Post by raggedglory on Jul 31, 2008 2:45:33 GMT
Morphing Neil Young for the Stage and Page
When Mr. Young recorded that 10-track concept album in 2003 with the band Crazy Horse, fans and critics were divided. Some found the song cycle overreaching. Others embraced the imaginative lyrics, which describe three generations of the Green family and a mythic small town reeling from a police shooting and environmental catastrophe. Rolling Stone magazine admired the “paranoia on Main Street” and ranked the album one of the year’s best.
That was just the beginning: Mr. Young went on to make “Greendale” into a concert tour, live recordings and an original film inspired by his post-9/11, save-the-Earth epic.
By now Mr. Young has moved on to new tours and releases and to activism against the war in Iraq. But “Greendale” continues to inspire spinoffs outside the music world, including a graphic novel and a multi-performer theater piece, which opens in New York on Wednesday.
The Ice Factory Festival will present this work, called “Neil Young’s Greendale,” at the Ohio Theater in SoHo for four performances. The production was created by Undermain Theater in Dallas, where it ran for five weeks in spring.
Bruce DuBose, who adapted the show for the stage and plays a role in the production, got hooked on the album when he first heard it. “It seemed obvious that Neil had some theatrical possibilities in mind when he wrote it with this third-person narrative,” he said. And he was taken with the rough-hewn 2003 film, featuring actors lip-syncing to Mr. Young’s vocals. “I kept thinking it would be very interesting to see it broken down into characters,” Mr. DuBose said, “and having the characters actually sing.”
For a few years Mr. DuBose didn’t pursue the stage rights, assuming someone else had secured them. But when he eventually applied, Mr. Young granted permission. “I gather that it interested him that we are a fairly small, experimental theater,” said Mr. DuBose, Undermain’s executive producer. “He has really been generous and pretty much hands off.” (Mr. Young has been touring and could not be reached for comment.)
An ensemble cast performs the tale, backed by a live band. The director, Katherine Owens, struggled in rehearsals first to identify the elusive narrative and then to turn it into dramatic action. For supplementary character information Undermain’s artists relied in part on stories Mr. Young told between the “Greendale” songs at a solo acoustic concert that was released on DVD.
Distributing the singing among multiple “Greendale” characters turned out to be a huge task, given the sprawling, novelistic material.
The breakthrough came when Ms. Owens realized she could build on another genre. “When I started thinking of it as opera, everything changed,” she said. “All of a sudden there was a lot more freedom in it.” Opera, she said, provided just the right form for a story that moves from domestic scenes to murder and then planetary cataclysm — with the Devil periodically offering commentary.
“It gets supernatural,” Mr. DuBose said. “By the end you’re looking at the universe and the planet, a lot of symbolic elements, alchemical symbols and things, a young girl and a bronze eagle. A lot of these themes have appeared in Neil’s songs over the years: the image of gold, for instance.”
To score the piece Undermain assembled a group of musicians who play in the theater’s Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, including the guitarist Kenny Withrow from New Bohemians and the Grammy-winning drummer Alan Emert from Brave Combo. Playing within a theater production did not faze them, they said. “We try to keep it spontaneous and emotional,” Mr. Withrow said. “It’s deceptively simple music, just a few chord changes, but you have to really be dynamic.”
The collaborators say the results show that rock opera is still a form up for grabs. “It’s nothing like ‘Tommy’ or ‘Quadrophenia,’ ” Mr. Emert said, speaking of the Who projects. “It’s kind of like a play and an opera and a live concert all rolled into one.”
Theirs isn’t the only retelling of “Greendale.” Vertigo, the art-house arm of DC Comics, is turning Mr. Young’s material into a graphic novel. Karen Berger, the imprint’s executive editor, said the idea came from Mr. Young.
In its 15-year history, Vertigo’s titles for adults have included Swamp Thing, The Last Man and DMZ. Many have dealt with apocalyptic or somber social themes, like plague, gendercide and Earth’s destruction. With its magical elements and family sagas, “Greendale” fit.
Ms. Berger assigned the project to the artist Cliff Chiang, and the writer Joshua Dysart. “Josh established this wonderful, modern Southern Gothic approach to the tone of his writing,” Ms. Berger said. “He looked at a lot of Neil’s lyrics and tried to find ways to utilize them where it worked.” And, she added, Mr. Dysart was sympathetic to the work’s underlying vision of social redemption.
Like the Undermain stage collaborators, Vertigo’s team is digging deep into mythologies that Mr. Young has created about the fictitious town. So “Greendale” the graphic novel will feature concepts and characters beyond those introduced in the original recording. The 160-page volume will likely be released in fall 2009.
After that no one knows what new versions the songs may inspire — or whether the proliferation will reach a limit. But as Mr. Young once noted, it may be better to burn out than to fade away.
