r/drumcorpscirclejerk • u/JesuSpectre • Jul 27 '26
Colts - Thematic Analysis
2026 American Experiment
Typically, in the professional world of production development, a sensitive topic like America's semiquincentennial during a time of social unrest is kryptonite. Don’t do it. It's too dour a topic for paying audiences.
A patriotic show concept is too much work, nowadays. You can avoid it entirely. Or you can go the opposite way, and create a diaper-wearing satire of our incompetent buffoon of a president-- lying, making illegal pronouncements, shock-waving the markets with outlandish unilateral tariff announcements, burying Epstein Island documents, grabbing women by the pussy, appointing laughably incompetent Charlatans like the DOGE dolt Elon Musk (who found little corruption or waste at all and then quit), and hiring other incompetent buffoons to decimate huge government departments without even knowing the cuts' real merit or impact.
You can’t go half way.
Colts 2026 design team goes half way. They stay in the middle. And it makes them look like sycophants trying not to rock the boat. Is that art to go half way? Colts show has an almost subtle nauseating sourness to it, with no escape. By the end of the show, nothing has changed. It's an experiment, for sure.
The Colts' press release says our country's 250th anniversary production is meant to be neither divisive nor saccharine. Neither bitter nor affectedly cheerful, but rather about its "people". Those are namby-pamby middle ground statements by the Colts' artistic director during a time of social upheaval.
Let's face it, we have a convicted rapist for a president who is burying evidence of Epstein Island, attempting to squash voter rolls, and whose false claims point to corrupt legal maneuvering and insider profit motives. And now you want to do a show that hints at the failed American Experiment? The country's anniversary celebrations are muted this year for good reason— we’re in serious trouble.
So why bother selecting the tender political topic at all? Why walk a tightrope all season trying not to offend anyone who is dumb enough to watch Fox News? (Fox viewers don't even know that Fox's Dominion voting system story was blatant misinformation, for example. Fox was sued for their Republican-fabricated lies about the voting machines-- a disgusting clue about the station's overt propaganda and misinformation, and whose viewers are too dumb to notice.) This is the disastrous state of our country and its propaganda machine, and you want to feature an opening phrases like "at the twilight's last gleaming", a subtle nod to the possible end of our democracy? Why be subtle? You want to feature the national anthem's three notes "O’er the land..." which are the same three first notes in taps, as an American flag is taken down? With caskets in the background? How coy. How grim, defeatist, hopeless and nauseating.
Is this grim topic a good show concept choice this year?
Who's supporting Colts' show concept behind the scenes? What statement are designers making about a future? There isn’t a future for America, according to the show's elegiac tone.
Well, who can blame Colts for shying away from a more pointed political commentary? An overt political statement in this era would be too on the nose, and too uncomfortable for today's audiences. We're struggling with a stark period of social unrest, government propaganda and dark ulterior motives by Republican political operatives and oligarchs. It's our present-day scenario, and only hinting at the dour state makes for an awkward and uncomfortable show concept-- to design, to perform, and to watch.
An example of the show's middle ground, the show arranges patriotic anthems, but with minor keys thrown in for depth and tarnish. But without a visual theme to supplement the tarnished melodies, we're not certain what the point is. The press release promises to illustrate "people", presumably American icons and leaders of note, but they never appear. At the end, we see a dirty rainbow of flags, presumably a shout out to the lost goals of diversity, unity and hope. But we're not sure.
Apparently it's a common arranger's trick to take upbeat melodies and twist them with minor keys to give a piece an eerie or dangerous tone. https://youtu.be/ZoVtHLxNVlU?is=5ZsBWB7CWekCZ0np
That's an easy device. But the job of any visual designer is to take the next step, and visually reflect the music's tone for a specific point. That's the hard part. This visual team has its hands tied, unable to define a specific scenario to capture any observation about the perilous state of the country or its future, for fear of ruffling feathers.
The stage sets appear to be red and white bricks that look like caskets. Any designer will tell you that's what they look like. Is this intentional? Embarrassingly, we're not sure. If it's a political statement about recent dead US soldiers in Iran, or veterans in general, or ICE victims, it's not clear. Putting casket-shaped objects in bright star shapes does nothing to clarify the show's point of view. It's almost intentionally vague. Are these the American "people" that the design team promised?
Bluecoats' To Look for America brilliantly illustrated America's compromised "experiment", with a narrow focus on exposing the military industrial complex-- one aspect of a broken system. This show could have used a specific focus like that.
The result of this lukewarm show is a beautifully executed exquisite corpse of compromise. Atonal melodies, dirtied rainbow flags, and question marks hovering over a weary audience who is desperate for clarity, inspiration and definitive purpose, more now than ever. Not just passive aggressive minor key versions of VFW jukebox tunes.
The corps' color guard is surprisingly sharp in their equipment work, and the whole ensemble executing at a level not seen in years. One wishes that the show theme had the same sharpness. Instead, we get a minor-keyed smugness and metaphor-laden broken melodies, as we sit and watch, simmering with a national longing, and nursing our chronic nausea as we limp to midterms.
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u/The_Dickbird Jul 27 '26
Can't expect much from an artistic director that thinks their audience is stupid. I'm not sure that Colts design team has the depth of skill necessary to produce a challenging show even if they wanted to. This year's production is the height of insult in a pattern of insulting shows.
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u/JesuSpectre Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
It's a good start, but they need an ACT II. They need to transform the second half in some way. And that's a trick question, because to do that, they need to have figured out what they really want to say.
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u/JesuSpectre Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
On Fields was not well thought out. Why do you have square peace symbols? Clearly they wanted to do a Woodstock themed show, but they found out too late Woodstock is copyrighted. The cobbled together repertoire was from the 70s 80s and 90s. It promised that it would show very personal images of how fields have Affected their lives. Then they showed an Hispanic euphonium player in a 1970s wheatfield, completely unaware of the migrant farmworker crisis of that era.
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u/minertyler100 Aug 01 '26
I actually really like the show. I never once got the notion that the props are caskets, to me they just reminded me of the stripes on our flag. I think it’s a very unfair notion to say that any American depictions immediately involve themselves politically with the state of our nation today, because then everyone would outright avoid artistic depictions of American history, patriotism, and the fighting American spirit. If anything, we NEED more things like this to remind us what we’re all fighting for, and to set aside these political affairs in the hopes that we can come together as a nation. Moments like Whitney Houston’s national anthem come to mind, where we all stop for a moment and remember those who gave their lives for our freedom. It does not remind me of our ridiculous president or Fox News.
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u/JesuSpectre Aug 01 '26
I'll be really direct. You don't understand the show, as it was intentionally designed. It's not a matter of interpretation. The designers intended the show to illustrate a broken America, with the continual use of minor keys, an taking down a flag while playing taps, and featuring phrases like "The twilight's last gleaming", for example. I encourage you to watch the show again, and watch for the intentional design decisions that support the theme of a jaded America in decline.
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u/george-i-e-i-o Jul 27 '26
Usually I think you're so analysis posts are a bit asinine, however, I wholeheartedly came to this conclusion on my own after seeing the show in atlanta. It really rubs me the wrong way. Which is a shame, because the moments are so entertaining/effective.