Dialogue: Music and Theatre

Dialogue: Richard Peaslee Stanley Silverman Music and Theatre Richard Peaslee has composed the music for a number of Peter Brook productions including: Marat/Sade, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Orghast. He has also written music for The Open Theater's Terminal and The Serpent, and most recently the Joseph Chaikin-Jean-ClaudeVan ItallieA Fable, andBoccaccio. Stanley Silverman composed the musicfor Dr. Selavy's Magic Theater, Elephant Steps, and Hotel for Criminals. He will serve as musicaldirector of The Threepenny Opera to be producedSpring, 1976 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater of Lincoln Center. This dialogue was taped on November 25, 1975. STANLEY SILVERMAN: I'd like to address myself to the issue of the tremendous place the new theatre has had in the general cultural scene. In the 60s-at the time of the second coming of expressionism in music as exemplified by Boulez, Stockhausen and Berio-music was incredibly vital and at the forefront. It was a rebirth after the war-the post-Webern generation. Theatre had always been in those days either commercial or interesting off-Broadway or offshoots. It definitely was a time for music. Now, I find we live in a time when the theatre has taken the forefront of the artistic stage, so to speak. And that the new writers and directors such as Chaikin, Gregory, Foreman, Schechner have really emerged as a powerful force in the arts not only in this country but in Europe as well. PEASLEE: I think that's very true. And it also manifests itself in contemporary music which now has a real bent toward theatricality. Stockhausen working with Bejart, Berio getting more and more theatrical, Jack Druckman introducing a lot of theatre into his concert pieces. On the sub40 ject of new music versus new theatre what really interested me when I first started working in the theatre was the fact that there was an audience coming in night after night whereas in contemporary music you put on your concert, and you were lucky if you got forty or fifty people for that one night. It is a real attraction for a composer to work in a medium where you have a larger audience. SILVERMAN: A subtle but perhaps more ferocious point is the fact that the new theatre has a much more real kind of self-trust, the belief that no matter what comes out, even if it comes out in its most banal form, could be dealt with and art made out of it-as opposed to imposing technique from without. That kind of trust in basic materials is something that had been lacking in music which had gone almost entirely the other way-it became almost exclusively about technical accomplishment, numerics, charts-or the about face from that-throwing the dice, chance. So that when one went to a new theatre piece it was very gamey, very real, very kind of frightening, a direct type of experience. I felt that the new music that used music exclusively, and the new music that used theatre, such as Berio and Druckman, were hiding behind almost an old-fashioned expressionism . In other words, basically the gestures of Pierrot Lunaire, 1912. The new simplicity, the directness-I can't quite label it-had superseded this in the avant-garde theatre and I found that refreshing. PEASLEE: That's a very good point because there's a great deal of intuitive work in the theatre which does not exist in music. I know it's the way Chaikin works. I don't think he can explain why he's doing what most of the time-it's just a matter that it works or it doesn't work. SILVERMAN: I think that way of working is liberating, especially for a composer. You trust yourself and see what you can put together. It's not like "where one is at that's art," but it's "given a certain level of input" in the composer. But what about the case where consumer pressures enter into it? PEASLEE: I was just thinking about the pressure I felt in the last two weeks seeing an audience sitting out there [Bo(caccio] paying eleven or...