Ontological-Hysteric Theater Production Blog

Astronome--only 6 shows left!!!

2009-03-29T19:19:00.000-04:00

Astronome - Richard Foreman's rock opera composed by John Zorn, has only 7 nights left! I have been working in the illustrious position of box office manager and therefore have the inside intelligence that this show is a theatrical gem. According to my boyfriend, Alex Wessel, acclaimed literary critic and novelist, the highlights of the performance are Jamie Peterson's tongue, and Ben Forster getting spanked with a embossed ping pong paddle by none other than Deborah Wallace.

The music is loud, and earplugs are passed out to wary audience members before entering the theatre. John Zorn's music will certainly rock you out of your seat. The performance is powerful and embodies all the best of sexual impulse, violence, and the occult. According to one Russian woman who spoke to me after leaving the performance, the play was "Pure evil." Aww Snap, Richard Foreman.

--Katie Hannigan

The Set, Then and Now

2009-01-31T00:55:00.012-05:00

Text and photos contributed by Leah Herman

Richard has been lauded across disciplines as a master of design, sound, movement and, of course, theater. The set, props and costumes are his creations, his vision.

It takes 10 interns, the props mistress, technical director and stage manager two full weeks to build the initial set, create the initial props and assemble the inital costumes. That adds up to roughly 910+ hours of building, painting, gluing, errand running, sawing, stapling, sewing, drilling...and activities I don't know words to describe (these ARE Formanized objects.) Then rehearsals start and all bets are off.

Over the next three months, everything goes through changes. Feathers, jewels, string, papers, a double dildo, blocks, multiple cacti and baby legs (off the top of my head) have come and gone. Props are built, added, and cut. The set is painted, written on, repainted, rewritten on, and then covered in material. The 10 foot snake (I sewed it myself) had a simple head, then a head with a tiara, then a head with a tiara and a snake in the mouth, then a head with a tiara and a baby in the mouth, then simply a head with a tiara. Karl started in a Prince Valiant wig, went to a Brunhilda wig, then to his own hair slicked down and parted in the middle, then to a hat. The hat has been through at least five incarnations involving gold paint, black gaff tape, two different rubber snake heads, and a piece of black cloth hot glued to the back. Richard seemed to develop an odd need to spend long periods of time with Karl's hat. "Come here," he'd beckon with his finger. Karl would walk over, hand his hat over, and we'd sit while Richard applied concentric circles of tape. Rehearsal would begin again, and Richard would say, "No, it isn't right." And Karl dutifully walked over and relinquished the hat.

Less than two weeks before opening, the trademark plexi and string that separates the audience from the performers came down in 10 minutes of screwdrivers, lug wrenches and a pair of scissors. It was called, "Richard Goes Radical." He said, 'In the next lecture I do, I think it will be called, How to Make Theater Without String.' " Everyone - performers, interns, stage manager and audio engineer were, to use our term, "completely freaked out" by the sudden openness. "This is like theater," someone said.

We've adjusted.

Attached are some photos chronicling the changes in costumes, props and set design. I wish I could show you everything. These photos show less than a fraction of what has happened.

On Magic, Esoteric Knowledge and Transmutation

2009-01-30T17:38:00.006-05:00

Contributed by OHT intern Ian Picco

I've been interested in the subject of magic ever since I was in high school, when I befriended a local intellectual/tormented genius/magician. It never became a subject that I studied too seriously. The scattered sacred texts I was able to get my hands on were always fascinating to read, but ultimately too esoteric for my intellect to obtain. I have a problem with holding on to certain kinds arcane knowledge, and thus have a difficult time when it comes to discussing such topics with other "intellectuals." I don't easily retain the specific names or terminology that is needed for fluent discourse. But nevertheless, I don't let it deter me from making an attempt.

Indeed, I did lose interest in magic after that friendship ended after high school, and I moved away to college. It wasn't until I found myself working on the production of Foreman/Zorn's Astronome: A Night at the Opera that my interest in magic resurfaced. The reason being, perhaps, because it was the first time in my life that I actually witnessed real magic.

I would liken Foreman's process of creating a play to the practice of alchemy, in that he takes raw material and transforms them into gold and precious jewels. It is a long process, and you must first create a lot of lousy theatre to get to a pure and valuable product.

The product Foreman has transmutated this season is Astronome. The play is littered with magical and mystical symbols, incantations, rituals, and dark poetry. The first 2 and a half months of rehearsal I was seeing the play as a sort of ritual, a dark and sinister ceremony. I knew it was about magic, but I hardly expected it to actually be magic.

Then I stumbled upon the Church of Satan on the internet, and I was surprised (though, not really) to find some rather uncanny resemblances between Foreman's play and the Satanic ritual of Black Mass. I wrote a short piece on my blog drawing parallels between Astronome's ritualistic aspects, and The Church of Satan's theatrical aspects. You can read it here.

Then I started to read a bit into the Key of Solomon, which has to deal with Kabbalistic magic, and Western Hermetic practices. (There is an online text here.) And I started to wonder if Foreman himself has a working knowledge of all this, or if he is just working from some genius intuition. Richard said the other day that he was unsure as to whether John Zorn was even aware of the magic present in his composition. So then maybe they are both intuitive geniuses, and their magic comes purely by coincidence. Either way, Richard surely recognized the magic inherent in Zorn's Astronome and ran with it. And though he is certainly not practicing any form of orthodox magic that I know of; with Astronome, Foreman has succeeded in creating a real ceremony of serious magic. I just hope he understands the responsibility of the power he possesses.

_____________________

Before I sign off, I also wanted to share briefly my experience of last night's run through. There was something that happened that changed my whole outlook of the play. I noticed a very small yet very drastic change in the actors' gaze.

This gaze suddenly gave a whole new tone to the play and to the characters that inhabit it. It also completely transformed the whole locality of the play for me, transporting me to another world. Where I used to see a group of actors performing a ritual in this world, I now see bizare group of underworldings who inhabit some sinister underworld or afterlife.

This new place that has been created is quite real, and quite frightening. What I saw in the characters eyes was a sense of real fear, something dark, a sinister stare. I suddenly realized that these characters where not of their own free will. They are being watched, made to perform, like puppets, strange gestures and bizare rituals: perhaps for eternity. They know they are being watched, you can see it in their eyes. They move with extreme caution, as to not miss a step, so the watcher doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary. This is a dangerous and anxiety ridden world they inhabit.

During last night's run trough, I was so much more affected by, and aware of, multiple layers of psychological associations in the play. I can honestly say that my experience was one of brief existential anxiety (until of course a bright light shone in my eye, thus denying me permission to fully fulfill my immediate desire, which was to contemplate a green light hanging in the corner of the stage).

It is what attracted me to Foreman's theater in the first place: this sense of playing to the audiences psyche rather than to their intellect. It is something that I couldn't really know until I experienced it first hand.

I just glad that the frustration of working through Foreman's relentless experimentations actually payed off: not that i had any doubts. But what 2 months ago I saw as a a process with no logic or reason; I now see as an intuitive ceremony that yields a wealth of esoteric knowledge.

If anything in Foreman's plays "make sense" it isn't because you can apply an intellectualized set of logic to it; but rather, it just "feels right (or wrong)." Foreman presents this very idea in a line of poetry "spoken" in Astronome: "The power of the message, is simply, to engender the thing with that message itself." This is, I think, definitely at the core of Foreman's technique.

