Separation of Church and Stage

A touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar recently hit town. Despite its longevity, this early Seventies hit for the duo of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice still stirs controversy. One inevitable criticism of this particular tour stemmed from Ted Neeley’s seemingly endless reprise of his role as Jesus. Neeley, who starred in the 1973 film of the rock opera, is now 67 and arguably far too old to play a 33-year-old Christ. But the main criticism is one of even longer standing, namely, that Jesus belongs in church, not on stage.

There are two problems with this argument. The first is that, as it usually is made by conservative Christians, it tends to be cover for their real criticism, which is that the Webber-Rice Jesus is “just a man,” something that Mary Magdalene emphasizes in the Act I song, “I Just Don’t Know How to Love Him.” Tim Rice has been quoted as saying, “It happens that we don’t see Christ as God but simply the right man at the right time at the right place.” The Christian Right condemns this view, which also is emphasized by the omission of the resurrection from the story on stage.

Expanding this argument to a more general one of “leave Jesus in church where he belongs” is simply spurious. Jesus has long been on stage in ways wholly approved by conservative Christians. Consider, for example, the mystery plays of medieval England, biblical cycles performed by roving bands of amateur actors during the Middle Ages and later, and passion plays. The most famous example of the last is the epic that has been performed in Oberammergau, Germany, once a decade since 1634. Add to these live events the myriad of films featuring Christ and the list of “approved” theatrical appearances by Jesus is endless. Perhaps the film most passionately embraced by the Religious Right in recent years is Mel Gibson’s 2004 sadomasochistic “The Passion of the Christ,” which is a veritable blood bath.

A second difficulty I have with the argument that Jesus doesn’t belong on stage stems from the theatrical element inherent in the religious practices of most churches. Looked at in stage terms, preachers perform much as actors do, robing (getting into costume), climbing into the pulpit (going on stage), and holding forth (performing). The most adept and elaborate of these church-theaters tend to be those occupied by the same conservative critics decrying stage Christs. Consider the megachurches, the traveling theater of tent revivals, and the elaborate staging that backs the most strident of the rightwing televangelists. Talk about theater!

Few topics — including the Bible and Jesus — are off limits as theatrical fodder, which is as it should be — and as it should pertain to all art forms. The arts are the expressions of culture. All viewpoints deserve expression, and that inevitably leads to controversy. Controvery ought not lead to suppression, however.

(The photo shows Jesus and John from a 1900 production of the Oberammergau Passion Play.)

Flash Mob Performance Art

Mass performance art is a fascinating product of the Internet age. For the uninitiated a bit of background may be helpful. “Performance art” itself is defined as art created by the performance of one or more individuals. It began in the modern sense in the 1960s, Yoko Ono among the practitioners. For many it was a response to the question, What is art? Pop Art could make art using everyday objects and images, from Andy Warhol’s soup cans to Claes Oldenberg’s giant Typewriter Eraser, which stands in the National Gallery of Art sculpture garden in Washington, D.C.

Why, then, should not an artist mingle visual art and theater, often impromptu street theater, and produce performance art? A popular term from the time was a happening. Performance art often seems simply to happen spontaneously. At least that is the viewer’s perception. Often, however, the artist has given considerable thought and preparation to the creation of the performance moment, how it should look, and what it should mean. Performance art can incorporate all of the senses, using color, movement, music, and so on — or their opposites: stillness and silence. The “living statues” or silent robotic-type individuals one occasionally sees on the streets, usually with a basket for monetary contributions at their feet, are engaging in a form of performance art.

Flash mobs are a 21st century innovation on the performance art theme. They began about 2003, with Manhattan being credited as the first site. Indeed, flash mobs tend to be big city phenomena. Individuals communicate with one another over the Internet and often anonymously about what, where, and when a performance will take place. Some flash mobs engage in a short rehearsal before the actual event, but the unrehearsed form is as common if not more so. Also, as a performance unfolds observers sometimes join in and become performers themselves.

