Many parts, one whole
Community: searching, creating, celebrating. The multi-faceted, multi-talented Sarah Taylor Ellis talks to us about how the sense of community informs her work, her place and her life.
How did you end up here in the UK?
That’s a great question. I studied abroad in the UK three times when I was in undergrad and I fell in love with London’s theatre scene. I kept coming back because I was seeing a different type of theatre, a more experimental form and style, and lots of support for new writers and new works. I had always had on my radar that London would be a great cultural city for me to end up in. My husband and I started coming here twice a year after we got married (he’s also a composer) and we consistently saw some of the best, most expansive and thought-provoking theatre of our year in London. We turned to each other at the end of Part One of The Inheritance and decided that we had to find a way to live here. The election had just happened and that was a huge motivating force as well, to try and hopefully move to a country that was more supportive of arts and culture. I have been here two years now, and I personally have found more opportunity and fewer hierarchies in the UK theatre scene. In the US, if you want to have a conversation with an artistic director, you have to find some sort of fancy connection to get you there. In the UK, if you want to have a conversation with someone, their email is often on the website; you can reach out to them and they will have coffee with you. I have had many amazing collaborative opportunities over the past two years that I never would have had in the US. The UK has been a mixed experience overall, to be honest, but the cultural aspect, which was the reason that we moved, has been a great gift.
Why do you do what you do? What got you to this place of theatre?
I grew up in a small town in North Carolina called Albemarle. I started playing piano from a young age, I was an assistant dance teacher at my local dance studio – I was really passionate about that. The arts weren’t a priority in my public school, and I spent every lunch period reading in the library. I was very much an outsider longing for a place where people had similar interests. I’d never actually done anything with theatre before undergrad. I always had an interest in it, but I think I had only seen one stage musical and one play in my life before going to Duke University.
Duke had a programme that workshopped new plays and musicals before they premiered on Broadway, and they workshopped the musical Little Women my freshman year. There were five dollar student tickets, so I went every single weekend, watched this new musical develop (I was obsessed with the process), and realised that this art form was the perfect fusion of my passion for literature, dance and music. I have always been interested in the multifaceted nature of the musical. It is such a hybrid form, with singing, acting, dancing, design, so many divergent parts coming together. The same is true of opera. We often talk about these art forms as if they are fully integrated, but I think the excitement comes from the difference, from luminous moments and performances that snap out of the story to surprise and captivate us. I was drawn to this genre and started working as a musical director in the student theatre scene at Duke, and from there I started composing. I especially came to value the ensemble aspect of making musicals.
What does musical theatre do for you?
For me, musical theatre can provide a lens into a different world – perhaps even a rehearsal for a better world. Musical numbers can feel like expansive utopian moments. They can offer an open sense of possibility and a visceral sensation of different ways of being in the world, different ways of constructing of identity and community. As a kid, that was especially important to me and gave me a foundation for dreaming myself to a place I felt I belonged. Now, it provides a structure of community, one that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. I don’t know if opera does quite the same thing for me personally, although my own music does often straddle the borders of musical theatre, art song and opera. I think that opera can generate a ‘transcendent’ or ‘utopian’ experience, but I feel a bit less at home in opera because of the white male structures that still dominate the scene. Musical theatre is very guilty of that as well, but I think the musical has moved on to embrace more diversity than the opera world.
So how are you moving forward?
Right now I am orchestrating a hybrid musical/chamber opera of The Trojan Women. We are aiming for a production this coming April at Columbia University, directed by MFA candidate Rebecca Miller Kratzer. Given the pandemic, we are remaining flexible as we make plans and building safety into every aspect of the performance. Another one of my musicals, These Girls Have Demons, may have a digital workshop in the spring. That would involve a Zoom setup, which is challenging as the piece has a lot of dense harmonies – but producers are being incredibly tech savvy and making the most of the current circumstances. The pandemic has been a heartbreaker as I was actually on the verge of having my first professional show at the National Theatre when we went into lockdown. I had written music for a production of Hamlet for young audiences, and we got to tour for several weeks to local schools, which was amazing; kids are the best audiences. But we never made it into the Dorfman Theatre. Hamlet felt like a real launching pad, a significant moment for me. For so many people in the industry, work has been put on pause, and the pause feels indefinite to a degree. There’s only so much you can do digitally.
