Our reverence for regency & a Sundance Film Festival bid
Celebrating a Jane Austen concept album & the magic of live performance.
Welcome to Script & Screen! I’m Morgan and you’re reading the second edition of this newsletter.
The idea behind this publication is simple: celebrating film and theater in Minnesota and the upper midwest. Within each edition you’ll find musings from both industries and the scripts bringing their collective magic to life. Each edition will offer varying emphases on either industry— today, the stage!
OVERTURE:
Overtures are pieces of music used in theater and film to set the tone and mood before the beginning credits or curtain.
Let the twists and turns of Elizabeth Robinson’s Aviary immerse you in sensorial bliss throughout your reading of today’s edition— and beyond.
Elizabeth Robinson is the co-founder and Vice President of Flute New Music Consortium, and Assistant Professor of Music at South Dakota State University School of Performing Arts. Read more about her project here.
Robinson will be a featured clinician at the 78th Midwest Clinic, an international band and orchestra conference, in December of this year.
THIS EDITION’S HIGHLIGHT REEL:
A Jane Austen concept album on stage in St. Paul
Broadway on the St. Croix (A Preview)
Minneapolis bid to host the Sundance Film Festival
A Message from The House
Monica Livorsi’s audience experience and stage setup at the live performance of her Jane Austen concept album, All About Jane. The regency-era theatrical event was produced by Buzz Music Theater. Read a synopsis of the show from Cherry and Spoon here.
Our reverence for regency and the stage
On one era’s influence 200 years later and an art form that far predates it: live performance.
INT. THE HIVE COLLABORATIVE - NIGHT
If I told you that Ancient Athens and the 1789 French Revolution are the likely reason I am at a Jane Austen concept album performance tonight, would you stick around while I attempt to explain why?
Walk with me.
I’m sitting in the Hive Collaborative tonight to see Monica Livorsi perform her Jane Austen concept album, All About Jane, live on this stage. The performance is entitled Eras of Austen. This is a new space for artists to perform events, but by the time you’re reading this, a few seasons will have passed and they will have a full roster of events lined up.
Fresh off the sting of not getting Eras Tour tickets, I’ve been trying to get my hands on anything that reminds me of Taylor Swift’s work. After recently attending and loving a live candlelight quartet tribute to her music, I’ve been seeing art inspired by her everywhere I turn.
It’s no surprise then that when I saw an announcement on Instagram that Monica’s Eras of Austen performance would feature each of Jane Austen’s works as “eras”, with a final era dedicated to Monica herself, the similarities between that concept and Miss Swift’s current tour pulled me in. Once I learned more about Monica’s spin on Austen’s classic works, I was hooked and purchased a ticket for the closing show of the weekend.
Sitting here now at the Hive, I’m surrounded by tapestries, tea, thematic seating, and the dark glow of the house lights. I’m happy to be here.
My mind is wandering as I settle into my seat. Monica is putting a unique and original twist on Jane Austen’s work in her All About Jane album, and it has me thinking about one of Mark Twain’s more well-known quotes. “There is no such thing as a new idea.” Rather, he understood that the beauty of our human creativity lies in our ability to build off of what surrounds us. With our personal twist and added perspective, we create new experiences and works of art that feel— and therefore, are —new.
We are then constantly altering the world around us and how others in turn react to it.
No inventions or imagined works really exist on their own. We are always inspired by something, which came to be thanks to something else.
An endless cycle of inspiration.
In other words, not even the greatest thinkers or artists or scientists of documented history simply fell out of coconut trees. Each were the products of their time, environment, experiences, personal and collective histories, and personalities.
This is actually a beautiful and freeing thought. As Stephen Shapiro put it:
What if there is nothing new under the sun? Would this give you freedom? Would this help you overcome the internal obstacles that stop you from bringing your ideas to the world?
Take, for example, regency, or the “Regency Era”. A specific period of history in just one corner of the world still triggers images of refinement and gowns and passionate stories of love and heartbreak in our minds today. Such a defining era still did not exist in vacuum though, did it?
It was predated by centuries of consequential periods that informed its then-present-day social and class cultures. It also existed, for a time, in parallel with Romanticism— a movement-turned-era associated with the minds of people whose names we still recognize today: Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson… Jane Austen.
The powers that brought the Regency Period to life were themselves the product of reinvention and societal changes. Regency’s tango with Romanticism also left it forever changed.
Jane Austen herself, and her lasting impact, allow us to see Mark Twain’s intended meaning play out even further.
Her work was informed by her surroundings at the time, which were constructed by larger powers and forces over decades and centuries. Her unique perspective and commentary was infused into her works, however, and from her brilliance came new art and works that have now transcended time.
Many proper catalogues of her work’s influence exist elsewhere, but a quick hit list is still impressive enough: Several present-day colleges now have courses on her writings, her novels have remained in print for 200 years, and her works have been made into countless film, television, and theater adaptations.