Ian Picco in Ontological Fez, gold hoops, and makeshift monocle.

24 Things You May Not Have Known About Richard Foreman (with two repeats)

2009-01-29T13:20:00.010-05:00

There's LOTS of information out there about Richard in interviews and essays and so forth. They cover the clever, theoretical, artistically relevant, conceptual questions around the maestro. Here's some tidbits those interviews might not mention...

Richard Foreman is funny. Very funny.

He has an alter-ego named Norman Foreman.

He recommends you read Peter Kingsley’s book, REALITY.

Did I mention he’s funny?

He wears black plastic spa shoes during rehearsal.

He likes fleece.

Richard is generous with the younger artists he knows who work around him.

He takes scissors and cuts material off costumes as the actors are wearing them. Sometimes he sits in his chair and says, “Come here.” Sometimes he just walks onto the stage and cuts.

During breaks he will quietly pick up gaff tape, walk onto the set and start taping stripes and x’s.

Richard hears everything we say, even if he doesn’t respond or seem to notice. He notices.

He watches one daytime soap opera.

During rehearsals, he will lift one finger in front of his eyes and wiggle it back and forth while he watches a performer. We have no idea why.

Funny. Right, I said that.

When you are in the rehearsal process, he’d like you to be immersed in it.

More than half the cast and crew began working with Richard as interns. No matter where you come from, what you do, or how long you've done it, if you want to work with Richard, interning is good. He notices.

He eats homemade sandwiches for lunch.

I’ve never seen him drink anything.

Richard knows all about hot glue.

If something doesn’t look right, he’ll take a pen, walk onto the set and start writing on the walls. Then he'll start changing the lights (see video)

Every once in a while, he will nap during the lunch break. Usually he sits in his black office chair and looks at the set.

Richard wears a headset instead of the special earplugs the rest of us use during rehearsals. Yesterday he broke one side off because...something about it not working with his glasses.

When inspired, he tells great stories.

He might disagree with one or more items on this list.

Tidbits assembled by Leah Herman

ASTRONOME Rehearsal Photos

2009-01-28T23:52:00.013-05:00

What is that Pink Feather in my Husband’s Hat or Musings on Immediacy and Richard Foreman (Astronome)

2009-01-28T23:23:00.010-05:00

Contributed by Leah Herman

It is my experience that NYers survive the constant, frenetic stimulation of the city by opening up to what interests them and closing out the rest. The degree to which this is successful is, I think, what determines the level of patience or snarkiness each person in this city exhibits. I am simplifying, of course, but the general idea is that whether you live in New York or Des Moines, we each have ways, frequently subconscious, by which we let in what we want to let in and block out what we don’t.

Richard Foreman bombards us with stimulation. Sets. Light. Sound. Pauses in which there is only a brief cessation of action, but never stillness - the underlying energy and tension is always there. The first time I saw a Foreman production I had the simultaneous experience of such sensory overload that the breath was shocked out of me, and the desperate wish that it would never end. All I could feel were my eyes moving, roving, taking in the stage, picking up pieces, giving in, giving over to this outrageous experience. Every part of me was alive. I came back to see the play over and over and over, bringing (or dragging, depending on who you ask) various friends with me. David went out of his mind with impatience – his brain simply could not hold the breadth of activity. Stacey loved it, but laughed and said, “No, once is enough” when I asked if she wanted to come back with me. For me - each time, same thing: breath knocked out, alive with the immediacy.

This year I’m a production intern on Astronome. I’m here to work, listen and watch, paying assiduous attention to what’s going on around me. Sitting on the back riser taking blocking notes, I watch hour after hour of rehearsals. I have listened to Richard muse, joke, direct, explore, question, change, solve, think out loud, accommodate, and become (occasionally) a little irritated. I see the same sequences repeated, amended, replaced, cut and sometimes reinstated. I wait as Richard goes back over each light cue, changing this light, lowering this level, cutting this one, adding it back in, reprogramming an entire series, removing one light from the entire show. I see props and set elements added, cut, and redone with tassels, jewels, stripes, scribbled words, veils, feathers and lots of Hebrew letters. He will try anything.

As Richard works, I see a world in which the steady spinning of stimuli is driven by curiosity and a relentless drive to break free from the strands of automatic behavior we each carry from all the Everybodies we’ve assimilated. That “Everybody” is our particular assemblage of right/wrong, do/don’t do, is/isn’t, should/shouldn’t, cause/effect messages we’ve picked up. It is the series of lenses that have been placed in front of us and that we unconsciously view the world through. Take one away, the world looks very different, because these lenses distort what we see. Richard’s barrage of sensory stimulation is a whirling top of possibilities, a collection of mindfully placed doorways to an alternative view, and an attempt – perhaps an offering – to remove one or more of those lenses. In rehearsal Richard challenges us. “Everything you’ve been taught is a lie” he tells us with a resigning smile.

It does occur to me that the surest way out of compulsive, habitual, unconscious thoughts and beliefs - the lenses we unconsciously carry - is the capacity to exist in the moment. Lucidity, self-possession, awareness - whatever your language - - - if you can see what is right here in front of you, you are in one hell of a position to take in and respond to your life.

The rhythms, blocking and aesthetic strategies of Richard’s plays, and his process of creating, present an opportunity for the audience and the cast and crew to do this. The importance is of this moment. There is no past or future in Richard’s timeline. There is now, immediacy. If a performer can’t do something, he changes the action to accommodate the performer’s limitations. If there is an error in the set, he might just work with it. Most surprising to me is that he continually lays out relationships between performers, and between the performers and the props and set, but the relationships do not carry forward. They have no past or future. They do not link together through time. There is no “arc.”

“When he goes down that hole, you’re looking at him and think, “That bastard, what the fuck is he doing now? And you have to go over now.”

“When she comes on with the pillow, you know she’s going to hit him with it, but that thing he just did to you felt nice, so take the pillow away. You don’t want her to hit him.”

“Look at her pomegranate for just a minute, then look back at your egg. Eggs are better than pomegranates.”

“Only spin it three times. You look at him and you are so appalled by what he’s doing. You think, “He’s an ignorant Midwesterner” and you have to get your object away from him, so cross to the other side of the stage quickly.”

“You look at the pole and think, is this what I want to spend the night with? No. Then turn to the wall and think, I want to go to that honeymoon suite behind this door. But when you walk you hit the wall because the door is gone. So turn back to the pole and think, well, I can spend the night with this. But collapse a little. It should be poignant.”

When the next action comes, the relationship is over and the characters/performers have moved on. The man who went down the hole is no longer a bastard. The nice thing that stops one woman from letting another hit the man with the pillow is gone. Eggs and pomegranates, and whatever rivalry existed has disappeared. The “ignorant Midwesterner” is now someone to shake hands with. The pole is just a pole.

The more time I spend in rehearsal watching and listening to Richard, the stronger this thought settles into my lap each morning: I trust the mind this material comes from. Whether I think I understand what’s going on onstage or not, whether the actions or props intrigue or discomfort me, I can sit back, let go and take it in. Something happens. My heart melts. I laugh. I am repulsed then alarmed. My responses don’t always make sense to me. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable with them – I should feel something else, not this. I have to let myself go to a place where I know nothing in order to let Richard's vision in. I have to let go of my past and become fully present, and then I am mesmerized by the blur of activity. I am in the middle of my own stimulus filtering system.

