The Dark Side of Collaboration:The Black Rider

From English 194 Wiki Site

By Victoriya Filippova
13:41, 1 June 2006 (PDT)

Abstract

Among the various types and modes of collaboration, that of theatrical performance is one of the more obvious visually. Unlike a book, a software program, or a car, which are the end result of a collaborative effort and, theater performances are for the most part “real time” collaborations. Surely some components of a theatrical performance take place behind the scene, literally and figuratively speaking, but for the most part what the viewer sees is the beginning and end of collaboration, and everything in between. Perhaps even more fascinating than the sense of immediacy is the fact that theater plays are often an example of convergence of various types of art – writing, songwriting/music composition, and stage/costume design to name a few.

Description

This type of inter-disciplinary, or inter-media collaboration will be discussed in this essay using the example of The Black Rider, a musical fable recently featured as part of Center Theater Group repertoire in Los Angeles, at Mark Taper Forum. Written by William S. Burroughs, it is his collaboration with two other mega talents in the art world – Tom Waits, who wrote music and lyrics, and Robert Wilson, who directed the piece. Combining the first-hand, eyewitness data with critical reviews of others as well as insightful interviews with artists themselves, this report will demonstrate that the three artists involved in the production of The Black Rider were able to remain distinctly individual while working on the piece of performance art that is nothing short of collaborative masterpiece.

Analysis and Evaluation

The composer Richard Rogers once said, "Collaboration is the most important word in the theater." Collaboration is definitely an integral part of each of the three artists. Before working on The Black Rider, Robert Wilson collaborated with Byrd Hoffman and his Hoffman School of Byrds in the production of King of Spain (1969), Deafman Glance (1970), The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973) and A Letter to Queen Victoria (1974). In addition, Wilson collaborated with Philip Glass in creating the opera Einstein on the Beach (1976). His works were featured regularly at the Festival d’Automne in Paris, The Schaubuhne in Berlin, The Thalia Theater in Hamburg and the Salsburg Festival. In addition to dramaturgical collaboration, Wilson also is the founder and Artistic Director of The Watermill Center,located in Southampton, Long Island. The Center has the worldwide reputation for supporting interdisciplinary approaches to arts and providing emerging artists with opportunities for research and practice. It is a one-of-a-kind place where artists, regardless of their cultural, social, and religious backgrounds can live and work together and explore their own interests while collaborating with internationally renowned performers. Among the artists who at one time or another participated in Watermill programs are David Burne, Lucinda Childs, Philip Glass, Miranda Richardson, and Susan Sontag, to name a few. William S. Burroughs, mostly famous for his book Naked Lunch, is known to have written his works if not in collaboration with then at least with direct influence of his friends like Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg, who were all part of the beat generation in America. He collaborated with Kurt Cobain of Nirvana on his 1992 album The Priest They Called Him, in which Cobain plays electric guitar over Burroughs’s voice. Tom Waits, apart from collaborating with Wilson and Burroughs on The Black Rider, also cooperated with Wilson on Alice (1992) and Woyzeck (2002). As seen from their production histories, all three artists have a predisposed taste and background in collaboration, and have enjoyed collaborating with each other as well as other artists, organizations, and communities on various projects.

Although William S. Burroughs is the sole author of The Black Rider text, the synopsis outlined below testifies to the fact that it is intertextually relates to many works in the German and English literature. Once upon a time there was an old forester who lived with his wife and his daughter. When it came time for his daughter to marry he chose for her a hunter, because he was getting old and wanted to continue his legacy. His daughter, however, was in love with another man who was not a huntsman, but a clerk. Even though the father would not approve of their union, the daughter was determined to marry the man she loved, so she said to him, “If you can prove your marksmanship as a hunter, my father will allow us to marry.” When clerk went to the forest to practice with his rifle, the devil appeared to him and offered him a handful of magic bullets. With these bullets he could hit everything he aimed at even with his eyes closed. But the devil warned him that “some of these bullets are for thee and some are for me.” The wedding day approached and entailed a shooting contest, and as the clerk aimed at the wooden dove, the bullet circled around and hit his bride. The clerk ended up in an insane asylum raving mad and joined all the lunatics in the devil’s carnival. At the face of it, the The Black Rider has obvious connections to the archetypal desires of Faust, who makes a pact with the devil and sells his soul. The story also has long history in Germanic folklore, particularly in reference to "Der Freischutz" ("The Free Shooter") which is found in Gespensterbuch (The Book of Ghosts). This collection of tales written and collected by Johann August Apel and Friedrich Laun (1810) is a central text of German romanticism. In this version, the heroine, Agathe, is shot by the marksman, who is confined to a lunatic asylum. "Die Freischutz" later became an opera by Carl Maria Weber, which premiered in Berlin in 1821. The story also appealed to British Romantic writers. While in Geneva, Lord Byron, Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, during a cold and rainy evening, “crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts” (qtd Performances 6). The German ghost stories were from Gespensterbuch, and the response they inspired from Mary Shelley was, of course, Frankenstein. Another British author, Thomas de Quincey, wrote a version of the tale called “The Fatal Marksman.” It is his version, combined with the tale told in the Gespensterbuch, that provided the source material for William S. Burroughs’s The Black Rider. As Tom Waits explained, “Burroughs found some of the branches of the story, and let them grow into more metaphorical things in everyday lives that, in fact, are deals with the devil we’ve made” (qtd Performances 6). What is obvious from this genealogy of the story, from its original source to the various permutations to The Black Rider, is that Burroughs did not collaborate per se with the writers preceding him. His mode of writing can be deemed a sort of delayed collaboration with the collective notion of the story, with its archetypal existence throughout various cultural domains.

