Why do the four opera singers repeat “This is Mad’line X” forty-one times? What’s with the big ducks and why are they playing golf? Is the ensemble a group of courtiers or a deck of cards? Why are these bedazzling and bewildering sixty minutes entitled “What To Wear”?
For answers, I turned to Richard Foreman, the revered and bonkers theater artist who wrote the libretto for this 20-year-old work being billed as a comedic post-rock opera, running at the Brooklyn Academy of Music only until tomorrow, as part of the Prototype Festival.
Foreman died a year ago at the age of 87, leaving behind a legacy of more than fifty works of cutting-edge and confounding theater, and surely as many manifestos and essays, some of which were published in a 2013 collection entitled, clearly enough, “The Manifestos and Essays. ” In the chapter “How to Write a Play,” he talks about how “the mind’s PROJECTED beauty (which is the only beauty) can either find itself in the already beautiful (so agreed upon) or it can MAKE Conquer new territories…” Which might be something close to what “How to Wear” is about — the fight over what beauty is. Foreman seems to be riffing on the story of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling,” in which the duckling, rejected by everybody around her for being ugly, discovers she’s actually a swan, and therefore beautiful — and not just beautiful to other swans but (Andersen stacking the deck here) also more beautiful to human beings, who prefer swans over ducks, even though swans are far nastier. But I digress — or maybe not; maybe that’s what Foreman is playing with. Might that explain such lines as “No duck bill for Mad’line X/Thank god still beautiful.” (which is repeated with some variations dozens of times.) as well as the most mellifluous refrain in the piece, “Bad duck, Bad duck, bad duck, bad duck, bad bad duck.” Like the ugly duckling, Mad’line is not one of the “oh-so-beautiful people” at the outset, but she learns…
Ok, I’m going to stop with the analysis. I seem to be doing here with Richard Foreman’s avant-garde work what Gertrude Stein accused a radio interviewer of doing with hers — trying to “understand it,” with the mistaken belief that I need to translate into my own words what the artist is communicating. “If you enjoy it, you understand it,” Gertrude Stein famously said. And I did enjoy “What to Wear,” from the relentless piercing music by Bang on a Can All-Stars, wearing crowns of pom-poms, to the continual assault of props and costumes and creatures, such as a green felt snake with what looked like the head of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Better to offer some still photographs and a short video trailer below to describe the show rather than use any more words. Let me just quote from one last duck passage, my favorite, because, I don’t know if “What To Wear,” is post-rock, and, despite Gertrude Stein’s admonition, I didn’t understand it, but, yes, it is comedic.
When a duck enters a fine restaurant
Dressed very beautifully
That duck is eaten
When a duck enters a fine restaurant
Dressed very beautifully
That duck is eaten
Duck says
I am a duck
Who would prefer
A roast beef sandwich to eat
I would prefer cream cheese on toast or rolls to eat with butter
And spaghetti to eat
When a duck enters a fine restaurant very beautiful
That duck is eaten
When a duck enters a fine restaurant
In such a bad bad world
That duck is eaten
“What to wear”
Direction, Libretto and Production by Richard Foreman
Music by Michael Gordon
Music Direction by Alan Pierson
Creative Direction by Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson
Featuring Bang on a Can All-Stars
SARAH FREI – SOPRANO 1
SOPHIE DELPHIS – SOPRANO 2
HAI-TING CHINN – MEZZO
MORGAN MASTRANGELO – TENOR
Presented by The Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival and Prototype Festival
Photos by Stephanie Berger
