USOperaWeb Interview - Carey Perloff

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Carey Perloff Puts Difficulty on Stage

By Robert Wilder Blue

Carey Perloff

As Artistic Director of American Conservatory Theater, Carey Perloff alternates as crusader, curator, futurist, protector, explorer, accountant, magician (anyone who runs a performing arts organization has to be one), artistic matchmaker, mother-of-us-all, and, of course, producer, administrator and director. Like many San Franciscans, she is from somewhere else. After establishing herself as an innovative and provocative "downtown" director at the Classic Stage Company in New York, she moved a little closer to the mainstream when she took the job at A.C.T. ten years ago. Yet, she hasn't given up her downtown ways, as evidenced by A.C.T.'s recent production of Marc Blitzstein's No For An Answer and the upcoming world premiere production of The Difficulty of Crossing a Field by David Lang and Mac Wellman. David and Mac were pals of Carey's in New York, although the two had never met before they began the current collaboration. What gave her the idea to bring them together for this project?

"I have known David since we were undergraduates at Stanford. I think he is a genius, which I don't say lightly, and a real maverick. He has a remarkable combination of rigorous classical training and an incredible ear for contemporary music. He's hilariously witty and possesses an enormous heart. To me his great strength is his eclecticism, but I would add that it has probably also been his downfall as a composer. Unlike, let us say, Philip Glass, David's music is extremely varied, although there are always certain recognizable qualities in it.

"The first project we worked on together happened after he won the Rome Prize. I was doing Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at CSC (the Classic Stage Company) in New York with John Turturro and I asked David to write a score for it. I thought he was one of the few young composers who wouldn't be intimidated by the Weill/Eisler tradition which is who you think of when you think of Brecht. But David wasn't at all hesitant to tackle this and he wrote a score for a band of five that was brilliant. I was struck by what a natural theatrical sense he had, which is not always true of classically trained composers.

"One of the big challenges opera and American musical theater are facing today is finding composers who have the training and artistic complexity to write a rich score that is interesting in a dramaturgical sense. Many classical composers can write great instrumental music but have little sense of vocal music. On the other hand, if you turn to the pop tradition, it is rare to find a popular composer who has any narrative sense - you get good individual songs but no line.

"As I have watched David's work over the years he has developed into a wonderful music theater composer. As A.C.T.'s composer-in-residence, he wrote a score for our production of Hecuba with Olympia Dukakis that used Kitka, a wonderful local Balkan women's a capella vocal ensemble. His music was unbelievably beautiful and haunting and he was able to tap into their style and be very 'David Lang' at the same time. When we did Schiller's Mary Stuart he used Chanticleer, another local group I love, and for our production of The Tempest that reopened the Geary Theater after the 1989 earthquake, he wrote a score for the Kronos Quartet. He had written two operas, Modern Painters for Santa Fe Opera and The Carbon Copy Building for the Ridge Theater, and was interested in doing another one. So I have been thinking about David and opera for a long time.

"Mac was a close collaborator of mine during my years of producing and directing in New York. He is the quintessential downtown New York playwright - linguistically rich, very funny and very smart. When I first got out to California I was very lonely for my community in New York, so I applied for a residency grant through the Pew Charitable Trusts for Mac to be a playwright-in-residence, in part just so I could have him in the building with me.

"I asked Mac to write something during his residency that would be unique to his time in San Francisco. He became interested in Ambrose Bierce, a writer akin to Mac in many ways. Bierce had fought in the Civil War and afterward had married and relocated to San Francisco. He was an abolitionist and a journalist and short-story writer. He wrote The Devil's Dictionary and An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge which, of course, was made into a film and which Susan Stroman used as the basis for Contact. And, his stories were the basis for the Rashomon stories.