A number of examples can be found on YouTube. For example, a flash mob of about two hundred danced to “Do Re Mi” from The Sound of Music in the central railway station in Antwerp, Belgium. London boasts what organizers hope to be an annual winter “No Pants Subway Ride,” coordinated by Improv Everywhere. Their tagline is “We cause scenes.”

Performance art comes in all sorts of forms, and flash mobs demonstrate the mass creative power that can be unlocked through electronic communication.

Nesser to Grieg to Rubenstein

The other day I was reading Swedish mystery writer Håkan Nesser’s book, Borkman’s Point. His detective, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, who drives a small, elderly Opel with an up-to-date, high-end stereo, comments on a northerly drive that he needs to hear “something Nordic”: “Cold, clear and serene. Sibelius and Grieg.”

The power of suggestion later that day led me to rummage in the CD cabinet for something to listen to as I fixed dinner. What came to hand was a Chicago Symphony recording of Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, orchestrated by Alfred Wallenstein. What I had forgotten about this CD was the pianist: Arthur Rubinstein.

The music was suitably stirring — cold, clear, serene, and Nordic — but listening to it also stirred memories of hearing Rubinstein in concert more than forty years ago.

Rubenstein (1887-1982) would have been seventy-nine in the spring of 1966, when I was a high school senior and somehow acquired tickets to a concert he gave in San Antonio, Texas. I recall going to the performance with my girlfriend (later wife) and another of our classmates. The program has long since escaped my memory, but I recall vividly the thrill of seeing this piano virtuoso at work.

Rubenstein, a Polish Jew, was born the eighth and youngest child of a businessman in Łódź. He evidenced interest in the piano during an elder sister’s lessons and by age four was studying and playing in Warsaw with Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, who became his mentor. By age ten in 1897 he had moved to Berlin to continue his studies and in 1900 made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1904 he launched his career in earnest in Paris. (The photograph shows him in 1906.)

Rubenstein led an amazing career that ended in 1976, when he was eighty-nine, and then only because his eyesight had begun to fail during the Seventies. I count myself fortunate to have seen and heard him a decade before his retirement. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1982, about a month shy of his 96th birthday.

January 28 will mark the 123rd anniversary of Rubenstein’s birth. I have several recordings of him that should be suitable to play for that occasion.

Blue Moon: Blue, Blue, Blue

When two full moons occur within the same month, the second is called a “blue moon.” The infrequency of the occurrence has made it a subject of folklore as well as scientific investigation. A common expression is “once in a blue moon,” that is, rarely.

Most years twelve full moons occur, approximately once monthly, over the course of the year. But the common calendar (called the Gregorian calendar) is not precisely aligned to the lunar cycle. Thus every two or three years there is an “extra” full moon.

Various explanations are given for this full moon’s designation as “blue.” One is that in Old English belewe can mean either “blue” or “betrayer.” Because early clergy were responsible for calculating the date of Easter based on the full moon, some years they may have needed to explain whether a particular full moon was actually the “Lent moon” or a false one, a “betrayer moon.”

Are blue moons actually blue? Rarely. But certain moons, not necessarily full moons, in past ages did seem to be bluish in color. The perceived color change probably was the result of other substances in the atmosphere, such as dust or ash from volcanic eruptions. One story is that in December 1883 geologist W. Jerome Harrison reported viewing an “electric-blue” crescent moon against a copper-colored sky from his home in Birmingham, England. He attributed it to lingering atmospheric debris from the explosion of Krakatoa, a volcano in Indonesia. Krakatoa’s spectacular eruptions began in May 1883, culminating in the destruction of the volcano island in August that year. In addition to the volcanic explosions, subsequent tsunamis devastated the region.

Blue moons also have been the subject of popular songs, often with blue given the connation of sadness, sometimes mixed with the sense of rarity. The most popular example is Rogers and Hart’s “Blue Moon,” which begins: “Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone, / Without a dream in my heart, / Without a love of my own.” But then a new love comes along, and the song includes the line, “And when I looked the Moon had turned to gold.” When the tune was first composed by Richard Rogers, it was given different lyrics and originally intended to be sung by Jean Harlow in the 1933 MGM film, Hollywood Party, which featured a number of the movie stars of the era. The song went through other versions — for example, repurposed for the film, Manhattan Melodrama in 1934 — until Lorenz Hart finally gave it the familiar lyrics after that film was released. Since 1934 “Blue Moon” has become a standard ballad, recorded by popular singers including Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley.