How is that not the perfect example of Mark Twain’s point at work?
Tonight, I’m sitting down in this victorian-era chair with a cup of tea ready to watch Monica perform each of Austen’s 6 published works as an “era” and walking us through the book characters who inspired her music for each section.
I think about the twists and turns in culture and the greater world between Jane Austen’s pen first meeting paper and Monica’s mind first crafting this album. Both of them original, both of them inspired.
Continue reading here (it’s free).
FROM THE STAGE:
In our next edition, we’ll come together to recap a starry night along the Saint Croix River at Mary Poppins - Broadway on the Saint Croix in Stillwater, MN.
Put on by Frosted Glass Creative, a new theater company pumping out impressive projects in the area, this production of Mary Poppins was put on along the banks of the river with immersive audience experiences and impressive talent each night.
BALCONY-EYE VIEW:
Minneapolis, MN threw its hat in the ring for Sundance Film Festival
Minneapolis bid to host the country’s biggest indie film festival! Though now out of the running, Minneapolis made the second round of proposals thanks to its thriving arts culture and ability to sustain a festival of this magnitude.
Minnesota WebFest 2024 is almost here!
Minnesota WebFest is the first film festival dedicated to the web series format in the Upper Midwest, and has a rocking lineup of selections for this circuit.
American Players Theatre in Wisconsin was featured in the New York Times
The annual audience of around 100,000 “Packers fans of theater” were heralded in the NYT this month. It is a personal mission of mine to visit this stage and experience a show!
FEATURED PIECE: A WINTER LOVE
ABOUT THE FILM: A Navajo songwriter, has few options left in freezing Minneapolis until she meets Lakota, law school dropout, Eddie. She may have finally found a home in Eddie's love if his self-sabotage and confused sexuality doesn't break her will to survive the winter.
Watch the trailer here!
INDUSTRY DATES & DEADLINES
Highlighting news, dates, deadlines, and events across Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota. This will never be an exhaustive list but there’s no harm in trying!
The University of Iowa’s Fall 2024 General Auditions are in full swing! If you missed them, check out their audition tips before the spring.
Aberdeen Community Theater in South Dakota is accepting applications for volunteers.
Mouse River Players, an all-volunteer theater organization in Minot, North Dakota, has their fall performance line-up live and tickets are on-sale now!
Message from The House:
The theater, for me, is an emotional experience whenever I step into one. This is not hyperbole. Much like the silver screen, theater shaped me, but unlike film, I found myself on stages and live performance sets for most of my formative years.
It comes as no surprise then that I believe theater is in the very make up of who I am. The acoustics of an auditorium, the heat of spotlights on your skin, the smell of the curtains, the moments between scenes during months of rehearsals that bond you to the craft and the people bringing it to life.
It changes you, and it becomes a high you chase.
Whether life gives you opportunities to participate in this magic backstage, onstage, or in the audience, you do what you can to stay in its orbit.
Film, to me, feels like flying the nest. Exhilarating, new, unfamiliar, exciting.
Theater, then, feels like coming home. Here I can swim freely into waters I already know, exploring more bravely and boldly. I’d love to feel this way about film someday.
Until then, I’m proud of this second edition for sticking true to the mission for this publication. Continuing on those goals, I wanted to also offer a learning experience I had while crafting these writings today.
I originally meant to dive deeper in the history of theater arts, hoping to dissect what it is and what it isn’t. Connecting that to Monica’s story felt important to me because her performance could have been interpreted as a musical concert by some, deviating from the theme of this publication. I decided against that angle for two reasons.
First, if the piece itself taught me anything, it is that even the ancient Greeks (those who have been credited as creating The First Plays in Athens) had to have been pulling inspiration from something, somehow.
I sweat the semantics in my work and didn’t feel comfortable placing the origin pin with them. I’d like to think instead that oral-based knowledge systems, though harder to track and follow now, might lead us even further back to our oldest ancestors.
Maybe research has already confirmed this, but I couldn’t find anything definitive and stopped looking shortly thereafter. This leads me to my second reason.
I realized that perhaps the need to identify and define the theater experience, and compare what it is now to what it came from, was me trying to impose on theater a set of constraints it doesn’t deserve.
Live performance and the theater are literally creativity come alive. Any effort to put them in a box would be in vain.
So for these reasons I instead leaned into what I knew to be true— leaving that show, I was filled with a renewed sense of community. I felt a connection to the people around me and before me, something I could use more of. The theater is a reassurance that the world is full of beautiful things.
My name is Morgan Wall and I am an aspiring filmmaker and playwright. I’ve been writing my entire life, sometimes having the opportunities to read and perform those writings. I created Cultivate Curiosity, giving me the chance to meet and interview fascinating people creating in their fields. I’ve performed in full and one-act plays, musicals, and competitive speeches. I’m currently writing a fictional novel, as well.
That’s curtain!
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