So It seems like we’ve discovered several things about how this show is going to work. There seems to be an epic element to the narrative which suits a chorus who’ll narrate through text spoken over drone/song or text set to drone/song as chant depending on the moment. There is then the voice of Ahab who represents the Epic. Everything has an epic importance – nature isn’t just random events, it’s the playing out of the fight between good and evil. It’s religious, spiritual and described with allusions to heaven and hell.
On the other hand you have Ishmael who is actually quite flippant, dry and funny – lovely little quick turns of phrase – like when he asks quequeg to stop smoking in bed – because if he’s sets it on fire he’s not insured. Or when he’s saying you need a fat purse to be a passenger ‘for what is a purse but just an empty rag unless it has something in it’. etc.
I think it’s really nice to set Ishmael up as the light relief who can pass comment on the epic chorus and even more epic Ahab.
So having discovered that, what we need is:
TEXT
– Sections of ‘epic’ narrative text that can be delivered over the drone and or set as a chant
– Speeches for Ahab that are in the territory of melodrama – everything is important!
– Lighter and wittier sections of narration for Ishmael again which might be used to
We already have the dialogue for the spouter inn, which we can use to test out the transition from chorus / narration to scene. Though obviously for the finished version we’ll need at least as much dialogue as narration!
SONGS
We now need to work out a repertoire of about 40mins worth of song that sums of the pallet of sounds we want to explore. We need to identify these songs by Friday for Fernando to arrange. It would also be good to identify any songs which we like which we want to set new words to and alternatively and lyrics (both new from the text – and words from trad whaling songs we want to set to new arrangements) – the quicker we can get these to Fernado the better.
In general with the music the overall feelings we’re going fro should be muscular, visceral, epic, religious, dark and brooding. Constantly alluding to a deeper meaning to experience than the mere day to day.
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