There also is the bluegrass song, “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” written by Bill Monroe in 1947, in which the blue moon is told to “Shine on the one that’s gone and left me blue.” Monroe, often called the “Father of Bluegrass,” is credited with popularizing the genre, which takes its name from his band, the Blue Grass Boys. Monroe’s home state of Kentucky has the nickname, the “Bluegrass State,” based on the prevalence of bluegrass, a smooth meadow grass of the Poa genus. Bluegrass seedpods turn from green to a purple-blue hue, which gives this grass its name.

A blue moon rising on New Year’s Eve welcomed in 2010. The next blue moon should occur in 2011 — plenty of time for any aspiring folklorists or songwriters to get a new composition ready.

Local Treasures

Many of us, myself included, are eager to seek out historic homes, museums, art galleries, and other places of interest when we travel but rarely, if ever, do the same when we’re at home. Of our local treasures we think, “They’re right here, so I can visit them anytime,” and yet we never go.

Recently my partner, a friend, and I decided to change that by spending a wet, wintry Saturday visiting the presidential home of Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis. None of us had ever seen it. Now I might be excused, having lived in Indiana only nineteen years, but the other two are lifelong Hoosiers. This house museum turned out to be a delightful local treasure, well kept and fascinating, with a knowledgeable docent on hand to point out otherwise easily missed items and their interesting history.

In 2010 Bloomingonians will have an extraordinary opportunity to tour another local treasure, even closer to home, as the Lilly Library on the Indiana University campus celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. At the time of its dedication on October 3, 1960, the library holdings — more than 75,000 books and 1,500,000 manuscripts — represented the combined resources of the university Department of Special Collections and the private library of Josiah Kirby Lilly, Jr. (1893-1966). The latter had been given to IU during 1956-57. J.K. Lilly, Jr., (above) was a grandson of Colonel Eli Lilly, founder of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company. Since 1960 the library holdings have grown to nearly 400,000 books, more than 100,000 pieces of sheet music, and more than 6,500,000 manuscripts.

Items range from major rare books, for example, the New Testament of the Gutenberg Bible and Audubon’s Birds of America, to famous manuscripts, such as Robert Burns’s “Auld Lang Syne,” and J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.

According to Bloomington’s Herald-Times newspaper, residents and visitors to the Lilly Library in 2010 will have much to enjoy:

The year will begin with the exhibition ‘Treasures of the Lilly Library,’ featuring such rare treasures as William Shakespeare's ‘First Folio,’ George Washington's letter accepting the presidency, Albrecht Durer’s ‘Apocalypse,’ and the first edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales,’ printed between 1476 and 1478. There will be a celebratory open house to view this exhibition and the newly renovated Reading Room from 5 to 9 p.m. Jan.22.

The celebration will continue with a summer display of more of the Lilly Library’s treasures, including a copy of ‘Hamlet’ printed on cork, Rita Hayworth’s makeup case, medicine show signs painted by James Whitcomb Riley and pencils made by Henry David Thoreau’s family pencil company. The year will end with an exhibition of 100 Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, curated by scholar Christopher DeHamel.

This trove should give local folk — and discerning people everywhere — pause to consider their local treasures, those perfect destinations for stay-at-home vacations.

Real Books in Real Bookstores

In “Loggerheads,” his piece for the December 7, 2009, New Yorker, David Sedaris writes admiringly of a family he describes: “Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.”

“Words still warm from being read” — what a wonderful image! I can conjure that from “real hardcover books,” and yet it eludes me when it comes to reading on an electronic device, whether this computer or one of any number of recently released handhelds. Kindles, Sony E-Readers, iPods — you name them. The latest one brought to my attention is called eDGe, whose dual screens open like a book with one side to display text and the other full-color images. It’s being touted as the brightest and best for the textbooks of tomorrow. Maybe it is. And maybe, for the sake of economy in a world where textbooks can cost a mint and weigh a ton, it is needed for economic and utilitarian reasons.

