Martha's Dance Card

In Dialogue with a canary torsi about CAST/STAGE/AUTHOR – Part I

©Martha Sherman

The name of her company is an anagram, and Yanira Castro’s expectation is that the work is not in her name only. Castro’s insistence on collaboration is central to everything she makes, and includes not only the performers, but every other element of performance: the design, sound, light, script. And the audience.

CAST/STAGE/AUTHOR is a trio of works that opened and ran simultaneously for two weeks in three New York performance spaces this month. Together, the works investigate the key elements that make up a performance. Yanira did extensive interviews and videos of fifteen performers; their words were transcribed into an enormous archive and a computer algorithm used the words to generate unique scripts for four randomly selected performers each night in CAST. AUTHOR was an installation in which audience members individually created scripts in dialogue with text from the archive, selected in a different algorithm; at the same time, on the walls outside the composing room, video scenes were affected by what was being co-authored inside the composing room. STAGE was a mysterious compilation of movement and images, also performed by four selected performers on a proscenium stage; the audience was seated in the balcony, removed to watch the spectacle from a distance.

I interviewed Yanira and some of her collaborators over several weeks,  about the genesis, process and collaboration that it took to bring the three works to life. The CAST for these interviews was: Yanira Castro, choreographer; Kathy Couch, stage design; Stephan Moore, sound design; and Pamela Vail, performer and rehearsal director.

MS: Where did the original idea come from – and how did you come to this structure and these choices?

Yanira: I get ideas all the time, they perk up from a title, or an image emerges. The big questions in the trilogy evolved around one core question: Why are we in this room together? Performance is such an ancient form of being present together. While I was working on “Court/Garden” in 2014, I began to think about what a deliberate choice it was to CAST a show, making a choice about what a group represents, what their responsibility is. The AUTHOR question is also about who is responsible for a performance -- in the three scenes of “Court/Garden,” I went from being an unseen author, to being the visible manipulator, to entirely relinquishing authorship by the third act. And the question of where and how it all operates was the germ of the idea behind STAGE.

Stephan: Yanira returns to the same issues over and over again, and there’s always more to mine – the questions of portraiture or how is a person represented?, what are the expectations of all the members and elements of a performance? what does it mean to be in the audience and to perform for an audience? As the economics of performance get more difficult, the questions are more confrontational, even more important. And there is always more to explore.

MS: Why did you choose to open all three pieces simultaneously? What was it like to collaborate in developing three works at once?

Yanira: I originally thought doing all three would take me years, but the practical urgency moved everything quickly – presenters wanted them together. Brian (Rogers, Artistic Director of the Chocolate Factory) thought they needed to be connected to impact the audience, that it made more sense to happen concurrently. If I had created and presented them in a linear way, the time lapse between them would’ve changed the pieces and their connection to one another.

Kathy: It all started as a grand dream of Yanira’s, but I’ve worked with her for so long that I jumped right in. There was such a clear sense of the task – how to communicate the performance experience, what it meant to be “present.” Her launch was the extended interviews with the cast. My entry became the space where those interviews took place – and we ended up turning a bland, abandoned office into a magical place, inhabited and alive. The conference room itself became part of all three works, a connector, even as Yanira was talking to all three presenters in their own completely different spaces (CAST at the Chocolate Factory, AUTHOR at Invisible Dog, and STAGE at Abrons Arts Center.)

Pam: All I knew at the start was that the work would be a trilogy, starting with Yanira’s conversations with me and the other cast members; otherwise, it was pretty mysterious. She’s usually very clear in her vision, but she didn’t want to be prejudiced about what the outcome would be here – she was interested in being surprised herself. So it was a true collaboration, not “hers” but “ours.” And I was surprised at how we used the text, Stephan’s non-linear, non-narrative scripts. There was very little actual dancing – more a scored improvisation, so it was really different. And I had no idea about AUTHOR until after it opened, and I finally played the game that was the installation.

MS: You talk about the importance of Spectacle, and of mystery. How did those ideas inform the work?

Yanira: The idea of Spectacle really drove the creation of STAGE, which was the most challenging (and mysterious) of the three works. I am very image-based, and a stage is really the control of what an audience sees. I also wanted to explore what it’s like for the performer just before coming onto stage – what is the transformation that happens. I decided to use a proscenium stage (for the first time ever), and to keep the audience far away, to make it a very visual experience. It was the last piece we completed, and it kept evolving, including the set, the masks, the movement -- none of us really knew what it would be until it finally happened.

Kathy: There were many iterations of STAGE, even though the budget was quite limited. First, we thought we’d use flats to build a pre-show conference room or dismantle it on stage, which we did finally figure out. For those who didn’t see CAST and AUTHOR, the piece was entirely mysterious – where it was, wondering what they were seeing.

Stephan: STAGE felt like it was in creation all the time – we kept asking ourselves how to wake the audience to the theater itself. I decided to activate the Pit, because most of the time the musicians aren’t even seen. So I created instruments that were interesting to watch being played. I borrowed the design from Sarah Warren, who created the Steel Cello – sheet metal suspended, with bolted cymbals – it is huge and makes huge, shrill, unearthly sounds. I started building it before I knew what the piece was, but I knew I could trust the process, and the sound became an important part of the STAGE spectacle.

 Photos:

Top: Cast in "STAGE" ©Maria Baranova.

Middle: Simon Courchel in "CAST" ©Brian Rogers.

Bottom: Stephan Moore in "STAGE" ©Maria Baranova.

The interviews are concluded in Dialogue Part II.

 

In Dialogue with a canary torsi – Part II

©Martha Sherman 2017

Part II of Interviews with Yanira Castro, Kathy Couch, Stephan Moore, and Pamela Vail about the making of CAST/STAGE/AUTHOR.

