INTERVIEW WITH MUSIC DIRECTOR MATT CASTLE


Education Dramaturg Ted Sod interviewed the music director for Into the Woods, Matt Castle.


Ted Sod: Will you tell us where you were born and educated and how you got involved in the theatre as a music director?


Matt Castle: I was born in Sacramento, California and lived there until age 17. I attended University of the Pacific for my undergraduate degree. I was in the music conservatory there, so almost all my classes outside general ed were music. I didn’t know what I wanted to do as a career. I did music education because it seemed somehow legitimate to have a statement of career goal inherent in the curriculum. I took two years off, and then still not knowing, I went to grad school for a master’s in composition at Northern Illinois, University of Illinois. I was 28 by the time I moved to New York. I came here to be an actor. As is the case with many actors when they first move to New York, I had a limited resume – community theatre and college shows. And I had no idea what was involved in being an actor in New York, so it took me a few months to figure out how to get a headshot and how to put together some form of a resume. I started taking whatever work I could get, and that included playing piano, which is what I had been doing for a living since I was in high school. It turns out that my experience as an actor, director, writer, and teacher all came in handy in the work that I do as a music director.


TS: Tell us what the music director does on this particular production of Into the Woods?


MC: It started as one thing, and it expanded into something else. The Fiasco folks knew as we went into production at the McCarter Theatre that they needed someone who was sufficiently strong as a piano player to hold up the show just with his two hands. It turned out that I would need to be able to reduce what I see on the page down to something that’s playable by one person. And it is not easy to do full service to the music with just two hands on the keys. So, that was one prong of my job. The other was to interact with the actors because everyone in the room in a Fiasco show is involved with the table work. Since I’m also an actor and understand what they’re doing as actors, I can be a full participant in the table work and had a lot to contribute there. And, moreover, I can translate what is happening in the music as text, non-verbal text, into something usable for the actors. It’s just a musical/analytical tool that I have.


TS: Is there any other instrumentation? I’ve seen other shows of Fiasco, and many in the company play instruments.


MC: The part of the show that has expanded the most is the instrumental component. When we started at the McCarter, we had a permission slip to work on a piano-based version of the show, with the addition of other instruments where we might deem necessary, with the proviso that we do not use any orchestral material known to have been created by Jonathan Tunick. We could not do service to Jonathan Tunick’s work without doing it in toto.


The more I learned about what the actors could do, the more inspired I got about the ways we could use instruments. The show is not fully, utterly re-orchestrated, but my husband and I are both engaged on


14 ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY


the show as co-orchestrators. We’re there to oversee and approve the use of instruments in the show however they’re going to be used. For instance, we have an actor who plays cello very well, and an actor who plays bassoon very well, and more than one actor who plays guitar well. All three of those instruments appear fairly frequently in the show, and then we have a number of pianists. So while they don’t ever come to share the keys with me -- at least not in the two productions that we’ve done so far -- their piano skills are still useful in other parts of the show.


The set is made partly of old piano harps that have been mounted on walls. And they are tuned by our sound designer, Darron West, so that if you hit them they make a noise. Darron’s treated them with microphones. People can make all kinds of musical sounds, which contributes to the sound of the show.


TS: Is it complicated wearing both hats, playing the show and musically directing? Or is that something you’ve done often?


MC: It is a thing I’ve done more often than not.


TS: Did Sondheim and Lapine see the show? Did they give you any specific notes?


MC: Stephen and James both saw the show, and they both were warmly enthusiastic with what we had done, but they didn’t take part in the rehearsal process. The artistic directors of Fiasco had a meeting with Lapine before we began rehearsal at the McCarter, and they got a clear sense from him of what he would and would not be okay with.


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