Movies

Motion Pictures

I feel almost at a loss for words when it comes to discussing movies, the newest art form and one which seems to incorporate so many others. It is truly awesome in every way, both in its power to hold an audience's attention and in the potential for a work to be seen by everyone in the world, even at the same time! Everything on TV and much of what one sees on a computer or phone — as well as in stores, taxis, billboards, and almost everywhere you look — is also a kind of movie, in that it is a moving picture of something real or imagined. And all this has developed in just the past hundred years or so, completely transforming the world and to such an extent that it seems almost too obvious to mention.

At the same time, i feel overwhelmed by it all and spend most of my days without looking at any movies or videos or TV. And when i do feel the need for it as entertainment and look at what's offered on over a thousand channels, more often than not none of them are worth watching. 

Still, it is impossible to deny what an incredible achievement a Hollywood blockbuster really is, involving the collaboration of hundreds of people and hundreds of millions of dollars to create what is essentially a collective dream, so for about two hours people can totally forget who and where they are and experience anything the human mind can imagine: beautiful, fantastic, horrifying — and utterly convincing, vividly real.

And like dreams, movies are completely passive experiences that take over the imagination rather than requiring it, like theater does or — perhaps an even better example — radio plays. It's the opposite of reading, an act entirely done in one's imagination, as one's eyes scan markings like these on a page and turn them into images and feelings in the virtual reality of one's brain. To me that's even more miraculous.

On Directing

I just finished directing Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors," which was performed yesterday at the Church of the Transfiguration in New York, and in two days we begin rehearsals for Benjamin Britten's "Curlew River," to be performed there in March. Both are chamber operas with religious themes by composers born two years apart, but they are quite different in style. 

Directing is a very indirect art form. The director is not actually creating the work like a choreographer or controlling it the way a conductor does. The director's job is more like a president's, having a vision of what needs to be done and then coordinating the work of all the other people involved in the production, in this case singers, instrumentalists, costume designer, set designer, and stage manager. Even before rehearsing, choosing these people — especially the performers — are the most important decisions the director will make, although sometimes there is a producer who does that, in which case a director just has to work as best as possible with whoever they are.

For directing is, again like a president, also very much about "handling" people, and of course that is very much a reflection of the director's personality and how he or she relates to people in general. Some directors are very authoritarian, others more "democratic," but all become parent figures on some level, at least to the performers, who often project their own mother or father onto the director and react accordingly. Some get very upset when criticized and argue with the director about everything, but others have a need for it and then work hard to gain the director's approval. The director then has the same problem as any parent in exercising the right amount of control, letting the performers come up with their own ideas and then selecting which ones to keep. 

Baroque opera house at Royal Palace in Sweden: July, 2012

On a practical level, sometimes the best thing a director can do is simply let everybody practice, without interfering too much, because the more actors or singers know their parts, the easier it is to make changes in, for example, how and where they move, or how a line is delivered. Then too, as they get their parts memorized, they often come up with good ideas on their own, which a wise director will recognize and incorporate. Ultimately, the director has to be the imagined audience, witnessing the production as it unfolds as if for the first time, and be honest about what that imagined audience is experiencing. Is it clear what's going on? Is it interesting and emotionally engaging, or is it confusing and boring? In the end, the audience's reaction means everything, as all politicians instinctively know.

New Forms

Central Park at Midnight: January 1, 2013

I begin this post not knowing where it will go, like the new year itself, like an improvisation, one thing leading to another, ideas unfolding, a sail waiting for the wind, in search of the new.

Why do artists seek new forms? Not all do, of course, but at some point a new form can stimulate the imagination, like traveling to a new place, hearing a new language.

Randomness can be a powerful strategy. One time i was writing lines of dialogue but didn't know who was saying what, so i drew the letters A, B, C, and D out of a hat, one at a time, and assigned them to the lines. This made for unexpected and interesting combinations. What one is trying to do is open up the unconscious by blocking the usual associations of the conscious mind, which tends to suppress it. Such was the liberating energy of atonality, a kind of escape from gravity for the composer, who was no longer inevitably falling back down to the tonic but instead was now weightless or perhaps landing on new planets equally tugging at the tonal masses.

Years ago i started imagining choreography in a weightless environment — how that would change everything about dance! (It even occurred to me that the choreographer might get a grant from NASA.) But what kind of theater space would that require, and how removed would be the audience? Still it's an intriguing thought. Actually, we already have something like that in aquatic dancing, where one views the swimming dancers underwater through a window. I wonder if any serious contemporary choreographer has worked in that form? Hmmm.

I remember an old maxim that goes something like this: "The tighter the structure, the stronger the imagination." If you give yourself very little room to work in, it really does force you to be creative, like a dance in a box or a musical composition that uses only four notes. I think people have written stories using words that have only certain letters in them. Tweets, with their limited number of characters, also come to mind. Or think of the Josef Albers squares.

That too can become exhausting — and then a new period begins: one of excess, release, multiplicity rather than simplicity, sensuality rather than austerity, an embrace of life's infinite variety and sumptuousness, the spring following winter, the new year's chick emerging from the old shell.