LARRY KORNFELD INTERVIEW with Steve Bottoms, 9.95 - Judson ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

happened with the best of Off-Off-Broadway.on that stage, and that was so exciting.People could be dangling by one threadLK: Oh, personally, when I was with the Living Theatre, we were what you calledpacifist anarchists, whatever that meant. I knew then, I don't know now ... Was therepolitical theatre? Sure, Macbird was political... In the broader sense, see I had to gothrough a whole thing about this because I wanted to be political, I wanteddesperately to be political, and do a piece that was a political piece ... and the storywas that it was political if you talked about politics ... or if you took a stand on anissue ... and I guess what most of us realised, either at the time or later, was that whatwe were doing was in itself political. The action was political. The action of beinginvolved in a theatre that is, in its very bones, is critical... or ecstatic ... about aspectsof our life today. Even if it's from an aesthetic point of view. If it is facing the issuesof life now, and not just running them through the mill over and over again, then it'spolitical. It's nice when a piece comes out, everybody recognises, 'Man! You took astand!' Most of the time artwork like that is preaching to the convinced. It's nice,because they're very supportive of that point of view. But for an art form to be trulypolitical, I mean to be truly original or truly breaking through ... I mean Gertrude Steinwas a very apolitical person (in fact she was probably a fascist) .... but her actions inthe world, her art was always political in the way it changed perception. Jacques Tati!Did those marvellous pieces, he was political in the sense that you can't look at theworld the same way. I think one of the most political movies is Wild Strawberries,Bergman [?] piece, an intimate little story about old age ... and you come out of thetheatre and you can't see the world the same way! I mean anything that... Rilke is thefamous example, Rilke in the Apollo sonnet, says it changed: it changed, if you see it,you can't be the same, you've gotta be changed, and that is political!LK: Well everybody interprets that different ways. For Oscar Wilde it was a politicalrallying cry! It was the way he confronted the whole world! .,. What do you think ofthe term health for health's sake? It's nice to be healthy. In order to be healthy youhave to eat well, you have to do all those things, you also have to have good genesand a lot of luck. Art for art's sake ... ? I think the term art for art's sake is a pejorativephrase that the world uses in order to put down things they don't understand. Or,works that they feel are too private. And there have been some artists who havebrought up the banner of art for art's sake meaning that they pay attention only totheir work. But you know, you can be the most fierce political activist if you'rewriting a poem - really writing a poem - or a play or a piece of music. When you'redoing that, the art is what you're doing, the subject matter... I think it's a term thatartists should not worry about. Because when you're doing your art, you're doing yourart; when you're taking a shit you're taking a shit.
SIB: OK. I'd like to ask you some more about Promenade, if I may, because I'mworking on an article about it, specifically. Irene sees it as an intrinsically "light"show, and yet it seems to me to have these quite dark undertones, right?LK: This goes back to what you were saying about camp, about style: underneathevery style, from whatever period in history, underneath it is a profound seriousness.You see that's what I discovered with Noel Coward also, that there's a profoundseriousness, the seriousness of the avoidance of feeling, the avoidance of pain: thatexpresses a deep pain underneath. I find that in Coward. I would never, if I weredirecting Noel Coward, try to bring that out, because you'd be spoiling it, becausebasically he's witty. But Moliere has that... all the great Restoration plays have thatprofound truth under them that all great comedy does ... I think Hamlet is a hilariousplay, very funny.LK: We wrote more songs. First of all we got Madeleine Kahn, do you know who sheis? You see her in movies, she's now become a kind of crazy icon, Madeleine Kahnhad one of the great coloratura voices in America when she was young, absolutelyglorious voice! So Al wrote a whole bunch of songs for her. And we had more peoplein the company who could sing, and ... it was a long while after the originalproduction of Promenade ... it was a full-length two-act play when it was uptown.Now Irene subsequently hated a lot of the second act, a lot of the additions that weput in. Her edition of it has, a lot of the stuff that we put in it, in an appendix.LK: Well when we did it uptown we sort of got carried away by the power of thesingers that we had, the glory of the costumes and the sets ... And we went slam bangand it was a wonderful show. If you look up the reviews for that show there wasn't acritic in New York who didn't think it was just fabulous. The only reason for itclosing was that the producers got greedy and raised the prices and removed theaudience that would enjoy the play. It could have run for years!SIB: Why did Irene not like it then? Was it because of the way the mainstream criticsemphasised the song and dance angle at the expense of the play? I mean one of themsays he has no idea at all what play's about but that it's great fun as a musical...LK: If I were Irene I would have been galled by that also. As a director I got a bitgalled about them not talking about the production more. But the music was quiteglorious! Al is a marvellous composer. .. and Irene didn't like that, ultimately. Nowthe original production was smaller, it was ... more beautiful. The production uptownwas fascinating, accessible, wonderful. But the one at Judson had a scale to it, it had amuch more inventive set, which was hand-painted by people ... So what happened:that was the one Judson production that really went to town, it had a huge budget forits day! Most of our shows, all the other shows that we moved were done for pennies!
Page 6 and 7: -- from song to song in one play: w
Page 8 and 9: The church's mission was very spiri
Page 10 and 11: LK: Yeah. I was always very fond of
Page 12 and 13: of the truck driver, who's the chor
Page 14 and 15: young playwrights, poets, who had a
Page 16 and 17: LK: The theatre was originally form
Page 18 and 19: SJB: Michael Smith said somewhere t
Page 20 and 21: LK: Remy Charlip's work. Almost any
Page 22 and 23: SJB: Yes. But was there a tension,
Page 26 and 27: So they really retained the quality
Page 28 and 29: SJB: Irene was saying how you shoul

LARRY KORNFELD INTERVIEW with Steve Bottoms, 9.95 - Judson ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?