Coweta arts tidbits
William Blake's Inn
A Visit to William Blake's Inn is a song cycle by Lacuna member Dale Lyles. It is based on a book of children's poetry by Nancy Willard, which won the Newbery Award in 1982, becoming the first book of poetry to be awarded the most presitigious prize in children's literature.In January of 2003, members of Lacuna were privileged to take seventeen students to Ayrshire, Scotland, to sing with the Scottish Opera's international cast of The Tale o' Tam, a setting of Robert Burns's "Tam O'Shanter." They decided then that they would work towards a similar project in Newnan.
In September of that year, Nancy Willard gave her permission for Dale Lyles to set her book to music. He finished composition in September of 2006 (having taken time off in the meantime for other projects.)
Now Lacuna is the artistic arm of the project to produce A Visit to William Blake's Inn as an international production. Our goal is a performance in 2008.
Happening now: get involved!
If you're a singer, a dancer, or just someone who is interested in learning more about creating a new theatre piece from scratch, come work with us on A Visit to William Blake's Inn! No previous experience is necessary. We'll be playing with all kinds of ideas, where anything goes!Dale Lyles and Marc Honea are leading a workshop of three of the pieces from William Blake's Inn: "The Sun & Moon Circus Soothes the Wakeful Guests," "The Man in the Marmalade Hat Arrives," and "Two Sunflowers Move Into the Yellow Room."
The purpose of the workshop is to provide a barebones visualization of these three pieces for a "backers audition" in May. After the First Look performance in January, we talked about the problem we've had in convincing people that a song cycle, with no plot or script, is actually stage-able. By staging these three pieces within the total work, we'll more easily convince our backers of what is possible with the music.
The workshop sessions are Tuesday nights, 7:30-9:00 pm, at the Newnan School of Dance, 35 Amlajack Blvd (across from the West Georgia University center/water tower).
I can't come on Tuesday nights!
This is not a problem. You can also contribute to the workshops in several ways.First of all, keep checking the group blog for weekly updates. You can always add a comment to any post, whether it's a new idea or image or anything.
Also, check out the Vyew page that we've set up to work with. The room ID number is 067760.
Further, you can actually help build things we need by checking out the What We Need page.
And of course, you'll want to get your own copies of the scores and the music. See the next story for links to those.
The work itself
There are fifteen songs in A Visit to William Blake's Inn, plus an epilogue.The vocal/piano scores are available at Dale Lyles's website at this page. There are also mp3s of each song.
Still to come
We will have our "backers audition" on May 3, 7:00 pm, at the Wadsworth Auditorium in downtown Newnan. This is another complete performance of the work, with the three pieces mentioned above in some kind of stagingAfter that, we will work with the producing agents of the project to set a date for a production in 2008. Our goal is a completely staged production, orchestra, chorus, and all, in 2008. We plan to invite 25 students from Scotland to take part in the world premiere. We also plan to invite Nancy Willard to help us celebrate her magical work.
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