She sees the state Devlin is in and can’t help but try to assist, offering words of hope.  Devlin alludes to being irredeemable and Faith suggests that she thought she was too, but has come to believe that she’s found hope:  it’s possible to survive is you embrace “love.”  Devlin resists but by the end of the song he’s met Faith as an equal…Devlin stopped Faith from killing herself, now Faith has restored Devlin’s belief that he too can live, and be better…along the way they both realize they are in love with each other. 

This was an interesting one for me…it’s my least favorite song in the show and so was the toughest one to pull off.  It may be because it’s the most “musical”-like…or maybe because it’s overly sincere and dry, or contains a lot more emotion than I like to display in my work.  I was never much of a fan of “Rent” but tried to pull something off in that vein…sincere, powerful musical moments that illustrate intense, dramatic feelings.  I think it was also when the audience realized the fun and games of the first half of the show were gone, replaced by drama and sincerity, and as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think you can sustain  that drama too long, at least if you’ve already shown an audience your “fun/funny” side…they start to feel cheated, and want to go back to laughing, because laughing feels good (and they’ll often find laughs where none exist because of that).  Perhaps I did the audience a disservice with this moment, taking it too seriously.  I do know I learned a thing with this song, but more on that in a moment…

Musically the song came from a dream I had in 2002 or so.  My friend was getting rid of LPs.  He had a bunch of “Helen Reddy” albums.  I loved one of her albums as a kid, it shaped who I am but there was a ton of her stuff I’d never heard.  I had never even really thought about what a “Helen Reddy” song meant—what defined her music. 

I was immersed in the music of Reddy, so it’s no surprise I dreamed of a “lost” album of her music.  I woke up with a song from this imagined “lost album” stuck in my head, wrote it down and filed it for later.  When it came time to create all the songs for “Sin” I looked to anything I’d ever made notes about as potential inspiration.  I thought the tone of the song was a nice fit anyway.  The chorus in the dream had been the words “I was losing my miiiiind” so it was all set up for me, I just had to flesh out the verses and tie it down, which came easily enough. 

I adjusted the chords a bit eventually--I actually “borrowed” the chord progression in the chorus from “Superstar,” the song made famous by the Carpenters, so it would be a little beefier than the more cutesie version in my dream, which wouldn’t have worked for such a serious moment.  Oddly, even I don’t hear “Superstar” in there anymore, the way the lead melody works (which is a good thing, I wasn’t trying to rip off the original song, just lean on it a little for inspiration).

 I also gave Chris Smith a laugh when I told him the chord progression in the verses are from “Dream On” by Aerosmith.  But he liked the idea, and I think a lot of people in the audience really did like this song, that had a “power ballad” vibe to it—I think it was a fun one to sing too.  I was deliberately trying to appeal to anyone in the audience who might be into the “power ballad” thing even though I’m not a big fan of the genre…it’s a funny feeling to be the author of a song that isn’t in a style you actually are fond of. 

Lyrically it does the job I think, the words get the story points out there…I just don’t think it does it in an interesting way, I think the melody of the verses can’t help but be rendered a little whiney because of the way I wrote the song.  Or, again, it may be I just find it a bit overwrought, but it was a big moment and had to be convincing.  I do believe in the lyrics I wrote—I do believe that, when you’re in your darkest hour, “love” is the only thing that can really save you.  At the time I wrote this, I hadn’t known what true love was.  I was thinking of love of family, friends, the past, physical things…retreating to a place where you can find comfort.  It didn’t occur to me until the night of the premiere that the song is about all those kinds of love, yes…but self-love, most of all…you can get through just about anything, I’ve found, if you have “yourself.” 

Just a couple clips this time, as, again, this was not—in my humble opinion—my finest hour. Take my word for it, the demo was beautifully done and Chris Maikish seemed to be designed for this kind of vocal…I keep using the word “soaring” to describe his singing…no other words is as apt. 

 As usual Joe Sousa and Kehau Gabriel blew everyone away with their soul-stirring and very convincing performances in the 2011 sing-through directed by Kay Cole.  I think the song actually worked best there somehow…the dramatic stakes weren’t as high and there was little-to-no staging so it was more of an evening of songs…the investment wasn’t as high so it seemed less melodramatic, to me anyway.  It certainly was a chance for both performers to shine and everyone was into it.  It makes me happy to see a song I’m not that interested in done so well, certainly, even if it’s a little surreal (I can blame no one by myself). In a way, this song “legitimized” the evening too.  The applause was truly earned that night, that’s for sure.  https://youtu.be/kIhqc7BBKOQ

The 2015 version of the show was something else entirely. 

Chris Smith was having some troubles with the harmonies, to the point I was considering dumping them—we just didn’t have time to work everything out perfectly, as you might have noticed if you’ve been following the clips on this blog—even on the best nights we had flubs and missteps here and there. 

Anyway, Sarah had just come out of music school and was eager to have the song done as written, suggesting the harmonies added a rich sound to a piece that might otherwise be a bit monochromatic.  She worked with Chris and together they were able to pull the song off as written (well, I had to lower the key but that was to be expected). 

This turned out to be a surprise blessing; when you watch the scene, you’re seeing reality play out…”Faith” is supposed to be reassuring Devlin, holding on and not letting go, not giving up, challenging him to let her guide him to a better place.  That, of course, is exactly what Sarah is literally doing in the clip, as she guides him into doing the harmony part of the song.  I couldn’t have asked for a nicer bit of coincidence and I think the relationship the two of them have in that scene really is kind of magical—it transcends what I wrote, certainly, and demonstrates the magic of theatre, to me anyway. 

Another interesting thing happened with that song.  Several reviewers came to see “Sin” and, as I’ll discuss in more detail later, the reviews were lukewarm at best, leaning towards negative at worst.  I quickly got a sense that the reviewers either didn’t understand what I was trying to do with my show at all or came in with a bias against it, which was really frustrating. 

