Artist Interview: Composer Christopher Colucci and Performer Charlie DelMarcelle
The TWELFTH NIGHT musicians on creating and performing the music at the bittersweet heart of the play
With Twelfth Night — onstage at the Lantern May 18 through June 18, 2023 — sound designer and composer Christopher Colucci and performer Charlie DelMarcelle continue their longtime artistic collaboration with the Lantern. Colucci’s work has been heard in many Lantern productions, including Travesties; A Man for All Seasons; The Plague; and The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens & Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord; as well as our annual presentation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which he developed with fellow artists Anthony Lawton and Thom Weaver. Appearing in Twelfth Night as wise and musical fool Feste, DelMarcelle returns for his fourth Lantern Shakespeare production, including Coriolanus, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He also performed here in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and Uncle Vanya.
In Twelfth Night, these two artists provide the songs that deepen one of Shakespeare’s most musical comedies. Lantern Resident Dramaturg Meghan Winch sat down separately with DelMarcelle and Colucci to discuss performing and composing the music.
Meghan Winch: You came into first rehearsal with these songs at least a little bit ready to go. How involved were you in their creation?
Charlie DelMarcelle: It’d be interesting to get Christopher’s take on this. When I got called into audition, the only sides the Lantern sent me were Feste songs. And there was no text, there’s no back and forth. It was just, “Here are two songs.” I think a lot of actors want to show off a little bit of versatility, right? I came to that first audition with a bunch of instruments. And one of the things that can be a fun tool that an actor-muso working solo can use is an open tuning on an instrument. If a guitar is tuned in a standard tuning, I have to fret chords, usually using all three or four fingers to get a full chordal sound. If you tune the guitar to a specific chord, if I don’t even touch it, then it kind of rings and sustains in whatever tuning that you have it in without touching the fretboard at all. Not to get too in the guitar weeds with it, but what that can really do is make an instrument sound very, very full and alive. And then with a single finger on the fretboard, I can create a whole other chord or a melody line around a drone that kind of exists inside that chordal tuning that the guitar exists in now naturally. I experimented with an open tuning for the audition, which is a tuning that 70s folk singer Nick Drake used…so when I was lucky enough to get cast in this production and I knew Christopher was doing the music, I thought it might be fun to send him, “Hey, I played this tuning for the audition,” and I think he dug that. He didn’t end up using the same tuning that I used then, but it’s a variation on a C tuning, and I think that showed him that we could experiment in open forms.
I would like to think that when Christopher heard those first open tune things from the audition he felt like, “Oh, we could build something with that.” And then we played a fun back-and-forth in the weeks up to rehearsal where he would show me a bit of a song, send me a video of him playing it. And I would play around with it and then send a video back to him. Because Christopher’s so generous with his time and because we like each other and are friends too, we were able to start collaborating on the music for a few weeks before the first rehearsal, which was actually super helpful, because then we came to the table with songs ready to go.
Winch: In terms of both style and what sort of support you get from the sound design, there’s a lot of different versions of your musicality in this. What’s it like to do all of these variations within one show?
DelMarcelle: I could give like the fancy answer, like “An Actor Prepares” kind of answer, but the real truth is that if I’m just playing by myself, if I screw up a little bit or if my timing or tempo is a little different night to night, no one will really be the wiser. That’s all underneath my own fingers. In the show, I have Christopher’s music supporting some of my solo playing with actual sound cues that are being called during the show. The tricky part is I’ve got to get it right every time. And the hardest one of those is the song “Come Away Death,” which is in our first act and is completely underscored throughout. Christopher sets a tempo with a cue, and either I’m with it or I’m not. That always gets my heart racing a little bit. Because even if you’re playing live with a band, like a drummer can adjust, or a bass player can adjust, or the singer can adjust and the track will always be perfect. But in the show, it’s up in the air whether or not I’m going to be as good as what Christopher has scored because that is locked in. That gets me sweating a little bit each night, because there’s also all the other moving pieces of the show to deal with — costume changes and my blocking and props I have to juggle. So those moments are always a little tense for me. But fun!
Winch: You are not a stranger to Shakespeare or to plays with music. As an actor, is there a difference in how you approach these musical moments versus your text moments? Do the two inform each other?
DelMarcelle: Yes, totally, completely. As they say, in a really well-written musical, characters break into song because they have to. There’s no other way to express what’s happened. Well, if you add the instrument to that too, and the expressive nature in which you can play the instruments, the sounds that it makes, I think it must be rooted in the character energy or it’s almost like a visual disconnect, right? So, I really do think about that quite a bit. And I think Christopher was thinking about that when he composed the music. Charles [McMahon, the director of Twelfth Night] is interested in Feste as untethered to the nature of the play. Feste kind of floats above it a little bit and seems, in my mind, to be really concerned with this idea of every moment we have here with each other is completely precious. And wasting it is not only foolish, but potentially like — what’s the word I’m looking for? Like, literally frittering away whatever limited beauty we have before we’re no longer here — before we die. And so I think my Feste is a little melancholy, actually…and that’s reflected in the way I phrase things on the guitar and the music that Chris wrote. So, yes, I think one thing informs the other for sure.