You have an opportunity in a Richard Foreman show to glimpse into what you let in and what you block out. If you must try to understand what you see in his current plays, as I sometimes feel compulsively compelled to do, remember this: lots of what you see on stage has no specific meaning. Lots of what you see are variations on a theme. Somewhere inside that is Richard’s vision, whatever it is that lives inside his head. The rest is you. Pay attention by getting lost in the visceral, sensory experience and face what comes up.

Leah Herman is a performer, teacher, writer, and Production Intern on ASTRONOME.

BEHIND ASTRONOME

2009-01-02T17:03:00.012-05:00

The actors, interns and designers share their behind-the-scenes look at daily life at the OHT...not always pretty.

WAITING WINDED (Astronome)

2008-12-31T13:47:00.006-05:00

Rehearsals have started for ASTRONOME: A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, which is a music/theater collaboration between John Zorn and Richard Foreman. Fulya Peker, a returning performer in the show, gives us her thoughts on the piece:

WAITING WINDED
Silence is indeed a golden pendulum, swinging between past and future, evoking a present decision for our lost in time minds… What causes the momentum of this magical object? Is it the subtle twitch of the hand that holds it? Is it the air that comes out with each exhale? Entangled, loosened strings of stillness? The fortuitous oracle speaks thus:

The subject of the decision is never really the ostensible subject matter but an object, which liberated itself from the reality of verbs that dominate each sentence. Each object is the most important object but yet all of them moving together long enough at a certain pace establish a still image, a whole… Stillness born out of movement… Use your senses to the full! One may capture stillness by rotating the mind relentlessly towards the direction of the axle of this unstable reality… But still, the thief who steals the pleasure of punctuated stillness from a period is called “reason.”

Here and there, the expectation creates the expected and the expected creates the one who expects, i.e. “subject.” The struggle to affirm our conditional existence inflames the airways and causes shortness of breath… To access the universe of proliferating realities one sacrifices the nose first… To be able to articulate what the once not known could have been, one has to learn to look deep inside the nostrils… As a nasal reaction we have an aim to deny some substances that are breathed in… Thus, we have to be careful not to sneeze out the secret every time we inhale this dusty, salty reality… Winded… “My genius is in my nostrils…”

Were you here watching me doing this? Goodness… Do not smell my navel… Indigested possibilities of uncontrolled desires are still banging themselves to the walls of my intestines… Cover it with black fabric… Do not tell what is behind… Wait a minute! There is indeed a man who still has a nose in here, smelling me on behalf of the audience, provoking the clause “I am I am not…” Close your eyes, close your ears. Write it down:
This is a world in which one is about to experience something that is about to be experienced until the next peripeteia that takes place over and over again and each time, another switched universe is about to be revealed and all affirmations are about to break up. What would happen if I do this? Shall I do it? Maybe… Yet, it is still me… Neurosis… Tip-toe… “Tell me, have I been a bad person…” Scream in the woods.

Well, remember there is always an audience. Here chaos is about to be framed—be quiet and respect the initiations of vocalized time… Too many details all at once… Do not come forth! Do not comfort! Do not be too curious… No reason whatsoever! There is nothing important!

This unauthorized volume requires alchemy… Take a fistful of salt, circle it around your head, and throw it into the fire… The harmony of spirits will burn with the salt… Do it all over again… Do it just to try it… Just for the pleasure of decision making… Just to feel like an authority in this universal momentum… Divagating divine trials and failures… There is only one inspiration in this room. The false messiah, named not! Three more days and everything will be all right unless the resurrection of “reason” is delayed due to some respiratory problems.

The music is now solidified in the throat of a man, prophesying the rhythm of each blink… Listen! But be aware that you listen! Do not forget to exhale! I do not know how to exhale! Just hold your breath, then… Art begins with a hold! He says “Art begins with a mark…” Hold the mark!

How much does the equipment cost if one would like to switch the universes?

THE KNOCKOUT BLOW

2008-08-13T18:50:00.002-04:00

The theater has never looked more neon...awesome lights by Zack Tinkelman

Title:Point rolls in

2008-07-30T19:05:00.006-04:00

Check this out

2008-06-23T09:15:00.003-04:00

Sintroca loads in this week with a 2-story set. How is that possible in the cozy Ontological? You'll have to come and see, starting this Thursday. Watch their trailer to get a taste of what they do...

Bark worse than bite?

2008-06-06T00:39:00.002-04:00

Now at the Ontological we have Witness Relocation's VICIOUS DOGS ON PREMISES, with text by Saviana Stanescu. Every night director/choreographer Dan Safer changes the order of scenes and the actors pick assignments at random.

At a certain point tonight when the four performers crept silently and maniacally toward the audience, hands outstretched, a man let loose a bark that caused Laura Berlin Stinger to scream, and then wonder from the stage, "Who is that man?"

It was Richard Schechner.

Reminds me why we do live theater.

SS

The Tiniest little festival with the biggest heart

2008-05-21T16:26:00.006-04:00

Paul Felten & Michelle Maxson in They Are Bad People, this week at the Ontological.

AWWWWW--isn't it cute?

Actually, very little (yep, I just did that) is cute about this festival. The six shows we have lined up at the Ontological this weekend (added to the other six at The Brick) are, between them, filled with sex, murder, a real pig's head (without the body--where are we?), and even Bill O'Reilly. It's not so much cute as it is scary.

All in all, a very adult festival. Maybe we should call it the Hell Festival. No, they already did that. The Moral Values Festival? Nope, that one too--The Brick comes up with all the good names.

Tiny Theater it is.

This Thurs--Sat at the Ontological and Fri--Sat at The Brick.

Check out all the details on The Brick's website or the Ontological's.

Ah the sweet smell of rejection

2008-05-21T16:13:00.013-04:00

Saturday, May 3 we all got down and partied our sorrows away. Guests posted over 80 letters of rejection, ate wings, hamburgers and hot dogs, and danced for hours. The walls that flanked the stage/dance floor told a loooong story of attempts made and dreams reached for, reminding us that no one's in it alone, and that NY artists really are the toughest breed.

Thank you to everyone who joined us!

--OHT staff

Short Form Saturday, March 1!

2008-02-29T18:57:00.003-05:00

The first Short Form installment in January was a stylistically diverse night --top quality experimentation with design and chock full of moments that seemed everyone in the room was holding their breath.

Short Form's second installment is Saturday, March 1, with four new 10-minute pieces by these artists:

Tina Satter
FOUR OBSTRUCTIONS
3 collaborators use one monologue to interpret the perfect human, an imperfect werewolf and doo-wop.

The Paper Industry:
SINE WAVE GOODBYE
In which a man (M) discovers the truth about Sir Isaac Newton, undergoes a metaphysical adolescence and becomes an existential mechanic.

Jake Hooker and Grammar School:
[WHAT WE SHOULD JUDGE WHEN WE JUDGE...]
LONELINESS, LOSS, REGRET, REDEMPTION:
FOUR (4) LECTURES ON THE RECALCITRANT HUMAN CONDITION,
VIEWED THROUGH THE PRISM OF MODERN ART AS REFRACTED THROUGH
THE AESTHETIC OF THE ANCIENTS
(ON SENSATION)
A solo performance/lecture with audio/visual aids on lyric Greek poetry trifurcated by personal ruminations.

The American Story Project:
WHAT I TOOK IN MY HANDS
The hope, grief and genius of Charles A. Lindbergh; Trans-Atlantic flights, American myths, a son’s death, a metronomic human heart, time travel, and phantoms collide in a rapidly modernizing world.

