The Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA) is offering a rare school production of The Wall, an opera based on the 1979 Pink Floyd double album, and which later became a live-action/animated musical film, directed by Alan Parker.
There are some unusual aspects of the production, performed Oct. 29-31, in the school's Dan Kryston Memorial Theater:
- The subject matter
- Permission to perform and update the work
- Involvement by all school departments
The original work, by bassist and lyricist Roger Waters, is based on themes of abandonment and personal isolation, and the SOTA production will only add to the depth and challenging nature of the subject by updating it with political content to include images of 9/11 and other current events.
School principal Brian Kohn, who is producer, music director, and conductor for The Wall, obtained personal permission from Waters' management, which is rare, because Waters himself still performs the stage show. Kohn explains what he is doing with the work:
In strategic places we are using video, pantomime, and dance to further move the story along. Throughout we are also trying to stay true to the rock show aesthetic.The first act contains a series of life changing events that impact the main characters development — father dying in war, overprotective mother, abusive school experience, and bad love affair. In the second act, we see the character as an adult, dealing with the results of a challenging childhood as well as war theme again, shattered relationships, and a resulting ever increasing isolation.
We are not trying to make it musical theater but rather a multimedia concert presentation of the album that involves writing, film, orchestra, choir, rock band, and dance.
Over 200 students are participating in the production, along with faculty members. All disciplines are involved, employing, for example, student choreographers and dancers to reimagine the “Another Brick in the Wall” theme song. Of the school's departments:
- Instrumental Music is providing orchestra and band
- Guitar is providing rock guitar
- Vocal is singing choral sections
- Dance is choreographing and dancing specific numbers
- Media is providing short video accompaniment to several songs
- Visual Arts has created the poster and other artwork
- Musical Theater is covering the lead roles in the opera
- Theater is providing actors who pantomime certain parts of the story
- Creative Writing is contributing to the program writings on themes of The Wall
- Theater Tech is creating costumes, effects, sound and lights
As it is a collective, massive school-wide effort, Kohn says, no individual credits will be listed "other than thanking Roger Waters for allowing us to perform his amazing work."
From Katy Metcalf's review of the film:
... many years later, Pink is isolated, alienated, and traumatized, spiraling backwards into paranoid fantasies and insanity, in a sudden fall that lasts just about the 95-minute run-time of this film.The music is, of course, perfection — no less than what one would expect from one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Though the film's soundtrack doesn't encompass all of The Wall, classics like "Vera Lynn," "Run Like Hell," and the iconic "Another Brick in the Wall" are included to great success, alongside new Pink Floyd songs like "When the Tigers Broke Free."
The dialogue, however, is all but nonexistent. What few words are dropped are quiet and irrelevant, irreverent, enough to make you lean in and strain your ears for the faintest whispers. Can you read lips? Is he saying "Help"?