Our Country's Good is a difficult play because even where it is triumphant,
that triumph is still ambiguous. The prisoners have developed a sense of their own
worth and humanity by the play's conclusion, but they remain prisoners, and the
production of The Recruiting Offier that we've watched them rehearse remains
unperformed in the text of the play. The complete misery of life aboard ship yields
to a gleam of hope by the plays end, and finding developing a musical journey that
helps tell the story that the play text suggests was my challenge.
While I considered baroque English music as the basis for my design, I actually found
Tcaikovsky's fifth symphony more appropriate. The funeral procession that begins the first
movement yields to a more triumphal march by the end of that movement, and continues on a
triumphant journey for the rest of the symphony. The over all effect was both haunting and moving.
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