Curated by Peter Ksander and Brendan Regimbal

THE DETAILS:
March 1, 10p.m.
Parish Hall, inside St. Mark's Church, 131 E. 10th St., (at 2nd Ave), NYC
$6 cash at the door--no reservations required

More info at http://ontological.com

Tomorrow night, Jennifer Walshe!!!

2008-02-22T13:25:00.005-05:00

Travis Just, curator of Experimental Music, interviews Jennifer Walshe, who performs tomorrow night in the Parish Hall at 10p.m. This is an excerpt:

Travis Just:
...There is something about the term 'opera' that just screams "the Past" to me... And I say this as I am working on my first. It was hard to decide to use that word for me.

Jennifer Walshe:
that's exactly why i wanted to use it, because it is so loaded. and that's why i have pieces which i call operas and other pieces which i call music theatre pieces. when it's an opera, it knows it's "An Opera" and it's aware of what's going on by being called an opera, and dealing with the past. because if you run away completely from opera, to me that seems a little like a film-maker running away from film and calling all their films videos. also maybe on one level it has to do with who commissions it and where it is being performed - the second opera i wrote [set phasers on kill!] was commissioned by an opera production company and premiered in the hamburg staatsoper, so there was never any question at any point about whether it was an opera or not. we had the full opera house treatment with all the trimmings (people to help us get dressed). but the opera i wrote after that [Motel Abandon] was for three people and it was dogme 95 style opera in an apartment in berlin, and it was important to me to still call it opera. otherwise it's like saying that you can never write one, that an opera is always in the hands of these massively-funded organizations.

TJ
that's true. i mean it's already an act of outrageous insolence in our culture to call oneself an artist. the decision to define these terms for ourselves as composers isn't that much further along that road.

JW
i think you just have to decide to use the terms and not let them be taken away from you.

TJ
how does the music-theater idea work itself into your music? does that mean something in particular in your thinking?

JW
music theatre is just how i think. the cage quote which i use again and again is "what next? theatre. because we have eyes as well as ears." you can't divorce the theatrical/scenic element from the sonic in a performance unless you are brought to the theatre in a hermetically sealed car, manage not to see/hear/smell/touch anything prior to the concert, and then leave immediately without even listening to the applause. you listen to mahler 2 on CD, and it's great. then you go to carnegie hall and you see all the brass players shuffling and re-arranging themselves just before they come crashing in with a huge chord, you see the choir sitting there all quietly waiting til they come in, and it's amazing and exciting. i think a lot of the interest in the theatrical and visual elements comes from two sources for me - one is that my mother is a writer, and when i was growing up she considered beckett, pinter, tennessee williams and other playwrights an important part of my education. another important factor for me is that i was a trumpet player for a long time, and when you play in an orchestra a lot, you look around constantly, you are very aware of what is going on visually. you know when people are nervous, you know when they're about to play loud or soft, you know when they haven't practiced, you know when they are nailing it, you know how different it can sound in heldenleben when the first violinist is having an affair with the first horn.

TJ
right, the difference seems to be that now we work with those ideas directly in the score. instead of having those be (probably undesired) accidents or exceptions, they become specified material that is written in or given explicit space. At some point, something changed.

JW
i make a differentiation in my work - there's the type of music theatre pieces where people are doing certain theatrical things, along a continuum from explicitly playing a role through to perhaps making simple scenic gestures like building blocks in between phrases. then there's instrumental theatre, which is very involved with the performers being performers. and so i end up in these situations where i write scores which are very complex, where the notation of everything from breathing, gesture, when the pages of the part are turned, when a brass-player releases their spit valve is all locked down. [they could laugh smile]

TJ
i guess one question is, what keeps it music as opposed to performance or text? does it matter even? at what point could you simply take away the brass-player and still have a music-piece?

i mean, musicians aren't the best actors always...

JW
i'll answer your questions in order - the first one is what i think people find very problematic. is it still music if the performer doesn't play for a while and reads text? it is if it's called music. is it still music if the trombonist makes air sounds instead of pitched sounds? is it still music if the piano is prepared? i think if you call it music it is, otherwise we'd all be writing for classical ensembles, with no microphones, pitched and traditionally notated music. with the instrumental theatre pieces i write, i'm not trying to get the performers to act, which gets around the problem of musicians not always being actors. i'm just bringing gestures that are a part of performing for them into the piece. it's very normal when you're a brass player to position and re-position your mutes on the floor next to your chair. but when you get someone to do that over and over in a performance, it becomes something else.

For the entire interview, check out the Object Collection blog

The Program:
same person, not the same person
samples/sine tones/harmonica, violin/harmonica, viola/harmonica, bowed electric bass/harmonica, voice

a sensitive number for the laydeez
alto saxophone (with radios, cigarette lighter, glass bottle, wool, film canister and pebble, spray cans), percussion (with shoelaces, paper, sugar, ruler, tin whistle in D, toy keyboard, vitamin, water) piano (without piano; with shoelaces, paper, sugar, radio, ruler, mouth-blown melodica, toy keyboard, vitamin, water, notebook, spray cans), viola (with card and dictaphone), and video

3 recipe pieces:
Nursed Demulcent Cake (voice/objects)
Layered Trifle (viola/objects)
Stellar Casserole (clarinet/objects)

performed by:
Eric KM Clark, Kara Feely, Travis Just, James Moore, Quentin Tolimieri, Jennifer Walshe, Harris Wulfson

Saturday, February 23rd 10pm
Ontological Theater (Parish Hall)
at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery
131 E. 10th Street at 2nd Avenue
New York City
$5

DEEP TRANCE is now open...

2008-01-27T20:28:00.001-05:00

All photos © Paula Court

My No Rehearsal Blog

2008-01-08T16:30:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to Richard's rehearsal. I don't want to.

Maybe I want to.

Ok - here's the thing - when I was rehearsing with Richard
I hated when people dropped in for a rehearsal.

for what? I wondered.
and who the hell are you?
and what do you think you are watching?
and what are you judging?
and I don't give a good god damn who you are
or what you think
and I wish you would just leave. Now. So we can get to work.

And, frankly, I don't want to be that guy, that stranger, that intruder for the actors. Or the stage manager. Or the interns.

As a performer I almost hate to admit it -
but
I, too, almost resented the fact that we had to perform his play in public.

Really.

I didn't want to hear what people thought. I didn't want to know what they found funny or sad or this or that.

I just wanted to show up every day at that theater and work.

Working with Richard is work.

Good old fashioned, blue collar, show up, roll up your sleeves
and
work.

get tired
keep working
get aggravated
keep working
the focus growing narrower and narrower everyday.

Do your job.

Work.

And then a stranger would come in...

A stranger taking notes (perhaps a possible preview story about the show, perhaps someone writing their thesis, etc etc)

and I wanted to smack 'em.

I don't go to construction sites to watch men work.
Sit around and watch.

Just not natural.

Not human, really. Is it?

Anyway. I like reading what people write about his rehearsals. I am reminded as I read these blogs how strange and funny and wild those rehearsals can be.

Maybe Richard's next play should just be one long 12 month rehearsal
and people can come and go as they please
take notes or not
watch some of it this monday
some next tuesday

and to hell with the one hour event.

Then
just then
maybe I'd go to a rehearsal or a few.

