Searle considers the legacy of Richard Rodgers’s output with Lorenz Hart.
Working together prior to his partnership with Hammerstein, this earlier professional liaison produced a very particular musical vernacular that included Manhattan, The Lady is a Tramp, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered, Little Girl Blue, My Funny Valentine, Thou Swell, Where or When, There’s a Small Hotel… the list goes on.
Rodgers and Hart were responsible for some of the greatest songs of the American songbook. Almost more than any of the great popular songwriters of the interwar period, their songs ‘express what we often cannot say, whether it be from shyness, fear or lack of the right words’ (quoting Rodgers himself).
Searle is a filmmaker and writer on cinema and other performing arts. He has just completed a practice-based PhD at the University of Portsmouth in co-creative documentary practice. This work builds on previous research projects, Rainbow Jews and Ritual Reconstructed. His short films have included Leaving the Table (2007) and L'Esprit de l'Escalier (2010) and a mixed animation/live action docudrama on Leon Trotsky entitled Dream Life of Debris.
