The 2002 Perth International Arts Festival this year included two one-man
music-theater works. Both feature a form of ritualized chanting; both tell
stories of horror and gore within a Christian framework. In every other respect,
they are at opposite poles of aesthetic sensibility, as well as opposite ends of
anglophone history.
Rouse: Failing Kansas
Mikel Rouse (performer, conception, writer, director)
Friday 8 February 2002
Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth
Presented by the Perth International Arts Festival 2002
This is Rouse's second consecutive appearance at the Perth Festival. Last
year he brought Dennis Cleveland, which enjoyed a mixed reception. Many
people arrived at the theater expecting a satire on American television shows of
the Jerry Springer variety — and were somewhat bemused by the weightier
message the work intended to convey. This year's Failing Kansas was
probably more successful at finding its appropriate audience, being presented at
10 p.m. in the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, a comfortable home for the
avant-garde.
Failing Kansas is described as an opera, featuring what Rouse calls Counterpoetry: "the use of multiple un-pitched voices in strict metric counterpoint." The subject of the work is the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas (USA) in 1959, a crime which was also the subject of Truman Capote's celebrated book In Cold Blood. The "libretto" of Failing Kansas is drawn from transcripts of the trial as well as fragments of poetry by Thomas Grey and others, songs by one of the murderers, and hymns; these texts are presented within the framework of nine "songs" (although they are not sung, exactly), set in an idiom combining elements of Minimalism and amplified rock.
The stage set is a screen behind four microphones arranged to form a square. Rouse appears in a dark gray lounge suit, white shirt and dark gray tie, as a grainy, unfocused black-and-white film starts up on the screen. The accompanying music is on tape, as is the sound of a voice (presumably Rouse's); he also sings — perhaps "chants" is a better term, with occasional crooning — into one of the microphones, selecting a different one for each song. The images on the screen are repetitive, as is the music, and at the beginning there is no apparent relationship between the moving images and the words. As the work progresses and homes in on the actual crime and its perpetrators, more relevant material appears on the screen, such as photographs of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock (who were convicted of the murder and hanged), the Clutter family, and newspaper headlines of the day ("Every room in the house was a tomb").
The effect was compelling but not overly comprehensible, particularly as it was difficult to distinguish the actual words of the text. A connection was clearly being made between the crime and Christianity, possibly involving the themes of retribution and redemption, but it was hard to discern more than that. While the program provided a detailed description of the musical themes, further exposition of the textual content would have been welcome. Rouse is clearly deeply involved in his performance, and the whole is a considerable creation, but the audience is on the outside looking rather opaquely in.
Beowulf
Benjamin Bagby (voice, lyre, conception)
Saturday 9 February 2002
Octagon Theatre, University of Western Australia, Perth
Presented by the Perth International Arts Festival 2002
In presenting his recitation of Beowulf, Benjamin Bagby contrasted
sharply with Mikel Rouse: in every fiber of his being in performance, and in
every aspect of the presentation overall, Bagby concentrated on communicating
every nuance of meaning to the audience.
Beowulf, widely considered today to be the founding work of English literature, is an Anglo-Saxon (Old English) epic poem thought to have begun life in oral form in perhaps the sixth century CE and written down in the early 11th century. It is a long poem, telling of the feats of the eponymous Swedish hero who rid the Danes of a monster called Grendel, then dispatched Grendel's enraged mother and finally slew a marauding dragon. While the original poem was probably created by and for a pagan culture, and certainly recounts the deeds of pre-Christian Scandinavians, the surviving narrative is embedded in an explicitly Christian framework. To retell the entire poem would take over five hours; this performance delivered the first part of the story, the slaying of Grendel.
Bagby aims to recreate the art of the scop, the storyteller and musician who would enthrall early English gatherings with traditional narratives accompanied on the six-string lyre. The instrument provides not a melody line but rather a set of patterns against which the story unfolds, as well as dramatic emphasis and cues for mood changes. Bagby's own instrument is a recreation of a 7th-century archaeological find from Germany (with reference to similar finds from contemporary sites across northern Europe). He recites the poem in Anglo-Saxon — necessary for preserving the rhythms and impact of the original — in song and declamation, with a brief translation of the meaning appearing on a screen behind him. In addition to the surtitles, the audience was also provided with a printed literal translation (not terribly useful at the time, as the lights were lowered for the performance).
The narrative of the death of Grendel has much in common with the modern splatter movie. The nature of the monster is only gradually revealed (cf. Alien), and before meeting its end, the narrator can relate with relish the bloody gobbling-up of the hapless Danes by the ravening Grendel. At the climax, the monster, which cannot be slain by sword or spear, has its arm wrenched from its socket by the tireless, all-powerful hero, and the audience gasped when the narrator described the crack! severing its shoulder. Indeed, the entire performance was riveting, as Bagby is a magnificent storyteller.
Neither of the two works discussed here will likely appeal to a mass
audience. It might be observed, however, that while a work created for the 21st
century, drawing on events of the 20th, was presented almost solipsistically and
with little care for clarity of comprehension, thus tending to alienate its
audience, a work from the very beginnings of English society has the power to
enthrall and involve an audience 1,000 years later.