If this is an indefinite pause and we have those digital options, do you see this as a way of working in the future?
This is the complicated thing, isn’t it? I write for live performance; I don’t really write for recorded performance. For now, my attention has turned more to my academic writing; I am finishing a book for Methuen Drama. I want to get back to composing for live performance as soon as it is reasonable to do so, but I am less invested in the digital possibilities at the moment. I don’t think there’s the same communal experience online.
Why do you write? Who do you do it for?
It’s for a community experience. I’m always happiest when I’m writing for a specific group of people, or for a show that will bring together a specific group of people. As an example, with The Trojan Women, we wanted to pull together the most amazingly diverse, unique blend of music theatre and opera performers – all ages, all races and ethnicities, all different backgrounds and musical experiences. We wanted to tell a story that felt significant and timely. I don't feel that it would be the same if we weren't all in the same room, collaborating together. These Girls Have Demons is a rock musical about a group of teenage girls who get possessed by demons that enable them to express all the rage, sexuality, and sheer feeling that they’ve been taught to repress as well behaved little girls; there are a lot of dense choral moments, a lot of harmony, a lot of sisterhood, and that doesn’t operate in quite the same way when you’re not together.
Fundamentally it feels like I write for an ensemble, I write for community. My favourite part of the process is when I get to hand over the pieces of music to the people that will be performing them. Yes, I could write all day by myself at my house, but I don't feel any purpose in that - the purpose is the bringing together. I think that’s why I enjoy teaching so much, too. It’s always about the process and the bringing together. In some ways I’m trying to create an experience for the students like the one I would have benefited from when I was growing up, using the arts to bring together a community of people in difference.
Suppose we never have “live” again? What then?
I don't know the answer to that immediately. I think I’m clinging to the hope that eventually we’ll return to a state where we can all be together and create together safely. On a day-to-day basis, I’m learning to adapt to the new digital reality, but writing for it has not excited me yet. My immediate solution is that my husband and I are moving to Berlin. We’re seeking a place where we will be safer and maybe have even more creative possibilities than in the UK. We didn’t anticipate moving again, but I resigned from my teaching job just before the start of the school year due to health and safety concerns. Losing my work visa meant rethinking what we valued and where we wanted to live. I think the pandemic has forced everyone to reexamine their lives and priorities. Culturally, London has been such a wonderful fit but the handling of the pandemic has been horrifying. I am such a logic driven person – very linear and organised. Looking at what both the US and UK have done (and not done) in response to the pandemic has been traumatic; the governments’ responses fly in the face of science and value the economy above human life. Berlin was never on our radar as a future home until recently, but we have never received such a warm welcome to a city before. It’s been an unexpected, winding journey over the past few months, but I do think it’s leading us to a new creative community where we’ll be happy and grateful to be.
I’m eager to be back making music and theatre live and in person, but I know I’ll return to the rehearsal room with important differences after the pandemic. Black Lives Matter has urged institutions and individuals to deeply examine who they’re working with, who they’re making work for, and how they can be more open and inclusive in every step of the process. I have been especially inspired by how my students have led the way in these conversations. I’ve always emphasised hiring a diverse cast in my work, but that diversity hasn’t always extended to the creative team. I want to ensure that my rooms are fully inclusive moving forward. I hope that both institutions and individuals hold to these commitments when the world begins reopening. There’s no going back to where we were before this moment. That’s a really positive thing.
Who are you?
I think who I am is always changing and evolving, and I’m made up of many different parts. Americans often define themselves by their careers, so I am used to introducing myself as a multi-hyphenate composer/musical director/dramaturg/teaching artist/academic. I don't think that’s who I really am. Maybe, rather, I am just a person who cares deeply about other people and community, and that has really come to the forefront during this pandemic.
We did say she was multi-talented…