Brutus

Clearly the Blue Devils can hear the difference in the crowd reaction this year. And that crowd reaction puts last year's five tab of acid jazz interpretation of The Rite of Spring on the endangered species list. This year’s exquisite production is decidedly more focused, more era-specific, and a hell of a lot more fun. With Felliniesque, the Blue Devils have finally found a subject matter that justifies their recent jonesing for abstract design and absurd imagery. The Devils’ design team has either sobered, or matured—maybe both. With their 2014 show, they’ve turned down the volume knob on the inexplicable randomness, from eleven to about six, and this year cleverly grounded their show with just enough exposition to keep audiences tethered by their feet, like Guido as a runaway kite in 8 1/2. Underneath the surface, this year’s Blue Devils show admits that last year's show topic was hampered by a lack of narrative platform. Here are the expository elements that ground BD’s current offering: Where: Backstage dressing room, bar, movie theater seating Who: Cabaret tamborine performers, Claudia Cardinale, the lady in black What: Making movies, changing costumes, cabaret dancing These simple expository elements subtly assure the audience that the field action is real world. The exposition brings the audience into a narrative comfort zone, and allows for leeway into the absurd. Without those elements, however, any show becomes a schmear of self-indulgent finger painting. The narrative “who/what/where” platform helps ground the audience in the story- who the characters are, where they are, and what activity they're engaged in. Without these simple narrative elements, shows seem decidedly flat and without the ability to captivate our sense of story. And yes, of course, not all shows need narrative elements, but this proves that it sure helps. But let’s get real. It’s not that hard. Anyone can create a performance art montage based on imagery from Fellini’s films. A couple of clowns, a few fedoras and a descending chandelier, and you’re legit. After all, who’s going to argue with you? No one’s really sat through more than two Fellini films before realizing that it’s an abyss of artistic argument. You soon realize that discussing the themes of Fellini is really good for nothing more than getting farther than usual on a first date in college. But the Blue Devils capture Fellini so artfully, and in such detail, from Claudia Cardinale’s flowing white scarves to the circus like absurdity of Satyricon, from the hornline’s matching the step of the slow motion lady in black, to the bawdy tamborine dance of the showgirls, this show could be one of the greatest drum corps shows ever. The film score grandeur of the beginning and end make for a moving, triumphant bookends to this work—a clear apology from the design team for last year’s lack of showmanship and accessibility. The drill has the most astounding moment where the entire hornline forms a massive diagonal line, rotating for a glorious five seconds before morphing into camera lenses. It’s so breathtaking, so impossible, so perfectly executed, and harkens back so strongly to bygone eras of exposed drill elements that it makes you wish there were more cut throat maneuvers like this. But, alas, there are very few. The Blue Devils have captured the essence of Fellini’s style, and brought their whole approach back down to earth from last year, and for that they should be rewarded with a championship. Fellini peppered his films with beautifully rendered fantasy sequences based on subconscious imagery, and that’s a perfect stylistic match for BD’s penchant for the abstract, and a perfect match for today’s montage-like drill style. Bravissimo. Recommended revisions: 1) Can you better define the row of movie audience? Maybe it should have some couples with one arm wrapped around the other, in typical date night fashion. Maybe one should whisper another or snuggle. Perhaps one person can be late and holding popcorn, and forcing all the people in his row to stand as he takes his seat. Otherwise they look like marchers taking a break on folding chairs. 2) Clean up the “lets drag a chair over to the drum solo platform” section. It looks like the start of a PTA meeting. 3) Drum major, when you bow, put your feet together. Otherwise it looks like sodomy. 4) Opening featured dancer although evocative in her movement looks like she wandered over from the musical Hair. Shouldn’t she look more like Claudia or Fellini’s other coiffed beauties? What Fellini ingenue is this referring to? We can’t tell. Even pulling back the hair and wearing a designer hat would be more evocative in the important first moments of the piece. 5) The background backstage area almost seems too cluttered. Are all those costumes used? Can it be more streamlined? 6) Who is the hornline member who is GLARING at the judges box when he finishes a particularly difficult passage before turning away? It’s really mean-spirited and unsportsmanlike. Apparently he’s angry about last year’s best hornline prize. Why should you care? Where’s the Italian insouciance? 7) Can the streamers be unfurled lengths of 35 milimeter film instead of red silk? Strips of film are more absurd than red silk, and funnier, especially if you've ever edited 35 mm film. (At times when you're editing, it feels like you're in a sea of cellulose acetate packing material!) 8) In the final moment, who are these four presenting the Fellini director’s chair? (Not to mention why one of the people walks directly in front of the chair.) Why not replace these four with the featured characters that you’ve already set up? This may offer more resonance in the final moments. Questions: Is the limping man preceding the lady with the black umbrella from La Strada? Can you make the reference more clear? Help us out. What is the Fellini reference, if any, to the guard seated around the square platform where the drums play? Or is it a simple generic pub or cabaret?