DJ's latest project is an internet soap opera that can be watched at www.startherefilms.com

Trying to make sense; a.k.a. Sarah's big leap into the light

2008-01-04T17:22:00.000-05:00

When moving images first appeared on screens, audiences were amazed by the illusion of a three dimensional space on a two dimensional surface. (Famously a short film by the Lumiere Brothers L'Arrive d'un Train en Gare (1895) apparently caused audiences to run out of movie theaters fearing to get run over by the train coming at them from the screen.)

During rehearsals of Deep Trance Behavior one particular scene struck me. It involves Sarah jumping at the screen, as if she was trying to enter the screenal reality ( the reverse effect from the Lumiere Brothers' train). I would like to expand on some aspects of this scene here, and explain why to me it stands at the center of this new
performance by Richard Foreman and simultaneously gives one explanation of how his plays are to be viewed.

For one the scene is very violent (loud thuds and flashes as well as shrieks accompany each of Sarah's attempts to jump into the screen); this violence to me evokes a feeling of struggle and urgency for Sarah to enter the screens. Secondly Sarah seems to be checking in with the audience members on whether or not she should continue trying; between every jump she looks back at the audience with a questioning
face.

Richard Foreman's plays, due to their lack of narrative structure, invite the audience to ask questions. Initial questions might be "What the hell am I watching?" or "What is the sense of all this?" but in my experience and especially after several weeks of watching rehearsal, I feel that these questions become more personal as well as existential (Liz commented on a similar notion in her earlier blog entry). Sarah's scene seems to stand at the core of these questions, strangely suggesting that the answers might be found within the screens.

If holding a Platonic opinion on two-dimensionality vs. three-dimensionality, one might argue that the two-dimensional world is inferior to the three-dimensional one (as in Plato's allegory of the Cave in which the shadows are only cheap renditions of what is truly real); thus suggesting that since Sarah is already part of the three-dimensional world and she has no reason to wish to be two-dimensional. However, within contemporary society is not the two-dimensional, screenal world becoming more and more superior? Computer screens, T.V. screens, advertisement billboards, movie theaters, Blackberry cell phones; all these two-dimensional illusions of three- dimensional spaces (hyper-textual spaces), are becoming crucial in our everyday lives. They provide information, communication and identity.

The possibility of short cuts in these two-dimensional places (in Deep Trance Behavior we move in a blink of an eye from Japan to England; within the World Wide Web a mouse-click gives us access to infinite information) have become central to the hypertextual, postmodern society. I would like to suggest here that Richard Foreman's
non-linear plays only represent an expanded version of these fast changing worlds. As if he were pointing at the ambiguous places in between the one piece of information and the next. (Is not the real world in between two mouse clicks? The cables, the electric signals— are these not more "real" than what appears on the screen?) Richard Foreman introduces one narrative and before the audience can start to follow it replaces it by another, which is unrelated to the first. An audience member used to a narrative structure thus feels lost and deceived (becomes aware of the gaps), as if given a promise of logic that the performance does not live up to ( strangely this kind of feeling does not seem so far removed from real life.) Sarah's attempt to enter the two-dimensional screens thus can be interpreted as a postmodern cry for enlightenment. Enlightenment to a higher consciousness, trance maybe? Sarah is hoping to "make sense", see further, see more (flashes illuminate the stage; too much light can make us see less). And so we are back at the projections, two-
dimensional illusions of three-dimensional worlds, light-beams less enlightening or more enlightening? A voice in the performance explains: " The great giants of mysticism (The Lumiere Brothers maybe?) and the ancient deep thinkers (Plato maybe?) did not say this exact thing." But they said it almost, or maybe they were just being
ambiguous.

Anna Friedlaender is a Production Intern on DEEP TRANCE BEHAVIOR IN POTATOLAND.

THE SYMBOLIC, THE REAL, THE IMAGINARY

2008-01-02T19:36:00.000-05:00

I have a secret, but I will not tell it....

It is none…

Close up to “none”… On the one side there are solidified and congested figures trying to sneak out through the cracks of their circular existences towards the other worlds; on the other side there are the liquefied ideas seeking a form to their selves, dripping down from the membrane of fear…Staggering… It is quite real, and really quite…Trance behavior is a close up to “none”… A dust ray along the path of a spotlight illuminates the intellectual abruption in the presence of immediacy… Flashes, one more time, wipe away the screen of reason, yet the scream of reason remains. In the most intense expression of the form lies the perception of retinal explosion. What not what… Each color is created by evaporated intentions. Image of forgetfulness fades away in a certain period of time, until it is black and transparent enough to sense beyond silence… Gentle notches of mysticism… Incomplete sentences drag punctuation marks along the rotation of transmitted fear…Neurosis… Look! When I say… You understand me…

You may leave the door open…there is no thief here… ok…

This “disinterestedness” opens up the realm of observational involvement and lets the objects appear without objectification… It happens now… Meaning is lost… Bleep! ...
There is always a mask behind another that is not yet revealed… Who am I? One has multiple non-identities. One remembers and forgets immediately. In those moments of remembering folded identities circle outwards and inwards from the same center, without touching one another’s skin. Eternally dis-intersected… What not what… When the aimless striving pauses for a moment, in that very moment, a flash of memory which many may lay claim to, lets the multiple forces of multiple choices sparkle…Empty…

A canvas painted white reflects upon and bounces back from the haunted mind. Since the canvas was white before it is painted white, nothingness was the truth before truth became nothingness. Observe the unavoidable… In this dizzying and tilted realm of meaning-itis, man with a desire to grasp harmony, falls on the ground of dissatisfaction and fails to his inertial resistance… Mostly forgotten premises…Damage…Cover your face…Imagine a pill…

Where you look at is not where the truth is hidden, it however exists in another folded time and space… In that performative dream, space affirms its deformation and the brain becomes elliptical because of the pressure of liquefied reasoning…The symbols, the real and the imaginary encircle this other world, curving together but yet not touching one another…

I was a part of concaveness last year and now I am a part of convexity in the world of FOREMAN OPTICS…Real…Click…

I have a secret…But I will not tell it…

It is none…

Soon “a door opens”

Fulya Peker is a Performer in DEEP TRANCE BEHAVIOR IN POTATOLAND (A RICHARD FOREMAN THEATER MACHINE)

Questions to Richard Foreman

2007-12-28T11:11:00.000-05:00

Production Intern Liz Peterson interviews Richard Foreman

Liz Peterson: I’ve heard you talk about the absurdity of the theatrical space and the notion of an audience sitting politely for a determined period of time, focusing on one event and I wanted to ask you what it was about that absurdity that for you was different from the absurdity of taking in a work of art or being present at a religious ceremony.

Richard Foreman: I probably used the word absurdity casually, I’m not particularly in favor of religious ceremonies either (laughs), but you know, probably it’s a product of my low attention span, but I do increasingly think that the whole notion of assembling people, of focusing, even of reading... I have great philosophical questions as to whether... you know the human mind is so constructed that if you put an object in front of it, it automatically cramps upon that object, if it’s a hand, a cloth, it grasps it, it holds it to study it. And I do tend to think that the spiritually better position is to discover how to release that cramp, so the mind is open and wide and relaxed, a little bit like an animal who’s just sitting in a field and is alert to the whole field, until the dangerous sound comes from the corner and it cramps on that.
There are various people who I read when I was young who talk about that being the big problem of the west, this continual focusing of attention that should better maintain a wide field of vision. I can also relate it to the one mystical experience I had that I spoke about to people here, when my whole head expanded into an eight inch in diameter transparent globe and everything outside and inside was there and co-present and how great that felt. And in my art I’ve always been interested in trying to create an overall feel rather than having you focus in and follow a narrative or follow a character’s moves from right to left, of course I can’t succeed, but that’s the aim and that relates to destroying this feeling that you’re sitting, nailed to your chair and cramping on the things that are seizing your attention.

