May 8th, 2007
In the midst of VERY slowly working on "Messiah", which the more minimal it becomes conceptually, the harder the working becomes, I have started to look towards my next full show which is a remounting of "Ground" for the start of the American Opera Theater's 2007-2008 season. This is a new experience for me. I've never had the opportunity to completely revisit a piece I have previously staged. I was just speaking with a theater friend about this essential (one of money) difference between opera production and theater production. At first it seems to be completely different, but in the end I have come to view them as just variations in time. In theater the production team makes large alterations during the production process. They have open rehearsals and preview and have out-of-town runs. The amount a show changes is gigantic. In opera we don't do this. The director or designer may make small adjustments, but the essential production stays once it is staged until the show closes. This is an inversion to the other great difference between the two. Opera is meant for a limited run with the same team, a weekend or two. Theater is meant for months or years. On the other hand, theater is grown over a series of months or a year. Opera is grown over decades. This show began in 2006. It was extremely successful, but not without its problems. This means two things. First the show will continue in the repertory for years to come (and we hope become part of a trilogy). It also means that I want to continue to change with each production.
This is a similar intellectual position to Robert Wilson's beautiful concept of all his productions being part of a continuum, ultimately making up one work which is his life as an artist. I ascribe to this, and in this one case it is as if each production of "Ground" is part of a continuum which ultimately makes up the final work.
I am fortunate in that I have video footage of the original production to look at and don't have to rely on my memory. There are slight musical changes, but I think the score will basically stay the same. It is still just the beginning of the process so it is too early to discuss it really. I am still digesting what "Ground" was. It has taken this amount of time to be able to look at the work objectively, and I want to go slow in order to remain detatached enough to make fair artistic judgements. More on this to come.
May 6th, 2007
I've been struggling lately with the Messiah project. The more I try to seriously work on it, the more it has eluded me. The more I stuggle to make sense of it the more it makes no sense at all. Some might ask why do it at all, it is kind of a quirky idea and there is probably a good reason that it just isn't done.
I made a break through today. Don't get me wrong, this break through is going to bring a lot of hard work on the project. Hard work I can take, I just hate feeling like I'm not on the right track. Finally it started to click: bottom-line, I was inadvertently slipping into the exact mentality on which I try to dissuage audiences from relying. I was trying create a narrative a structure. I guess even though I rail against this practice, to some extent I still use it. "Acis" for example diverged extremely from the text, but there was still narrative. "Dido" had a completely different narrative, but still a narrative. Perhaps "Il Re Pastore" walked away from narrative more than anything else, but there was still some there.
With "Messiah", I couldn't come up with a senario that fit, that didn't feel like I was forcing it upon the piece and disrespecting the work. It would, in that case be better not to do it at all. I realized this morning that I was falling for the trap that I had to establish some narrative, that it had to make sense. But no! That is exactly opposite of what I have been saying. It doesn't have to make sense - meaning, and therefore beauty, is not intrinsically tied up in "sense". Often times "sense" is in direct opposition of art. Not that art doesn't have a narrative (most does), but what gives it meaning is not narrative, but what is non-sensical (in a very literal way) about the art, what is beyond explanation.
For "Messiah" I don't need to rely on creating a story or a scenario that makes sense. Instead I can focus on evocation of emotion, something more valuable. It is always a question of balance between the two, but with "Messiah" the equation must be less of the former and more of the latter. Audiences don't need an agenda shoved down their throat with this brilliant piece which is so abstract to begin with (thank you Mr. Jennings). Rather the action must compliment, even if in non-literal ways, the text (meaning both Jennings and Handel).
The reality of this is that it will be hard work. Narrative creates structure and structure is based on limitations. Without limitations the possibilities (my favorite word not-incidently) are infinite, and choosing which images are right for the evocation is going to be incredibly time consuming. Still, this is the only way the piece can come to fruition and be meaningful, timeless, and humble.
April 28th, 2007
And finally...After months of having a non-functioning player to the right side of this blog I have, through the wonders of YouTube, succeeded in posting the trailer for the American Opera Theater's DVD of my production of Handel's "Acis + Galatea". Below are clips from the multimedia work "Ground". The image is small unfortunately, but the music is great. Enjoy!
April 22nd, 2007
I started a new blog to tell the ongoing tall of AOT and being its Artsitic Director. You can find it at:
AOT Blog
April 2nd, 2007
All of March with no entries, but I've been keeping busy. This past Saturday saw a new performance of "Fleury". The challenge with this performance was that it took place in a vastly different space than where it was first performed. The initial performance took place in I.M. Pei's atrium for the IU art museum. The atrium is a three level space of concrete and glass with cathedral accoustics. The production was designed to use the entire space and for the action to envelope the audience. This new space was a uni-level hall. In an attempt to recreate the affect of the inital performance we places the action in the center of the hall and the audience along the edges. Perhaps not as effective atmospherically, the space allowed to a stronger visual component. With the addition of two more projections, the audience was surrounded by virtual realities and the players interacted in a much more relevant way with the projections. The projections also created the lighting for the production.
