Story Or Song?
Lonesome Traveler brings together an eclectic ensemble of singer/songwriters, musicians and actors. While the entire cast brings a musical background to their work, Justin Flagg, Sylvie Davidson and Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper more frequently tread the boards without benefit of a tune. Flagg plays the title role and characters inspired by Peter Seeger and A.P. Carter, Sylvie Davidson personifies artists such as Ronnie Gilbert and Mary Travers, and Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper performs songs made famous by Bob Shane, Lee Hays and Cisco Houston, among others.
The trio recently talked about being actor-singers with RTC staff writer and photographer James Scolari:
RTC: The three of you make an interesting group because you all began as actors, whereas others in the cast started out as singers. Lonesome Traveler offers you an opportunity to marry these abilities, with an emphasis on music...
JF: I’ve done some actor/musician shows before, where I’ve definitely been an actor first, and a musician second, and I always felt on those that I was the "musician” of that group of actors. I definitely didn’t feel like the “musician” in this process.
NMC: Yes, it’s a little intimidating at first to be in a group of people who have extensive experience as multi-instrumentalists and concert performers. I’ve always been an actor and a singer, but in terms of my guitar and folk music experience, it was limited to camps, music nights and sing-alongs.
JF: On the first day, our Musical Director Dan Wheetman sat down with me with the banjo and said, “Here’s what I want you to do.” (JF mimes playing.) That first day was hell. (He laughs.) I thought, ‘I’m going to get fired tomorrow.' I had come in thinking…
NMC: I’m so glad to hear I’m not the only one who thought he was going to get fired! I thought I was going to get fired, too! (laughter.)
JF: I came in pretty confident – they saw what I could do in the audition so I thought they were okay with my level of ability. And as I said, in the other shows I’d done, I was the “musician,” so I was thinking, “everyone else is going to be where I am, and it’s going to be fine." Then it was Day One Music Time. It was intense, to say the least.
NMC: I went in to auditions in New York with my twelve-string and played a couple of things I knew. Then I came in again here, with my six-string. Jim said, “Oh, so you’re a pretty skilled guitar player?” I replied “I’m really not. I can fake it, I know a bunch of chords, I can finger-pick, but I’m not primarily a guitar player.”
I had just come off a musical with a lead actor who couldn’t really sing and couldn’t dance – in a show that required that. And I thought, “this is an important lesson to learn–not to apologize for yourself, but to be up front, with yourself and the people that are casting about the extent of your abilities.”
SD: I think I really lowered their expectations at my audition! (laughter) I don’t get nervous usually at theatre auditions, and I play in a band, and I don’t get nervous about that, either. But something about this music audition – I went to play and my hands were shaking. My singing was fine, but the guitar was terrible! So I think when I came in here and could actually keep rhythm and pick, they were happily surprised.
JF: In my band it took me a long time to get over the fear of playing the guitar in front of people. I spent so many years in the theatre, acting, singing and dancing in front of people. But to have to play the guitar in front of people - I was much more nervous...
SD: ...because it’s you and not a character.
JF: I won’t be nervous after this.
NMC: We are playing characters in Lonesome Traveler, but we all agreed that we are not doing imitations; we’ve been invited to incorporate our own personalities into what we’re creating. When you go up in a band, and with this type of music, it IS you – and that’s not necessarily what I signed up for when I became an actor. As an actor it wasn’t about “being myself” on stage; in fact I often wonder if I was running in the opposite direction!
JF: In my band, I learned that they want to see me; I don’t have to pretend that I’m uber-confident, or that I’m a rock star or something. It’s a plus for the audience if I’m actually showing myself. If I’m playing a new song and I don’t remember the words I can just say “I don’t remember the words!" And the times when you’re performing and you screw up and it’s kind of funny - well you really have the audience then.
This is very similar. I find when I’m doing the Pete Seeger stuff, it’s like I’m wearing a coat, but it’s still me under the coat and I can do whatever.
SD: I don’t know how you guys feel about this, but I think it’s really great to be doing a play where I’m basically playing music. For me, personally when I’m in a play in Seattle, I might play my guitar a little bit, but I don’t do very much of it because you just don’t have a lot of energy left over. I certainly don’t perform very much with the band when I’m in a show. This is the best of both worlds, which is one of the reasons I was so excited to do this project. I got the opportunity through theatre, but it’s about the music. And there’s been such a learning curve. Which is good.
JF: That’s the best part.
NMC: For me, absolutely. It’s been a huge education. Also, I’ve never worked in this way before. It’s the first good show I’ve ever worked on without a score. I’ve never worked without a physical score in front of me before in a show with music. To have that time at the beginning of the process, with all of us around the table essentially showing up to jam for ten hours a day–
JF: It was pretty amazing.