LP: Now, I also heard you say once, and I might have misunderstood what you were saying at the time but I heard you say that your plays are never as boring as you morally feel they should be...

RF: Not exactly boring, but I do see how, I mean I’ve been in the theatre since I was 9 years old. I’m corrupted, you know, you have people sitting out there and you don’t want them to fidget, even though you know that most of them should if you were doing something really good because they wouldn’t be interested in really high art. So I don’t necessarily mean boring, but the refusal of all these goodies and all these items that are going to make the attention cramp on them because that’s the secret drive, which I can’t quite achieve. Yeah, I’m torn by those two alternatives; either making something so vast and rich that is like, you know, totally involving in that sense or making something that doesn’t move and so it’s up to you how you relate to it. There are certainly artists who do that more rigorously than I do. I think it’s pretty hard to do in the theatre... and if you say that somebody like Beckett did it to a certain extent, I have to admit that I’m bored with Beckett. So there I am torn in many directions at once, and can’t decide.

LP: What has kept you working in the theatre form for so many years?

RF: Oh, I don’t know. Because it’s what I did, and I didn’t know what else to do, and the main reason I think, because I know that when left to myself, when I’m not coming to work at the theatre everyday, I’m sort of a hermit, and I think that’s bad for me and it makes me atrophy. And I think I need to be forced to interact with other people and although I resist it, for my health (laughs), I have to do it.

LP: The way that the video that you use incorporates into your plays, what is the function that you see it has within your work?

RF: Well, this is probably the last play that I’m going to do with video because I think the video interests me so much that I just want to work within the video. But I don’t know, it started out I think that I wanted to disrupt my performances and find a way to introduce a foreign element that was indeed more placid, more passive, I was trying to have effect. Probably with the video in this play it’s getting too flashy in a way. In comparison to most films it wouldn’t be considered flashy, but quite static and slow. But the function arises as I work with it. I gave myself a problematic element that I would introduce in the plays to make them harder to do, sort of like introducing a grain of sand into an oyster, the oyster figures out how to spin a pearl around that. Well I introduced these movies at the back of my plays and try to figure out how can I arrange the play so there’s the proper total dual-like finished product of the play mixing with film.

LP: How do you think that affects the relationship that you build with the actors?

RF: I believe that in a life setting also, but certainly in art, you should not have preconceived goals. You should give yourself some materials and then see how you can put them together and find out what they want to say by being put together.

LP: Do you feel like video almost replaces theatre for you?

RF: Oh sure, for me, well I mean, it doesn’t replace it, but it’s a step into something somewhat different. I’ve always said, I mean it’s true that I’ve always disliked the theatre, at least for the last thirty years, and I work in the theatre in order to work out other certain problems that are for me of a more philosophical, spiritual nature. That’s what concerns me, not making a good play. Now obviously you have your ego, so you want to make a good play to the extent that people like it, that you get good reviews, but that is less important to me now finally. I mean I suffered from being vain and being anxious about wanting to be a success and wanting to be accepted, but then you reach a certain point, you know, everybody feels they’re not accepted sufficiently, or appreciated. I think I have overcome that more than I ever have in the past, maybe not completely and I just want to be in an arena that I build for myself where I can work on certain problems and I resent, and I have for a number of years now, having to open these plays and subject myself to audiences, critics, what have you, and that’s not part of a real life, you know (laughs) it seems to me, it’s something we do.

LP: One last question: have you ever considered becoming a free mason?

RF: No! I considered when I was younger, I mean considered isn’t the right word, but I did at different times feel slightly guilty about making art instead of finding my guru, and following my guru and theoretically becoming an enlightened person, not that too many people who follow gurus become enlightened. But masonry was never one of the disciplines I tried, I was interested rather in a variety of much more serious stuff.

Blogging from Potatoland

2007-12-16T14:06:00.000-05:00

I am a former Foreman stage manager and was involved with five of Richard's shows from 1995 to 2000 (I’ve Got the Shakes, The Universe, Permanent Brain Damage, Benita Canova and Paradise Hotel, a.k.a. Hotel Fuck). Since then I have been back to see Richard’s shows every year but I have not been to a rehearsal since I left the role of stage manager. I accepted the invitation to blog a rehearsal. Although I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant I brought my computer to jot down some of the events, quips and controlled chaos as it unfolded.
I arrived in Potatoland just after lunch and apparently just after a run through and so the afternoon session started off with notes. As the actors, technicians and interns gathered I asked Richard how the play was going and got his usual “Oh I don’t know”. I look around and see the tiredness in everyone’s faces as they are in their last weeks of rehearsal. Richard reads through the notes, taken by an intern, first in a confused voice and then realizing what the notes mean. He addresses Eduardo, the video op, in a tone familiar, a combination of frustration and impatience. This note is followed by confusion from Eduardo, and now Brendan, the stage manager, joins in to comprehend what Richard is insistently referring to. The video screen shows a frozen tableau with question marks running across the bottom of it.

“Red words, big…you don’t see the red letters enough…” Richard says, and the interns resetting the props on the stage now catch my eye. Brendan calls out “ the newspaper goes one higher guys”, referring to the fish wrapped in the fringed white cloth wrapped in the newspaper and set on the shelf in the curio cabinet. Then we’re pulled back to Richard saying, “…so as there is no confusion…” and then “the world that rivals the real world” Richard's voice intones, but this is now a recording of Richard’s voice that I hear. As the interns again cross the stage with white wooden swords and set them in their place the swirl of disjointed notes and cues and corrections continues--some things never change.

”We changed it, we changed it to…” Brendan says to Richard.
“I heard it because you were not going to use it, ” he says.
“Let’s try making the truth, single”, Richard says.
The actors have now taken their places on the stage, three women in eveningwear and a man in a suit. The man wears a bright blue dust mask. In Potatoland, or any other of Richard’s realities, this mask is ambiguous--is it a prop or a costume piece or is it merely what it is, a mask over the nose and mouth of a sick actor? Richard turns and addresses me.
“Now, Ken, that blue mask is not part of that gentleman’s costume. “Oh I know”, I said. “I noticed that as soon as I arrived,” and I recounted the story of when I was sick during a pick up rehearsal before a tour and Richard made me wear a similar mask so as not to infect the other company members. “But the eye patch he’s wearing is part of his costume”, he says without missing a beat and then returns to the notes.
“Cut the mental experiment,” Richard says.
“Which one”, says Brendan
“How many mental experiments are there”, Richard asks.
“There’s the one where… when Joel grabs the fish.” Brendan replies.
“Yes, where Joel grabs the fish” Richard says knowingly.
Richard addresses Sarah, one of the actors.
”Did you take the cloth off before you played the piano?”
“Yes”, Sarah replies.
“DON’T, he implores. “You’re much more talented than that and you can play the piano through a cloth. Okay, let’s run this."

Ken's recent fascination has been the stars and their roots in Greek mythology. He is currently investigating how to recreate the constellations in physical form.

Juliana Francis Kelly in rehearsal

2007-11-30T11:13:00.000-05:00

Messing around with Potatoland-like objects at home can be fun: a coil, a spirit photograph; unusual jewelry and an interesting dress.

