Concept notes:

Sailor’s Song is most definitely a memory play in the vein of Glass Menagerie or Dancing at Lughnasa. Through Rich’s remembering we are transported to a place and time of searching and significance in Rich’s life at a critical moment when Rich was forced to evaluate his life and the meaning of his choices. Sailor’s Song is full of juxtaposition—charm versus grit, romance versus death, order versus chaos and most importantly, reality versus fantasy.

In all aspects of the production, we need to evoke the tension and seamless transitions between reality versus fantasy. As the play is taking place in Rich’s memory, there should be a nostalgic quality to all things that he romanticizes—the women should be especially stunning and beautiful, the backdrop/setting should be vaguely enchanting and wistful, and every character (especially Rich and the sisters) should dance better than they probably did in real life. Like Don Quixote, Rich tends to see life not as it is, but as he thinks it ought to be. Women are idealized and dreams are of more interest to him than the reality of the real people right in front of him.

“If you could dance with the days of your life, if you could take life by the wrist and dance, I think it would be a waltz. Forward and back, sad and happy, high and low…” –Rich in Sailor’s Song

The dances in Sailor’s Song are the meat of the fantasy in the show. While there should be a smooth, seamless transition from the regular action of the play into the dances, it should be clear that these dances are not taking place in reality—they are wonderful, perfect, idealized visions of how the characters are feeling. Just like in good musicals, the characters break into dance only when the emotions are so strong that they must use dance to communicate their feelings in ways words can’t express. Each dance needs to be its own scene that helps to move the story forward so that the characters (and in turn the audience) are in a different place with a different perspective when the dance ends than they were when the dance began. As complete scenes, each dance needs to have a beginning, and middle and an end and every movement must have a purpose. This sense of purpose in the movement-as-storytelling will help connect the dances to the rest of the action of the play.

Unlike all of the partner dances in the show, which take place in Rich’s imagination, Carla’s dance takes place vividly in John’s memory and imagination. John is reliving the moment he met his wife, when he was traveling down the Danube and saw Carla at an Otis Redding concert, dancing by herself, full of life, desire and fury. Just as Rich’s memories are fantasized and exaggerated, so, too, should John’s memory of Carla dancing be painfully vivid, intoxicatingly hypnotic and evocative. The difference is that while Rich idealizes in a way that probably softens the edges and flatters, John visualizes both the beauty and the blood and guts—John accepts reality and hence, his imaginings are ultra-real and very visceral and Carla’s dance should reflect that.