Relax, Francis. Not a greater number of words, just tweaking what's there.

My analysis is intended to clarify and focus the design elements in this show, to purify the show, and align it with the original artistic purpose of the piece, The Lincoln Portrait. Forgive my condescension. 1) The platform has become a hiding place for the narrator and soloists. It's become a masked backstage area which is antithetical to the nature of the piece. A backstage area suggests artifice and theatrics, hidden motives. It pulls focus. Why do the narrator and soloist hide under it for so long? Why don't they want us to see them? In fact, the narrator is so tall that he has to duck under it in order to fit underneath it. I'd rather see the narrator listen to the music. Sit and relish it during the entire show. Think about the words. Stand and speak when he feels the need, just like the Lincoln Portrait is usually performed. His words spring up in a germaine way from the music. But a backstage area is artificial and indicative of "play acting." But this piece is Brechtian. We see the performer. He's not pretending. He's not playing a character. He is himself. He is Everyman. Let us see him as he watches the corps. There are no theatrics here. The script is as bare bones as you can get-- there's no play acting, bombast, theatrics or artifice here. "This is what Lincoln said. He said..." 2) What is the narrator's relationship with the corps? Right now, he seems to ignore the corps. Is the corps generated from his imagination? Can he watch the corps and relish it? Can he join the corps at the end? Present the flag he's carefullly unraveled and planted? The corps seems completely separate from him. And that's artificial. When the Lincoln Portrait is typically performed, the speaker is among the orchestra. In this case, he can be down center, but he should at least watch the corps and feel the music and be a part of it for the entire piece. In the Lincoln Portrait, the narrator becomes the music and vice versa. He doesn't exit from the middle of the orchestra when he's not speaking. 3) Can the soloist shake the hand of the narrator when the solo is done? Can they just touch base with each other for a second as the build this piece? Can they interact like that for a second as they combine the words and music? How about the drum major and the narrator? Can the narrator and drum major do a fist bump, or maybe a hand on heart acknowledgement, or shake hands before or during the piece at an appropriate moment?

Here's a line from the script of the Lincoln Portrait: "Lincoln was a quiet man. Abe Lincoln was a quiet and a melancholy man. But when he spoke of democracy, this is what he said." The narrator in the Lincoln Portrait should mirror the humbleness of Lincoln's persona. The narrator should have an air of humility about the timeless words he's saying. Any bombastic recording of an actor could easily be played, but that's not what this show is. The Lincoln Portrait is about a narrator discovering for himself who Lincoln was. Saying his words. Eventually, the narrator becomes Lincoln, first in a quiet, humble, and then profound way. And the music behind him comes from his own mind as he brings Lincoln alive. The narrator is every man. Not a professional orator.

Why don't they just use an actor's recording of Lincoln? Why is it a live narrator? Eventually you'll get there.

God help us. If you know anything about Lincoln, you know that he was not a loud aggressive orator. In the Lincoln Douglas debates, he was laughed at because he could barely be heard. Lincoln's words were profound and his delivery weak. The Lincoln Portrait is told from the narrator's point of view. It's about the narrator discovering what Lincoln said. It's about the narrator repeating Lincoln's words and discovering them for himself. Have you ever seen Lincoln Portrait performed live with orchestra?

I'm talking about the show content and direction, not about the "phenomenal" performers. This isn't Dance Moms.

