BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Another night at home, another night in front of their screens.
Troy and Emma are on opposite sides of the city, but they are both searching for the same thing: something, anything, to bring their life some purpose. Aimlessly clicking, they serendipitously stumble across findr – a place for creating meaningful relationships.
They find a real connection with each other, but are they really themselves?
This is the story of Adrian Kingwell’s new song cycle FINDR. Presented with a live chamber ensemble, this piece of contemporary music theatre poses the question: would you catfish someone? Would you pretend you’re someone you’re not?
Adrian is a Sydney composer, educator, and director who specialises in both musical theatre and contemporary classical music. He lectures in Popular Music Studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, of which he is also a graduate; and is the coordinator of contemporary music at Cranbrook School.
Adrian, tell us about FINDR.
So, I guess the ‘elevator pitch’ for FINDR is that it’s a dramatic song cycle about two people who catfish each other. I composed it as part of my Masters in Music (Composition) that I completed at the Sydney Conservatorium.
The idea of a show about two people catfishing each other came as most things do with me: over conversations with friends, usually with a beer in hand. I think the moment the idea really took hold was when I realised that catfishing can be viewed as a kind of hyperbolic online curation, which is something that everyone does with their social media accounts.
Catfishing is not something exclusively done by Nigerian princes, but done by people seeking connection, who are so fragile in their self-worth that they need hide behind a lie. I feel like a lot of people have that fragility, it’s just how they deal with it that is different.
FINDR shares a story of relationships in a digital age. When composing music for a theme like this, how do you make choices surrounding instrumentation or motive?
It was a real struggle for me to figure out whether to use electronic instruments or not. I think it was tied to a much greater question of what is FINDR‘s focus – technology and people? For me, it’s entirely about people; their frailty, their aspirations, their shortcomings. The technology is merely a device for character connection, much like it is in real life.
In light of that, I decided to use acoustic instruments to – for want of a better analogy – ground the work in humanity. However, once that restriction was put in place, I made sure to get as many different colours from them as I could in service of the narrative.
You’re experienced in both classical music and musical theatre. What do you love about working across both worlds?
The people. There’s a great community of theatre creators in Sydney that are so keen for new works, and there’s a family of musicians here who are so eager to collaborate on new works too – it’s all quite life affirming!
How are these two sides of music similar in ways that we might not expect?
Both sides of music understand artistic gesture and shape, and how it can be used to evoke particular responses. How they individually go about doing this though is totally different, but I find that kind of fascinating.
Why is musical theatre an important medium to share a message or character stories when compared to other mediums?
I think about accessibility a lot, not only in my music, but also in the classroom. ‘How can I introduce a compositional technique to students so that they will not only understand it, but won’t be afraid to use it?’ easily pivots into ‘How can I use extended string techniques in a musical so that the audience will not only be okay with it, but enjoy it?’.
Presenting new sounds, ideas, and using new approaches in new music works is incredibly important – it pushes our art form forward, and I thoroughly enjoy doing this in my instrumental music. However, for me, it’s also important to bring the audience along for the ride and educate them about these new things. For me, musical theatre as a genre can do that. Mixing in Elliot Carter-esque modernity with an accessible narrative is a great way for punters to listen to music they may not usually listen to.
There is also a wide range of musical styles used in musical theatre, from art-song in Gabriel Kahane’s February House, hip-hop in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, to purer musical theatre style songs in Pasek and Paul’s Dear Evan Hansen. The lack of stylistic limitation can also help foster new musical sounds, ideas and approaches. And, rightly or wrongly, I feel like musical theatre has a much broader appeal than other musico-narrative traditions. People grew up with Disney; my niece will sing Let It Go when I Skype home to Western Australia, which I guess highlights that it’s still a living, breathing, readily accessible tradition.
Not only did you compose the music, but you were also responsible for lyrics in this production. Talk us through your compositional process behind the scenes.
So, I normally start my works from a macro perspective. That’s irrespective of whether it’s an instrumental work, or narrative-driven. I like to plot out sign posts so I know where I’m coming from to where I’m going. They’re not always literal, and the road-map does change, but it does anchor me a bit, which I think I need.
FINDR‘s story was plotted, and interrogated, then refined. Once that was done, I’d pick a song and pretend to be one of the characters. I’d then record myself improvising a conversation about the subject matter of the song. From there, I would start to sculpt the lyrics and write music to accompany. This was really great because it got me out of the habit of being cute and witty with my lyrics. However, I also found myself overly relying on the lyrics to convey every little emotional detail. It started to really clutter the emotional information that the music was providing. This caused me to make big lyrical cuts and tweaks.
When writing the music, I found some really interesting questions to tackle around pre-conceptions and expectations in musical theatre. For example, when people catfish, they put forward a version of someone that they think that will be universally liked. So in the musical theatre world, what are the conventions used to create a ‘universally liked’ song? And if writing something in a pure musical theatre style is something that may be universally liked, what then would be the sound world which isn’t universally liked? What’s the world sound like when they’re not catfishing?
Also, they say in musical theatre that songs occur when the emotion of a situation is too much for a character to bear. However, what happens if singing is the norm in a work and there is no dialogue? What happens when the emotion for the character is too much to bear?
The answer … come to the show and find out!
What do you hope audiences will take away from your song cycle?
Firstly, I hope they enjoy it!
Secondly, I hope, in the best way possible, it challenges their preconceptions of what musical theatre is and what classical music is, respectively.
Finally, I hope it makes them ask themselves, would I ever catfish someone?
See FINDR at the Eternity Playhouse at 3pm or 7.30pm April 28. For more about this JackRabbit production and to book your tickets, visit the website.
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