30 Days of NYMF Day 21: Journey to the West

The Challenge of Journey to the West
By Richard Oberacker (composer/co-author/director)

So how do you adapt a four-volume, 100-chapter, revered Chinese novel into a musical? Hell if I know. Rob and I are still trying to figure that out. It's one big experiment and NYMF is the test tube. But one thing I did know at the start of this adventure: after working five years at the very core – the highest and most secret levels of development – of Cirque Du Soleil, helping to create two of their renown spectacles, I needed to apply what I had learned from them to this show. And one of their basic principles of creation is that one cannot be afraid of failure. To try and live up to another's version of what a particular art form is or ought to be is artistic death. The freedom to fail is the most liberating concept when trying to develop something new. And in essence, that is the magic of watching a Cirque show – being in the presence of work that is beholden to no one else's definition of success but its own. So that is how we proceeded. That is how we set about to create visual poetry and a world-beat soundscape.

What we're bringing to NYMF is not a normal musical. It simply refuses to play by the rules of what has come before EVEN THOUGH it honors and is an extension of everything theatrical that has come before. It is, like the novel on which it's based, by its very nature derivation. But in the combination of disciplines, it is new. We drew from the traditions of Peking Opera, Kabuki Theater, Puppet Theater, musical theater, Vaudeville, rock concerts, Modern Dance Theater; just about every cultural expression of story telling we could mine for inspiration. But we made it ours and we made it uniquely Journey to the West's. And by Broadway criteria, the piece might be a failure. But it is fully alive and constantly evolving. It is the most challenging but exhilarating thing I have ever been involved with and I assure you the artists working on it will say the same. These performers, along with artisans from as far away as China and St. Petersburg, Russia who created customized specialty props, weaponry and sculptures, have come together to bring to NYMF a vision of a legend that has been trying to come to the west for centuries. We are taking this piece out of China and re-inventing it for the world – all cultures, all races. We're creating a fantasy world in a tiny space called 37 Arts. Creating it out of nothing – thin air.

So how do you create Gods arguing in Heaven?

Or a reincarnation?

Or a violent bloodbath?

Or Demigods and Demons battling in mid-air?

Or a water dragon that transforms into a giant?

Or a seduction by a spider?

Or a love story that spans 1000 life times?

Or the discovery of a god within each of us?

We do it the same way a child would and the same way cultures have been creating epic theater in intimate spaces for centuries: with a piece of silk, a beam of light, a puppet, a toy, our bare hands and imagination, imagination, imagination.

Come and see for yourself. Make the connection.

www.journeytothewestthemusical.com