The Cadets show has a couple of flaws that can be fixed in a week, and it will be one of the most profound and moving drum corps shows in years. (These are rudimentary directorial decisions that are shockingly obvious to anyone who’s ever directed anything.) 1) Are we supposed to like this narrator kid or hate him? Is he pompous and grandstanding or is he humble and one of us? Does he do something likable and self-effacing right off so that he becomes the underdog and we love him, or is he a preaching, finger pointing, declamatory, accusatory, villainous authority figure? I recommend you add a warm bit of business at the top so that the audience warms to him immediately. If you can’t think of an underdog bit of business for him you have no directing experience and should pack it in. 2) Put the narrator in jeans and a t-shirt. Right now he looks like some kind of Baptist preacher wearing a chenille unitard. It’s just weird. If it's a uniform, make it look like the traditional uniform. Otherwise we can't tell what he's wearing or why. It doesn’t look like the others’ uniforms. He doesn’t march in the show or play an instrument. If you want to make appear to be a part of the corps, then he should wear the quintessential Cadets uniform. Right now it looks like a monochromatic silken, artsy wrap . Not the right vibe at all. I suggest putting him in the classic marching uniform of previous years, which might harken back to Lincoln’s era in the civil war, and give it a timeless appeal that alludes to the 1860’s. 3) Get rid of that book—it looks like a bible. There’s no leather bound book with the speeches of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy in one volume. Why not have the kid be reading this from his cell phone or from a kindle? The book makes him look like an evangelist. And it puts an arcane spin on these words that should resonate with their immediacy. Make it ring with immediacy. 4) Get rid of the declamatory artifice. He’s not William Warfield. He’s not Tom Hanks. Skip the declamatory bologna. It rings false. He should read it as himself. If he reads it as himself, then the truth will emerge in the most powerful way. We want to see the human truth that he bring to these words by his being distinctly himself. That’s profound and real. Not false and trumped up. We love him and want to see him make sense of it in his own voice. 5) Keep him on the platform. His constantly exiting and re-entering begs the question, is he leaving to get a snack? What better thing does he have to do than be here with the corps, and us watching it? His constantly exiting and re-entering make us wonder what’s under that platform and what he’s so in a hurry to do. He should share it with us. He should help us make it all make sense. Maybe this whole show is coming from the narrator’s mind. Sit down. Say the words. Make them your own. Be present in the moment. Watch the corps. Find something on the kindle, get up and speak when it’s your time. Discover it in the moment. That’s truthful, simple and profound. 6) The rhythm of the words is tied to the meter of the music, we get it, but becomes mechanical and declamatory when he does this. The narrator should have full improvisational leeway with the rhythm. Otherwise it’s canned, trumped up, stilted and he becomes declamatory and the spontaneity and honesty get flushed down the toilet. Yuck. 7) How does the action on the field tie in thematically with the speeches? It doesn’t really. So at the end of each segment, the narrator can simply place a flag in a stand at the center on the 50. The Union flag of 1860. The WPA flag. And a flag with the NASA logo for Kennedy. And then stand proudly with the flags at the end. Simple. This helps tie the action on the field with the Narrator’s commentary, which, without this small tie-in would be almost completely separate. At the end maybe he could could present the flags. Watching William Warfield perform The Lincoln Portrait live after his Grammy win, I was a little bit shocked how declamatory his style was. THIS IS WHAT LINCOLN SAID! Jeez. There was strength which was important, yes, but no vulnerability. Warfield has an automatic underdog status that others just don't. When a white guy starts declaiming without any vulnerability, he instantly becomes "the man." Ugh.

In terms of the show design, Crown needs only one thing. Signposts. All they need to do is add three short snippets of pre-recorded astronaut dialogue as a signpost for each phase: launch, space and return home. These real astronaut quotations will help create the who/what/where platform. They can be made to sound distant and transmitted over NASA radio waves. 1) LAUNCH. (Played over Major Tom.) “During the launch, it’s all a matter of height. That horizon reduces to a point, and then to nothing at all. Then the human dream of being like a god, without no confining horizon is finally ours.” 2) SPACE. "The silence is deafening up here. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us." 3) HOME. “Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . this is home. “