Apart from collaboration in the textual aspect of The Black Rider, there are also collaborative efforts in terms of musical accompaniment as well as directing of the play and stage design worth exploring. Tom Waits, a unique lyricist, composer, and raconteur, wrote the music and lyrics for The Black Rider. Burroughs wrote the entire libretto (text) and contributed some lyrics to Waits’s songs. The Black Rider compositions came out as an album in 1993, and as Waits writes on the sleeve of the album, “[Burroughs provided] the branch this bundle would swing from. His cut-up text and open process of finding a language for this story became a river of words to me to draw from” . While watching the play in early May, both my friend and I agreed that the music was uniquely Tom Waits-like, and even though all the songs were written specifically for The Black Rider, they could very easily have a life of their own, and that in fact they did – in form of the above-referenced album with the play’s title. Graham Caveney in his book Gentleman Junkie. The Life and Legacy of William S. Burroughs describes the nature of Burroughs-Waits collaboration as “complementing each other with dramatic unease, like two inmates forced to share a cell” (202). He also observes that in all his collaborations, Burroughs “does not confer approval on his collaborators, so much as anomaly – a space in which incongruities are allowed to seek out their own harmony” (202). I believe that it is precisely this attitude of laissez-faire that allowed artists who collaborated with Burroughs retain their individual style and not assimilate under the umbrella of the common goal.

Robert Wilson is the third integral component of the play’s production. Similarly to Burroughs, Wilson does not limit himself to one particular style of theatrical landscape. Stylistically, his approach combines element of vaudeville, cabaret, circus, and opera. His stage sets are reminiscent of German expressionism; the furniture bears the look of Czech Cubist esthetic. The architecture onstage is very fragile and illusionary, layered with diffused and neon lights, and punctuated by costumes that extend from actor’s bodies like papier-mache skirts over wire frames. The colors of costumes and decorations and very striking and bright, in the palette of the 19th century high drama – purples, blues, grays, blacks, and reds. In his interview with Nicholas Zurbrugg titled “Space Art,” Burroughs tells a few facts about the nature of his collaborarion with Wilson. Wilson is the one who contacted Burroughs and offered him to work on The Black Rider together. He also said that he did not suggest any forms of staging and scenery to Wilson, since it was “his job. That’s what he does” (720). Again, the autonomy of the artist seems to be the driving force behind the production of the play. In addition, there seems to have been no complex approval process before the two became working together, at least that’s the feeling one gets from the same interview, where Burroughs, to the question of whether he had seen much of Wilson’s work, remarks, “Some of it, yes. I think it’s very interesting” (720).

Whether or not this type of collaboration is a successful one depends on the opinion of viewers and critics. The play was originally performed in Germany, and the text, not the music, had to be translated from English into German. At the premier of the play, in Hamburg, there was a 23-minute standing ovation. In another interview of his, with Klaus Maek, “Walking out of the Pages,” Burroughs expressed some doubts as to whether the play would enjoy the same level of popularity in the United States. He wasn’t even sure if it would be shown in America, even though “the devil’s bargain is a classic, and in so many forms – in Hollywood, advertising, job ads – selling your soul, your integrity for games of money or for time” (751). In America it has received mixed reviews and opinions. Paul Griffith, for instance, writing the review of the play for The New Yorker in January of 1994, believed The Black Rider to be a disappointment. He thought that Burroughs is not the right person to rewrite the tale of a young man tricked by the Devil He also thought it was a failure due to “graze and grizzle of Mr. Waits’s music” and the fact that the director had his hand in too many things at the same time, having two productions opening simultaneously on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. Whether success is measured by the public’s or critics’ subjective opinions, is not the purpose of this essay. What I set out to do in the beginning is to illustrate that the most pronounced oddities can and do attract in theatrical collaboration and can retain as much of their individual style as they want.