{"id":145272,"date":"2022-04-01T09:30:37","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T13:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=145272"},"modified":"2022-04-01T16:09:48","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T20:09:48","slug":"video-noah-pott-22-and-the-romance-between-theater-and-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2022\/04\/01\/video-noah-pott-22-and-the-romance-between-theater-and-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: Noah Pott ’22 and the romance between theater and music"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For Noah Pott \u201922, what started as a fun way to kill time in the summer before seventh grade \u2014 by acting in a community production of the musical Oliver! <\/em>\u2014 culminated in a proud but terrifying moment on the stage of Schaeffer Theatre on a recent evening in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The occasion was the March 3 premiere of 35mm: A Musical Exhibition<\/em>, which Pott directed as part of his senior thesis in theater and music. A one-man band of sorts, he not only directed the show but also conducted a live orchestra \u2014 Pott is also a music major \u2014 and played keyboard and accordion.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/lite-youtube>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t
Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/figcaption>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n

In the heart-pounding moments before the curtain was drawn, Pott recalls thinking how \u201cthis is real, this is the night, this is when we have an audience. There are real stakes here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy heart was racing, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then the magic of theater took over. \u201cI remember a moment, maybe after the first or second song, where I just started sitting back playing the piano on stage and conducting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pott\u2019s experience with 35mm<\/em> typifies what he discovered during his studies at Bates: a performance community that thrives on collaboration, which in turn opens the doors to all sorts of possibilities for storytelling that showcase a variety of skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play features a series of vignettes in which actors perform songs in front of projected photographs by New York City artist Matthew Murphy with music and lyrics by his husband, Ryan Scott Oliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play \u201clooks at how photographs inspire the stories that are told on stage,\u201d explains Pott. \u201cThat\u2019s not often been done in the musical theater canon by any means.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

35mm<\/em> shows that there are \u201cmyriad possibilities\u201d in how theater can tell stories, he says. It\u2019s about \u201cmarrying theater, marrying dance and movement and acting and all of these different aspects \u2014 and tech design and production \u2014 to tell these stories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Noah Pott ’22 plays keyboard and accordion while conducting the live orchestra during performances of 35mm<\/em>, which he directed as part of his senior thesis in theater. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As a director, Pott found that he thrived in the collision of ideas that arise as a production is envisioned and executed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of my favorite parts is just listening,\u201d he says, \u201clistening to others and hearing other people’s opinions. I’m very much about just listening to other people and collaborating on pretty much every single aspect of the production.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pott describes the coming together of his two creative worlds, theater and music, as a kind of romance. This \u201cnewer love,\u201d as he calls it, started blooming when he joined the Deansmen a capella group in his first year at Bates, moving into the role of music director his sophomore year. He calls the job as creating \u201ca balance between voices in the group and also creating a collaborative atmosphere. I just absolutely loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Complementing his two majors, Pott is pursuing a general education concentration in urban studies, and during his time studying abroad in Copenhagen did urban studies and design coursework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Musical director Noah Pott ’22 (right) adds his energy to a Deansmen performance during Back to Bates Family Day on Oct. 2, 2021, in front of Hathorn Hall. (Anna Gouveia\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What does urban studies have to do with performance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, \u201ccities and performing arts are inextricably connected\u2014 where there are cities, there are people, and the arts are the lifeblood of people,\u201d says Pott. \u201cWhether I go into urban planning or design, or the performing arts beyond Bates, both of these passions will naturally feed each other, with the goal of creating a better, more sustainable, and more humane world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Pott will take away from Bates is the ability to achieve excellence \u201cin many different things \u2014 and continue to do all of those things after Bates as well. Whether it’s music, or music direction, environmental studies, or all of the above.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Noah Pott ’22 believes in the power of collaboration, as he makes a habit of directing \u2014 from a capella choir, to a musical, to a live orchestra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1422,"featured_media":145396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11010,11012],"tags":[12256],"class_list":["post-145272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-student-life","tag-voices-of-the-class-of-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145272"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145399,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145272\/revisions\/145399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}