Selecting an abstract art theme for a corps show is a cop-out. Abstraction gives show designers complete artistic license to incorporate random, nonsensical, unstructured elements in a corps show and call it “art.” Babies make abstract art in their diapers every day. It’s easy. When show designers use an abstract theme for a corps show it’s like using a human shield against the judges because abstract art has no rules. Abstraction is random, alienating, and it has no place in a 12-minute marching music youth program where crowd reaction, shared joy and unified sense of purpose are so important. If I want to experience a random subconscious event I’ll take a sleeping pill. If I want an absurd experience at a drum corps show, I’ll sit on the visitor side. That’s not why people come to a drum corps show. Abstraction is as easy as putting lipstick on a hamster. But getting 30,000 people in a stadium to feel the same thing is near impossible. Yet that’s what Carolina Crown did last year. That’s why they won. That’s what Madison did last year. Everyone agreed about their sense of purpose. Everyone stood on their feet. And a solid narrative is a lot harder to create than walking an imaginary tightrope or managing 160 meaningless folding chairs. But this year, as with last year, if BD is not careful, audiences are going to be alienated again by a miserably disjunct, incoherent, juvenile, random, subconscious free-for-all performance art piece, just like last year with red balls, human sacrifices and elephant tusks, all of which left Fathom semifinals movie theater audiences scratching their heads so hard that there was blood in the popcorn. Here’s a dada-like paragraph of random words, similar to a Blue Devils show. Now everyone can argue about their meaning, but eventually everyone realizes, it’s just annoying, it’s meritless and stirs no emotion. Alsjdf asd a;sld jkfas; dlfjasl o9r ;asd lkfjq ;2jrqn ssdf asd;fl q2x asd ihaspod fu8xq984 ua;. Af jazx lcjvwot pim qwcptu pgq;I giuh ihiuhas ldukhs. Are you bored yet? I typed it in less than 20 seconds. It required no technique, it required no thought about structure or purpose, and if it were twelve minutes long, paying customers would be angry that they were swindled. The Blue Devils’ obsession with alienating abstractions and random artistic absurdities helps them avoid getting to the purpose of musical performance—shared human truth. DRUM CORPS AND ABSTRACTION DON’T MIX Absurd theater, film and orchestral pieces often use random, subconscious, unstructured, anti-establishment elements. By its nature, abstract performance art is completely antithetical to the drum corps medium in every way. Think about it-- every aspect of the drum corps activity has been shaped over the years for audience reaction, group mind, and shared sense of rhythm and purpose. Music is an art form that by its very nature contains repeating patterns that grow and build for dramatic effect. On the other end of the spectrum, abstraction thumbs its nose at patterns and delights in unresolved randomness. Drum corps shows are only 12 minutes long and capture the essence of musical pieces that are often longer. (Fellini has a lot longer to develop his complex themes and to create meaning and story over two hours and still manages to confuse.) Drum corps has a caption for judging audience outward response and acceptance. Fellini's films are the complete opposite. Drum corps horns are uniquely designed, shaped and held to project toward the bloody audience, for God's sake. If the instruments were designed by Fellini, they’d be pretzel shaped and sound like mastadons in pain. But corps instruments are intended to literally project to the audience for their reaction. It's direct, clear and purposeful invitation. It’s embracing, not rebuking. Projecting, not hiding. Clarifying, not obfuscating. There are captions which judge precision and unison of form. Can it be any clearer? Drum corps is not a performance medium suited for confusion and disagreement. Drum corps shows by their musical nature have an underlying agreement, a rhythm that’s shared by audience and performer. Unlike in a Fellini story, the characters in drum corps are literally in step with one another the entire time. Absolutely nothing about the nature of marching music is random, improvised, subconscious, left to chance or fate. The entire corps show is choreographed within an inch of its life. The nature of the entire drum corps activity is musical unison with clear emotional intent. The drum corps medium, because it’s a large scale music activity that is projected to the audience in a huge venue that battles for your attention doesn’t jibe with abstract, alienating elements. Corps already fight to get your focus and attention without making it worse. Corps shows are designed to be performed toward the audience in one direction. Everybody agrees. There is so much agreement and unison in the drum corps experience that to subject drum corps audiences and young performers to dissonant, meaningless, patternless absurdities is harmful and rude. Last year, there was a palpable disgust at the Blue Devils when their show was over. The gut feeling was that audiences had been swindled. Audiences had been presented a riddle with no answer. Unsatisfying, mystifying, patternless, unresolved randomness, similar to looking into a trash can. If I want an entertainer to abuse me, I'll hire an escort with electro-stim equipment and a sounding rod. What’s more bothersome than the lazy selection of an abstract performance art theme like Fellini, or any number of the other Dada-dabbling shoulder-shruggers that the Blue Devils have done in previous years, is that the Blue Devils are evading the purpose of the activity under the guise of artistic merit. The purpose of the drum corps activity is the shared enjoyment between performer and audience during marching music routines with a single-focused dramatic action or musical emotion. That's the challenge. Everyone is gathered to feel and see the same thing. It's a collective exprience. A shared emotion by 30,000 people is an incredibly hard thing for show designers to achieve. The audience is all facing the same direction. We are all facing the performers, and the performers are facing us, and playing music for us. They are inviting us to share a specific series of themes, patterns and music that together help us create a shared vision of our humanity. Whether it’s Velvet Knight’s Wagnerian