A PERTH FESTIVAL COMMISSION TAO OF GLASS PHILIP GLASS & PHELIM MCDERMOTT
Image: Tristram Kenton
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Commissioned by Manchester International Festival, Improbable, Perth Festival, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, Hong Kong New Vision Arts Festival and Carolina Performing Arts – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in association with Naomi Milgrom AO. Produced by Manchester International Festival and Improbable. Perth Festival acknowledges the Noongar people who continue to practise their values, language, beliefs and knowledge on their kwobidak boodjar.
They remain the spiritual and cultural birdiyangara of this place and we honour and respect their caretakers and custodians and the vital role Noongar people play for our community and our Festival to flourish.
TAO OF GLASS
HEATH LEDGER THEATRE | WED 19 – SUN 23 FEB | 2HRS 20MINS INCLUDING INTERVAL Hear from creators and artists in a Q&A session after the performance on Thu 20 Feb.
Thu 20 Feb
Fri 21 Feb This production contains coarse language, adult themes, smoke and haze effects Image: Tristram Kenton
CREDITS
There is a special relationship in the performing arts between creator, performer and audience. Without any one of Composer Philip Glass Music those elements, the ceremony of performance ceases to exist. In choosing to be here, we thank you for your act of Writer & Co-Director Phelim McDermott Billy’s Wonderful Kettle community as we celebrate the artists on the stage and the imaginations of those who have given them environments Co-Director Kirsty Housley Maurice to inhabit, words to embody and songs to sing. Associate Director Peter Relton Kintsugi Designer Fly Davis Flotation Perth Festival 2020 is a celebration of us – our place and our time. It wouldn’t be the same without you. Lighting Designer Colin Grenfell Lao Tsu Sound Designer Giles Thomas Opening Iain Grandage, Collaborator Ragnar Freidank Newspaper Perth Festival Artistic Director Musical Director Chris Vatalaro Glass Coffee Table Associate Director Peter Relton Rigveda FANFARE Puppet Designer & Puppet Maker Lyndie Wright The River Design Associate Camille Etchart Coma You were called to your seat tonight by The Celestial March composed by 19-year-old WAAPA student Hanae Wilding. Sound Associate Sorcha Steele I Ching Visit perthfestival.com.au for more information on the Fanfare project. Lighting Associate Matt Lever Closing LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TO DO AFTER THE SHOW? Puppeteers David Emmings, Janet Etuk, Rachel Leonard Performer Phelim McDermott Venture down below here at the State Theatre Centre and slide into the late-night world of Perth Festival at Clarinet Jack McNeill Bar Underground. Open every night until late. Violin Rakhi Singh Piano Katherine Tinker Percussion Chris Vatalaro PHILIP GLASS, PHELIM MCDERMOTT AND KIRSTY HOUSLEY QUESTIONS DREAMING
DISCUSS THE MAKING OF TAO OF GLASS PM: One idea of what the show was going to be was that KH: I feel like there are almost two different types of I might ask Philip eight important questions – about dreaming. One is really prevalent at the moment: sorry BEGINNINGS COLLABORATION creativity, life and mortality. to be political, but it’s a very capitalist way of dreaming. It never allows you to be in the present. There’s always Phelim McDermott (PM): I don’t really know when KH: We’ve got a sign on our wall that says ‘Be prepared PG: I don’t remember Phelim sharing that idea with me. something that you want, so you’re spending your whole I first heard Philip’s music – but I bought his album, to be surprised’, and I feel like Philip is the epitome of So he may have asked me the questions without telling life trying to get that thing, which is always in the future. Glassworks, and that was my first introduction. When I that. Some composers want you to do your bit first and me there were eight questions. was at college, I thought, I’ve got to find out about this then they know what they’re doing – but Philip wasn’t sat But there’s another way of dreaming that we’re man. I ended up in the Middlesex Polytechnic Library opposite Phelim saying, ‘Tell me what it’s about, Phelim, During the workshops, he may have asked all the interested in with this show, which is more meditative: watching old VHS videos of the original productions otherwise I can’t bring anything’. There was this really questions and got the answers, but I was not privy to the it’s about being connected to reality and listening to your of Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha [Philip Glass genuine collaboration. system. instincts. It’s really the difference between daydreaming operas]. and having a life plan. PG: Of course, it didn’t happen the way he wanted it to, PM: It’s not what ended up happening, because it didn’t Kirsty Housley (KH): This is what I find interesting: you but that’s just life in the theatre world. feel right. Philip did say, ‘It’s hard being the sage, isn’t it?’ PM: The show is about a different kind of understanding grew up with Philip Glass and I did too, but I wasn’t of dreamland and where dreams originate. There’s a aware that I had. My introduction was also through film, PM: I told Philip stories, he improvised, I responded to KH: That feels like a really important element of the model in the show, Arny Mindell’s Deep Democracy but I didn’t know that it was Philip Glass. The Truman his music, and then he responded to me. He has the show, though: that there are just some things that are model: if you go further down the cone of Show was probably the first time I heard his music, David Bowie cut-up mentality: let’s put these pieces in impossible to articulate with words. Philip can’t give consciousness, there’s a kind of dreaming that happens then someone recommended Koyaanisqatsi [scored by this order and it’s going to do something to your brain. Phelim the key to successful creativity or living a brilliant pre-image, pre-words, that’s very easily marginalised Glass]. I watched it and just thought: ‘Wow – this music.’ It will do something to how you listen, how you perceive life any more than anyone else can. But he can give you within ourselves. this piece of theatre. extraordinary music. PM: He’s a very humble man: very approachable and This dreaming is much more like a big, connected, human. They say don’t meet your heroes, because you’ll KH: The show is a bit of a collage, I think – it comes from TAOISM unbroken wholeness where we are not separate people, be disappointed. I haven’t been disappointed with Philip. lots of different places. There are echoes thematically or separate from nature. This whole show has grown across all the different stories, and when you glue them PM: It’s called the Tao of Glass – and one of the ideas of from that place. LOSS together, the whole is transformed. Taoism is that there are times when you may notice that you’re following nature, and what nature is asking of you KH: Tao of Glass has been our dream in this room, but Philip Glass (PG): Phelim and I spent some time together KINTSUGI or revealing to you, or you’re working against that. That’s when it meets an audience, it will become a new dream visiting Maurice Sendak [illustrator and children’s author, very good as a creative process metaphor. that involves them too. most famous for Where the Wild Things Are], and we PM: Kintsugi is a form of Japanese art where you take were talking with him about [adapting] In the Night pieces of a broken vase and fix them together with KM: It’s an incredibly difficult thing to do – I definitely REALITY Kitchen. Before we got to do the piece, Sendak passed golden glue, and it becomes more beautiful because it can’t do it – and so there’s also something impossible away – so that came to an end. Phelim asked if I would highlights its flaws. I would say that, on some level, the about the Tao, which I really like. You can’t win it and you PM: Tao of Glass will mean different things to people like to work with him on a new piece that would be a show is like a piece of kintsugi. can’t know it. It’s about the journey of it. in different places. I like to think that if we create kind of replacement, and that turned out to be the something that does continue, it will be open enough to PG: I’ve read the same books as everyone else has, but Tao of Glass. It’s not even like the pieces of the same pot – it’s pieces unfold new stories that might get told. from about eight different pots. the books about Taoism make a point of telling you that PM: The show became about the stories and they’re not going to explain Taoism. PG: There are some interesting things involving my conversation between me and Philip, and whether KH: Every day we make good discoveries, then we hit a presence in the piece. Besides being the composer, I And they don’t! anything grew from that. Actually, Philip was interested brick wall and have to rethink how we’re working. The kind of have a ‘ghost’ presence: I will be with the piece in the fact that there was nothing there. Tao of Glass is stories existed when I came in and the process has been at the performances, but I won’t be on the stage. KM: I’m interested in the humanity of trying to follow about what emerges from the space where there to discover how they will evolve and fit together – in a