Our Brand Coordinator Emily Bryson had a chance to spend time with the cast and creators of Courtin the Spark: Inspirations from Joni Mitchell. She’s written an article on her conversation with director Clint Thorton and her experience in rehearsal –
Before experiencing Courtin’ the Spark: Inspirations from Joni Mitchell, I had no idea what to expect in a “theatrical exploration of the music of Joni Mitchell.”
Walking into the Black Box Theatre was like walking into a warm, inviting coffee shop. There are tables dispersed around the room with actors sipping coffee, playing guitar, and painting a mural. The audience is encouraged to sit with them, to not only be an audience member, but part of the story. Courtin’ the Spark has no script; it revolves around the mood and meaning within each song. Through these songs, we discover each character’s story.
Watch a performance of “Raised on Robbery” in Courtin’ the Spark:
After the performance, I sat down with one of the creators, Clint Thornton, to talk about this fascinating concept. I was very curious to hear how this piece is unique from his past work, as well as the creative process.
Here are his thoughts:
“When I decided to do the Joni show, I realized it couldn’t be done the same way we did the Sondheim piece, since Sondheim wrote his songs for specific characters, and Joni’s music all comes from her and is mainly for a solo voice. So I decided the singer/songwriter/coffee shop angle was the way to go. I told Chris Moses (Education Director at the Alliance) that I essentially wanted to change the theater into a functioning coffee shop, and have both audience and performers be the patrons of the shop.”
“I didn’t want the performance to be an actual “show”, rather, I wanted Joni’s music to simply arise and unfold as these personas moved through this environment. Thusly, I decided to include the actual audience members at tables in the shop with various characters, to blur the line of “performance” and have the event be more of an organic happening, even though the performers are quite specifically staged.”
“At the beginning of rehearsal, all we had was this concept and the songs I had chosen to do. The cast all worked at creating their own persona/character based on their own instincts, and we developed the energy of this shop around those characters. We did want them to be personal but also archetypal, so I decided to formulate a name for each character that describes them without the audience needing to know what it is. So we have The Server, The Barista who Won’t, The Man who Plays, The Woman who’s Lost, The Painter, The Fortune Teller, The Woman who Saw, etc. The audience gets to immerse themselves in these subtle storylines as the music and lyrics move the evening from one emotional tone to the next.”
“Having the House Band of the coffee shop is fun, as are the addition of The Poet and other personas. Once Daryl, the actor playing The Poet, started working with her character, I immediately knew that The Jungle Line would have to be a spoken word performance of some type. Other happy coincidences with the characters that were developed helped me to figure out how each song should be staged, without forcing the audience to follow some scripted dialogue or story track. I’m very proud of the way each character’s situation is readable through only the staging and the music, without any spoken lines or inserted ‘scenes.'”
Only four performances remain.
June 28, 7:30p; June 29, 7:30p; June 30, 7:30p; July 1, 2:30pm
Click here for tickets
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