Chin Music
by John Rezmerski
Director
Ron
Duffy
Director's
Note-Chin Music
Theatrically
staging material designed for another medium provides a unique challenge.
When I directed the original production of Old Man Brunner Country, Leo
Dangel's poetry, I decided to mount it against the deserted Wolf Creek Country
Store because it created for me a meeting place for the memories of the characters
who presented the narrative. In working with John Calvin Rezmerski's Chin
Music the challenge was different. The concept of setting it in a present
time setting seemed more fitting. It was determined that John would be the
presenter, Rezmerski doing Rezmerski, but he would perform the material through
a fictional character, Calvin, both for a remote radio listening audience
and for a "studio" theatre audience. The style seemed not only expediently
appropriate, but provided both the interesting dimensions of a here and there,
and a then and now. Concurrently, it also gave the work a dramatic backdrop
for the poetic narrative— things were about to change, all that would
be heard would not be heard again, and the radio Calvin, after tonight, would
be seen no more.
—Ron Duffy
THE CAST
| Calvin | John Calvin Rezmerski |
| Voices: Engineer | Ron Duffy |
| Myron | Garrit Zayic |
| Aunt Piggy | Colleen Nuessmeier |
Setting: KCHN-FM
There will be one 15 minute intermission
Boxelder Bug Variations
adapted from the work of Bill Holm
by Sally Childs
Music composed by Bill Holm and Robert E. Hindel
Ensemble (left to right): Suzanna Winter, Terry Lynn Carlson, Jeremy Poetker, Monica Heuser, Beth Desotelle, and JP Fitzgibbons
Directed collaboratively by Sally Childs, Billy Kimmel, Elizabeth M. Desotelle
Director's
Note: Boxelder Bug Variations
In 1987 1 adapted
and staged Boxelder Bug Variations with the help of choreographer Lewis Whitlock,
composer Bob Hindel, six actors and Bill Holm who appeared in the piece himself.
The piece was formal, elegant, presentational, and highly experimental. Now,
as Artistic Director of the Jon Hassler Theater, I am collaborating with a
team of three other artists-Choreographers Elizabeth (Beth) M. Desotelle,
Billy Kimmel and Musician Jeremy Poetker to create something less formal,
elegant, and presentational but still highly experimental-"A Meditation on
an Idea in Language and Music." Describing the result of our collaboration
is as difficult as Holm says it is in his book:
"The material of any work of art-a chair, an afghan, an equestrian statue,
a waltz-is so amorphous and mysterious that probably only a psychologist,
an executioner, or a full professor would be fool enough to try to name it,
or even describe it in its own language. An artist, on the other hand, gives
it a body, and a body, since is exists, is true. A boxelder bug is as satisfactory
a body as purple, or a saxophone, or French, or obsidian."
None of us are psychologists, executioners or full professors and so we have
barged ahead, taken the body provided by Holm and transformed it into a stage
work for six actor/dancer/singers, one keyboard artist, and 225 audience members
(and some leftover bugs still hanging out from last summer). Our aim is to
entertain, using Holm's surprising off-beat images to spur our imaginations.
We start with a simple statement, "consider the boxelder bug." Then we look
at how "we, too, dislike them" (not many of us love bugs), and finally bring
it together with "a man and a woman and a boxelder bug are one." Using a range
of dance styles to create the "Shaker Bug", the "Boxelder Bug Gavotte", the
"Boxelder Bug Tango," the "Boxelder Bug Blues" and a Manhattan Transfer style
Do- wop in "The Boxelder Bug Prays", six
actor/dancers bring Bill Holm's ideas alive. Embedded in all the music is
the boxelder bug motif which is built from the musical pitches in the name:
Boxelder.Bug. Holm plays with this idea musically much like Bach is thought
to have done with his name in The Art of Fugue.
If this sounds complicated, it really isn't, and it all comes clear on stage
(and matters not at all) once the action starts. The complicated part took
place offstage when four artists got into a dialogue about how to do this,
with four voices interrupting and bumping into each other. Billy Kimmel says,
"This is the most challenging project of my career." These artistic challenges
have resulted in a cleverly staged entertainment, wherein humans, who have
"too many of them plug-in things," learn to live more peacefully with the
bug. The bug has only one fault and asks that we "forgive him only for being
so many."
—Sally Childs