opera singer and the shark, or BD’s long missed When a Man Loves a Woman. Peformers are not there to confuse, obfuscate, fog, question, stumble, delay, muddy, mix up, or fail. Drum corps performers are there to clarify, deliver, and elevate specific musical passages to audience members, and convey a specific, clear underlying dramatic action or musical emotion to them in 12 minutes. Good shows invite the audience, not alienate them. Every good corps show invites the audience to understand the world of the piece. From the joy of the Bridgemen's collapsing at the end of the William Tell Overture finale, to the breathtaking end of Phantom's Juliet show, good shows have a single dramatic action or sense of purpose that everyone in the audience understands. There is agreement between the players and the audience about what is being communicated, and the audience is swept away, in unison with the bold humanity and clarity of artistic purpose. The performers shouldn’t alienate their audience like BD does with abstract, random, unresolved, vague designs. Toddlers with finger paints can do that. With abstract themes like The Rite of Spring, audience members sat dumbfounded, wading in a sea of tattoos and elephant tusks, desperate to feel an emotion, any emotion-- anger, rage, delight, sadness, hilarity, freaking anything, any pattern or truth about our human experience. Instead, we were left with a barage of randomly selected, but briliantly executed abstract woven moving shapes and choreography in an alienating ballet without purpose or pattern, presenting no shared experience or meaning, making BD’s performers appear insane. BD seems to be using Cirque du Soleil as a model, with one major difference. Cirque du Soleil’s abstraction has an underlying structure, a narrative arc, and the intention to draw specific emotion from the audience. For example, the Cirque clowns interact with an audience member, bring him up on stage to develop a character, and in less than a minute, the clowns find a human truth in that audience member, and that truth elevates the reason why the audience is here-- to understand the human experience and to share our universal, unique natures. Not wallow in unsatisfying abstraction and randomness. For the last several years, BD has been like a college kid hanging out at a Jean Genet short play festival, smoking clove cigarettes and reveling in the lofty complexity of Genet’s themes rather than getting off their butts and writing something of their own that has a clear, focused dramatic action that appeals to all of humanity—a task that’s much harder to do. Drum corps is a large scale performance activity suited only for instant, excessive agreement by performers and audience. There's no getting around it. That's the nature of the beast. SHOW SUGGESTIONS: Now that I’ve completely eviscerated BD’s selection of abstract themes, I have some pointed Fellini show design suggestions. These two show concepts use abstraction only as a potent spice, but still provide a clear narrative arc, emotion, and meaning for drum corps audiences. Here are two show ideas. 1) SHOW CONCEPT #1 Based on Fellini’s The Clowns, a TV movie. 30 guardmembers are dressed as clowns. Each guard member has in tow as their piece of guard equipment a lifesize, light-weight clown dummy that looks like a twin—each guard member spins, drags and throws his lifesize dummy like a flag, spinning their dead twin partners around wildly and dragging him by its feet, trying animate and resuscitate their dead twin, the entire show. The clown guard members lament their dead partners and try to revive them throughout the show, throwing, wooing, spinning, and animating them, even kicking them in anger, to no avail. By the end the guard members one by one give up their dead twins, drop their own clown costumes, and return to the signature guard uniform and flag/rifle. But there is only one clown left by the end, still trying to revive his dummy, finally giving up. But surprise. The dummy comes to life and angrily chases his partner, who now regrets having revived him. The End. This show idea has a singular visual theme. It’s absurd, it’s hilarious, and has a sense of humanity about death, relationships and our human desire to control and hang on to our past. This idea incorporates a SINGLE piece of equipment that becomes the center of the dramatic action and is used the entire show. That SINGLE piece of equipment becomes a metaphor for relationships and death. It’s absurd, funny, and fun to watch, and ultimately moving for audiences on the theme of meaning and loss in relationships. 2 SHOW CONCEPT #2 Fellini, played by one guard member, is a director who sees the corps on the field marching in a tight box. Fellini toys with the corps, tries to pull the box apart, tries to push some of the members, and encourages them to break rank. Fellini pushes and pulls at the corps’ tight square block which rotates around the field. He pulls the corps block apart, as if with an unseen rope, huge wedges of horns and drums break off as he attempts to scatter them, a metaphor for his films breaking tradition. The corps begins to break apart at his command. He controls the field action as if images in a dream in his own mind. He is in heaven. Fellini creates the action on the field. But suddenly, it starts to spin out of control. Sometimes he pulls two wedges of horns together, but wait, they crash into each other. Oops. Nothing works as he planned. Sometimes he pulls them toward him but the corps becomes out of control and tramples him. In a slow passage, he begs the guard to become impassioned, and eventually they do. They become so lively that they chase him around the field. Exhausted at the end of his life, tired from chasing, cajoling and orchestrating, he hobbles toward his director’s chair. As a clown presents the director’s chair to him, paying tribute to Fellini and finally giving him the accolade he deserves, just as Fellnini tries to sit down in it, the clown pulls the chair out from under him. Fellini falls. The clown helps Fellini up, apologizes and offers the chair again. Fellini hesitates, tries to sit down and the chair is yanked again. Fellini falls. Fellini angily tries to grab the chair from the clown, and after some wreslting, Fellini succeeds. Fellini, in a triumphant move, dances with his chair, sets in a final resting place, sits on the chair and it breaks into pieces as he falls to the ground a final time. The end.

