Corey and I were lucky enough to get tickets for Einstein on the Beach this past weekend. For those unaware, it is a defining work of avant-garde opera originally produced in 1976. Since then, there have only been two other short runs of the show in New York in '84 and '92. This incarnation was overseen by the original designer, Robert Wilson, composer, Phillip Glass, and choreographed by original featured dancer, Lucinda Childs. The opera is meant to be abstract, with no explicit narrative. Wilson compared it to the operatic equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting.
Corey is a huge fan of Phillip Glass, so this show had been on his radar for months, but as it drew nearer, we, and the city of Ann Arbor, learned just how big of a deal this performance was. This was the first time this show had been preformed in the U.S. outside of New York. Due to production costs and the length of the piece (4.5 hours) the runs are very short, most lasting only a weekend before picking up to tour Europe.
The previous weekend, we attended a lecture by Wilson, Glass and Childs to give us more background on the piece. The big take away for me was the idea that this was a very deliberate piece. Even though it lasted 4.5 hours, these artists were meticulous with every detail of this show. Every artistic choice was made to complement the whole, never would one medium overpower another.
After hearing all the hype for so long, I was expecting a life-changing experience, and I got one, just not in the way I thought I would. I expected this big, mind-blowing production, but very early on I realized that was not the spirit of the show. For example, the first scene is twenty minutes of three slowly repeating notes while two actors move slowly to desks and remain seated in silence.
A big theme in the piece is the passage of time. It's 4.5 hours, so they have a lot to work with, and some scenes seem to go on forever; but every time I found myself losing interest, I remembered the lecture and how very particular the designers were. I would ask myself why it felt so long, and what was happening in that moment that made it necessary to suspend it. I think about traditional opera, and how a very long aria usually contains a very short idea that is suspended over several minutes because the idea/emotion is so important or intense ("I love her" "I'm going to kill myself" "I'm dying"). In almost every scene in EOTB, there is some set piece that indicates the passage of time, usually a clock (though not always spinning clockwise) or a moon going through its phases.
I was really surprised that I sat through the whole performance (with only a brief potty break). There is no intermission and it is expressed by the directors that the audience is allowed to come and go as they please. When I first heard that, I was prepared to "need" to get up and stretch or something, but I didn't. It was one of those things where, while it's happening it seems to take forever, but once it's over, you're like, "really? that didn't seem that long." My take-away from that, other than experiencing an amazing work of American opera theatre, will be that I will never again feel guilty for sitting through an America's Next Top Model marathon, for I sat through Einstein on the Beach in its entirety and liked it. I will not be ashamed of my reality TV guilty pleasures as long as I retain the ability to appreciate real art.
(For tour details, visit Pomegranate Arts, Inc.)
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