MS: As collaborators in this idea of Yanira’s, where do your own creative juices come from?

Stephan: I’m a musician, but I worked for Merce [Cunningham] as his touring sound engineer for six years. For him, music was always autonomous and independent, except the beginning and end. Every performance could be different – the score didn’t emphasize any movement at all. The first time I worked with him, I didn’t meet him until near the end, and he’d never seen both the dance and the score at the same time until the last rehearsal (he was 90.) When I told him I was amazed to see it all come together, he said “I’m amazed when it doesn’t.” It was so liberating! It allowed me to focus on the musical integrity. With Yanira, too, the art leaves it to audience to put everything together, so it is also always new. We live in a sea of ideas – we get good at figuring out whether new ideas fit; there’s always a danger of too much choice but the structure, goals, complementarity of the three pieces do seem to make the right stuff “stick.”

Kathy: The place was like a portal which transported us all. When we decided to transform the conference room, it became a fantasy of location, dislocation, relocation, and the source of imagination, There was such delight in the iteration of the banal space, and the way it became magical. STAGE, especially, felt like a miracle; in the week that we finally made it, it was so beautiful and strange and satisfying – like dada, a madcap experience. The other thing that was incredibly energizing was seeing the cast improvise every night. They were so stunning and exciting, and kept getting better at the task. Working with Yanira always pushes all of us for more. She’s like Magellan with her hearty crew; she trusts us, and I’ve learned to trust my own choices, to carry out what we imagine.

Pam: Working with Yanira reminds me of an early Elizabeth Zimmer quote – “unafraid to think big.” It’s inspiring to work with big ideas, and to be really offered the chance to fully collaborate, not just participate in her ideas. This was a large group, and new people to work with, which was really exciting. In each segment, there were surprises – I didn’t know what CAST would become, I was surprised at how we used texts, Stephan’s non-linear, non-narrative scripts, and how little actual dancing there was. But the conversations, the shifting casts, the continual development and the way things finally came together were all intriguing.

MS: What was hardest – what were some of your biggest challenges?

Yanira: The questions were always interesting, but the logistics were challenging – the timing, the practical side of opening three interconnected pieces at the same time. Doing the interviews – hours with each of 15 cast members, and five hours of video of each – was fascinating, but exhausting. The challenge of the work was to let go of my own aesthetic, not try to make it “good” or “beautiful,” but to let it go where it was taking us. And I did take a deep breath to figure out the funding, which has been a significant challenge.

Stephan: Well, budget is always a challenge, and we did struggle with that at several points. But for me, the idea challenge was how to create the score using Yanira’s interview texts – hours and hours of them. I had to build an algorithm using the language and voices; I learned a new computer language (Python) for text searching and text processing. And then there were other sound decisions – like miking the printer to amplify the sound of the printing of the random scores, so that became part of the performance, and I built a collage of voices that were a scramble of sound for the last dance in CAST.

Kathy: It was always really clear that the cast of characters and their texts were central, but initially the spatial ideas were further apart. We determined that the connection in all three pieces would actually be the conference room where the interviews had happened, even as the texts and cast members constantly changed. Then the question was how to connect the work across all three theaters, to see that space in every work. As unusual as it was, it turned out that Yanira’s navigations with the three theaters really weren’t a challenge at all – they all collaborated to make this unified work happen.

Pam: It’s inspiring to work with Yanira on these big ideas – but it can be intense and stressful. Every time, there are moments when I think “this is crazy, it’ll never work.” But it always comes together – and blows me away. And in CAST, we really never know what role we’ll play, who will play it, what the script will be. It’s such a large group, we’re never all together – so four can come into the room, and have to perform it being a group for the first time. STAGE is a bit different – each of us only knows and performs one of the tracks. But it’s still so much to keep track of! And for me, as rehearsal director, I’d work with one group, and Yanira would work with another – it was hairy having half the cast not be with her. We were also very diverse – and that totally informed the conversations, and the way things came out.

MS: Now that the the premiere run is over, what did you learn – what insights did you get from finally presenting the works?

Yanira: I always learn from seeing the work actually performed for audiences. I see what I would like to have done differently – and I’m inspired to try. We didn’t know what AUTHOR and STAGE would be until they opened. And although I knew that CAST was informed by both of the other works, I carried it all in my head until they became real. It was so exciting to have them finally relate to each other, like a crescendo, building momentum up to the end –I understood better and differently how intertwined everything was.

Now that I’ve seen them, I’d love to re-stage CAST as a continuous loop, where audience members would come in and out, and the multiplicity of the cast could be clearer to them. It’s not like other theater, where you come in, the cast does the performance, and that’s it – this work is alive, and it needs to constantly grow. Instead of traveling between theaters, I’d love for people to start in the balcony to watch STAGE from afar, then to come down into the space (where the conference room has already been built,) and then watch CAST in close proximity. I have so many ideas that came from the reality of the performances.

As I have with other works, seeing the works finally – but also for the first time -- is like beginning with a new lover – so enticing, it’s like candy – delicious and sensory. But there is still such thickening to take place; it feels like we’ve only just started. I hope to get a chance to tackle these works again.

Photos:

Top: Leslie Cuyjet, Simon Courchel, Kyle Bukhari, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste in "STAGE" © Maria Baranova.

Middle: Cast member in "CAST" © Brian Rogers.

Bottom: "STAGE"©Maria Baranova.

These separate interviews were combined and edited.

To read the companion article I wrote about CAST/STAGE/AUTHOR, find it here: http://dancelog.nyc/awaiting-cast-stage-author/

** Yanira and the cast will lead a live conversatioin "About Casting: Casting About" at Gibney Dance/ Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center on September 27 from 6:30-8:00 PM. All are welcome.**