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Source material is Send in the Clowns: The Ballads of Stephen Sondheim

audio CD recorded 1975-1993

posted 2007

My niece Sara (featured in Moon Mayhem) is a budding actor and I am back into a previous life as teacher of theatre arts. We both came out of Sweeney Todd loving it and the music, so back I went to find more Sondheim to listen to and came upon Send in the Clowns: The Ballads of Stephen Sondheim.

What a gem of a vehicle for an acting lesson, especially for musical theater performers and students. There is a plethora of emotion in Sondheim’s words and music, which might account for the loyalty to Sondheim’s work of some of our best stage actors and singers. On this album, each ballad is a microcosm of a one-act play and each performance a mini-lesson in acting.

There are several ways to study this album, several points of view to take. Among these are:

• You could study the musicality of it, the musicianship of the performers and the composer. In that case, you might talk to your music teacher about it.

• You could use it as a way to trace musical theatre through Stephen Sondheim on Broadway from the 1970s through the 1990s.

• You can use it to study technique, craft, and acting styles of various performers at the top of their game.

For interested acting students or teachers, you can get a copy of this “Acting Lesson: Building and Repetition” based on this CD. It‘s a way of looking at album to help you with the choices you face as performers.

by Mary D. Turner posted 2007

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