Falsettos Stage Directions

[Alex Kulak2]

Posted: 10/9/16 at 1:00pm

So I just found my library's copy of the published script of Falsettos, and to anyone who hasn't read it, if you don't have the context of William Finn's score, it is a weird show. Mainly in the stage directions, where there are lines like "Jason picks up the (toy) bed and hides it behind his back" during "Four Jews in a Room Bitching", or during "Please Come to My House" when the characters come out with portraits of famous psychiatrists (Freud, Jung, Westheimer,), and the stage direction reads "The band stands and sways. The mouths of the portraits start flapping in time to the music." The one that always gets me is inbetween "Trina's Song" and "March of the Falsettos", where it reads "The Four Men march in, wearing gauze versions of their costumes, with their sexual things either exposed or exaggerated in neon. The effect should be both silly and eerie." I love the score of Falsettos, as well as all of William Finn's other work, and I'm really confused over whether weird visuals like these made it into the original Broadway production, or the recent revival.

[FiddleMeThis]

Posted: 10/9/16 at 2:33pm

Those are directly from the original staging. Most of that is not in the revival. 

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/10/16 at 5:41am

I remember the business with the bed and the gauze versions of their costumes, but if their genitalia were represented in neon, I missed or have forgotten it.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 10/10/16 at 10:24am

When you read a published script, even an acting edition....you must assume that most of the stage directions are from the "biggest"  professional production.  There is really no way for the average Joe to know what was written by the author and what came from the production. .

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/10/16 at 7:45pm

dmama, what you say is absolutely true of "acting editions". The stage directions (Cross DS to sofa; sit) absolutely come from some stage manager's notes.

But I'm not sure the same is true of editions published to be sold to general audiences. I think the creators have more say in them.

I know lots of directors are taught to ignore stage directions--and I'd agree they are a guide, not absolute rule--but, as a playwright, I can vouch that we spend a great deal of time on them. Authors such as Miller and Williams and Ibsen all reveal as much in stage directions as they do in dialogue. That doesn't mean the director has to replicate the direction, just that s/he ignores it at his/her peril.