Director: Jerry Tan
Unifying design statement
The Silver Swan is a one act play written by Cadence Spore and Directed by Jerry Tan. The play is set up in the structure of a film noir and follows 5 characters in a who-dunnit following the murder of an upper-class jazz bar owner. The show is meant to be a covert satire on the genre and its ideals. A large part of the film noir style is the music. Jazz, often very suspenseful and free flowing, fits the style well. And given that one of the show's main character Evelyn is a jazz singer, it seemed fitting to have a live onstage jazz quartet to accompany her. To match the show's style and reinforce the film noir aesthetic, it was decided that music would be playing for the entire show. Reacting to and playing off the dialogue in the scenes. The sound design was also shaped to match the aesthetic through immersive effects and filters.
Summary of given circumstances
The Silver Swan takes place in 1949 in a jazz bar named “The Silver Swan”. After discussions with the playwright and the director, I narrowed and reaffirmed some assumptions I had on inspiration behind the story. The club was based on a bar named Cafe Society, which was open for only a few years during the 1940s. However, in those few years, it saw stars like Billie Holiday flourish. It was clear that the Silver Swan was based on the Cafe Society in many ways. So, to understand how this would impact the music, I pulled archival records of set lists from the club and others nearby, which helped me understand what music one would hear in a New York jazz club.
Beyond the reality of the show. Film noirs were a massive part of its style. So, I knew that a lot of the music had to be modeled after the music of a film noir. The sound design and recording style were modeled after film noir styles.
• Artistic and practical needs
Early in my meetings with the director, it was clear that music was a large part of reinforcing the theme and sense of space given by the show. Our largest artistic need was to use music to build suspense and intrigue into every moment. While writing underscoring for all 30 minutes may have worked, I wanted to take inspiration from a Miles Davis soundtrack: Ascenseur pour l'échafaud; In which he and his band improvised over the footage of the film live with only scraps of music to work with. For The Silver Swan, I created, vamped, or sectioned improv pieces that the band and I could go through, while each piece was designed to match a specific moment, they also called out specific solos in which a musician was instructed to react to the dialogue live onstage. They were also told not to read the script to create fresher reactions.
Of course, some parts of them were pre-written, namely the opening piece: Caravan, the final piece: Taxi Driver Theme, and any numbers with our vocalist/lead actor. These pieces were chosen because of their sound in relation to the scenes and how the ideas associated with them matched the story being told onstage. For example, the Taxi Driver theme plays as the two leads talk outside the bar about ambitions, the city, and the feeling of being trapped from their dreams. The theme counterplays this by delivering a soft yet hopeful feeling. Shifting the tone to a more concise ending.
Having an onstage band from a practical standpoint is a challenge. Luckily, the stage design allowed for the band to be far enough away from the audience, but dynamics were an extremely important part of the design. Wireless microphones were also used on the actors to raise the volume of the show.
• Sources of inspiration
The Silver Swan’s music has many sources of inspiration, such as the work of Bernard Hermann, especially on the Taxi Driver soundtrack; as well as other classic jazz soundtracks and Dave Brubeck's orchestration and piano solos.
Techniques used within design
Live underscoring:
Live underscoring was used to match the beats of the show as best as possible and create a better sounding atmosphere than prerecording underscoring would give, Musicians and the conductor could react to scenes naturally.
Strong Improvisation:
The underscoring written was at times loose and heavily leaned on improvisation by the conductor or the soloist of the moment. This way, a basic form could be written to match the moment, but the musicians could react to moments live. To make this work, they matched instruments and phrases to characters, and actions were imperative.
Liet motifs and usage of motifs:
Because the underscoring was so loose from night to night, a strong base of Liet motifs (instruments assigned to characters and actions) and musical motifs were needed to give structure. For example, the opening phrase of Stormy Weather by Ted Koehler is repeated through solo sections to connect the lonely and pulling themes of the song back into the moment. Solo sections were also written rigidly to match characters and who they fit to, such as Trumpets being matched to the murderer of the story, or a bass being used to represent the detective. When built upon, we can create a sort of ‘conversation’, matching the scenes in the story. For example, the song ‘Gunpowder’ starts out as a Dave Brubeck style piano riff, but as the bass and trumpet player begin to move, it matches the onstage conversation between the detective and the murderer. We know he committed the murder almost immediately, so this underscoring only reinforces the satirical film noir dialogue of the scene.
Complex filtering and cueing in Qlab:
For the opening scene, I wanted to create an immersive environment to help match the show, that way the audience could be properly pulled into the story. One of the most classic ways this is done in theatre is environmental sounds; in this case, city rain soundscapes were used slowly building until a filter falls over them, allowing for a monologue to play. The monologue was decided to be prerecorded to match the style of a film noir that the director was trying to emulate. Overall, this cueing built a clean environment that matched the intended source material well.
Period and source material accurate sound effects:
Sound effects were used minimally throughout the show, the most prominent being gunshots. While simple gunshots in theatre can fall along a wide range, from large and plosive to more detailed and less prominent, the different styles of gunshots can illicit different kinds of reactions from the audience. While a softer gunshot still has the effect of a gunshot it is less shocking and is treated more like a story beat, while a large shaking gunshot auditorily stuns the audience giving more a shock factor. For the gunshots in The Silver Swan, the playwright intended for the gunshots to remind that while the story is satire, it is still criticizing an over romanticized environment and abuse. So, a large banging gunshot really emphasized this and pulled the audience out of the story momentarily. The gunshot was also mixed with Film noir gunshots used in motion pictures of the time.
Photo credit to Rhea Roof of Bat Roof photography
