Dramaturg's Statement

This is what I would bring to the first meeting with the director(s) and design people as a dramaturg.

The musical of Phantom of the Opera was taken by Andrew Lloyd Webber from the original novelization of Le Fantome de l'Opera by Gaston Leroux. This dramatic tragedy takes place in late 19^th century Paris, France. The opera house that inspired Leroux's Opera Populare was in fact the real life Opera Garnier. This includes the backstage, the theater itself and the underground lake. Supposedly another part of the inspiration was that the Opera Garnier had had and incident where their chandelier fell and kill a single person. In Phantom, the incident with the with the chandelier and the person dying are two separate events. One happens at the end of the first act while the second happens during the second. The play also has to echo the feel of late 19^th century Paris, France. This includes the grave yard.

In Phantom, there are references to light and dark. When referencing the PHANTOM, most of the references have to do with the dark. He even lives in the underground lake that rests below the theater. When it comes to lighting, when it comes to the PHANTOM the lighting should become somewhat darker if it is not already dark. This includes during the graveyard and masquerade scenes. The opera at the end of the show however does not need too many lighting changes. He also has an air of mystery about him. Most of the time when it comes to mystery of some sort, fog is most often used. I wouldn't say to add huge amounts of it, however I would add just enough to make it so.

RAOUL on the other hand is a lighter character. He should have a little bit lighter when it comes to a his lighting. Especially when it comes to the graveyard and underground lake scenes. If there is fog in the scene – whether or not the PHANTOM is there – it should lessen a least a little bit.

Now as far as casting goes, non-traditional casting could be accepted. The down side is that you would have to be careful as to how you cast. Casting with the main characters has to be fairly strict. What needs to be done is the characters have to cast because of how they act, not for such things as race but for their acting instead. If the roles were cast purely on race and not for their performance, then either way it would show a statement about the political aspects of the the performance and not about the talent.

There are are a few scenes that I see the most difficulty in trying to recreate on the stage. The first ones that comes to mind are any scenes that use the boat for the underground lake. It would be difficult in trying to perform such a task as to create the boat and having the steering of it be easy. In past productions of Phantom this problem has dealt with in different ways. There is a way for it to be dealt with, it is just the question as to how it will be done.

The other issue that I see is with the chandelier. This will again be difficult because because it would have to “crash” into the stage each night of the performance. It would have to be sturdy enough to handle it, but look delicate enough to look genuine. This has also been addressed in the various productions. It's an issue that's not really an easy one to solve, however it can be solved a couple different ways.

Statement: Producing the Play

Production Problems by the Text

In Phantom of the Opera, there are actually quite a few problems that I have seen. Most if not all of them are production problems. First has to do with the underground area. In the underground area, the Phantom uses a boat to go from one side of the lake to the other. This would be very difficult in several ways - one of the ways being steering the boat if a boat is used. There are also various other architectural problems. The one that stands out for me personally is the chandelier(s). If one is used - or two depending - then they have to be careful with it/them since night after night they would have them "crashing" to the floor - twice a night if they have just one. And then there is the stairwells. There are multiple scenes with some sort of stairwell and it would be difficult with not only building at least two sets of stairs but figuring out how to get the cast members up to the top of the stairs if that is where they are supposed to start the scene.



Production Problems Posed by Our Context

As far as context production goes with Phantom there are only a few problems. The largest problem to take care of of the issues is actually having to do with costuming. Several of the costumes for the in-production plays are extremely elaborate - especially with Hannibal and Il Muto. There are also the late 19th century French uniforms that have to be done as well and the dresses and costumes for the masquerade scene at the start of the second act. There isn't much with morals that has to be worried about. It would be slightly troublesome for some if people don't like the thought of a murder or two men lusting after one woman - especially since one of the men is old enough to be her father. Other than that there is no real foreseeable issues with the context of the play.



Other Productions Solutions

Upon what I've seen and read about other productions many of the problems have been solved. With Baldwin-Wallace's production, they actually altered some of the scenes so that extreme special effects did not have to be used. Two of such scenes were the underground boat scene and the chandelier crashing to the ground. In one photo I saw from them, I assume that instead of a boat they actually used a live horse instead. Other productions have used boats from what I have seen of them and they have actually done very well. As far as costuming has gone, when Carroll Senior High made their production they raised the money themselves - over $75,000 when is was all said and done.



Critical Response

When reading each of the review, the critics of the ones that I had found had nothing but good things to say. Each had known the script and were familiar with it. The script was a favorite with little if anything changed about it from production to productions. Mostly what was reviewed though was how the production was put on from place to place. In the cases of the schools, they continually had to remind themselves that these people weren't professionals putting the plays on. They were impressed with each production and whether it was the amateur versions or the actual Broadway production, it didn't really matter in the end.