"Mac found his two-page story, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, and made a libretto out of it. I was immediately intrigued by it. It tells of a cataclysmic event and you never figure out what actually happened. As the story unfolds, you discover the incredible ripple effect it has on everyone involved. I told Mac I wanted to give it to my favorite composer and see what they could do together. I was actually surprised they hadn't crossed paths before, especially because of David's involvement in Bang on a Can Festival. But they ended up really liking each other and working very well together.

"The Difficulty of Crossing a Field is about a farmer named Williamson who disappears one morning and nobody knows what happened and nobody ever finds the body. What kind of disappearance is it and what does it mean? How does one determine a death if you can't find the body? Who gets to decide that it is over? There's a moment in the piece that is so chilling (especially after September 11) where the magistrate says, 'it is not the business of this court to answer that question. This court has determined that Williamson is dead and his estate will be distributed according to the law.' Here we've just lived through this horrible event where many, many remains were never found and ultimately people had to accept the fact that it was death without having a body to bury. It was very sad to look at Difficulty in that light.

"It is also about the anxiety one feels when a chasm opens up. Max writes plays that often have gaps in the evidence or the truth - sudden gulfs that open up - which he calls the black hole of history. The land shifts a little and something drops through. How do you go on? It's very mysterious; the only time you really see Williamson disappear is in the minds of everyone else.

"I hope it's gripping enough to hold people, although an audience that wants a narrative payoff won't get it here. That is always true with Mac's work though. He writes pieces that are illusive and include all sorts of language games. You just have to go along for the ride. To me it is about who gets to tell the story when something happens? The people who have 'witnessed' the event - the chorus of slaves, the little black boy Sam, Williamson's daughter who is Sam's best friend and Mrs. Williamson - aren't allowed to testify in court. The only people who testify are the overseers - two white men - who never saw it. So you see, it's about what goes on in the margins - the reactions, the code, the whispering, what is buried - which makes it interesting dramatically. It's a very lyrical piece and I think it is very accessible emotionally. Some of it is very funny and some of it is very sad.

"One thing I've learned from the producing point of view is not to put any strictures on the artists. I told Mac and David to create what they wanted and we would make it work. David's first request was to write something for Kronos again. After doing The Tempest, Kronos had indicated their interest in doing another theater piece with us, especially something in which they could be involved from the ground up. We approached David Harrington [link] with this project and he was very interested. The two Davids have worked very well together. David Harrington has had an enormous impact on this piece, encouraging David Lang to write a score that was more than just accompaniment and to use the members as soloists as well. Kronos is not only a wonderful string quartet; it is four distinctive individuals."

We had to ask (because we knew the question would come up eventually): is The Difficulty of Crossing a Field opera or music theater? "It is almost completely sung, so if that is what defines an opera, this is an opera. Mac calls it an 'opera in seven tellings,' which I think is quite evocative. But it contains some very different musical traditions and for that reason I was hesitant to call it an opera. It was deliberately created for various types of voices. Julia Migenes, who is an extraordinary opera singer, plays Mrs. Williamson, a great role for a mezzo-soprano. The most beautiful part of this opera is an exquisite aria-duet she sings with David Harrington. Marco Barricelli, an A.C.T. core acting company member, has the nonsinging role of Mr. Williamson. Michelle Jordan, a wonderful Bay Area blues singer, is featured, as is Anika Noni Rose, who has a real pop voice. She sang Polly Peacham with us and is doing very well in legit theater in New York. Two of the mens' roles are sung by the two Freds, as I call them, Fred Winthrop and Fred Matthews, from the San Francisco Opera Chorus."

Does creating a piece from different genres make it more difficult to find subsequent productions? "It is hard to find homes for these hybrid forms. Traditional opera companies rarely do new work and when they do, they are enormous projects that are very traditional. Unfortunately, most opera companies don't have second stages where they can do more experimental works. The lyric theater has no relationship to a work like this that is purely sung; you would almost never see this kind of piece at a major regional theater. But I loved the piece so much, I wanted to find a way to do it. We couldn't do it at the Geary Theater as part of a subscription run, partly because Kronos couldn't do five weeks, so we're doing it at Theater Artaud which I think suits it really well.