For the first performance I was unable to attend due to directing "Acis" in Baltimore. I was very happy to have the opportunity to see it live. It is a powerful piece that I hope will have the opportunity to continue to remanifest itself. Margaret Dolinsky and I continue to explore new ways to involve technology and real-time interaction between the virtual and the actual. I hope to have photos posted soon.
February 28th, 2007
In an interview on his appointment as the new General Manager of City Opera yesterday, Gerard Mortier made the following statement:
"As the future of opera will be judged on the content rather than on the package, opera should not be a nostalgic dream of the past, but an inspiring sensitive answer for the future."
Bravi, M. Mortier!
February 15th, 2007
The tour of "Acis + Galatea" is over and we are all exhausted. The DVD came back and it is exceptional in quality. I will be traveling to Oberlin, OH this weekend to see the students there perform my staging of Charpentier's "Les Plaisirs de Versailles". There will be more to come in the way of my thoughts on the "Acis" project, but for now here are some reviews:
January 25th, 2007
“Acis + Galatea” opened last Friday to sell out crowds. Fortune had a lot to do with the great publicity we received, but hard work and a lot of creative energy from all the artists involved created the excited reception we received from the audience. Reviews have come out in Ionarts, the Baltimore Sun, and the Baltimore City Paper, and those – along with photos – will be up here soon.
Perhaps most wonderful are the new audiences we reached with this production. The theater was full of children, young couples, yuppies, as well as traditional opera lovers. It was gratifying to see all these different types come together for this performances and to all enjoy it as a communal experience. Once people “got it” (to quote several of the reviews) it became insatiably fun. Also gratifying is how many people have commented on how persuasive the production is. People really feel as if they are at a circus performance and that each number in the show is a different circus act. It is difficult for people to let go of the idea of narrative, but once they realize that we aren't resetting the narrative so much as setting it completely aside in favor of something completely new, they are able to enter into the vision and have a great time doing so. Perhaps Charles Downey's review on the Ionarts Blog says it best:
“Well, at about the point that the Trapeze Girl climbed onto a pair of fabric ropes suspended from the ceiling, it all became irresistibly fun. There is no point in pretending that this makes any sense. It turns the plot into a muddle and may annoy a viewer who is familiar with the work. However, if you accept that you are not going to be watching Handel's masque, but instead watching something else to the accompaniment of Handel's music, this production is a lot of fun.”
There are a lot of issues to be considered with this project, and once I've had a chance to digest the performances and the audience response I will write more. In the meantime, the review of “Fleury” was forwarded to me and I am posting it here. It was a great success and they are planning another performance in March. I am leaving three days to begin staging the Charpentier “Les Plasirs de Versailles” in Oberlin and then onto the Midwest for the tour of “Acis”.
January, 16th, 2007
Here is a monumental speech on why we do what we do by Peter Sellars to the Leauge of American Orchestras. It is a brave testament and if you have a spare moment you should listen to the entire thing, and then take a moment to reflect.
January, 14th 2007
A short blog...the Fleury play opened yesterday in Bloomington. I couldn't be there, but I heard it went well. The photos are lovely and I certainly am sorry I had to miss it. Tomorrow I enter tech week for the Acis-Circus Opera project. It is going very well, but we have to move to the next bar. It is going to be a long week. Look for the photos of Fleury to appear soon. I am also starting to work the Charpentier “Les Plaisirs” for Oberlin. I will hopefully have time to write more when Acis opens on the 19th. Its looking very cool though.
October, 15th 2006
As work continues on the Interfectio Puerorum, and staging rehearsals approach, I have started to work more intensely on the Acis and Galatea. This is remarkable piece, and I am feeling increasingly delighted with the freshness and immediacy of the production.
The piece was composed in 1718 for performance by five singers and seven instrumentalists. This is the version we are using. The libretto is by several poets that were available to Händel at the time: John Gay, Alexander Pope, John Hughs. There is even some Dryden pulled in. For such a literary pastiche, the work shows incredible compositional economy. Since the five voices sing not only the solo roles, but also the choral music, the work has the feel of a late Monteverdi Madrigal, where characters float between being part of the action, commenting on the action, and often living between the two perspectives. It also doesn't hurt that this is Händel at his most tuneful. From the moment the scaler Overture begins Acis and Galatea is one whistleable tune after another. Each one tops the last, but it isn't all fluff either. The second act opens with a breathtaking double-fugue, and the trio of Acis, Galatea, and Polypheme is no doubt the works most famous piece for its rhetorical wit. In fact, it is wit that characterizes this whole composition. Communicative power in each lyrical phrase is unique to Händel, and no where more so than in this work. By the end the audience suddenly finds themselves not in the “Happy Händel” land of the beginning, but emotionally elevated by the series of moving airs that closes out the piece.