Taoism, and failing – the attempt is fascinating, but is nothing. way, the meaning reveals itself through how they’ve been KH: Tao of Glass will continue evolving throughout its collated. It’s in the form as much as in the content. human nature can often get in the way. run in Manchester, at Perth Festival and beyond. KH: I think when we first spoke about the show, what I was PM: That’s the beauty of the Taoist version of dreaming. most interested in was the idea of absence. The idea that PM: You don’t really find out what you’ve done until an Maybe you will follow the Tao, which says to believe in a show hasn’t happened and an empty space has been audience is sitting there – and that’s what theatre is. your dreams – just don’t expect them to be manifested left. And that feels like a kind of grief, but actually in that Dreaming together. in the way you think they will. space there’s hope, and possibility. Nobody knows what’s going to happen and therefore anything is possible. There’s another way of dreaming that we’re interested in with this show, which is more meditative: it’s about being PM: On one level, this show is about a number of dreams connected to reality and listening to your instincts. not happening. There was one point where Philip said, ‘You know, this show’s about loss, isn’t it?’ BIOGRAPHIES PHILIP GLASS PHELIM MCDERMOTT Composer Writer, Co-Director & Performer Through his operas, his symphonies, his Phelim McDermott is a compositions for founding member and his own ensemble co-artistic director and his wide-ranging of Improbable. He collaborations with has been directing artists ranging from and performing since Twyla Tharp to Allen 1984, when he co- Ginsberg, Woody Allen founded derek derek to David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and with Julia Bardsley. Productions with Improbable include unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual the multi-award-winning 70 Hill Lane, Lifegame, The life of his times. Hanging Man, Theatre of Blood and The Tempest. He directed the acclaimed Philip Glass operas Satyagraha, Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Glass is a graduate of the The Perfect American and the Olivier Award-winning University of Chicago and the Juilliard School. By 1974 Akhnaten. Recently McDermott has directed Verdi’s Aïda he had created a large collection of music for the Philip in collaboration with English National Opera; BambinO, Glass Ensemble, a period that culminated in the landmark an opera for babies co-produced with MIF and Scottish opera Einstein on the Beach. Since Einstein, Glass’ Opera; and the critically lauded revival of Satyagraha repertoire has grown to include music for opera, dance, with LA Opera. theatre, orchestra and film. His scores have received Academy Award nominations (Kundun, The Hours, Notes In 2003, McDermott was awarded a National Endowment on a Scandal) and a Golden Globe (The Truman Show). for Science, Technology & the Arts (NESTA) fellowship to Recent works include an opera on Walt Disney, The research new ways of rehearsing and creating theatre Perfect American; Glass’ memoir, Words Without Music, using improvisation and process-oriented conflict by Liveright Books; Symphony No.12, based on David facilitation techniques. As part of this work, he has Bowie’s Lodger and music for King Lear on Broadway. facilitated many Open Space Technology events.
Glass received the US National Medal of the Arts from President Barack Obama in 2016 and the 41st Kennedy Center Honors in December 2018. He presents lectures, workshops and solo keyboard performances around the world.
KIRSTY HOUSLEY Co-Director Kirsty Housley is a director, writer and dramaturg. Current and future work includes Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran (cocreated with Javaad Alipoor; Traverse, Edinburgh); Avalanche: A Love Story (dramaturg; Sydney Theatre); and Mephisto [Rhapsodie] (Gate). Other theatre includes The Encounter (co-director with Simon McBurney; Complicité); I’m a Phoenix, Bitch (with Bryony Kimmings); Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales (Unicorn); A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer (dramaturg for Complicité at the National & HOME; director for international tour) and The Beauty Project (Theatre Uncut & Young Vic). She has won the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award and the Title Pending Award for Innovation at Northern Stage. In 2017 she won The Stage Award for Innovation for The Encounter and was nominated again in 2018 for The Believers Are Image: Tristram Kenton But Brothers. WE COULDN’T DO IT WITHOUT
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