You mean "firsts"? Which part did you disagree with? 1) Designers botched their show pitches at semi's? 2) Madison's Mason lied that Madison was "harkening back" to their military past? 3) Cavies' show had an unclear protagonist? 4) Cadets show lacked specificity and thematic argument? 5) Crown blew its show pitch at semi's? 6) Phantom botched their pitch and flaked on the puppet design?

I haven't really studied the show that much, but what does the "emerging from the backfield black triangle" mean? Are these new members that have been accepted into the "society"? Why are they so happy when they emerge from the black triangle? Do they serve drinks under there? ;)

No, in Corps of Brothers: Behind the Scenes with James Mason he continually alludes to the history of the Madison Scouts as the reason for selecting the theme of military combat. He segues continually between Madison's "old time corps style" honoring the history of the corps and military drills. It's intentionally misleading. "The combat mode of the men of Madison." "...what it takes to be in training for let's say special ops or the marine corps or the army or the navy, and you get a feeling of this boot camp type mentality. I really believe that we're, we're getting a feeling for old time drum corps." Uh, the Madison Scouts were never a military training group. The line is blurred here, and I believe that many viewers are convinced that Madison has some military history, and that the military was part of its early history, and the reason for selecting this theme for their anniversary show, but it's simply not true. It's one thing to harken back to military bearing, and the formal marching style, but it's another thing to suggest that the history of the Madison Scouts had its roots in military training, which it clearly did not.

1) These duface designers agreed to encapsulate their program in front of thousands of viewers on a nationally televised event. It's in their contract. They should have prepared, for the sake of the kids. This is the age of Youtube, not the age of Morse code. Practice. Market. Publicize. Enlighten. 2) The reason why we interviewed them is because 1) Some of the shows need explanation for clarity's sake 2) The corps asked to do it 3) It points up the main argument why Carolina Crown will win this year-- their show has a thematic argument, and BD's simply does not. Unfortunately Crown was unable to articulate its thematic argument, so they carelessly flushed that opportunity down the old porcelain black hole. 3) Jackson Pollock's art was a singular act-- unlike drum corps which requires a group mind, intense agreement and collaboration, budgets in the hundreds of thousands, and artistic unity of purpose. The comparison is laughable, much like Pollock's random, selfish puke-spattering.

So, if someone chooses music from TV commercials from the 1980's as their show theme, the show music should be judged on its own terms? No, of course not. Any show designer who chose that music should be sent to Siberia. Selection of the music should be a big part of the equation, and choosing a wacked out piece of anti-establishment Russian classical music, adapted for the jazz genre, and truncated fora 12 minute marching medium with bugles, and whose composer describes his music as "only understandable by children" has its consequences. You think emotions mean "feeling good?" How odd. How binary. Emotions run the gamut from ecstasy to depression, fury to silliness. Was Phantom's Juliet show meant to make you feel good? No, it was way more complex than that. What the show did was put you in the mind of the impassioned girl who fell in love so deeply that she took her own life when she lost him. Clear as a bell. Specific as hell. Drum corps is a condensed medium of 12 minutes, and has the same requirements as all performance media-- it must be universal and unique. For it to be universal, it must be relatable to the core of human experience, not a random palate of playful expressions-- a broken xylophone falling down the stairs can do that.

Do you have to judge someone's comments based on the resume, rather than on the content of their post? Why is that?

Another show designer who could have been a little more clear was the Bluecoats, who have a great show. I think the explanation could have been more specific. "We're taking the traditional American parade unit, and turning it on its ear by reversing the roles of audience and marching performer, and finding out what's possible when we break down the separation between them. It's out with the old parade, and in with the new."

These kids lives are at stake, and the state of the entire artform rests on these shows, which will be remembered by these performers forever. And thanks to video, will be remembered by audiences forever. The designers need to push themselves to their very limits in order to create meaninful, airtight show concepts, not play with color or themes like they're in a sandbox. This is life and death.

Yes, appalling. And it's so easy, too. I think he should have said "Our show features a delicate storybook princess who battles an evil queen who wants to control her self-image. By the end, the princess finds her own unique identity and triumphs. It's a message for all young women to be true to themselves." WOW! HOLY GUACAMOLE! B O O M!

