John Dietrich
Lautrec At The St James
Book & Lyrics by John Dietrich
Music by Julianne Wick Davis
Imagine believing that no one could ever love you, really love you, or knowing it. Would it change how you choose to live your life? In the early morning hours of March, 1899, after his standard practice of excessive cavorting, the French artist Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, passes out in a gutter and is kidnapped. Three days later he awakes to imprisonment in the Chateau St. James, an asylum on the outskirts of Paris.
LAUTREC AT THE ST. JAMES almost entirely takes place in the asylum, where the lines between hallucination and reality, beauty and blemish, are continuously blurred. Where Lautrec confronts the fear of losing his artistic ability: the truest form of love he knows or believes he knows. Standing only five feet tall, disproportioned, and odd in appearance, Lautrec states, “We are born into whatever we are born into. Me this, them that.” (Suggesting the prostitutes and curious entertainers he feels an alliance and devotion to.) In this era known as Belle Epoque, a decadent period of mass entertainment, Lautrec is a celebrity, a master artist, and an oddity – he lives the urgency of both proving himself and finding himself, and in doing so, begins to uncover the many forms in which love might exist.
DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
LAUTREC AT THE ST. JAMES has gone through a typical early development process. Early on we conducted table reads which resulted in a shift of focus and the piece going from being a two act to a one act. Over time we received three grants, two of those allowing for readings, which we intentionally kept closed as we continued to shape the story, and the other enabled us to create demo recordings that incorporated more in-depth orchestrations and instrumentation which we felt important to understanding the style and aural world of the piece.
The show was selected for the 2019 NAMT Conference and a 45-minute segment of the show was produced and presented with a cast of 10 actors, three musicians and was directed by Sarna Lapine. A concert version of the show was chosen and produced for the inaugural 2022 Applause Concert Series at the Olney Theatre in Maryland accompanied by a 12-piece orchestra.
FEATURED PERFORMERS
Ben Roseberry, Kurt Robbins, Amy Justman, Kennedy Caughill, Tatiana Wechsler, Matthew C. Thompson, Jason Pintar, Casey Erin Clark, Mary Kate Morrissey, Keri Renee Fuller, Nancy Anderson, Svetlana Tsoneva, Patrick Thompson, Allison Seidner, Jarrett Murray, Boris Baev, Jonathan Christopher, Monet Sabel, Tess Primack
