"Sin" Scene 03

Early idea for "Betty" from my show "Ecstasy," the character would become "Santana" from "Sin," and is based on a "new burlesque" wave that was happening around 2008

Devlin, having confessed he’s given up on faith, hope and himself, is walking the streets of Hollywood late at night.  Meanwhile, Santana has been watching him the whole time and slips out of the shadows seductively. 

This was one of my favorite moments in the entire show.  My first show, “Ecstasy,” was not about drugs at all (that’s how naïve I was when I wrote it), it was about sex from beginning to end…but it wasn’t sexy at all.  I wanted “Sin” to create some of that heat that I had seen in other theatrical pieces but hadn't been able to capture in my first staged effort.

The song was the easiest part.  In 1995 I recorded a song of my own where I tried to capture the seductive, hypnotizing electronica of William Orbit.  I’d been a fan of Orbit’s stuff from the beginning of his career but he really took off in the 90s with lots of great remixes and Madonna’s “Ray of Light” album.  One thing he produced has influenced more of my music than anything else, a song by One Dove called “Breakdown.”  My song picked up elements of that, added some other Orbit touches and I topped it off with some great samples I got from a dj mix collection (that’s where the original “Ooooh baby baby” thing came from). 

I still think that song is one of the best things I’ve ever done and it’s had plenty of fans over the years.  I recorded it again in 1998 and handed it out to anyone who had a pulse on my first official CD, I got fantastic feedback from it too.  Here’s the “official” version: https://youtu.be/TTsiit0G3hw?feature=shared

I’ve reworked the song again and again about a million times over the years, I never get tired of it, so there was no question it would go into a show that was spotlighting my music, and also meant to be seductive and sexy.   

I re-recorded it for “Sin,” it was the second track I created for the show, in March of 2011 (the first instrumental I put together was “Fire is Burning”).  For this version I gave it a little bit of a hip-hop vibe and added some saxophone to give it the jazzy/adult-contempo feel I was going for in the show overall.  The idea with my tracks was that they should sound like there was a band in the next room actually playing this stuff and if it doesn’t quite replace a real band I did what I could to emulate one—again, it was all done in the loft of my apartment in West Hollywood on Sunday afternoons. 

This was the first real “storytelling” song in the show…the first two songs were just introductions that introduced characters, this song had them interacting and advancing the plot.  I saw it as a back-and-forth duel between the seductive and sly Santana and the reluctant—but increasingly seduced—Devlin. 

Modesty (or respect for the performers) keeps me from sharing the whole thing—it was PG rated and done for laughs (I had the dancers hold up a vaudevillian “Censored” sign) but still mature, it's more fun to imagine what went on anyway.  Santana seduces Devlin into a cheap hotel room off Sunset strip and explains she has an idea…he’s going to have the night of his life, and after that sign a contract that says he’s “all hers.”  He resists, believing she wants marriage, he doesn’t understand she’s after his soul.  All the same, he can’t resist her.  They have sex and as the sun comes up the next day, Santana shows him the contract she has and explains her plan. 

She tells Devlin there’s a girl Santana is after, an amateur singer who reeks of innocence and reverence (her name is “Faith”).  Devlin’s task is to win her over…seduce her, sign her up to what she thinks is  a “fame and fortune” contract for showbiz but actually is a contract for HER soul too.  If Devlin can do that, Santana will restore his career.  If he doesn’t succeed, she gets his soul and he’ll join her in hell (unspoken, but presumably as a minion of some kind). 

Desperate and still dizzy from spending the night with Santana, Devlin signs the contract.  As Santana points out, “What’s your soul worth, anyway?” 

I got all this from a radio drama I’ve listened to about a million times…in my work as an animator I always needed interesting stuff to listen to—music of course, but also programming, and radio dramas were the best.  The BBC has a seemingly endless supply of this kind of material, but Canada produced a great half-hour horror series “Nightfall” in the 1980s.  I first heard about them when I randomly bought a collection—just looking for something new to listen to at work—in 2008 or so, and have since collected all the shows, they're wonderful.  One of my favorite stories is “Angel’s Kiss,” and basically follows the idea listed above…a gorgeous, seductive, but very businesslike woman and a guy who is a bit of a cad and eventually gets his comeuppance when the “contract” is due.  Faust, yes, but with an urban-contemporary feel.

This scene was a bit of a risk, of course…there was a lot of exposition to convey and the “back and forth” nature of the song meant ideas had to be laid-out slowly.  The original version ran 8 minutes, which I thought was great since I loved the song.  When we did the sing-through, Kay insisted it needed to be cut down, it was just too much of the same thing, “Ooh baby baby” followed by Devlin’s sorta-rap patter.  As the creator of the piece naturally I resisted.

She was right of course, and I could see the audience getting restless at the sing-through.  That being said, I made it clear in rehearsals when I stated emphatically that I wasn’t changing a thing this round, the whole point of doing the show as a “sing through” was to see what worked and what didn’t.  Even though Kay was right and I might have trusted her professional and artistic instincts (which I pretty much did all the time anyway), I had to find out for myself.  It didn’t break the show at all, but I knew if the scene was shorter and more to the point it would serve the show better, and when we did it in 2015 I saw how much better it played in a version half as long. 

The other risk of the scene was it was a bit tawdry of course--"Ecstasy" had been naughty but was like a Disney cartoon. 

First and foremost, this scene in "Sin" painted a not-too-pleasant picture of both characters, veering on stereotypes and bad representation (a seductive “evil” prostitute played by a woman of color and a rotten—and yet still sympathetic/hero focused—white guy "victim").  At the same time, these weren’t supposed to be “good” people, at least on the surface, and they were supposed to be tough, low-down Hollywood types.  I know the people who played these roles understood what I was trying to do and that I was embracing the easy idea of these tropes that would all be refuted later. 

Then there was the idea of how to portray the idea that sex had been a big part of what had seduced Devlin.  By turning it into something vaudevillian that didn’t ask my actors to do anything uncomfortable, we got the message across and most people had fun with how it played out, in part because the actors were having fun with it and not afraid to go over the top, for laughs.  I did have to give it some serious thought to make it tasteful and not descend into a kind of burlesque I wasn’t going for, however. 

So here’s a clip of the scene how it played in the show, the opening section anyway.  https://youtu.be/Mu38aOJyEdE?si=5K_j_W60Oc6_8fMc

Just for fun, here’s some footage of Saudia and Chris rehearsing at the “Debbie Reynolds” rehearsal studios in NoHo.  We had so much fun there, we were there when Ms. Reynolds was still alive…we didn’t see her but the women who ran the front office were of her "ilk," irascible and wonderful.  They seemed suspicious of us at first but after I became a steady, paying customer they were great, and helped me secure one of the best rehearsal rooms whenever I needed it.  Rehearsals for “Sin” were surprisingly fun (surprising because sometimes rehearsals can be grueling and repetitive) and I think that shows. You can also see how I had planned for the staging to be more opened up before we were confined to the four microphone stands.  Further, I believe this was the first time Chris and Saudia had even met and you can see they had great chemistry from the start, a quality no money can buy. 

https://youtu.be/8CFJhOMuqF4?si=Ms1lH-FJRvLVhFVH