Winch: Do you have a favorite song to play?
DelMarcelle: My favorite song to play is the very first one which is “O Mistress Mine.” Two of the other clown characters, Sir Andrew and Sir Toby, kind of drunk one night, ask for a song…and it’s a love song too, but that song is really like the old 70s song, “Love the One You’re With.” Its advice is take advantage of what you have in front of you right now because this idea of love and the vibrancy is not going to stick around. And I really, really like that. What Christopher wrote there, I think is actually kind of audacious, because it’s slow and meditative and in a risky way stops the play for a second. It’s like, you’re going to stop and listen to this really kind of sad, contemplative song after what’s been this big drunken moment. So, I really, really enjoy that. It’s fun.
Winch: Is there anything else you want to share?
DelMarcelle: I always think it’s a pleasure when you’re able to be an artist in one city or one region for a long time and you get to build long-term relationships with other artists. A collaboration like Christopher and I have would be harder if we were strangers to each other, you know? So, our artistic sensibilities, our friendship, I feel that in the music too. It’s pretty great.
Winch: Can you talk about the composition? Shakespeare provides lyrics, but how did you go about landing on instrumentation and how these songs were going to feel? Charlie talked a little bit about the back and forth that you guys had.
Christopher Colucci: Well, I knew I wanted to do it in open tuning. Did Charlie explain?
Winch: He did.
Colucci: I trafficked in that when I was playing guitar as a thing, in various tunings. And we’ve worked together before and talked about tunings, and he has played some things for me in various tunings. So that gives it a whole tonality, a whole feel on the guitar, a whole resonance that a standard tuned guitar wouldn’t have. Because we’ve worked together, I knew it was going to be grounded in the guitar. Guitar was going to be a major instrument. The question was what else was there going to be? And Tydell [Williams], the lighting designer, mentioned this steel tongue drum idea, which got intriguing very fast. The idea of duets with guitar and steel tongue drum. So that became the palette.
It was interesting to hear Charlie talk about the risks of composing “O Mistress Mine” as a kind of a contemplative ballad. Honestly, I didn’t think about that, because I think of course we filter text through our experience and our impulses, and to me those lyrics felt like they were contemplative and a little sad and a little beautiful in that kind of poignant way. It does kind of stop the room. We’ve noticed that in some of the preview performances, it doesn’t continue the comic arc. So, I’m hoping that that that provides a depth and a richness to the experience that it might not have had if we did a more standard approach to that.
Winch: You’re also designing the sound of the play, not just the music. So, a two-part question: How do those two sides inform each other? And then also how do you determine where you’re going to give the live music it that little extra support and where you’re going to let it just be the performers?
Colucci: That was an opportunity that I’d never had before, which is sound designing on top of live music in a meaningful way. So that, in fact, the sound design is the third instrument that happens on top of some of these songs. Just as Lee [Minora, who plays Maria] plays the steel tongue drum on stage with Charlie, I’m playing three different EBow tracks to provide the ethereal refrain between the verses in “O Mistress Mine.” In “Come Away Death,” the idea was that I would provide a track that would provide a bed for Charlie to play his guitar and sing live on top of that. And then in “The Wind and the Rain,” the final song, seagulls happen as a part of the song…each of the four or five songs has a different configuration, different relationship of sound design and the live music. That was just really the exciting part of this. There’s also something about it being the last show of the season for me that it becomes a little bit of like, “Okay, I’ll roll the dice on this. We’ll take some chances on this.”
Winch: Did any of the songs come easier than others? Were any of them more challenging than others?
Colucci: No. And I’ve never talked about this with anybody and so I don’t really know how much I want to say about it. But the process for me is very, very simple once I sit down for the thing…I put the lyrics up on the screen, I start to find the thing on the guitar. But getting to that place is very — all that time is long. Am I ready to do this? Do I know? Because once I go in, it’s like the energy leaves you, it takes energy to do it. But in terms of music and stuff, I just love doing it so much. I listen to so much music. The challenge is to be in the spiritual and the mental place to sit down and do the thing. If you’re in that place, then the thing comes pretty quickly.
More reading: QUIZ: Shakespeare’s Songs — How well do you know Shakespeare’s songs? Test your musical memory by filling in the blanks!
Lantern Theater Company’s production of Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare is onstage May 18 through June 18, 2023, at St. Stephen’s Theater. Visit our website for tickets and information.
