thirteen ways

As a Generation X new music ensemble, we are demanding. 8bb is never content. We always want more. More, I tell you, more!

As early as last fall, we knew that we would tour 2007/08 with a substantial tech setup, featuring video camera, screen and projector. This was specifically for Tamar Muskal’s Mirrors project. But for a program of works so obviously dealing with the collision of the visual and musical worlds, it would have been a waste not to use these fabulous 21st century resources for at least one of the other works on the program.

My 20th Century by Martin Bresnick was the natural choice, as there are significant theatrical/visual elements are written into the score. Bresnick instructs that two microphones be placed downstage, to the right and left of the performers. As the work progresses, members of the sextet stand, move to the microphones and recite lines from the poem, My 20th Century by Tom Andrews. The composer writes that he wants players to “speak the lines of the poem to us, and to each other, as if in a heightened conversation”. The order of speakers is very tightly organized. You can read the composer’s note and the poem itself at Bresnick’s website.

We brought in the spectacular Barbara Whitney to help us in the initial, frenzied preparation of our staging. Barbara is frantabulous. She works often with Chicago’s own world-class puppet theater, Blair Thomas company, and we particularly love her for her subtle insights and no-nonsense working methods. Barbs is one of the family.

For 8bb’s My 20th Century preparations, a video camera was set up (out of the view of the imaginary audience) behind the screen (which sat upstage, directly behind the ensemble). In front of the camera were two benches, one immediately behind the other, on which members sat to deliver lines during the work, in different directions and combinations. The ensemble, which for this work became almost an operatic “pit band”, sat to play for rehearsal, but the stand-or-sit debate has not ended!

The Devine Ms W designed an overall theatrical trajectory for the work, which begins with back-to-the-camera austerity:

1. Matthew and I, as initial speakers ignore one another.

2. As the piece progresses, the speaking “couples” more obviously begin to sit facing one other, even if they don’t obviously interact.

3. Finally, in a striking moment at the end of the work, Michael sits down facing the camera. This is the only time anyone in the ensemble looks into the lens.

Barbara encouraged us to generate variety within this pattern: sometimes members stand, sometimes they sit. There are subtle but reserved attempts at communication through small physical gestures, facial expressions.

I took some videotape from the rehearsal (see above!). What you see and hear comes from “blocking” (setting the basic framework for) our basic movements, after initially playing through the piece. The ensemble didn’t play at all during this chunk of rehearsal.

Barbara coached us how to deliver the lines of this quite odd, emotionally-barren but emotionally-potent poem:

“Try not to be too “stagey” - don’t over-emphasize words in each line. If anything, just concentrate on the verbs, so that the most simple meaning comes across. Don’t think too hard about each line - just say it.”

“Okay, now try saying it faster. Okay…faster again. Now, don’t let the line drop at the end - keep the energy up.”

The hardest line to say, and all members struggled with this, was “My brother died in the 20th century”. Several members felt emotionally moved by the line, and as a result lingered too long and left huge gaps. Here is an unkind exaggeration:

“My, BR-other, died…in the twen-tieth CEN-tury”

The photo below was taken from behind the back-lit screen. Matt is seated and Nick is standing, and their image appears (backwards, as it is the reverse side) on the screen to the left.

Barbara Whitney, score in hand, in deep concentration:

A rather troubling sepia image (which always makes people look like criminals to me…or at least it does in Australian photos, because, well, most people in 19th century Aussie photos were criminals) of Mike, who is seated at the left of the photo:

You can find more photos from the Bresnick rehearsals at our Flickr photoblog here.

 

 My 20th Century, September 2007: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (207)