Big Loud Live 8/8/2013 Show designer interviews on last night's Big Loud Live Broadcast revealed that they don't know how to pitch their shows. It was just embarrassing. Their comments pointed up the weaknesses in the shows-- vague show concepts, or under-developed narrative arcs. If you can't encapsulate your show's design succinctly and clearly, you're screwed-- either because you can't articulate it, or because the concept isn't clear! Get your pitches together! />/>/>/>/>/>/>/>/>/> Madison Scouts James Mason first said on a Youtube video months ago that the reason they were doing the show was to get back to Madison's military roots. What miltary roots? Madison doesn't have any military roots. They were established in the mode of the Junior Marine parade units of the 40's and 50's. They performed in VFW sponsored shows. That's it, as far as research reveals. Last night's broadcast narrator mentioned some vague military association but then handily skipped over any military details for this corps-- because there aren't any. Madison has no military background-- they were a boy scout troop from the beginning. So that's just misleading. Then last night Mason said he wrote the show for his marine son who returned from Afghanistan. Which one is it? Both? Madison's show from a design standpoint doesn't work for one basic reason-- you can't have military guys in camou doing pirhouettes. It just doesn't work, I'm sorry. It's the Village People effect. Great heartfelt performances, but no. I was with a Hollywood casting director who has cast some major, major films, and she agreed, the concept rings false for this medium and for these performers. Call me crazy, but the Mason's kid wouldn't recognize this style of dance associated with his military service. There's something awkward and uncomfortable about the whole concept of dramatizing war conflict this soon after the war. It feels fake, contrived and belittling. I would have changed it to be on the subject of PTSD. One soldier struggles to acclimate to daily life after returning from war, and succeeds with a little help from friends. Keep the ending the same-- You'll Never Walk Alone. This way, you can avoid the "war play" scenes which ring false because of the awkward pairing of the flambouyant choreography and military fighting. Awkward. And yes, I cried at the end. Blue Devils - I'm glad Wayne Downey is creating jazz versions of the classics. That's really wonderful. Congratulations. Now how about taking some responsibility for the accessibility of the pieces you select? Maybe the audience "skins you alive" as he put it, because you selected an abstract, anti-establishment Russian classical ballet piece, and adapted it to the jazz genre, played by drum corps. The audience at the theater here in California just sat dumbfounded during BD, as if at a lecture. At the end, there was some confused applause. Completely inaccessible. Also, it's not enough to say that you're creating choreography and drill design based on the "moods" and "emotions" that the music evokes. That's not enough. You're designing a 12 minute production in a stadium, you're not designing a fabric. It's no longer enough just to do pretty pictures and colors. You're responsible for a thematic argument in this show. And a clear reason for doing this musical piece. And that reason better relate to who these people are as performers, and as people. And that reason better include the audience, not alienate them. Why are they performing this, here, now? And why are you even bothering to show it to an audience if not to share a personal message or story or observation about our lives and the way we live and how we feel? Just because a piece of music is abstract doesn't mean that the performer's intentions are vague and ambiguous-- they must be razor sharp. But here, we just can't tell who's thinking what or why they're bothering. "Pushing the envelope" means building a thematic argument into your show. A commentary on human behavior, illumination on our lives, or the lives of these performers. Now we know, Wayne Downey's music comes first, and the abstract pictures come from that. He basically admitted last night, there's nothing more to this show than choreographing around his musical phrases. The corps is his canvas evidently, and any progression, any heightened story, or any narrative arc or any understructure is not important. Curiously, during BD's various show segments, the facial expressions on the color guard performers varied between each other. Each one different-- multiple closeups revealed that in any given phrase, the color guard facial expressions varied among one other-- one super intense and murderous, another smiling, all in the same moment. Which is it? If you can't decide what the intent of the "phrase" is, we can't either. This points up the fact that the corps is lost in terms of agreeing on the meaning they're trying to convey. And it points up the fact that there's no narrative throughline to help them determine what each phrase in this ballet means. When they're carrying the elephant tusks, I got a sense of confusion and embarrasment from the guard. If they feel awkward and unsure, we do too. Choreographers are expert at defining each moment in a ballet, and convincing the performers to climb aboard the meaning train. But if the movements are too abstract and random, and if the performers haven't agreed upon the meaning, you can see uncertainty in their performances, like you do in Re-Write of Spring. Cavaliers The Cavalier representative revealed that the show is about "images" on the topic of secret societies in general, and that the Cavaliers have some of the qualities of a secret society. That's way too vague a subject matter to sustain a 12 minute show. Nothing is specific enough. Who are you? Why are you transforming at the end? Why does everything look like it's from the Freemasons? Who's the good guy? Looks to me like they selected an action-adventure theme of a secret society a la Game of Thrones but couldn't secure the copyright, and gave up. The Secret Society theme has presented some awkward public relations issues for this corps-- the Cavaliers aren't a secret society, and they don't have an evil hidden agenda either. To associate the corps with a questionable hidden motives is to taint the good will built up by the corps over the past 5 decades. The show is unspecific, and we don't know whether to cheer or boo because we don't know who you are, where you are or what you're doing or why it should matter to us. I would change the show to be centered around one member of a society who takes off his robe in defiance, fights them off, and gradually, all the members defect and form a new open society. Much clearer. Drop the references to the Masons. It's a copyright infringement and is just creepy. Cadets Most appalling were the remarks of the designer for the Cadets whose casual, gormand-on-mushrooms musings basically revealed that they were playing with colors and shapes around the phrases of the music. Uh, that's it? Bueller? Bueller? And that the towers represented nothing, basically, except to "define the space". Um, after we get milk and cookies, we'll play with crayons on real paper. This is a shockingly indulgent and vague concept, and the show suffers as a result. The lives of 150 kids are hinging on you building a thematic argument into this show. They're waiting for you to establish a strong narrative or emotional arc to this music, and relate it to building meaning in their lives. The audience sat in confused silence throughout much of it. Even esoteric show concepts around shape color and form can move audiences, but only if it's relatable and human. Crown Also appalling were Crown's design team remarks. So nonchalant, so careless, so vague. Dude, this show revolves around the theme of E=mc2 which is a space science concept. You're playing music from 2001, and from Phillip Glass. We need you to step up and relate with razor-sharp specificity what this show concept is. I'll help. "This year's show E=Mc2 revolves around the theme of space-- it illustrates the grandeur of the Universe, how infinitessimally small we are in it, and how love transcends it all." Boom, done. Instead, he said something vague about energy and mass and it was so vague, it meant absolutely nothing and makes the audience question whether the design team had any control of this monster at all. Either this show means a lot more than he's able to articulate, or he's just lucky that it means more than he intended. Phantom The Phantom representative basically talked about how they added the Evil Queen puppet late for some vague logistical reason that he wouldn't specify. There's no excuse for late prop design. And no excuse for adding this so late in the season. If you're doing a show about an evil queen, you start working immediately on the maquette design, you start the performers immediately taking puppet classes and take the whole thing through a focus group. Otherwise you end up with a floppy, odd looking rag doll on a stick that looks like a nun in a blender, and you're making excuses on a national broadcast. Come on lazy design teams, step the hell up! The kids' lives are at stake!