Notes from a rehearsal:

RICHARD FOREMAN: Is this the fifth week?

STAGE MANAGER: Oh we’re past that-

We did two with you then two w/o you…

RICHARD FOREMAN: (laughing) Oh well those two don’t count-

STAGE MANAGER: Okay, this is the beginning of the fifth week.

…Actors on break: actress in a black crepe dress sleeping by a giant urn…

RICHARD FOREMAN: Which play had the giant blackbird pie?

TWO ACTRESSES: King Cowboy Rufus!

STAGE MANAGER: The blackbird pie is in storage upstate.

Four striking actresses in early 1930s dresses; just after the flapper dress first got elongated and someone invented the metal zipper: Sarah Dahlen, Caitlin McDonough Thayer, Fulya Peker, Caitlin Rucker. One actor: Joel Israel, looking like a malevolent Arrow Collar Shirt Man in a dark suit and a jangled stripe tie.

Break is over – actress on floor wakes up.

VIDEO: Japanese cast rewinds on film: a crowd descends the staircase

VIDEO CLOSE UP: Beautiful girl in a black hat turns her head

A light bulb in the video screen pulses then glows (like a hat pin, a pearl, a mystical navel)

SOUND: Old opera baritone punctuated by harpsichord

BEAUTIFUL BLACK HAT GIRL ON VIDEO: I AM HIDING PERSON

I UNDERSTAND YOU IMMEDIATELY

With florescent subtitles

RICHARD FOREMAN: Joel – move your feet more like “what are you doing?”

Then –

RICHARD FOREMAN: What is the term human beings used before they started saying “whatever?”

Some good suggestions. None quite match “Whatever.”

STAGE MANAGER: We’re going to keep going from here. The girls are going to stand up and twirl.

LOOPED VOICEOVER: Here is the end of part one-

Girls turn (not a full twirl) reveal three 19th century spirit photograph portraits (which is very moving suddenly – why?!)

In Japan a girl in a red dress crawls down a staircase

DIRECTIONS FOR ACTOR JOEL ISRAEL, WHO MUST MIME PRESSING A KEY ON ONE OF THE ODDLY PROPORTIONED GRAND PIANOS THEN COVER HIS EARS AND…I THINK…FEEL THE WORD “WOW” INSIDE HIS HEAD

RICHARD FOREMAN: You’re going too fast; it doesn’t have to be even. (He demonstrates. Joel repeats.) Cover your ears; feel the vibration…. I think it would be closer to your ears… make head phones for yourself…(Demonstrates.) I think it’s impossible to do “wow” without opening your mouth a little….And then…when the thuds come (SOUND CUE OF THUDS) all beauty comes to tragedy”

--Posted by Juliana Francis Kelly

Juliana acted in Foreman’s PARADISE HOTEL; BAD BOY NIETZSCHE!; MARIA DEL BOSCO; and KING COWBOY RUFUS RULES THE UNIVERSE. She is currently on tour with Young Jean Lee’s SONGS OF THE DRAGONS FLYING TO HEAVEN (next stops: Berlin, Brussels, and Seattle) and can be seen in Marie Losier’s film, MANUELLE LABOR (created in collaboration with Guy Maddin) in Brussels, Paris, Stockholm, Montreal, Cairo, Lausanne, and Columbus.

Polkaroo

2007-11-29T14:25:00.000-05:00

Any Canadian growing up in the 80’s will remember a children’s show called The Polka Dot Door, in which, along with a plethora of multicoloured characters, real actors and regular sing alongs, there was a character called Polkaroo. Polkaroo only ever appeared on “Imagination Day”, and most specifically only when one of the “real” actors had left the room. Polkaroo would appear and would never say anything more than his own name. Then he would disappear, and just like the week before, the absent actor would return having missed Polkaroo’s appearance.
Now before you dismiss this tenuous link between Richard Foreman and a large polka dotted kangaroo playing the guitar, let me explain. I was sitting in rehearsal, very much wrapped up in my own problems, when I looked up and saw a scene that I had watched many times before. Sarah was standing upstage centre with a handkerchief over her face vigorously shaking two black sticks with jingle bells on the ends, while some melancholy French song played over a web of other sound cues. And suddenly I asked myself one of two questions that tech director Peter Ksander repeats frequently when at work, What am I doing here? (the other question being, Who am I?). Looking at the world that had been created onstage (and built to Caligarian dimensions), I was overwhelmed and it occurred to me that the hurt that we carry around with us, the injustices that we feel, are all so absurd. And it’s not absurdity in any funny sense, but an absurdity that stems from some sense of self-importance. Then I remembered something that Richard had said a while ago, when he referred to us, (presumably us being members of our present society) as “evolved, broken and stupid beings”.
I was, most definitely, having a moment. I’ve seen Sarah shake those bells since and it hasn’t had the same effect on me. At that particular point in time a meandering train of thought suddenly felt like it held some weight. Something emerged, and then like the Polkaroo, disappeared. I couldn’t put my finger on what had seemed so clear to me at that moment; it had vanished. And like the absent actor whose presence the Polkaroo always replaced, I’m waiting for that moment to re-emerge.

--Liz Peterson, Production Intern

Today something changed

2007-11-28T14:34:00.000-05:00

Richard introduced a new working system for the light and sound cues. Usually he would pause the rehearsal when he wanted a change and then would add or cut a light or sound cue. Then Brendan, the stage manager, and Travis, the sound engineer, would immediately adjust the cues. However for me it always felt like an interruption in the creative process of the performance because sometimes these adjustments would happen every three minutes.
But today Richard introduced a new method, which makes it possible to rehearse longer sections of the play.
If Richard feels there should be a change in the cues or in the actions of the actors he will shout out "stop". Then the videotape will be stopped and the actors freeze. The video engineer, Eduardo, shouts out the timecode of the tape and the director's assistant notes it down. "Continue", and the play starts exactly at the moment where it stopped. This whole action only takes a couple of seconds and allows the actors and the director to keep up the creative flow.
After a bigger section is rehearsed, Richard takes his notes and tells the crew his new changes, while the actors have time to relax, look at their notes or take a sip of coffee.
For me as a spectator and stage manager's assistant, his new method makes it more relaxing to watch and to understand his way of directing.