So with all this lauding...why isn't the work performed all the time. Well, for a literal approach, common in most American houses, Acis and Galatea is certainly not without it's dramatic problems. Taken at face value there isn't much meat to this piece. Its roots are in Ovid, a source for some of the great artistic cornerstones of western culture, but this isn't the moving story of the nymph Galatea whose love Acis is snuffed out by the cyclops Polypheme. That story is full of possible pathos (one look at the Romano frescos in the Palazzo di Tè will attest to that). The characters in Händel's libretto are rather flat. The audience has difficulty feeling any pity for them, and though the music is extremely beautiful at times, it doesn't seem to characterize sincere emotion. Taken literally Händel's Acis and Galatea is rather two dimensional.
Endow the craftsmen of this work with a sense of irony though, and suddenly Acis and Galatea comes to life as an extremely smart, subtle, witty, delightful piece of humor. Taken seriously, the monster Polypheme could never frighten, horrify, or menace an audience. Looked at ironically Polypheme because like so many people we know – full of huff and puff, bloated with ego, and completely frightened and insecure on the inside. Like modern stereotypes of many a boss he is ripe for comic characterization. Acis would have a hard time seemingly like a hero, but he makes a brilliantly funny hero by default, particularly when Galatea is not read as the innocent sweet ingénue as the literal text suggests. These characters, when allowed to be less of what their text says and more of what their music says, are really quite layered. The music then becomes not just tuneful, but incredibly smart. Endless quirky elements pop out for dramatic advantage – unusual intervals, awkward bass passages, overly florid passage work. A libretto that seems antiquated, when one embraces that very trait instead of working against it, becomes the seat of endless ironic humor.
My staging of this piece will not be a mere updating however. Acis and Galatea was written for a concert performance as far as scholars can discern. Since it was never intended for a full staging, a literal, albeit ironic, telling of the story, seems too easy and not terribly effective. I wanted to find a concept for this piece that would take it out of any literal context, a concept that would allow the performers to go as far with the ironic aspects of their roles as possible without losing character credibility with the audience. The solution must be to make that character credibility not reliant on their portrayals of Acis, or Galatea, or Damon at all. Instead, making their credibility grow the zanier and more over the top they become.
I am going to set Acis and Galatea as a circus performance. It is important that this not mean it is LIKE watching a circus, but that in its own way it IS watching a group of circus performers, at least in some vaudeville tradition if not Barnum and Bailey. Instead of a cast of the Arcadian Acis, Galatea, Damon, Polypheme, and Coridon, we have a cast of circus archetypes that match the ironic attributes of each character: a mime, a trapeze girl, a ringmaster, and a dancing bear. The story ceases to be the point. It isn't about the narrative, its about the performance. All of the characters are on stage the entire time and involved in each number. They incorporate into their performances juggling, tumbling, magic, aerial work, acrobatics, mime, gimmicks, street theater styles. Because this is a touring production I have great say in the spaces we use. I am avoiding proscenium stages in favor of thrust and round theaters. The singers and players will be integrated with audience in ways that are unconventional to say the least: handing out programs, taking tickets, comically ushering, selling popcorn.
Beyond the fact that big tops are slightly more appealing to most audiences than Arianna's island or Egisto's castle, that this opera is in English and under two hours makes it a particularly valuable tool for connecting with younger audiences and audiences that usually avoid opera. This concept also allows my designers to go crazy with the visual looks for the show. On the one hand a break from my normal minimal aesthetic, on the other there is something minimal in its own way about this show. Whereas most of my productions rely on a minimal panoramic perspective, this show is minimal in that it relies almost entirely on the performers ability to draw in the audience. I have a very talented cast both musically and dramatically. Even better, they are fun to work with. I am confident in there ability, and excited about this imaginative, colorful, and unconventional show.
September 2nd, 2006
I have begun collaborating with the Early Music Institute of Indiana University on a new production of the 12th century Interfectio Puerorum (Massacre of the Innocents) from the anonymous 12th century Fleury Manuscript. The manuscript contains 10 plays, but the Interfectio is certainly the most dramatic and innovative of them. I have long wanted to have the opportunity to work with this powerful and unique work. It is a truly amazing piece, especially when one considers that it was composed 900 years ago.