When Mr. Young recorded that 10-track concept album in 2003 with the band Crazy Horse, fans and critics were divided. Some found the song cycle overreaching. Others embraced the imaginative lyrics, which describe three generations of the Green family and a mythic small town reeling from a police shooting and environmental catastrophe. Rolling Stone magazine admired the “paranoia on Main Street” and ranked the album one of the year’s best.
That was just the beginning: Mr. Young went on to make “Greendale” into a concert tour, live recordings and an original film inspired by his post-9/11, save-the-Earth epic.
By now Mr. Young has moved on to new tours and releases and to activism against the war in Iraq. But “Greendale” continues to inspire spinoffs outside the music world, including a graphic novel and a multi-performer theater piece, which opens in New York on Wednesday.
The Ice Factory Festival will present this work, called “Neil Young’s Greendale,” at the Ohio Theater in SoHo for four performances. The production was created by Undermain Theater in Dallas, where it ran for five weeks in spring.
Bruce DuBose, who adapted the show for the stage and plays a role in the production, got hooked on the album when he first heard it. “It seemed obvious that Neil had some theatrical possibilities in mind when he wrote it with this third-person narrative,” he said. And he was taken with the rough-hewn 2003 film, featuring actors lip-syncing to Mr. Young’s vocals. “I kept thinking it would be very interesting to see it broken down into characters,” Mr. DuBose said, “and having the characters actually sing.”
For a few years Mr. DuBose didn’t pursue the stage rights, assuming someone else had secured them. But when he eventually applied, Mr. Young granted permission. “I gather that it interested him that we are a fairly small, experimental theater,” said Mr. DuBose, Undermain’s executive producer. “He has really been generous and pretty much hands off.” (Mr. Young has been touring and could not be reached for comment.)
An ensemble cast performs the tale, backed by a live band. The director, Katherine Owens, struggled in rehearsals first to identify the elusive narrative and then to turn it into dramatic action. For supplementary character information Undermain’s artists relied in part on stories Mr. Young told between the “Greendale” songs at a solo acoustic concert that was released on DVD.
Distributing the singing among multiple “Greendale” characters turned out to be a huge task, given the sprawling, novelistic material.
The breakthrough came when Ms. Owens realized she could build on another genre. “When I started thinking of it as opera, everything changed,” she said. “All of a sudden there was a lot more freedom in it.” Opera, she said, provided just the right form for a story that moves from domestic scenes to murder and then planetary cataclysm — with the Devil periodically offering commentary.
“It gets supernatural,” Mr. DuBose said. “By the end you’re looking at the universe and the planet, a lot of symbolic elements, alchemical symbols and things, a young girl and a bronze eagle. A lot of these themes have appeared in Neil’s songs over the years: the image of gold, for instance.”
To score the piece Undermain assembled a group of musicians who play in the theater’s Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, including the guitarist Kenny Withrow from New Bohemians and the Grammy-winning drummer Alan Emert from Brave Combo. Playing within a theater production did not faze them, they said. “We try to keep it spontaneous and emotional,” Mr. Withrow said. “It’s deceptively simple music, just a few chord changes, but you have to really be dynamic.”
The collaborators say the results show that rock opera is still a form up for grabs. “It’s nothing like ‘Tommy’ or ‘Quadrophenia,’ ” Mr. Emert said, speaking of the Who projects. “It’s kind of like a play and an opera and a live concert all rolled into one.”
Theirs isn’t the only retelling of “Greendale.” Vertigo, the art-house arm of DC Comics, is turning Mr. Young’s material into a graphic novel. Karen Berger, the imprint’s executive editor, said the idea came from Mr. Young.
In its 15-year history, Vertigo’s titles for adults have included Swamp Thing, The Last Man and DMZ. Many have dealt with apocalyptic or somber social themes, like plague, gendercide and Earth’s destruction. With its magical elements and family sagas, “Greendale” fit.
Ms. Berger assigned the project to the artist Cliff Chiang, and the writer Joshua Dysart. “Josh established this wonderful, modern Southern Gothic approach to the tone of his writing,” Ms. Berger said. “He looked at a lot of Neil’s lyrics and tried to find ways to utilize them where it worked.” And, she added, Mr. Dysart was sympathetic to the work’s underlying vision of social redemption.
Like the Undermain stage collaborators, Vertigo’s team is digging deep into mythologies that Mr. Young has created about the fictitious town. So “Greendale” the graphic novel will feature concepts and characters beyond those introduced in the original recording. The 160-page volume will likely be released in fall 2009.
After that no one knows what new versions the songs may inspire — or whether the proliferation will reach a limit. But as Mr. Young once noted, it may be better to burn out than to fade away.