12345678

This weekend, along with hundreds of others, I experienced art at its most complex, gutsy, and visceral.  I saw, listened to, and contemplated Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach presented by UMS.  This was the first time the opera had been performed in twenty years.  They call this piece an opera, but it breaks any formal structures, including narrative.  The show is devoid of narrative.  This is something both the composer, Glass and director, Wilson, speak to at length and wish for the audience to embrace.

I heard Glass and Wilson speak at the Michigan Theatre last week as part of the Penny Stamps lecture series (which I will be attending again this week to see Daniel Handler a.k.a Lemony Snicket!).  Hearing their thoughts about art and performance were inspiring but also hard for me to wrap my head around.  As much as I try to be open to the avant garde and understanding art outside of my own experience, no matter what I do, my framework for understanding is the theatre.  I have a hard time hearing a director say it’s okay if audience members walk out in the middle of a performance, as Wilson said of Einstein.  Beyond that, he encouraged such behavior.  However, I understood and embraced his point: theatre should be like art, it should be available at all times to be observed as the viewer sees fit.

After hearing the two men speak and seeing snippets of previous productions, I was eager to see the marathon four and a half hour opera performed at the Power Center.  My ticket was for Sunday, so I had heard plenty from friends who had seen it the previous nights before venturing into the theatre, perched in the balcony of a packed auditorium.  No matter how much I had heard, I went in with an open mind, not knowing entirely what to expect, only knowing that it would be different than anything I had ever seen before.

That much was true.  I sat through almost the entire four and a half hours, getting up only once for a bathroom break.  My mind wandered as the repetitive music played on and the words spoken by those on stage merged with other sections and mutated into other phrases.  The most interesting part for me was knowing that while we were all watching the same performance, every single audience member had a different experience.  In this way, the piece was much more like art than theatre or opera.  I wish I could explain what I saw there, but it was almost like a dream.  I was present, I was awake, but everything seemed to be happening on some other plane.

Later that day, with the images and music still fresh in my head and my brain still reeling from the cerebral work-out, I discussed what I had seen with a group of theatre majors, some who had seen the show, some who had not.  One of the girls who hadn’t seen the show sat there silently for a while, and then she finally said, “I didn’t see the show, but it is so funny to hear people talk about it.”  And it’s true.  It is one of those things where your opinions become questions.  If you ask anyone what they thought of Einstein on the Beach, someone who wants to say, “I liked it” will actually end up saying, “I liked it?”  You can’t trust your own mind, and you’re still not sure if this is the type of thing that one likes or dislikes.

Days later, I am still questioning my experience, mulling everything over in my head, hearing the actress repeating, “If you please, it is trees.” I am still beyond impressed by the physical, emotional, and vocal stamina of those actors who perform nearly non-stop for four and a half hours every day.  I wonder what their experience is, what their understanding is.  I wish I could have been in the room to hear how an opera with no meaning or plot is made.  Every scene was disconnected but the experience was felt as a whole.  The experience is the point, and while I may never entirely understand why I watched a blindingly bright beam of light rise from a horizontal position to a vertical one with a nonsensical aria scoring the movement for probably ten minutes, I appreciated it.  I appreciate art that I may never understand.  It was executed with uncommon courage.  I am inspired to push the bounds of my understanding and my own creations.