The story of the Massacre of the Innocents comes from the biblical book of Matthew and is the story of Herod's slaughter of the Jewish children after discovering that the Magi had fled him. For the author of this play, however, the story becomes a tool for depicting the end of time. The Interfectio is full of references to the book of Revelations. The images of innocents following the Lamb in a great procession to be slaughtered and then resurrected, these innocents crying out to the angel to ask why they were forsaken, and the angel's response that they should wait until the number of their brothers is made complete, are all direct references to Revelations. This clever dramatic double-entendre is just the beginning though. The centerpiece of the Interfectio is a long expressive lament for the murdered children. The character that delivers this lament is Rachel. Rachel lived over a thousand years before the massacre of the innocents and appears in the biblical book of Genesis. She was the wife of Jacob, son of Issac, who after wrestling with an angel was renamed Israel by God. She is therefore, quite literally, the mother of the children of Israel. The site where she died and was buried later became known as Bethlehem, and was the city of the Messiah's birth and where the massacre took place. When she laments the death of the children, she is really weeping for the death of all Israel; and according to early Christian theology, all mankind. Her inclusion in this representation of the massacre is both a masterstroke and pregnant with meaning.
A tendency among medieval liturgical dramas is for the action to happen simultaneously – several events happening in different areas of the performing space. The trait of temporal distortion within the drama is made even more extreme in the Interfectio by this 4 A.D. story utilizing a 2000 B.C. character, and it all being an allegory for the end of time, still somewhere in the future. It is brilliant even by today's standards.
What has been important in searching for a way to represent this work is to be very clear about what this production is and what it is not. As strongly as I feel that, when presenting early opera, it must be presented in the visual language of the audience it is being performed for in order for it to be relevant (a work's meaning is inseparable from the viewer of the work), that theory is blown a thousand times larger with a work like the Interfectio. Performing it today takes it completely out of the context in which is was written. The very act of producing the Interfectio Puerorum in the 21st century makes its original meaning cease to exist.
So why perform it at all? The piece is so well crafted dramatically that is continues to overflow with meaning for a modern audience. This is different meaning perhaps, but it is still rich with dramatic resources. The importance is to retain the essential elements of the piece and to be flexible about the rest. The work need not be performed in a church, but it cannot be performed in a theater either. The audience must be enveloped inside the action. It must happen all around them. Along the same lines, the action must continue to be simultaneous. The work cannot be converted into a clear chronologically linear piece of theater. Rather, the audience must be allowed to focus in and out of different parts of the action as they desire and not as they are led. Unlike almost all drama from early modern Europe until the middle of the 20th century, the Interfectio is not about characters or even about the story. It is about ideas. This must be retained in a modern performance. The audience does not reach catharsis through empathy with the characters or through an emotional response to the story. The audience is instead opened into contemplation by the atmosphere and the depth of ideas inherent in the work. These are the precepts we have tried to retain in this production.
The IU performance will take place in the atrium of with IU art museum. This space, designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei. is a cathedral of today. It is a large cavernous space, perfect acoustically for a work such as this, and has three tiers of balconies. While the audience sits on the ground floor they will experience the action happening on several different physical levels at once (perhaps reflecting the different intellectual levels of the work). Realizing that there can exist no ur-text version of any of these medieval works, we have been flexible in creating a text for these performances. We have used the bulk of the Interfectio, but we are also including sections from the play of Herod (which is the tale of visits of both the shepherds and the Magi), as well as bits from the Visitatio (the story of discovering the resurrected Christ). The section of the shepherds seeking the infant Christ, and that of the women at the tomb seeking the body of Christ are beautiful mirror images to bookend the Interfectio. We will also develop the silent Virgin role into a fully integrated character whose extremely slow gestures depict her own story over the course of the entire work. She then sings the lines originally attributed to the Magdeline in the Visitatio.
This playing with characterization is an important part in allowing the audience to experience a type of theater based on images and not on character. The Virgin becomes the Magdeline, the shepherds become Herod and the Man-at-Arms, the consolers of Rachel become the women searching at the tomb. The idea of character is blurred here. The style of theater helps that as well. Slow and carefully choreographed gestures help to depersonify the roles and to make them very clearly temporary representations, and not actual personifications. This approach to the piece feels both organic and historical. It is in line with what we know about the original performance style. At the same time it is very modern. Perhaps it has taken modern theatrical giants like Brecht, Wilson, Ionesco to teach us how to perform these precursors to Western drama as it is understood today.
Finally the abstraction of time is important in this piece. It is essential to play with the audience's temporal experience in order to make the piece effective. This is due to the very nature of the work, the necessity for abstraction in so many other elements of the performance, and perhaps an inherent difference in a post-industrial audience that requires something temporally shocking to edge them towards a non-linear experience. It will be important to find ways to bend time, slow it, stop it.
The details are far from worked out, but we are on our way. Wendy Gillespie, the musical director, and I have a meeting tomorrow with Margaret Dolinsky who will be helping with the visual look of the production by using projected video images.
Here are some of the images I'm working with right now:
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Cabaret de Carmen - Final Scene
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