Transylvania University is premiering a collaborative production between the theater and music departments next week featuring the talents of professors Tosha Fowler and Greg Partain along with other familiar faces.
“Ghost Music” runs May 7-11 in Little Theater. Reserve free tickets to the show, funded in part by an AthensWest Emerging Play Grant.
The production features professional actors with student support as part of a May term class. Fowler plays one of the leads, while Partain provides live piano music. The play was written by Bo List, a theater instructor at Transylvania — and it’s directed by Abe Reybold, who has worked on Transylvania productions before.
The show is distinctive in that it revolves around music, but it’s not a musical.
Dressed in coat and tails and seated behind a sheet of gauze at a grand piano, Partain will perform works by three of the characters in the play: Robert and Clara Schumann along with Johannes Brahms.
The spark for the production came to Partain in 2020, when he took a deep dive into the lives of the Schumanns. “This is one of the most emotionally rich and charged stories of classical music,” he said.
Robert is a renowned 19th century composer and Clara is also well known as a composer and touring pianist in a time when it took a lot for a woman to break into the profession. They were devoted to one another and shared a “wonderful synergy, artistically speaking,” Partain said.
After the up-and-coming composer Brahms enters the Schumanns’ lives, Robert eventually suffers from mental illness and dies at 46. Brahms and Clara Schumann have become close, forming a love relationship of sorts.
Fast-forward to the modern day and these characters come back to life, in more ways than one.
The current-day triangle involves a woman who loses her husband — a pianist and Schumann scholar — along with one of his musician students. The play explores her journey through grief with the guidance of the famous ghosts from the past.
Tying it all together is the music “like the air that they breathe,” Partain pointed out. “It’s really what made them all tick.”
Fowler echoed this sentiment. “It really is about the way that music can connect everything,” she said. This includes the past and present as well as the experiences of others, like grief. “We use stories, and we use music to make sense of the world around us.”
She added that this particular story, despite the sad and eerie elements, conveys much hope and joy.
Fowler also noted that it’s not often you get such a stunning piano player to accompany your play. And she said the students benefit from seeing their professors perform — while she gets to experience some of the things she’s been asking students to do while on stage.
In addition to the AthensWest support, the professors’ sabbatical funds along with other university grants made the production possible.
“This is very much a collaboration, and the most collaborative playwriting experience that I’ve been a part of,” List said for a WEKU interview. Also, check out this Arts Connect podcast feature of “Ghost Music.”
Another familiar face involved with the production is Derrick Ledbetter, who’s playing Robert Schumann. He’s directed other Transylvania productions like the recent “Pride and Prejudice” and will lead the “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” production this fall.
Fowler reminded theater goers that even if tickets are sold out, they can almost always just show up before the play starts and still get a seat.
“Ghost Music” begins at 7:30 each night and 2 p.m. that Sunday — which is being promoted as a great Mother’s Day outing.
