We’re past the halfway mark in the rehearsal process for Disney’s Mulan which opens at Imagination Stage on Wednesday, November 25 –- less than two weeks from today. This is our biggest musical extravaganza since Seussical in ’05 and I am grateful every day to the terrific team of artists I’m collaborating with. A musical of this scale really requires the skill sets of many specialists. Beside me in the rehearsal hall are Scott Rink, a choreographer with Broadway, regional and national credits, and longtime friends of mine, musical director Keith Tittermary and fight choreographer Linden Tailor.
–Janet Stanford
You could say that my job as Director is to make sure that Mulan’s story is told in the clearest and most compelling way. And that it’s Scott’s job to create beauty through movement; Keith’s job to make the actors sound glorious; and Linden’s job to add excitement. (Or maybe I should call it “fight-citement”! Disney’s Mulan is a story about a girl who goes to war, after all.) But as we work on this music-filled script, we find that there are no hard delineations between what each of the specialists does. Scott, whose genius for creating stage pictures and exciting movement astounds me, will turn to Linden for advice on Tai Chi moves, or a punch that occurs in the midst of a movement section. I turn to Scott for help with how the masks of Mulan’s ancestors float through a scene. Keith will have the guys sing a musical line in falsetto and ask us, “Is that too silly?” Several times it has happened that when we finish a scene, all four director “specialists” descend on the cast with acting, movement, fight and music notes. And, magically, we all seem to be seeing the same vision of where the scene should go. I’ll say something to an actor and he’ll reply, “Oh, Scott just told me that.” “Linden just made that change.” “Keith fixed it.”
This is one of the mysteries of the rehearsal room that I have experienced before and been humbled by: a cast of 11, and four directors all with a passion to tell a particular tale, somehow communicating through intuition rather than words. I am not superstitious but I do believe in a sixth sense that artists inhabit when we create. To quote Mulan, “Sometimes, what can’t be achieved with one’s muscles can be achieved by one’s mind.” In the best theatre, it’s not so much the intellect as the spirit and “one mind” is what the whole artistic team—from designers to performers to deck captains must share in order to move and amaze our audience.
Tags: Artistic Director, Dance, Musical Theatre
