Bridge Over Troubled Water
Crossing the Divide Between Musical Theater and Non-Musical Plays
By Matthew Beymer
This essay is part of the Stage Raw/Unusual Suspects Youth Journalism Program
I used to worry that I would never understand plays. No matter the number of times my early teenage self sat perched on my bed with multiple Samuel French play scripts on hand, I experienced a recurring detachment from the text and an occasional inability to finish a script altogether. How would I ever be able to act in a play, let alone interpret one, if I felt so lost? Why did each play feel so esoteric to me, so shrouded in mystery and inaccessible with my toolkit?
For the first six years of my theater journey, my brain was hardwired for musical theater only – any circuitry related to plays was still yet to be delivered. I had first ventured into musical theater when I was eight years old, playing Zebulon in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at a local summer camp. In middle school and high school, I participated almost exclusively in musical theater productions at the local community theater or at my high school’s performing arts building. Repeatedly, musical theater charmed me with an alluring spell (shoutout to Carly D.W. Bones for the framework of theater as a spell). Sure, I knew plays existed, but why couldn’t I remain in the silo I knew best?
Asking your friendly theater enthusiast whether they prefer plays or musicals is just like asking someone whether they prefer cats or dogs. They usually answer with a strong partiality, a life-changing experience (good or bad), and an eagerness to expand on their preference in infinite detail. Sometimes they even add a little dig at the choice they reject. Back then, I drifted toward musical theater territory, but I could barely articulate in words just how and why it spoke to me. I had no idea yet what lay on the other side of the proscenium dividing plays and musicals.
The boundless magic of the play first clicked five years ago, when I was a junior in high school. My AP English Literature teacher had asked us to analyze any text on the provided list for a practice essay assignment. After an initial attraction to its book cover and a cursory reading of the text, I chose to examine Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, focusing on the character of Blanche DuBois in my thesis. This was an early attempt at play analysis at best. I don’t remember getting a high grade on this assignment. What I do remember was the spark of curiosity within me as I pieced my essay together. What stirred beneath the surface presentation of Blanche DuBois in the subtextual margins of Williams’ play? How did Tennessee Williams’ own life intertwine with the writing of one of his most beloved works?
Just a month later, I performed in the Simon Stephens adaptation of Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, playing Reverend Peters and the Station Policeman. This was my final in-person high school production before my school switched to remote learning. My deepening acquaintance with both the play text and the original in-depth text of the novel enriched my understanding of how to imbue plays with magic. I felt so alive as I watched the show from the outer perimeter of the stage with the rest of the ensemble each night, and I felt more committed to understanding a character’s psychology than I usually did in musical theater productions.
I almost resisted studying theater in college at UCLA after I witnessed the precarities of the theater industry during the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating impact it had on professional theater makers. I nearly went to school for broadcast journalism instead, but I knew that deep in my heart, my passion for theater (suddenly not just musicals!) was unquenchable. If I had never understood my love for theater as an all-encompassing practice, I’m not sure I would be writing this reflective piece today.
Unsurprisingly, I chose musical theater as my emphasis for my bachelor’s degree, though I knew a significant amount of my foundation would include plays as well. Over the past four years, the play has been a pillar of my undergraduate education. I have rediscovered the boundless magic of the play over and over again, with as fierce a repetition as a Meisner exercise.
Here are examples of the many (semi) recent encounters with this boundless magic that I will never forget:
The haunting feeling of reading Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis not just one but two times in my first year of college. No play has ever shaken me to my core as much during a first reading. How could I unpack this safely?
The tears that pooled in my eyes as I finished Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman; I somehow expected — yet did not expect — the ending from a mile away. How raw that pain felt when I connected the play to my own life.
The pleasure of discovering Eduardo Machado’s The Cook – a combination of cooking (one of my favorite rituals) with political theater. Breaking this play down for my theater history class is where my textual analysis skills began to soar.
The tide pool of emotions after encountering Francis Turnly’s The Great Wave and learning about a Japanese family’s grief after the abduction of their daughter. I immediately recommended the play to a friend.
The amazement derived from reading and watching a selection of El Teatro Campesino’s Los Vendidos for my Chicano theater history class. This allowed me to understand how stereotypes of Mexican Americans have affected my maternal side of the family.
The unwillingness to put down Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros as the Los Feliz Branch Library closed for the day. I would return the next day to finish what I had started.
My enhanced appreciation for the play in college took me down a pathway I had never considered: writing my own plays. While I enjoyed writing non-fiction papers, journalism articles, and magazine-style essays, I was terrified at the prospect of creating a dramatic work that could be scrutinized by so many were it to be read and possibly even produced.
But after an unexpected schedule change in the spring of my junior year, I chose to enroll in an introductory lower-division dramatic writing course, taught by a friend in the MFA playwriting program. This was one of the best decisions I made in my entire undergraduate career. As a student playwright, I learned how to hone and trust my voice, how to construct a play that could be deconstructed, and how to establish tone and dramatic action. I challenged my tendency to crave perfection in every moment of the writing process. Most importantly, I learned how to become a better handler of the boundless magic that produces theater.
During the summer before my senior year, I wrote a play entitled A.G.I., a reference to Karel Čapek’s R.U.R., a 1920 sci fi play that many believe coined the term “robot” as we know it today. I directed this 20-minute play as part of the Bruin Fringe Festival this past fall. Writing a play that was loosely based on characters from Čapek’s original work while still relevant to contemporary discussions about artificial intelligence was not an easy undertaking. I almost gave up several times after multiple drafts felt fruitless and confusing. But every day, I am so grateful that I stuck to my path and grew even closer to the craft I love so dearly.
My voyage into the vast world of plays has only improved my ability to approach musical theater with greater confidence, affording more insight into my characters’ given circumstances, actions, and objectives. My former wishy-washy approach to performance is now more focused. I feel more in control, more present, more honest in terms of what theater demands of its many participants. I have also been fortunate to take many classes with students in the acting emphasis, bringing to life the many characters of Shakespeare and commedia dell’arte to drive our theatrical practice forward.
As I head into post-undergraduate life, my commitment to being an actor remains as strong as my commitment to being a musical theater performer. I no longer see myself participating in a play over a musical or vice versa as a form of infidelity to one or the other. My choices are now more fluid. I also don’t feel as lost as I did six or seven years ago – I feel invigorated with hope. I still have a boatload of plays to read and decipher, but I know I am capable of understanding them. I am ready to continue my artistic journey towards the further discovery of boundless magic.
