Scarcity and Creativity

A friend of mine just sent me a link

http://www.uie.com/articles/scarcity_part2

To an article about how the limitations of the number of characters you can put in a message affects content when communicating in that medium.  According to the article, twitter’s 140 character limit was originally just based on the limitations of telephone texting technology, but as we have seen, that limitation is actually created a whole new paradigm of how people interact.

It was funny that she sent me this, because I was thinking the exact same thing about how limitations were essential to the creation of my children’s stage plays.

This is timely to mention, as my “Peter VS the Wolf” is being performed next weekend by the Charlotte (Florida) Symphony down in Punta Gorda.  Also this year is (I think) the 25th anniversary of the creation of “Peter VS the wolf,” so I thought I would say something about its creation.

 
 
(above, a scene from the Aachen, Germany premiere) 

I find limitation to be a wonderful source of inspiration.  In the case of “Peter VS. the Wolf,” I was challenged to come up with a one-hour program that taught kids about classical music.  However, I was also given a lengthy list of immovable limitations: it had to be a small chamber size orchestra (which usually means doing Haydn or Mozart), the music had to be in the public domain (as they had no money to pay royalty fees), and the budget limited me to two professional actors.  Talk about coping with scarcity.

Now some people might have said that this would be impossible, others might have said “well, we can’t do anything with so little, so let’s just crank out the same old ‘Peter and the Wolf’ show with the narrator and be done with it.”  But I decided to push myself a little further.

What all these rather excessive limitations did was force me to think in terms of maximizing the potential of the elements that I DID have at hand.  “Peter and the Wolf” uses a tiny orchestra, perfect.  (and at the time it was in the public domain.)  Also it is of course a well-known children’s piece, so a story based on it would immediately have some familiarity, and therefore some free marketing legs.  I was only able to hire two professional actors, but it occurred to me that I could get “kid” actors for free, so I created two roles that could be done by 11-year-olds, in this case, Peter (who should be played by little kid anyway) and the Judge.  (It’s kind of interesting to me that, outside of the premier, no one has ever staged the show with a child actor as the judge.  Oh well, to each their own.)  Later on, I added a court reporter, also played by little kid.  (One trick I learned early on is that kids in the audience are fascinated when kids are on the stage.) 

For a moment I played with the idea of somehow hiring a whole bunch of actors play the various parts of the bird, the cat, and so on… but of course, there was no budget for that many actors.  Then I realized, I’ve got a whole orchestra just sitting there… and I figured, why not use them as actors as well?  I doubt that I would have had the idea, or perhaps I should say the temerity, to suggest that an orchestral musician would “cross the line” and be asked to play a part and read lines, if I hadn’t been under such strain of limitation.  As it is, those limitations forced me to come up with an entirely new genre of theatrical and musical fusion, one that I’m still waiting for someone to label.  

Part of the charm of the show I think is that the musicians step out of their normal role.  In creating their characters and lines, I took full advantage of certain musical stereotypes… the average concertmaster loves to play a solo, I had great fun parodying the exaggerated style that all tympanists demonstrate, and you can always count on a brass player to clown around when given the slightest opportunity.  

Many thanks to Chari Leitch, the executive director of the Charlotte Symphony for all her fabulous hard work, and a special thanks to Maestro Francis Wada, who has been a proponent of my work for many many years.   

Just FYI, this piece will be done by the Rochester Philharmonic in February.

 Also a little bit of press news, David Meerman Scott’s new book, “Real-Time Marketing and PR,” came out officially this week, and I am in it!  He included a brief excerpt from “Real Men Don’t Rehearse” to illustrate the issue of connecting with customers.  David is quite the visionary and if you have anything to do with marketing or sales, I strongly recommend reading his books, even the ones that I’m not in!   

© Justin Locke