REP SEASON 2012 – Rehearsal Day 13 – THOMAS WHITELAW (Composer)

If music be the food of love

This will be the seventh production for theFaction for which I have provided music. Come to think of it, it will also be the eighth. Whilst we’re on the subject, the ninth too. Three plays to create music for and they couldn’t be more varied but I am used to that by now, creating music for a Faction production is dependent on many things, and one of their productions of Shakespeare will be a world apart from their next. 

It is Shakespeare I find myself confronted with first in the Rep Season. What I enjoy most about producing music for the Shakespeare productions is that I get to collaborate musically with William himself. He write the words, I write the music. He’s like my Bernie Taupin, or am I his Elton? Anyhow, it is an exciting collaboration. For Twelfth Night, i’ve had to write music for the songs of Feste. When Mark Leipacher (the director) talked to me about what he envisioned musically for Twelfth Night (I don’t want to give too much away) one word sprung to mind. Banjo. What has made this all the more exciting is moving away from a pre-recorded soundtrack, and focusing on the music being performed live by Lachlan McCall, the actor playing Feste. This has required more interaction on my part into the rehearsal process, made a lot easier by Lachlan having a pretty good background in music to start with. Feste’s songs have a timeless message in them: the cycle of life, a fear of death, and the style of music chosen for the production is, I believe, a fitting one.

Now I find myself in the rehearsal process for Mary Stuart. No songs to be sung in this play, but a play with music none the less. I have always liked never being able to label the period of a Faction production; their previous Schiller adaptation had a band of robbers wielding guns rather than daggers. In the design of the play, there were things that represented the old with the new, a mixture of styles and periods. Mary Stuart is set historically in the Elizabethan period, amongst Royal Courts. The first task was to create a soundtrack for a royal celebration. Starting with a Pavanne by Henry Purcell, an English Renaissance composer, I added a crashing electronic beat and slowly altered the elements into a Renaissance re-mix. A re-mix of the old and the new. Having witnessed the rehearsal of this celebration, I can tell that this production of Mary Stuart is going to be brimming with relentless energy.

I will begin work on the my ninth production for The Faction shortly: Miss Julie by the Swedish playwright Strindberg. I don’t know what to expect just yet, but to be honest, I prefer it that way. I know that whatever we end up doing for it musically, it will work. Unless it’s something based around that famous Swedish band. Catherine Johnson has kind of already done that.

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