But none of these electronic devices, as yet, can compete on an aesthetic level with a “real hardcover book” — or even a good trade paperback — when it comes to look, feel, and readability. Try reading a book on a iPod Touch, for example. The eccentric word spacing alone, because it’s cheap just to slap already printed text into electronic form, is enough to drive anyone with an ounce of visual aesthetic bonkers.

As books migrate to the electronic world, so do bookstores. Recently I went for the last time to OutWord Bound Books, the only gay bookstore in Indianapolis, which is now closing. The shuttering of any independent bookstore is cause for lamentation in this age of corporate mega-stores. But even Barnes & Nobles and Borders are struggling against the online giant Amazon.

Part of the loss in any bookstore closing is that buyers are deprived of browsing rights — touching, feeling, mentally tasting those warm-from-reading words. Even with all its electronic bells and whistles, Amazon’s and other online booksellers’ websites ultimately are mere catalogs. Fancy technological catalogs to be sure, but viewing them is nothing like browsing real books in a real bookstore.

The loss of a gay bookstore is even more heartbreaking. In a mega-store, what passes for diversity often is only a shelf or a little more worth of gay or lesbian books — fiction, nonfiction, what have you, often all jumbled together — but nothing remotely approaching the scope of an entire store, however un-mega. And what about books from small independent or specialty publishers? Try finding those in any mega-store.

Gay bookstores always have been few and far between. Now, with the closing of OutWord Bound, not only has the population of Indianapolis gay, lesbian, or simply interested straight readers lost a significant resource. The loss extends to the whole of central Indiana.

Technology, whether online bookstores and e-reading devices, simply cannot replace the experience of real bookstores and real books with “words still warm from being read.”

An Innovation Too Far?

Here’s a question: How much is too much when “tweaking” a classic to give it a new spin?

Quite a number of years ago I bought tickets to a production of one of Shakespeare’s popular comedies. The show had been touted for its all-male cast. Naturally enough I thought it would be a highly traditional, even close to authentic staging, given that female roles in Shakespeare’s time were played by males.

Alas, traditional was it not. The acting might have been good, even excellent. But it was wholly obscured by staging that used metal and transparent plastic sets, and the voices of the actors could scarcely be heard over the din of atonal jazz. These elements, designed no doubt to refresh the classic play, instead rendered it obscure and frankly unbearable.

This past week I attended two productions of classic works at Indiana University. The first was put on by the Theater Department, a rendering of Shakespeare’s As You Like It; the second by the Opera Theater, a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute).

As You Like It was rather delightfully “tweaked,” with casting adaptations that one-upped even Shakespeare’s penchant for gender-bending. But somehow setting the frolicking finale to the Beatles’ classic version of “Twist and Shout” jarred. It was rather like seeing one too many pies in the face — farce ad infinitum. Plus, the speech that followed it was anticlimactic and, while standard, was all the more incongruous after everyone had been twisting and shouting.

If anything, Die Zauberflöte was even zanier: Mozart meets the Muppets. Mozart himself put in a few appearances, red frock coat, powdered wig, and all. Sometimes he materialized in Disneyesque boxes that opened in the scenery. Opera goers of a certain age must have been reminded of the TV show Laugh In or perhaps Hollywood Squares.

Mozart’s opera is juvenile and funny as it is, but apparently for modern audiences the childishness must be more blatant, with puppets reminiscent of Broadway’s The Lion King and an enormous dragon right out of a Chinatown parade. Still, the Queen of the Night’s aria resonated, and Papageno was brightly acted and sung in spite of the enormous puppet birds with their black-clad animators cluttering up the stage.

So, how much is too much? One viewer’s happy innovation well met is another’s over-the-top flop. There are times when I would like to see a play played straight. Fortunately that happens often enough that I can appreciate when Shakespeare’s, Mozart’s, or some other classic writer’s or composer’s work is “tweaked” — even when the tweaking overreaches at times.