"A really visionary thing somebody could do in this town would be to build a 500-seat theater that A.C.T could share with the Opera and the Symphony. I'd love to get a real collaboration going and begin to do things that aren't conventional operas. It has been my dream to cocommission a new piece for the San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows and for our young actors, but I couldn't persuade the previous administration at the Opera to do so. This is why I'm so excited about Pamela Rosenberg coming here. I know Michael Tilson Thomas would love to have a theater like this. He's a symphony conductor who is extremely interested in vocal music and uniquely attentive to the expressivity of the human voice. I would love to see us develop relationships with composers like David Lang and his partners at Bang on a Can, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe. They are all incredible talents and I'd love to give them each an opera!"

But is the critical community ready for this sort of work? "That's a problem. Personally, I don't expect our theater critics to have any interest in Difficulty. Their views are very narrowly drawn and I doubt they know who David Lang is. I would guess this might appeal more to the music critics, but I don't know. When we approached the Editor of The Chronicle about doing a piece on Julia Migenes, he had never heard of her! And she was just here recently and sang an incredible Seven Deadly Sins with the Symphony. That tells you something. When we sent out the press release about Difficulty we got inquiries from all over the world, but very few from our local press.

"One of the problems is that most critics are very harassed and have too much to do and get too little information. When things fall into the crossover category it's harder for them; many feel uncomfortable outside of their area of expertise. But if you let the critics dictate, you'd never do anything. The impetus could come from visionary critics who got excited about new music and got behind things. Mark Swed in Los Angeles is very interested in new and unusual things. It also comes from visionary producers like Paul Kellogg at Glimmerglass and New York City Opera. He is really pushing the art form forward. Or it comes from composers like John Adams who insist on being part of this field. But it's hard to say what will keep composers making operas if there's not a lot of encouragement.

"It is so difficult for young composers to get their sea legs in this medium because there are very few outlets for them to practice their craft. You really don't get better at it unless you do it; it's not a theoretical thing. You need practical training to learn, for instance, what the human voice is capable of, what it is to write character-driven music and how to collaborate with a librettist.

"I really believe in David Lang. I think he is an exceptional talent who should be nurtured. It is sad that he hasn't had more opportunities. Alex Ross of The New Yorker didn't like Modern Painters and that sealed its fate. It was his first opera! Who gets it completely right the first time in the hardest art form there is? That kind of critical dismissal stops people in their tracks and they don't get the second and third commissions. In offering David the residency, A.C.T. was able to use him by putting his music in plays which is less of a risk for us too. After having the opportunity to do that he has grown a lot and gotten very good at writing vocal music that fits in a dramatic context. And he is extremely receptive to collaboration."

"Audiences are hungrier for new works than is generally thought, but the producers, particularly at opera companies, are extremely conventional. Money is tight and they think no one will come if it's not Puccini. The fact is nine out of ten new pieces are not going to work in some way. But not every Verdi opera worked either. I have been talking with Pamela Rosenberg about this. She has very experimental tastes, but she is running an opera house that has over 3,000 seats. She is not going to be able to do certain kinds of work there. The greatest thing that could happen to American opera would be for major companies to build smaller theaters for newer and more experimental work. Encouraging producers to take that risk is hard, but it is so important, which is why theaters like ours could take more responsibility for doing unusual musical repertory. A.C.T. doesn't need to do Oklahoma. Shows like that are being done in big commercial productions that usually find their way to San Francisco. What we can do is really interesting musical theater pieces that aren't getting done as much, like [Kurt Weill's] Three Penny Opera and Mahagonny and [Marc Blitzstein's] No For an Answer.

