Performance Report 1

The performance “Shakespeare in Song” was held in the Jonsson Performance hall at 8:00PM on March 27th, 2010. The songs were performed by approximately 20-30 UT Dallas students, and were composed by Shakespeare himself, Roger Quilter, and Matthew Harris. The program director, Kathryn Evans, was the director of the performance.
The musical aspects of the performance were fairly basic. It was polyphony of the 20-30 voices of the students accompanied by one grand piano. Now, although the word polyphony was used, it may almost be considered a homophony because the variations were so closely related between the piano and the voices during certain pieces. The texture of the voices as compared to the piano was about equal; as the volume of the voices went up, the pianos volume did as well. Dividing the vocals by pitch, the volumes of all were about equal as well (one could hear a little bit of each although the alto and bass pitches probably stuck out more.) The voices were smooth and surprisingly clear and understandable compared to most operas. The typical operatic vibrato was still there but one could clearly distinguish what the singers were saying. The tempo of the music changed right along with the mood: if the songs were happy, then the tempo began to increase pace, while if the mood was more somber, the tempo slowed. This tempo change occurred not only in the larger group setting but also in the solo/duet/trio settings. Also, through the performance there would be intermittent monologues or conversations between two or three persons. These would also be accompanied by song, and the elements stayed more or less the same except for the fact that the person would have to change his/her volume to suit the microphone.
The performers initially processed into the auditorium in a single file line, and all (even the pianist and director) were wearing medieval costumes to create the mood for the musical. While singing, some of their facial expressions also brought more emotion into the play as some would smile or frown, depending on the situation the song was describing; also, their eye contact was either at the audience or gazing at the director (Kathryn Evans). For the monologues, there seemed to be no correlation in which character each person played except for gender (as in skin color, deepness of voice, etc. didn’t matter). Lastly, no props were used in the play except for a single beer bottle to show drunkenness; mostly hand gestures were used to express various emotions and situations.
For the size of the performance hall, the audience was pretty sparse. About 20% of the seats in the hall were filled and even less were filled after the intermission. This audience consisted of either students at UTD who would be considered “insiders” of the music culture, as well as parents of the performers and possibly even adults from the surrounding community. The lack of attendance may be due to several factors including: students not liking Shakespeare, it being a weekend, and the time of night it was at. Normally for these types of performances, audiences know not to clap until a major intermission or until the end of the entire performance. In this instance, though, the director actually turned and told the audience to clap after each act; this ensured that everyone would clap at the same time and there would not be any confusion.
The Performance was held in the Jonsson Performance Hall on March 27th, 2010 at 8:00PM as mentioned before. The actual performance began approximate at this time, approximately at 8:03PM or thereabouts. The performance hall seats about 196 people and has 8 rows of seating(utdallas.edu). In the beginning the performers marched in from a front entrance of the auditorium and stood on the series of bleachers so that they were all visible. One microphone was set on the audience’s left side of the stage and three were set on the right for the solos. Otherwise, the stage was left fairly plain so the attention was more on the performers.
All in all, the performance was organized well and performed punctually. The musical aspects were more or less typical with no specific variations from the majority of operatic type performances.

Shakespeare in Song. Shakespeare, Roger Quilter, and Matthew Harris. Kathryn Evans. UT Dallas Students. Kathryn Evans. Jonsson Performance Hall. Richardson. 3/27/2010.

Sommerhalder, Christian. Program notes. Shakespeare in Song. 3/27/2010. Richardson: Jonsson Performance Hall.

"Jonsson Performance Hall." UT Dallas. http://www.utdallas.edu/ah/events/jonsson.html.