A Field Guide
Synopsis Professor Harold Hill has developed a reputation among travelling salesmen and none of it good. In order to sell his band instruments and uniforms he promises to form a local student band. After he gets paid it's away - and - no band. He is concentrating this time on River City, Iowa. To focus attention on the need for a boys' band, he attacks the town's new pool hall as a sign of depravity creeping into the community. His argument is convincing, but it turns out the pool hall is owned by Mayor Shinn who orders the school board to check out Harold's credentials. When they approach him he turns them into a barber-shop quartet and disappears. An old friend has warned him about Marian, the town librarian and music teacher. To Harold this is an old problem, but his advances are met with a brick wall. Later at the Fourth of July celebration, Harold takes advantage of a disrupting prank to move in and sell his band idea. The Mayor continues to push for proper credentials, but Harold is slippery. Marian's research pays off, but she withholds the evidence when she discovers Harold is helping her brother, Winthrop, to cure his speech impediment. With the exception of the Mayor, the town is now under Harold's spell. Even Marian is coming around. The band instruments have arrived, but it takes a little longer for the uniforms and instruction books. Future band members have been busily working on Harold's "Think System" of musicianship, and Harold has just met Marian at the footbridge. She confesses that she has known he was a fake since the third day he was in town. Now it's Harold who is off balance. The uniforms arrive but so does Charlie Cowell, an anvil salesman and Harold's arch enemy. Marian tries to prevent Charlie from getting to the Mayor, but is unsuccessful. She wants to warn Harold, but Charlie reaches him first. He still has time to run but can't. He's hooked on Marian. The angry town, hearing that he's a fake, drags Harold to the ice cream social where everyone has gathered. The talk is ugly, but Marian speaks out in his defense. She's a good salesman herself. The band arrives in assorted, unaltered uniforms. Harold is handed a baton. "Think, men, think," is his command. At the drop of his arm comes the "Minuet in G" as it has never been "played" before. But each struggling note is music to each parent's ears. Harold has his band at last - and a truly loving librarian besides.
Director’s Notes Meredith Willson’s The Music Man is a musical theatre classic, a work of art. Most likely you have seen the movie, performed it in high school, or maybe even played some of its unforgettable melodies in a school marching band. If you have performed it before, you will know that Willson’s work of art is not a simple piece of theatre. It demands a lot from musicians, actors, choreographers, designers, and artists. For our production, we are focusing on the work and treating the masterpiece as it is, a piece of art, a beautiful valentine to Willson’s boyhood memories of growing up in Iowa. When I was asked to direct this production there was one piece of art that repeatedly came to mind. My uncle, Ernesto Bustamante, local artist and interior designer in San Antonio, painted a watercolor of a house he was designing for my aunt in the Carpenter Gothic architectural style. This was an architectural style that was typically expressed in the same setting as The Music Man. The house is still standing in the Monticello Park Deco District located a few blocks from The Woodlawn Theatre off of Donaldson Avenue. This painting inspired myself and our resident designer, Ryan DeRoos, to create a unique way of telling the story of The Music Man as a watercolor painting in motion. The story of The Music Man focuses on one main character, Harold Hill, a con man who manages as a “salesman” to inspire an entire town to find hope, courage, and love through music. One of my favorite quotes from the production is one that Hill’s love interest, Marian Paroo, expresses in Hill’s defense: “I know what he promised us and it all happened just like he said. The lights. And the flags and the colors. And the cymbals.” The beauty in production that we can take away is that even empty promises can still manage to turn, transform, and inspire the unlikeliest of believers and give someone a second chance.
WORKS CITED www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_m/music_man.htm www.visitmasoncityiowa.com/meredith-willson?id=160 thecommunityplayers.com/tcpshows/musicman12/ www.skylightmusictheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ Skylight_Audience_Guide-The_Music_Man.pdf
Special Thanks to City Council Project Funds!