It's a magical space rather than a realistic set. There'll be a band on stage, and actors, they'll move between each other. It's part of the surreality of what happens when the landscape of your life, and your sense of self shifts so dramatically - the most ordinary things can become ridiculous. like moments of clarity that come together suddenly but slip away or bleach out before you can hold onto them. I've come back to the idea of moving frames that might hold video animations, people, tableaux. Graphic novels are a big influence on how the story is told in terms of the script, and I think that will bleed through into the staging. I want to create a sense of being swept along inside these unpredictable emotional tides. Tanuja // Having all the words projected, as well as sung or spoken, is part of that saturation. (Not sure if Tim would use different words to describe the music.). I definitely feel like the songs hold that shimmering quality in their synthy, electronica, dream-pop production. I think there'll be a sense of that colour and saturation in how the show will look visually. A feeling that everything had gone sort of hyper-vivid. Tanuja // This has to be an outrageously seductively beautiful show! One of the things that really stunned me about working through grief was how heightened things suddenly became - like someone just whacked the contrast dial up or my eyes were too wide open or something. What’s your vision for how the show will be staged? Of the other available forms, opera doesn't quite work because AMTG isn't entirely sung through gig theatre doesn't quite work because our show will be intensely theatrical, people will be sat down, there'll be a safe space for them and 'music theatre' doesn't work because we don't want people constantly asking 'but is it music theatre?' So of all the things that don't really apply, it seems to us that 'a musical' doesn't really apply the least. we finished writing the story before the song lyrics were finished, so that claim doesn't completely work. So after developing AMTG for a while, between the two of us, we started describing it as a jukebox musical of songs people haven't heard yet. Tim // I think that's why jukebox musicals like Mama Mia hold together for audiences, despite going against so many maxims of 'musical craft' - the spirit of free expression in a lot of pop lyrics often works out absolutely fine as part of a wider story. The song lyrics and music production are really emotionally vibrant - and when we've played demos to people, people find it really moving. We've been calling AMTG a musical because it's built around these songs, so that feels like the most honest way to invite audiences into the show. It's a frustratingly inward-facing attitude and I don't think it really reflects how open audiences are. You might get updated versions of the same old same old, but anyone who's coming process or form from a different angle is treated with suspicion by the cognoscenti. ![]() ![]() I think that kind of fixation on defining what is and isn't correct practice really puts the boot into doing anything new. ![]() I wish we didn't have to get caught up in this kind of industry jargon. But as we've been trying to build support to make AMTG, I'm learning that "the musical" as a form is policed quite adamantly! I'm learning that there are a lot of people, certainly within the musical theatre sector, who might not consider AMTG a musical, because even though it has songs at the heart of its storytelling, it doesn't have the right type of songs or the right dramaturgical structure to be a "proper" musical. Tanuja // Well I always thought if a show had songs in it, as part of the storytelling - genuine songs you could sing and that you might take away and listen to - that that would deem the show a musical. You describe the show as an electronic musical. The lyric especially, even if it's about something quite focused and specific, if you write it in an open enough way, a pop song kind of explodes it even further. Tim // And pop songs in particular hold emotion in a way that can mean so many different things to so many different people. The only way we could begin to express these emotions was by starting with song, so that kind of forced the form.Īnd Tim's background is being in bands and writing pop songs, so it's not like an alien thing to us, to put songs at the heart of storytelling. Songs and music can hold the fullness of that kind of overwhelming emotion really directly. So we were sitting in these waves of grief that are very big and difficult to regulate. Tanuja // Well, sometimes life throws you big emotions, and Tim and I went through a period where we lost 3 close family members within just a few years. ![]() What made you want to make this show in this form?
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