Jeff Britting (born 1957) is an American composer, playwright, author, and producer.
Each day, I read the New York Times before leaving for the theater. And I have this standing assignment: connect the world of Anthem to the late breaking events of the day.
I certainly did my best to bring the story [Anthem] to life in another medium.
Most of Ayn Rand's major characters are already formed at the start of the stories.
Typically, among the audience members joining the actors, the director, Ann Ciccolella and myself, about half of these theater goers have read the novel [Anthem], and half have not read it. That is interesting.
Who can I marry? Where can I live? What kind of career can I achieve? These are just some of the stories breaking with Anthem-like implications. And the ideas crushing the individual are all around us, chipping away at us constantly.
Basically, I composed the musical structure in one pass. The rest was editing and small adjustments. And when the play was read by actors with the music, the sequence timed-out perfectly.
Ayn Rand called her novella Anthem a "hymn to man's ego. " My approach to Anthem the play was to provide the story a further dimension through music and sound. The work is now larger than a hymn. It's really "spoken opera. "
After I write a sequence, I just open the script and then sit at the piano keyboard and "play" the script. (And because I also draw and paint, sometimes I sketch out the action as well. )
Jumping twenty or so years later, Ann Ciccolella, artistic director of Austin Shakespeare, approached me with the idea of staging Anthem. She had heard my film score to Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life. And she said, I want to do Anthem as an oratorio. Well, I figured what she meant was a straight play with music.
Sometimes, I stood at the front of the E train, watching the tunnel ahead, imagining what Anthem would look like on stage.
I think a successful adaptation rises or falls on the work presented. If people need to read the book to understand the play, I didn't complete the job.
If Anthem finds an audience in New York City, my hope would be to see the play transferred to a commercial theatre for an open-ended run.
I love film scores and opera, and I wanted to work in those forms. But theater was more accessible. And no one was doing this in the late 1970s, when I began working in the theater. So, I have written scores for thirteen plays, which are not musicals, but straight plays.