Blessed are those who died for carnal earth
Provided it was in a just war.
Blessed are those who died for a plot of ground.
Blessed are those who died a solemn death.
...
Blessed are those who died, for they have returned
Into primeval clay and primeval earth.
Blessed are those who died in a just war.
Blessed is the wheat that is ripe and the wheat that is gathered in sheaves.
-- Charles Péguy (as quoted in Peter Wagner's libretto)
We gave UKSUS a good brush up and comb out and trotted it out once again for the perusal and hoped-for edification of the Oakland Arts Audience, as well as those who happened to be caught up in the rush. This all at the end of last August and early September, but just now I begin to write, it being a production of some mean energy outlay and the recovery time long and sometimes arduous. For a while after, I was kept in a smallish white-painted room in the sanitarium at Mainz, daily cleaned by the young Eugen (or perhaps that was the name of his dog), but those in charge have now allowed me out on my own recognizance, and so I now convalesce here in our Palazzo in Firenze, listening to the bells calling us to vespers.
The gloriousness of Kharms' writings came through even better this time, for two reasons: one because it had all sat with us for a while, and things that had seemed obscure originally now were transparent as a pool of clearest water, and two because of the wind which was just then beginning to blow: a wind of authoritarianism carrying a scent of those old bad days of Stalin and the gang. The OBERIU's joyful silliness in the face of that continues to impress given the despair that has settled over the art scene here in the US of A, collectively wishing that we would all wake up from our odious dream;
"And so we hope that we, now, living in our own time of horror, among those who impose their piggish and tinpot will on others, can find our own place of exultation, our own reason for continuing in this life, and finally our own triumph over all that works to contain us." -- from the marketing material for UKSUS
The video came out quite well. It is above and I suggest you watch it. We put on the show at the Oakland Metro Operahouse, a space that let us spread out onto a multiplicity of stages, and that had a feel very different from the little theaters in which we usually perform. The Metro has a surprising amount of death metal and wrestling for an opera house, and the stink of beer is ever-present, and all this beer-metal-ness just freed us up. In one big change from before, we hired three soviet soldiers - the bouffon performer Sabrina Wenske and the actors Nathanael Card and Peter Overstreet - to bully the audience from the moment they arrived. Those who came early had to queue up outside, waiting and waiting, after which their passports were stamped and they were sent from one department to another, and only then were they allowed in to where the late Pushkin lay in state, felt up and whispered to by Fefjulka and some of the members of the audience, at least one of whom tried the French Kiss.
Several of my favorite moments: One) when a woman in a motorized wheelchair arrived and the soldiers jumped up and questioned her - where is your permit for this? - and checked for bombs and contraband underneath by means of a mirror and Two) when at the end of the show, before the audience was done clapping, how the soldiers pushed and cajoled them to leave - entertainment done, time to go, out, all done now.
Of course there was also the piece itself - the actual opera - and the performers, who were fantastic. Nikola came to Stalin and Our Mama with a great and renewed intensity, plowing into the part. She seemed really angry, maybe in fact because of the aforementioned foul wind, and who since has been advocating for me to write operas full of "violent biker chicks beheading awful men."
Laura, of course, as Fefjulka - she's my angel, how much I owe her - was spot on, singing beautifully: you are a god of nine legs still brings the chills - a perfect example of music that's maybe more-or-less OK before but is brought to life by the performer, that becomes something else. I loved every night watching her and Nikola do the clockwork bit in the OBERIU costumes, and the two of them together have such soprano power in their duets - it knocks you off your feet.
Then there's the entrancing Timur, who had to jump into the Kharms / Pushkin role when Duncan was called away. He's a boy of the old empire, born in Almaty KZ before the fall of the wall, when they were still doing October Revolution Parades in Red Square instead of the hot dog stands and Stalin bobbleheads. He took on some of Duncan's bits but transformed them into his own deal and added a cavalier freakiness, and then, at the end, into a bit of geometry.
I was just now remembering how long I've known Bob Ernst, who was Michelangelo and the notebook of Michelangelo, as we go back to Jon Jost's Sure Fire, back to before that first time at the Sundance Festival, and then when Jim hired him to choreograph The Knife for Mary Forcade and Chris Brophy in the first performance of A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil. As Duncan once said, Bob can't help but be funny, but he also rips you up in his death, the cardiac arrest, after he bids farewell to the sea, farewell to the sand, and how high you are, o mountain land.
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