It's the words you DON'T sing! Working is the Show of the Week
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 3 фев 2024
- ► Suggest a show of the week: / 97653640
►Subscribe: goo.gl/673d7i
►Patreon: / musicalmash
Need a break from your livelong day? Give the libretto for working a read: www.mtishows.com/news/read-wo...
(Link was functional as of Feb 4, 2024. If it's not, hit up the comments and we'll figure something out.)
Working is a musical with a book by Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso, music by Schwartz, Craig Carnelia, Micki Grant, Mary Rodgers, and James Taylor, and lyrics by Schwartz, Carnelia, Grant, Taylor, and Susan Birkenhead.
The musical is based on the Studs Terkel book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974)
Show my friend Kelly some love: / kellylinhayes
✽ ✽ BIG WALL OF LINKS ✽ ✽
🎧 Listen to the podcast! jimandtomic.com
🐉 Or the other one oncemorewithdragons.com/
(and subscribe to my podcastmate, Jimi: goo.gl/RfLGp2)
✽ ✽ SOCIAL STUFF ✽ ✽
Find Tommy (aka Mr. Mash) on social…stuff…
🐦 Twitter / musicalmash
If you're reading THIS comment below with what song or profession we need to add to Working to update it to 2024. Probably a song about RUclipsrs, right? "Like and Subscribe" would be the name of the song. Anyway, that's how I'll know you read this far. 😉
Oh, and would you click that like button? And maybe subscribe? (Like the song we're writing?) Love you forever. 
Развлечения
Ok, so as to your assignment. I've always loved Mike's song on pg 54 (libretto)/62 (their numbering system). He stops twice to speak, not sing. I have a number of thoughts, but one is that a lot of the beginning of the song is him more thinking to himself, but through song. Then, he gets to a place where he has too many thoughts that he needs to share with us, not just for himself, and he has to articulate them through speech, it takes him out of the song and talking to us while he's discovering what he needs to say. Then, after these realizations, he goes back to song and incorporates these new thoughts into what he sings. I could get into the specific lines, but feel as though I've already rambled enough.
As someone who teaches voice to young music theatre students in college (I've loved your channel for years btw) I'm so glad you're posting again! I've never heard of this musical, but I'm always looking for different rep for my students that is out of the box! I'll be looking into this one for sure!
I actually submitted this show to the local community theater. and it was accepted! I'm going to help direct it!
Yay for more shows for educational theatre
Hi, Matt the first time I came across "Working" was in 1982 when PBS American Playhouse did a version of the musical. I wouldn't call it racists, but it does exposes you to instructional racism. 1982 was a big year for me. So much of Broadway was on TV that year.
I was in this show a few years back. In high school actually. I played a multitude of roles, but the one that continued to stick with me was Charlie Blossom (Page 53). It was hard to do a monologue about someone who fantisizes about that kind of violence in front of a room for full high schoolers circa 2021. Gun violence was (and still is) something that was on our minds constantly and having to create a believable person out of such harsh words was really interesting as an actor. Because that's the thing, he was a real person.
I discovered early last year that a lot of LA Theatre Works', well, works, are available on Hoopla, including a version of Working recorded in 1999. The cast includes Orson Bean and Harry Groener, but the name that stood out to me the most is B. J. Ward, who did a ton of voice work in the 80s and 90s.
What a time to find this. I had a solo shift two days ago at a corporate coffee job where the store made $800 in 90 minutes and I could barely walk after. I also came and emergency closed this evening and cut my finger fixing a faucet and a espresso machine. No such thing as unskilled labour.
What intrigues me about both recordings I listened to is it feels like it could be chronically NYC or chronically somewhere else in America. Not a lot of shows like that where it can feel so mailable in the way it’s regional.
Fave script quote: “Jobs are not big enough for people.” I always feel that. People have jobs, they aren’t defined by them. A person is so much more, but their lives can be chronicled by it
ALSO, both my parents were firefighters and I loved that monologue being in there showing the horror and nobility of the job. ALSO ALSO loved the opening being the SM chatter, that speaks volumes
The famous actor Rip Torn was one of those interviewed in the book.
I know Working when I music directed it in 1983 at The Catholic University of America in WDC. I know that it has gone through changes and rewrites since then - songs/characters being taken out and new ones added.
It was an amazing experience - particularly having spoken to Mr Schwartz and getting some very personal help from him to get our orchestra parts
Maybe a 2024 update could include an undergrad or grad school student in their college career or at graduation who is doubting their major and their career choice? In today's job market, career prospects are certainly becoming a source of significant concern for the students pursuing them. I comment this before reading or listening to the work, so I might have just described something already in the show...
It certainly is an interesting idea! I think the show has a lot of the lives portrayed feeling very lived and the jobs being so definitive of how people are or are seen. It could be cool to see someone as more of a blank slate, an empty entry in a dictionary
I haven't read Tom's monologue, but it sounds pretty similar to Paul's monologue from A Chorus Line. Imagine if Paul's monologue was sung......
Did it my junior year of high school for community theatre :) I split Cleaning Women with 2 others.
As a response to parts of the script that aren't sung - I was part of a group that were a bunch of office workers talking about their day-to-day or their cubicles, etc. certainly lives in the realm not enough emotion to break into song. it's like, 4 or 5 brief stanzas basically. I also think an "office worker" song is blase because 9-5 workers are already so ingrained in culture, so putting that "busy busy hustle energy" (or the "blaaaah'' energy) of office life is better saved for unsung jobs, such as the waitress's upbeat "It's an Art" or the lower key energy "Just a Housewife"
happy to see you back matt.
Search out Turkel's Working interviews that he did on Chicago radio. Essential! LuPone was in the OBC and did not sing!
She was in the PBS production, too. If I remember right, she played the prostitute.
Neat.
🎉
I found Rex's monologue very intresting. As a filthy commie his hyper-capitalistic worldview is something I kinda struggle to wrap my head around, especially coming from a 1970's yuppie type (yeah, yuppies are 80's, but you get what I mean). But it's interesting to hear someone just... *say* something that would illicit incredulous stares from my social circle.
Please do Hadestown! :)
Tommy...Alan Brady called....he would like his toupees back !
I say this with love but you really need to fix your audio. It makes these videos seem way more amateurish than they really are.