As a writer (and also a lyricist) I come from the land of musicals, and it’s always been a disappointment to me that I have never seen a science fiction musical on Broadway. Little Shop of Horrors is the closest. Sure, I’ve seen a few Science Fiction off-broadway shows, but in almost every single instance they have been camp. And good camp is fantastic, but I feel like Science Fiction Camp has been overdone a little, and it’s always because nobody wants to figure out how to do “real” Science Fiction on the stage.
Many people will say that there aren’t too many science fiction plays and musicals because science fiction is “expensive”. Sure, if the Star Wars musical ever actually had come to Broadway (yes it was a real thing in the making) then it would have been expensive. But what about, say, a low-budget version of Donnie Darko, which I hear is actually happening. The point is that Science Fiction is all about the human stories, not about the effects. The effects support the story. If somebody travels though time, they don’t *necessarily* need to find man-killing robots on the other side. They could find snooty British people. And we all know that snooty British people work out great onstage.
When Jennifer Lynn Jordan and I attended the Fringe marketing meeting, we had gotten there a little early and we had a little extra time to chat with the friendly Fringe folks. Elana Holy, Fringe’s Artistic Director, mentioned that she had been involved in the off-broadway production of the musicalization of “Time and Again” by Jack Finney. In the novel of Time and Again, the main character uses self-hypnosis to convince himself that he’s in 1882. It’s a lot like the trick detailed in “Somewhere in Time” and the book it was based on: surround yourself with things from the time period you want to go to (go to a room that basically existed exactly the same in the past) and convince yourself you’re there.
I can’t imagine it having been very thrilling to watch a guy onstage hypnotize himself into time traveling. Apparently from what i learned from Elana, the musical version of the play never truly solved the “make time travel onstage convincing” issue. I hope that Ken Davenport and his crew figure out that same form of time travel for the Somewhere in Time musical, whenever it arrives.
What Elana liked about our play was that she said we’d “solved it”. “It” being how to convincingly portray Time Travel onstage.
Our solution, if you don’t mind me ruining it for you [if you do, stop here] is: two doors. There’s Clara, and there’s William, and she comes from 1925 and he comes from 2008. And when they meet together, it’s a surreal mixture of both of their worlds, with a sense of infinity going on forever. So when he goes back in time, he takes the door to 2008, and she takes the door to 1925. And if Time doesn’t want William to travel back to 1925, it doesn’t “let” him go through the door.
Basically, we’ve solved the problem by avoiding to acknowledge the problem at all costs. Nobody goes to see a play to learn how time travel really works. They just need a believable enough conceit, and a little bit of theater magic.
I once directed a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream where you could tell whether Oberon was invisible or not at any given moment by whether he was wearing sunglasses. And so long as every actor onstage ignored he and Puck when their sunglasses were on, you bought it. And once you’d bought into it, it was pretty hysterical when he would take his sunglasses off and suddenly “appear” out of thin air in front of Helena. It was simple, and because of that it was most effective.
It’s a shame that there isn’t more science fiction theatre. There’s so much stage magic that can be more effective and convincing than CGI.
That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s how we hope you’ll believe our version of time travel.
With two doors.
[I'm attending this Friday's rehearsal; more updates after that.]
