Feedback
Stuck Elevator is in development. We’d love to get your feedback. Let us know what you think by leaving comments below.
Byron Au Yong & Aaron Jafferis
Special Thanks
Stuck Elevator is a project of Creative Capital.
Touring is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Theater Pilot, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The show was developed, in part, with assistance from the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, Asian/Pacific/American Institute artist-in-residence program at NYU and Yale Institute for Music Theatre.
Residency Support
Workshop Showings
2010
International Festival of Arts & Ideas [Info]
2009
Hand2Mouth Risk/Reward Festival
On the Boards NW New Works Festival
Museum of Chinese in America
Awards
Creative Capital [Info]
4Culture
API/2
Artist Trust
Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs
Research
films to watch
Organizations
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Hey,
I was on my bike this evening so wanted to head out before darkness fell.
All the way home I was hearing, singing music in my head. I don’t know if it was your songs or just music like your songs, but it was sweet accompaniment. While watching the show I don’t remember the music sounding particularly “Asian”, this after-music, the haunting little melodies, did have that “sound”… Perhaps, the key or the scale??
- The sections/songs I remember liking are Shame, Pst (Hah!), Hunger, Listening, 3 Hungers, The Key (wonderful metaphors!), all of Act 3. – Though I didn’t really get the last song/lyrics, I didn’t mind. It was so sweet.
- I assume the lawyer character is a memory of a customer.
- Somewhat confused about weather he was confronting his son or his father in Act 2.
- I’m a real fan of little props going airborne, the paper airplanes….how well should/could they fly? I’d love to see teeny tiny paper airplanes, almost like they were made of fortune cookie paper. Esp. if they could really stay aloft for a while.
- There some great possibilities throughout the show for some mime/theater type transitions in and out of dream times, physical acting moments (Pst!), the knife business.
- I’d love to see him singing into the floor since there’s no real walls in the set. Just the closeness of the mouth to the floor.
Okay, my 2-cents worth for now. Thanks to all for a very new evening.
Curiously enough, I made my very first batch of Fried Rice for dinner tonight before heading down to your show ….?!?
June 18, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Congratulations! Loved it! This production is hilarious, sad, tragic, emotionally charged…
I love the fried rice take-out and misfortunes ideas-very funny and true to life. I know the opera will only get better as time goes on…also love the idea of postcards in a take-out box outside the theater-very clever indeed. Perhaps the familial relationships between father, son, wife needs more explorations? Good job guys.
Love, mom
June 20, 2007 at 11:39 am
I loved stuck elevator. The solo percussionist did an excellent job and I loved the music. I thought the actor did an amazing job and I can’t wait to see it in full production.
June 26, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Byron! On the Boards – Loved being in the audience for this performance. 81 hours is a grueling long time & editing your ideas into this short piece must have been difficult! The struggles you decided to showcase were on point. And by the way, from beginning to end it was a continuous heartbeat & each change in thought was another pulse & it was impossible not to feel for Kuang.
If this piece were matured into a larger piece, I think it would be interesting to see one man’s story become a metaphor for the isolation, poverty, family pride, conviction & will to survive that immigrant cultures in the States have struggled with. Because this man had the will to survive. And to highlight too the fact that people must have been walking around talking going to work, on with their days all around this guy and maybe he could hear them but he couldn’t participate. And if he was nothing on the streets, he certainly had to feel the pit of nothingness in those 3 days. And food = culture. And Chinese take-out is an Americanized version of a culture…so maybe out of boredom he picks at and tears off a logo for the restaurant and is left with a white empty space on his shirt or something… but a beginning. I don’t know… but look at me brainstorm!!
I could go on and on and on and well…we didn’t know if you’d be around after the show? Everyone seemed to just leave, so we moseyed on out but really would have liked to give you a congratulatory hug!
June 9, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Byron,
I want to say again how much I liked the excerpt yesterday.
“Poignant” is a much overused word, but precisely appropriate here.
Particularly appealing is how humor (chickens, the bladder song) and deep sadness are so seamlessly mixed, the way it often is in real life.
And under it all lie the basic metaphors of stuckness and forgottenness, particularly powerful because they grow so naturally out of Kuang and his predicament. The music is like that too: it almost seems one hardly hears it separately, it is simply part of the whole (as is your performance).
Thank you very much,
Victoria
June 9, 2009 at 2:58 pm
For some reason I am having difficulty locating my original comments posted onto your facebook link, so I will try to paraphrase here, per your request.
After listening to the Stuck Elevator excerpt demo on Facebook, I was very proud of you and what you have accomplished. Being an old friend from the univerity days, It made me happy to see your talent finding an audience.
I thought your compositions conveyed a strong first person narrative. Musically speaking, in particular I thought that the melodies, which were primarily consonant were enhanced by the use of more dissonant contrasting sections as in the intro to Shame. I also felt that some of the songs such has Hunger, carried a stronger metaphoric or social commentary component in the lyrics, which elevated the composition, giving it another layer of meaning or context.
I believe that this work provides a voice and a perspective not often heard, and I think that it is done so with style and artistry.
The following are my constructive criticisms and I hope you find them useful.
1. In some of the songs there was a doubling of the lyrical line and the lead string. I feel that in some areas this is effective, but believe the lead string can perhaps play something else harmonically related to the lyric without doubling the notes.
2. I feel that you have written these songs for a target audience and that they will respond well to this, however I feel that perhaps you could revisit the character conflict to further sculpt or frame that essence which speaks to all people about the plight´/ soaring of the human spirit. I believe that in your work, there is also a universal story of the human condition that can be further elicited to bring a broader audience to this particular work, without diminishing the established narrative.
Good job, Byron. I have been listening to the demo all morning!
October 7, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Hi, I was at your performance in September, and thought it was terrific. I especially liked some of the off-the-job sociological lyrics (about sharing sleeping space, etc.), and wondered if you could add more. Perhaps using the Fung Wah bus as a way to briefly discuss the national Chinese waiter circuit? There’s so much about the lives of Chinese food workers that people can already learn from your opera, though; I understand the desire not to overdo it.
Also wondered if you’ve ever read Yun Gee’s poem “Sensation,” as far as I know the only other artistic commentary on Chinese immigrants in New York elevators.
October 19, 2009 at 2:00 pm