©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.**
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