So you had no idea why Crown featured the love theme and how it related to their space theme? You thought it was two separate unrelated themes? "My love for you has no bounds." "Infinity?" And you didn't give it another thought? Bueller? Bueller?

The Blue Devil's show is without narrative structure of any kind. The show almost antagonizes the audience and dares them to "figure it out". The performers face away from the audience throughout most of it, literally alienating them. The charge the horns do as they run down the corridor is away from the audience, not toward. It's a collection of playful, supercilious, abstract expressions and in-jokes between designers. It's exclusionary and self-indulgent, but meticulously performed. The show design apparently encompasses the evolution from invertebrate animals to humans who play jazz at the end, as the guard appears to be emulating the characters of animals, elephant tusks, and galloping horses at one point, but it's completely unclear what the progression is, or what the visual statement is they're trying to make. The various clusters of performers gather and disperse, ad nauseum, and the lack of through line is frustrating to watch, and alienating to experience. The ending park and blow, when the corps has evolved into human life form, looks desperate and out of place after ten and a half minutes of unflinching abstract posturing and crisp, modern circus like technique. It no make-o sense-o. Other big issues are why isn't there any improvisation in this jazz show, how does the animal choreography fit into the overall arc, why is the crowd so contemplative and silent during the show, and what in God's name do the white posts represent, and what have the same white posts represented in each of the last two seasons' differently themed shows? The Carolina Crown show is clearly about humans finding meaning in their lives in the high tech age of space exploration. Crystal clear. The voice arrangement of the pulsing numeric chatter is both ridiculously absurd and haunting. For a corps to capture that emotional duality is unheard of. The material is fresh, funny and profound. The wide open chords are haunting and rich like the depths of space. The guard captures both the comedic robot-like jitter, and the balletic "How much do you love me?" passage so well, it's hard to believe they're the same performers. There's something for every level of sophistication in this show-- shaking knees, an e=mc2 spelled out, and an infinity symbol, and a spinning 3-d pyramid at the end. But it also asks the big questions about measuring love, "How much do you love me" and measuring the significance of life and love in vast cold space. Profound, breathtaking and moving to the core. When that drum major bows and clasps her hands together at the end of this moving show, she is thanking us for allowing her to share her message-- an utterly absurd opposition that I last experienced in the very first season of Cirque du Soleil when the performers bowed, and thanked the audience when it was they who had blown our minds. Such warmth in their universally human message. Same for Carolina Crown. Emotionally, it's almost too much to handle.

Do any of Crown's words mean anything to you? Do you understand what they mean in the context of the show? Also, do you get the Phillip Glass style vocals? Do you think those vocals have anything to do with the type of music they're playing and the theme of the show? Definition of Love by Samuel Johnson? Einstein on the Beach? Bueller? Bueller?

Wait until you see Crown live. If you have ever thought about infinite space and earth's place among the stars, and the meaning that humans build into their lives and how profound human life is in the vacuum of space, this show will hit you like a ton of bricks. I'm telling you, it's profound. It's weird, it's funny, and at the end, it's so powerful it punches you in the gut. The horn impacts are from heaven. The guard is stellar, and the live vocals are impressive and add to the music, not detract from it. If you can hang on through the first couple of minutes of chaos, you'll be rewarded. The audience at Riverside was speechless. My God.

Here's the dumn version: 1) Crown will win 2) BD is too "out there" 3) BD changes at the end, why? 4) Do you wonder what the stars are? Crown made sense of it.