Classical Music - Limelight Magazine: I began to make my first works for the theatre in the late 1960s, and they were all silent. This culminated in a major work that was seven hours long – and also silent. It was written with a 13-year-old African-American deaf-mute boy who had never been to school and knew no words. We were supposed to show it only twice in Paris in 1971 but it was a huge success and we ended up playing for five-and-a-half months to 2,200 people every night in a sold-out theatre. The last thing I had expected was to have a career in the theatre, as my background was in architecture and painting. The work was called Deafman Glance, and the French called it a “silent opera”. I started thinking about it and realised that’s exactly what it was: it was structured silences. That was my beginning.
4 comments:
I believe that Mr. Wilson may have his own style, but it is very different from what we learn in school about creating a production, and is only really applicable in the most specific of circumstances. He seems to argue that the story in a theatrical, operatic, or dance work is not important at all- going so far as to say that these pieces don't need a narrative, that they can just stand on their own. That is wrong. Otherwise, why would we always refer to the text in all the design and production work we do. It is human nature to try to find a story in everything, which we will do regardless of if the production attempts to tell a story. It is just lazy direction to not demonstrate the story you are trying to tell. I think his pieces can be successful because people are allowed to find a story in them, and that can be an experience, but it is not a habit anyone should get in to.
Wilson's outlook on staging a work as a decoration to the text and almost entirely disconnected from it until the last minute feels like utter anathema to the intense design discussions and directing process of the theatrical world. On one hand, it could be argued that because the music is more of the storytelling device than any of the text in an opera, the singer's actions have reduced impact on the communication and therefore can afford to be disconnected more. But it's worth considering the process of our tech rehearsals, where the designs that could be disparate (and some can be based on others, such as the lighting plot being based off of scenic information) only come together at the very last moment and you hope it all lines up. Does the ambiguity of what the set might look like distract from the rehearsal process, beyond the practicality of use? Can you not craft the show through the silences, understanding that there may be other information there later but to create what you need in the first place to achieve the primary storytelling objective? I'd love some designers' and directors' input on this.
I absolutely love this idea about a silent opera. What is interesting is that nothing in the theatre is silent at all. We would hear "silence" but what we really hear is our own voices, inside thoughts, and the sounds of others in the building. We would hear breathing; perhaps, someone holding their breath or a heavy breathing during an intense moment. Perhaps you would hear your own heartbeat. Overall, each audience member would become a role in their own theatrical experience. As for the original play about the South African boy, I don't know how I would feel about sitting for 7 hours. I guess because the experience is so new and different, it is worth sitting through 7 hours of "silence." I think this would be a very interesting style to practice here at CMU. We are so used to traditional theatre. Why not go outside of the box even more.
I saw an installation piece put together by Mr. Wilson in New York when I was in high school, and it was one of the reasons I became involved with theatre. Hearing him talk about this disconnection he promotes in his work between narrative, sound and vision puts my memory of the installation in some perspective. I remember only bits and pieces, but overall my impression was of unease, a disjointed melange of sights and sounds, but not random or chaotic. It was a very carefully planned experience, even while nonsensical. For instance, I recall entering a room in the gallery, the walls of which had been covered floor to ceiling in a shaggy, almost hairy material. Towards one corner there was an elephants leg, larger than scale, like a roman column. As you approached the leg, drawn to it by a vague human moaning, you found in the opposite side an iron jail cell door, curved to fit the radius of the elephant's leg. Inside, standing with his back to you looking into a mirror, was a man dressed like Napoleon, hand in jacket. OK, so maybe it was nonsense. But the experience forced you to make a narrative out of what you were seeing and hearing. In a way I can almost see it now as an exercise in how our minds crave and devise patterns. Even when presented with logically disconnected elements, we find ways to make sense of them. It's the same capacity that led us out of the jungle, and I appreciate Wilson's work because it doesn't take it for granted. You have to work to get experience his stuff, and there is nothing passive about it.
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