--Michaela Schultz, production intern

Guest Blogger George Hunka Pays a Visit

2007-11-16T12:09:00.000-05:00

“I don’t write plays anymore,” Richard Foreman says while rehearsing his new show, Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland, due to premiere in two months’ time from this chilly November afternoon. Now he culls his texts from notebooks that he keeps daily, and instead of crafting line readings and psychological conflicts during rehearsals, he crafts moments.
And it is a craft like any other, but the peculiar materials he’s working with are time and space. The thing is, both are filled with all these objects: words, video, blindfolds, people, large black knots, and in this production two miniature grand pianos (the set has been fully-built for a while now). All are in undoubted evidence during the process (Foreman rehearses each show for several months before it opens), which also includes a row of interns, all the performers in full costume, wires and sound boards and texts, mounted for convenience on stiff white paper. Foreman, during rehearsals, sits in the middle of the audience on an office chair with arms, lists of sound and light cues and the text itself at his side; to his left sits his stage manager, Brendan Regimbal, cheerfully (at least he’s cheerful this Sunday afternoon) calling the cues, making notes, keeping track of the endless details from behind his own tech boards. A video engineer sits directly before him, a light technician to his left, a sound technician to the right.
“We’re starting from 37:05,” Brendan yells out, referencing the place in the video from which most of the stage production takes its cues. “And roll video!” As the video (completed months ago; it doesn’t change much once rehearsals begin) begins to move on two screens above the playing area, the cast goes through its choreographed motions. In this scene, four elegantly-dressed women are manipulating vases holding large Styrofoam balls; an elegantly-dressed man is trying rather unsuccessfully to make contact with them.
Foreman stops the proceedings. “I don’t like those Styrofoam balls any more,” he says dourly. He sits for a moment then brightens. “Knots! Yes, knots painted gold!” Everyone breaks into laughter, including Foreman; knots play a large part of this particular mise-en-scene, whatever they may mean, and this will introduce another echo of the motif (it would seem almost Wagnerian if there were some precise theme connected with it, but there isn’t) apparently without reason. But it does echo the black knots that the women are manipulating; this seems good enough for now. Brendan makes a note to have some gold-painted knots made to be placed into the mouths of the vases, and the rehearsal continues.
Although Foreman’s shows have been becoming technically more complex for years, during rehearsals he spends a great deal of time with the actors, but his instructions to them are far more biomechanical than Stanislavskian. He tells one actress, “Look up as if you’re saying, ‘I want to be a part of this!’ And then you see that you aren’t, and you’re hurt.” Nor does Foreman hesitate to leap from his chair onto the stage to demonstrate the movements he wants the performers to make. Then, of course, there are those moments in which the movements remain undecided so far. “Do you want me to move to the left or to the right?” an actress asks. “I don’t know,” he says, asking her to explore both possibilities. However, Foreman never gives more than rough outlines of gesture to the performers. The actors and actresses perform, interpret his suggestions in their own movements: they do make them their own, stylize them with their own physical instincts.
During a break, he shows me a large folding black board from which he works: there are pasted in it columns of numbers and three- or four-word descriptions of the cues these represent; often, they’re sound loops of a few words or sentences from the text. “We make jokes that it’s like a Chinese menu, and I guess it is,” he explains; during the rehearsal he’ll say, “Let’s try 204 here,” and the sound technician can instantly call up the cue and play it through the speakers. “One from column A, two from column B … and we see what we end up with,” he laughs.
And sometimes he is not laughing. He stops the rehearsal at one point and says, “What is that?” He seems to be the first to hear a low bass thrumming rhythm shaking the theatre. He sends producer Shannon Sindelar to investigate; she returns to report that a bass guitarist has been practicing in a nearby room. He has been told to move further away, and Foreman begins the rehearsal again.
“Things like that still bother me, and I try to find ways to fix the problem,” he tells me. For this particular show, he has been running a recording of John Cage’s Europeras, made up of various sound elements arranged by chance, through the performance (Foreman claims to be coming to a new admiration for Cage’s achievement); then, odd outside noises may not seem so invasive. But Foreman’s face falls. “It doesn’t work.”
By 3:00, the rehearsal has been going on for five hours (with a half-hour break for lunch); this continues six days a week; and the hours can be hard, calling on intense attention to detail from both performers, designers, the stage manager, the cast, and Foreman himself. Once an hour or so, Regimbal calls a “Stop and write,” when he joins the cast on the stage to help them annotate the changes that have been made into their scripts. But there’s an ease that’s been engendered among the theatre practitioners. Foreman chats with the designers and the invited visitors during these breaks; there’s a lot of laughter; to a visiting pianist, he jokes that she should do a concert on a raked stage, from which the piano (and pianist) slowly roll into the audience.
Today, Foreman and his collaborators have been working on a five-minute piece of the play, carefully designing each individual moment – but what’s surprising is that each individual moment leads from and to another. In crafting this time and space, the rehearsal process finds not only a few minutes here and there of importance – suddenly, you realize, each moment itself is uniquely important, not only for itself but for the ways in which each connects to another. The director, cast and crew seem to be creating sentences of time, word by word, and this reminds me of Georges Bataille’s discussion of the quality of language in finding connections within itself. “Ever since sentences started to circulate in brains devoted to reflection, an effort at total identification has been made, because with the aid of a copula each sentence ties one thing to another,” he wrote. “All things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of an Ariadne’s thread leading thought into its own labyrinth.” During Foreman’s rehearsal process, that labyrinth is explored, the rehearsal process itself that thread; and who could know, even with all the indexed sound and light cues, all the decisions made by the placement of the performers’ bodies, what might lie around the next bend in the labyrinth?
It’s just after 3:00 and time enough for one more hour of rehearsal. Regimbal and Foreman take their seats in the audience, the cast stands and waits again to take position – for Regimbal to call “Roll video!” – and Foreman takes up his Chinese-restaurant menu of cues. He tells the cast that he’d just been describing it to me that way, and they laugh with recognition. One of the actresses says, “You can order up a pretty interesting meal from that.” And Foreman responds, “And if you really know the chef, you can order stuff that’s not on the menu.” Regimbal places his hands on the lightboard, says, “Are we ready?” and the rehearsal commences again.

George Hunka is the author of the blog Superfluities Redux.
For more of George's writing on past Foreman productions, read his entries

Dear Readers,

2007-10-31T13:47:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the first day of this new blog, dedicated to the artistic process-- and more specifically, rehearsal and preparation towards production and the various events that surround this theater. Over the coming months current Ontological artists (and some from the past), staff, interns and others from the community will post their observations, questions and revelations in response to their experiences here.

Currently the theater is in rehearsal for DEEP TRANCE BEHAVIOR IN POTATOLAND (A RICHARD FOREMAN THEATER MACHINE), opening January 17, 2008. So who better to make the inaugural post, but Mr. Foreman himself? Below is an excerpt from Foreman's notebook on the current show:

DEAR MICHAEL

NOT ABOUT
Thinking or feeling
BUT
About de-focus
(self-remember?)
savor “WHOLE FIELD”
let it enter

(don’t identify with one
element, which is always DECEIT)

Ah
The temple of
The rift between—

(break off sentences)

The personality mask, and the empty. . .empty

The dream of the voice so deep that its rumble sounds all possible words, all possible ideas, all at the same time, such multiple universes of sound and sense

“WHAT I GIVE YOU NOW”
What I give you now
Is the key to the echo chamber—
Inside of which discovering the echo of all things inside each single word or sound, and one therefore
Eventually. . . . .

The temple of all people who strive
For continual clarity, with which—

Le large door opens—to deceive in
That opening—those who—

DON’T FINISH SENTENCES
(Beginnings only, like a lightening flash)

(Flower BUD—opens...

Still, swinging the pendulum
Subjunctive tense
Conditional

Suppose I were to postulate

Let it be that

A possible

Contingent

I might

Suppose it were true—

Even though

Were he to go

Were it true

Suffice to say

Should it be true

One insists that

It seems that

It is possible

Provided that

Even though

If.....

(contrary to the fact at present)
Ah the true realm
Which this confrontation hides
Rendered unavailable
Through normal rigor
Misapplied, as always

(One does not, perhaps,
copy internally, -- the mental configuration
isomorphic with this
total compositional field.
And yet, it happens
Inside you—now)

Defining the perimeters of this
3 dimensional ideogram—
nothing less than what is touched, mentally
at the moment of non-sustainable
contact

Certain aspects, not yet clarified
One fights impatiently
To fill in such gaps
That might otherwise have led one
Into very real things

To read the full notes click here