NMC: Yes, amazing! As I said, at first it was pretty intimidating, but it was a great way to build a dynamic and a blend. It’s a style I was completely unaccustomed to in my professional life. That was exciting.
SD: It’s a good ensemble-building exercise, really, it just occurred to me! When you’re in a play and you walk into a room with a bunch of people you don’t know, sometimes you do exercises or activities to build ensemble. With this show, that was a very organic experience for us just sitting around that table, we all got to know each other pretty well. That, and carpooling!
JF: And living together.
SD: And living together! It was a good way to start.
RTC: The music is so central to the piece, and yet it’s a piece that’s designed for young people, and the music is so far out of their milieu. How do you see the folk revival coming across this time around?
NMC: Like any revival – or any word that begins with R-E-V–it doesn’t happen all in one shot. Do I believe a show like this is going to define a new generation of folk lovers? Probably not. Do I believe it can contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way? Absolutely.
We as young people may follow the issues in this piece in a different way -- on Twitter and CNN twenty-four hours a day -- but we're just as dedicated to communication about these causes. We are up there singing about unions and immigration — these issues resonate for us now.
I don’t think that the concerns have changed, and I don’t think the belief systems have changed; I think this show can help connect the dots between generations.
JF: The risk and the challenge is to not let this just be history – we want to avoid it being a museum piece; I think we’ve succeeded in that. Today, we were just “teching” the end of the show, and Tracy Nichole-Chapman and I have this little scene, and Trevor Wheetman is underscoring “Remember When the Music,” and our director Jim O’Neil cautioned us not to get sucked into the music in that moment; to energize against that, which is a good general note for the whole show. There will be meaningful memories for people who attend. But we don’t’ want to be too nostalgic or sentimental.
SD: It’s funny too. Ending on “This Little Light of Mine”– I’ve known that song my whole life. I think I sang it in a children’s choir. I love singing that song in the end of the show, because everybody’s doing their own thing; the audience is with it, and everybody’s letting go. I can only speak for myself, but I am having a lot of fun just rocking out there with the audience.
As a twenty-seven year old I’ve been surprised by how much I love all the music in this show; the songs that I knew and the songs I didn’t know that strike a chord in my heart. That can’t be anything but a good sign.
RTC: I’ve always admired actors because you go into an unknown situation and have to put yourself out there in a way that many people simply could not do. With this show, you’re challenged in ways that maybe you haven’t been before. Coming away from this, do you own the feeling that you’re musicians more than you did before?
NMC: For me personally, I feel that we’re very fortunate to have the wealth of knowledge and research we were presented with, by both Jim and Dan; and also the extensive library of materials they offered. It made it possible for us to get a sense of the real people we’re all trying to get a handle on.
But if you ever work on a really great song, or you work on Shakespeare, the rhythm of the language or the rhythm of the song or the way something scans, does a lot of the work for you as an actor. Really, just finding the how the language or the line does whatever it does, tells you a lot about who it is you are as a character. It tells you a lot about what you want in whatever you’re doing. I found that a lot in this work, that the music these people sing tells me a lot about who they were. So inhabiting those characters got easier the more we worked on the pieces they created and explored the world they lived in.
JF: I have struggled with the dichotomy of trying to define myself as an actor or a musician; there’s a lot of pressure in the world at large to be just one thing.
NMC: That’s so funny, I feel a lot of pressure to start a band! So many of my actor friends are in bands, I find myself asking, “should I be doing this?” (He laughs.)
JF: Dan Wheetman became a teacher for many of us in addition to being the Musical Director. A lot of what I’m doing on the banjo is stuff I couldn’t do before; obviously, I’m doing it now. I guess my point is that I’m confident in what I’m doing because I’m confident in Dan and Trevor (Wheetman – Associate Musical Director and Dan’s son). If what I was doing sucked, they’d tell me. I know they’ve got my back.
RTC: It’s unusual to tell so much story strictly in the music–especially something that can’t be described as a musical or an opera. To have 90% of the story be carried in the music is pretty amazing.
JF: It wasn’t really clear to me what it was at first; then I was into it, I thought it was great. It’s been an odd thing for me to discover the character of the “Lonesome Traveler,” but it’s not so much plot driven as it is feeling-driven; there’s an arc of feeling that is led by song, as opposed to of an arc you understand intellectually. Which makes perfect sense when you think about it; that’s what the music is about, so that’s what the show is about. The whole show affects you the way a song would affect you.
SD: I love telling stories through songs—fortunately, in this show, we get to do both.
RTC: Best of both worlds. I’ve been watching the power manifested in your performance, being swept away by the power of song. I warn people to be ready to sing when they see this show. Some say “Oh no, I don’t sing.” To which I say, “Trust me, you’ll sing.”
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