WINE, TICKETS AND CHAMPAGNE: TEST FROM POINT A TO POINT B

Tickets for TEST are now on sale at www.ticketcorner.ch. Point B is now in sight, and the road ahead is straight and secure. The champagne is on ice. What was the road like to get this far?

 

 

POINT A

We usually choose the fastest path to get somewhere. In the case of writing a rock opera, how fast is fast? Time is relative, and getting from point A to point B may not be direct. In fact, it’s more like a Formula One race track. You have your flat-out straight-aways, and you have your treacherous curves. Both are important parts of the course.
Point A for TEST was a patio, three friends, and a bottle of wine. The patio was at Krista Jaquet’s house near Basel; the three friends were Krista, Tuija Takala, and Matti Häyry; and the wine was – lost in the mist of time. The three friends were also close relations. Krista is Tuija’s cousin; Matti is Tuija’s husband. This trio – all from Finland – are the originators of TEST. They are point A.

 

A NORDIC PACT

A bottle of wine figures prominently in the origin of TEST. Not in the sense of a drunken spree or an incoherent rant. Rather, the wine was in the glasses to toast Matti’s new book on the ethics of genetic engineering. The conversation flowed freely. And soon it turned into a discussion that went deep into the night: how to talk about genetic engineering through the medium of a rock opera.
So the trio made a Nordic pact on that evening in early 2010. They decided to bring to life the ethical ideas that Matti addressed in his book – the issues of life extension, designer babies, cloning, and savior siblings. The purpose of the pact was to create characters out of ideas, create narrative out of expository writing, and create a theatrical plot for an academic book.

 

CURVE IN THE ROAD

The way forward was not a wide-open stretch, however. And just like with a Formula One race car, you need many engineers and technicians to keep the car up-and-running. You need a team.
To start building the TEST team, Krista reached out to friend and theater collaborator Jamie Sievert in the summer of 2011. The very first discussion that Krista and Jamie had regarding TEST came while driving on a sunny freeway flanked by the blue Mediterranean Sea as Jamie drove Krista to Barcelona airport after a stay with Jamie and his family at his house in Spain. During the drive an agreement was reached: Krista and Jamie would work together to write the book and lyrics for TEST.
The TEST team expanded yet again in December 2011, when Daniel and Stefan Raaflaub joined Krista and Jamie for an in-depth weekend of discussion about the possibility of moving forward with TEST. Daniel and Stefan are both professional musical actors. And even better, they are identical twins. They were obviously typecast to play the roles of the twins Tony and Alex in TEST.
Then on another weekend in December 2011, just before Christmas, Matti and Tuija flew down from Finland to Basel to join Krista, Jamie, Daniel, and Stefan for a weekend of intensive labor on TEST. The team spent the weekend poring over the story, lyrics and musical styles, taking stock of exactly where TEST stood and how they could move it forward.

 

PICKING UP SPEED

Soon, however, the three originators of TEST – Krista, Tuija, and Matti – had a different vision of where to take TEST. Krista wanted a true rock opera that included a full, Broadway-style staging, along with a director, choreographer and professional actors. Matti and Tuija, meanwhile, took their idea of TEST in the direction of a concept CD and concerts.
So in July 2013 the team of Krista, Jamie, Daniel and Stefan founded the company Happyville Productions GmbH in Basel to provide the proper legal structure for writing and mounting a production of TEST The Rock Opera.
From October to December 2013 the plot and character development received a fresh round of revision through extensive late-night and all-weekend sessions with the core team of Krista and Jamie. The duo produced a revised treatment and synopsis that became the basis for writing the lyrics, which began in December 2013 and continued into early 2014.

 

ON THE STRAIGHT AWAY

In 2014 the TEST team put the pedal to the metal. Krista’s home in Lupsingen, outside Basel, complete with Finnish sauna, became the de facto headquarters for TEST. In January 2014 the Happyville Productions creative team invited the Berlin-based composer Jakob Vinje to Lupsingen. Over good food and fine wine, in the same location where the original idea for TEST had been created back in the spring of 2010, the Happyville team and Jakob found there was a mutual liking and a strong urge to go ahead and give the musical breath of life to TEST.
Between January and September 2014 Jakob regularly commuted to Basel to present the music he had composed for the TEST libretto. But the TEST libretto was not static, either. Jamie and Krista kept up their torrid pace of rewriting and rethinking the libretto. Jakob’s assistant Clemens Bötel became part of the core TEST team at this point. The goal was the have a libretto and musical score for the first TEST workshop in September 2014.
The TEST actors presented the first public workshop of TEST in Basel on September 25, 2014 after only five days of rehearsals. The purpose of the public performance was to draw more attention to TEST and to attract investors. Success came on both fronts, as new investors joined the existing pool and the performance received a very enthusiastic reception from the audience.
In early January 2015, a second workshop was held in Basel, this time with some blocking and acting, as well as limited choreography and lighting. Again after only five days of rehearsals, the actors put on a brilliant performance. TEST again attracted a half a dozen new investors after this workshop. In addition, the core team of Krista, Jamie, and Jakob were able to make important adjustments to the script and music based on findings gleaned from the workshop. The excellent pianist Christine Archer also joined the core team at this workshop, along with Clemens, to assist the actors with learning the songs. Clemens and Christine are now sharing the duties of musical director for the February-March 2016 production of TEST.

 

MARKETING TEAM FUELS THE END SPURT

So the TEST car was up and running, putting in some excellent lap times. One problem, though. Not enough people knew about the strong pace.
Enter the marketing crew of Tintti Sarola and Jussi Hyttinen. This high-octane duo provided an explosive fuel mix to propel TEST into another category. In addition, this Finnish team, now based in Berlin, added another Nordic dimension to the international saga of TEST.
Tintti and Jussi came to TEST HQ at Krista’s house in late April 2015 to grill the creative team about how they wanted to launch TEST to the world. After a grueling weekend workshop and over the ensuing weeks, Jussi and Tintti created the TEST brand, launched the website, and started to prepare the vast amount of advertising and media material that was necessary.
Their creation of the TEST brand was the perfect additive to accelerate TEST into the final phase before opening night.

 

POINT B IN SIGHT

There will be no let up between now and opening night on February 20, 2016. The road ahead is clear and straight. Point B is looming hard on the horizon. The road getting there has had its ups and downs. It has required navigating some tricky passages. When opening night comes, the original TEST prototype that took form in the discussion of Krista, Matti, and Tuija over a bottle of wine in early 2010 will be celebrated six years later over a big bottle of chilled champagne.