One reviewer came in bubbly and optimistic, however, and brought us the best review we got.  She was a sweet person who talked to me after the show and told me she loved the piece and the performers, and let me know in advance her review would be positive.  What an angel. 

I was stunned, because opening night, when she showed up, was easily the worst performance we’d done up until then.  It was as if the night was just doomed with “opening night jitters,” at least technically. I really saw this on my next show, “Ruby,” where, because I’d made it more complicated technically, opening night was a complete disaster and that, as much as anything, convinced me live theatre wasn’t for me—I don’t have the guts for it, and I’m in awe of those who do. 

But with “Sin,” we were well-rehearsed, the show was pretty low-tech and we’d already done it at least once in the venue, so everyone knew they could pull it off.  No one, however, expected the show to “break” halfway through. 

The whole show was driven by a video that contained both the visuals and the backing tracks.  It came as one solid file, so the possibility of something going wrong was far higher than I could ever have imagined.  It meant that if the video stopped, for whatever reason, the show would stop too, and we’d have to get it back on track somehow. 

Well, opening night, that is exactly what happened.  For some unknown reason the video and audio just went out with a quiet “pop,” leaving our performers stranded on stage without a clue what had just happened, when or even if the video/audio would return and put in the position of deciding what to do next. 

I did some acting in school and worked tech on shows here and there, and saw a lot of things go wrong—and more than once, because of my mistakes. I also worked on the live “Jungle Cruise” ride at Disneyland when I was in college and that effectively cured me of ever being afraid of an audience again…I actually got really good at working a crowd and I use those skills to this day in my teaching.

Well, I knew it wasn’t the end of the world that the show “broke” on opening night…but it was excruciating to see.  I just didn’t know what to do, and I felt terrible for the actors.   Luckily, we had an excellent board-tech person and I sat in the control booth area at each performance to assist.  Our tech guy didn’t waste time trying to find out what had happened (unlike the incompetent, hateful guy who did the mix board for “Ruby” the next year and literally ruined half our shows with his lack of professionalism), it only took this guy a minute or so, with my help, to get the show back “live” again and get the video to the right place.  That guy was a genius, and, unlike the miserable mess of a person who “assisted” us in the control booth the next year (he came with the club, I had no choice but to put up with him), he was really nice and felt bad the break had happened on his watch (it wasn’t his fault, it just fritzed out for some reason, a power surge or something). 

Sarah and Chris being the amazing professional performers they are, decided to just keep going with their song, without the music or video.  Sarah sang out, strong and proud (completely in keeping with the moment of the scene, where she is—coincidentally--trying to make order out of chaos) and Chris followed her lead. 

The audience sat, spellbound, watching and listening.  It’s very possible they didn’t even know what was missing until the guy in the control booth got us back up and running and re-started the song.  Everyone laughed and breathed out a gasp of relief for the performers--the audience was on our side that night—and the show kept going and won everyone over as usual—maybe moreso because we’d fought the tech and won. 

The next morning I caught the review of the show from the cool person who had been there that night, I think she was a North Hollywood reporter.  Her review focused mainly on the part where the show had broken; she called it one of the most satisfying nights of theatre she’d attended in many years…to see the performers up on stage, improvising the moment, letting their raw emotions guide the way as much as the characters they were playing, and feeling the connection between the acoustic singing and the tense audience trying to understand what was happening…she proclaimed it pure magic. 

It really made me think.  On the one hand, I suddenly felt rather embarrassed about the bombast of my pre-recorded tracks suddenly.  I got a lot of heat about the “canned” tracks in reviews, that’s for sure. 

My goal had always been to have a rich-sounding musical environment to compensate for not being able to afford to bring in a band (for “Ecstasy” too…at one point someone suggested replacing my tracks with a piano and I didn’t stop laughing for an hour—the tracks WERE the “score,” to change even a note of it would, I felt, destroy what I was trying to do with the synths and MIDI fake instruments and heavy-hitting drums.  Well, I’m over that now, thankfully). 

It was the first time it hit me that it wasn’t terribly interesting to hear pre-recorded tracks and the tracks might actually be doing a disservice to my work…it might actually be better even if the instrumental sound was significantly smaller and less “thick.”    On the other hand, it really made me take a second look at my show and what I was trying to do with it.  Perhaps all anyone was really into the show for was the live element—the story, the ideas, the things I’d put into the music (most of them documented in this verbose blog I’m pretty sure only a few people will ever see)…these things weren’t nearly as engaging as simply watching people perform on a stage, live, right there, feet away.    A very loyal and trusted friend once said to me, “Sometimes I think you’re a little too smart for your own good.”  I got his meaning and it was a learning moment…but it was still disappointing somehow. 

So it was a mixed blessing…I was happy the reviewer liked the show and gave us a positive review…but I couldn’t help but think she, like all the reviewers who gave us lukewarm reviews for “Ecstasy” in 2009, was responding not to the show itself but to the excitement of the performers and their performances, the costumes, the lighting, the kinetic energy the show generated.  I’ll get into it more in my last entries where I’ll sum everything up…but it’s a pretty bitter pill to swallow to keep hearing that people love everything about the show you’ve created except…you…

Well, that self-pitying nonsense aside, here’s the clip of Sarah and Chris “the night the show broke,” and it really is an inspiration to see, and a nice way to present the song; certainly, if we ever did it again I’d do it with something like a quiet guitar strumming for accompaniment.  Live and learn!    https://youtu.be/VmhkPcfAZRQ

And now we have two dedicated and unified lovers, who, despite having signed their souls over to the devil, are united in their love and ready to fight for it. Good thing, because "Santana" is heading back onto the stage...