"The wonderful thing about producing theater in San Francisco is the audience. They are the most intelligent, engaged, demanding, and savvy audience. We do tons of dramaturgy before every play and they read it all. They never call to ask us why we don't do Neal Simon or Wendy Wasserstein; maybe the people who want lighter fare don't come to A.C.T. We have worked very hard to educate our audience, in the same way that Michael Tilson Thomas has done at the Symphony. He has been fearless in his programming. He talks to the audience before they play a piece and tells them why this music is important. This is an incredible thing to do for an audience because it puts them at ease with new music. They know if they arrive having never heard a particular piece before he will guide them through it. Esa-Pekka Salonen has done the same thing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And that has made a huge difference toward making the audience receptive and excited about work that is unfamiliar to them. Audiences are also very interested in process. They like being involved in the creation of new work. They like knowing they are seeing something that has never been seen before, if they can find a way into it. So, we are doing lots of precurtain and post-curtain discussions and giving them literature and letting them read the libretto.

"It's a matter of leadership. Broadway has made no investment in audience development - zero! So these discussions bemoaning the fact that you can't do serious work on Broadway do not interest me at all! Why would you? It's purely a tourist attraction; they don't make any attempt to develop a New York-based audience, so serious theater people don't go to Broadway. There is always going to have to be a place for mass entertainment but I think there has to be room for new and challenging material too.

"I was at SFMOMA to see the Eva Hesse show, which is really incredible. It is side-by-side with the Ansel Adams show, which to my mind - and I know it's heresy - is one of the most boring shows they've had. Why would you line up and pay to see photographs you've seen reproduced on calendars, placemats and greeting cards? Whereas Hesse's material is incredible! But the show is empty and at first I was a little depressed about the fact that all these people were lined up for Ansel Adams and no one was there for Eva Hesse. But then I realized that the Ansel Adams exhibit was paying for the Eva Hesse exhibit. So we have to stop judging everything in this country on volume. We are so obsessed with numbers. Nobody went to Waiting for Godot and it's the most important play of the 20th century. Nobody went to Pinter's The Birthday Party, which changed the face of British drama. The future of the art form will often not be represented by the things people flock to in the short-term. The talent is protecting that and paying for it, so you do a lot of Ansel Adams shows and you're vigilant about taking some of the resources generated from the popular entertainment and putting them into the unusual things. If you are only investing in last year's hit, there is no forward movement.

"I feel cautiously hopeful about the future of opera and music theater. This is such an incredible moment in our history and it will be very interesting to see how it is reflected in our art. There are some wonderful, exciting composers in America today and I think if they were given more room to participate, really exciting things could happen. San Francisco is a great music town. We have so many incredible vocal ensembles here and there is also a big cabaret tradition. There's an appetite for new and unusual music and there's a willingness to cross lines. I am hoping that this city becomes a real incubator of new and interesting music theater."

For more information on The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, see also the USOperaWeb interviews with David Lang, Mac Wellman, David Harrington

More about Ambrose Bierce
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/bierce.html
http://richardgingras.com/devilsdictionary/
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Bierce/
http://www.biercephile.com/
http://donswa.home.pipeline.com/
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/18661913/lit/bierce.htm

More about Mac Wellman
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/perloff/articles/wellman.html
http://www.theatermania.com/news/feature/index.cfm?story=658&cid=1
http://theatreschool.depaul.edu/PERFORM/0002/s2guide01.htm
http://www.theaterartaud.org/field.htm
http://www.theatrezone.org/productions/past/surreal/surreal.htm

More about David Lang
http://www.otherminds.org/shtml/Lang.shtml
http://www.schirmer.com/composers/lang_bio.html
http://www.bangonacan.org/ads.html

'The Disappearance of David Lang' (no relation)
http://www.spartechsoftware.com/dimensions/vanished/DavidLang.htm

More about Michael Tilson Thomas
http://www.schirmer.com/composers/tilson_thomas_bio.html
http://www.vanwalsum.co.uk/amd/amdmtt.htm
http://www.lso.co.uk/newsfeatures/mtt.html