A PERTH FESTIVAL COMMISSION TAO OF GLASS PHILIP GLASS & PHELIM MCDERMOTT Image: Tristram Kenton Founder Principal Partner Community Partner MEDICI DONORS 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.