Solo Versions of The Hat
.The Women of "The Hat"
Solo Creation Festival and Alva's Showroom July 2014 & February 2015
The Women of "The Hat" . . . a duet for one
Hollywood Fringe Festival - Theatre of NOTE June 2015
The Hat
The Rag Factory London July 2016
Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival March 2017
About the transformation of the two-hander, The Hat, into a solo performance piece:
The first solo version of The Hat was a scientific experiment of sorts: a removal of one ingredient to see what remained. It was also a practical solution to the logistics of collaborating with a working musician - the operative word being working - who lives in NYC. When things fall apart, I like to examine the pieces and explore what they have become. In this case, I decided to feature them.
I thought about the way The Musician functions in The Hat. The story belongs to Rose and Ruth and it is the absence of this man that tears at both women: even when he is there, he's never really there. That is how The Musician came to speak only through trombone solos - the gorgeous, original compositions of David Gibson. www.jazzbone.com.
Every time I mount a new production of The Hat, it morphs. As the daughter and wife of a jazz musician, my perspective continues to evolve. This particular piece of theatre will never be finished as long as it continues to chronicle the subtle shifts, and my ever-deepening understanding of the workings of love.
The first solo version of The Hat was a scientific experiment of sorts: a removal of one ingredient to see what remained. It was also a practical solution to the logistics of collaborating with a working musician - the operative word being working - who lives in NYC. When things fall apart, I like to examine the pieces and explore what they have become. In this case, I decided to feature them.
I thought about the way The Musician functions in The Hat. The story belongs to Rose and Ruth and it is the absence of this man that tears at both women: even when he is there, he's never really there. That is how The Musician came to speak only through trombone solos - the gorgeous, original compositions of David Gibson. www.jazzbone.com.
Every time I mount a new production of The Hat, it morphs. As the daughter and wife of a jazz musician, my perspective continues to evolve. This particular piece of theatre will never be finished as long as it continues to chronicle the subtle shifts, and my ever-deepening understanding of the workings of love.
Rose in motion and stillness...
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REVIEW: "Daughters of Semele: Solo Creation Festival"
by Mark Hein for Theatre Ghost (review of Solo Creation Festival production of The Women of The Hat) "Randel moves us steadily through two lives shaped around a missing man. Mother forms hers around his retreat from marriage into music, drinking and at last illness; daughter’s is formed by his distance, then his death. Randel creates quiet alarm in us as she sips from smaller and smaller teacups, and shocks us when each woman tries to dance a duet with the empty chair. "The trip through the past leads to a triumph both lives have earned, as the daughter flings herself joyfully into space in Chorus Line‘s choreography. Elegant and poignant, Randel’s piece — edited deftly from a two-hander to this more powerful solo — takes us deep into the life of passion found, fettered and finally freed." Ruth in motion and stillness...
REVIEW: The Music and The Mirror: The Women of The Hat June 24, 2015 by Jonathan Ross (review from Hollywood Fringe Festival-Theatre of NOTE: The Women of The Hat....a duet for one) "...much of Melissa R. Randel’s one woman show The Hat comes directly from the mythology of A Chorus Line, abstracting its meta-nature even further and shaping it towards her own life story...two simultaneous life events are smartly juxtaposed through the use of Michael Bennett’s A Chorus Line choreography and Randel’s own original text and movement... Randel plays two characters...assuming both roles with the help of a few key props and costume pieces (most prominently the top hat she used while on tour with A Chorus Line), Randel manages to create a cohesive and theatrically sound little world for herself, leaving just enough ambiguity around the edges to keep things interesting... Randel is a gifted actress, dancer, writer and choreographer and watching the way she builds the interior world of these two women is engaging...setting Michael Bennett’s Broadway-style dance up against her own more ambiguous, but no less theatrical, style of movement, Randel creates a unique meditation on not only the multifaceted nature of dance itself, but also the inseparable way in which movement and music are intrinsically tied to our sensory memories… A large red armchair that signifies her father is incorporated in a smart and surprisingly poignant manner, at some points practically becoming a character itself. The reoccurring motif of Ruth sitting down to tea, with the pot and cups getting smaller and smaller as the character gets further and further away from them, is a provocative stage image as well. It suggesting the distance her character feels from her childhood, her father and the conformities of feminine-nature in the South she has spent her whole life pushing away from... …It is refreshing to see a work from an artist that got her start in Broadway musicals who has since become brave enough to explore more abstract and less literal theatrical possibilities than those often found on the Broadway stage. That the material is as consistent and thought provoking as it is only speaks to Randel’s strengths." |
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