Fugue for Three Voices: Coda

The last installment of a recent conversation with local opera composers Byron AuYong, Garrett Fisher, and Hope Wechkin (whose one-woman show, Charisma, premieres Friday at ACT), in which is discussed conceptual theater exercises and the therapeutic benefits of "Turkey in the Straw."

Seattle Weekly [to Wechkin]: So what are you thinking about for further pieces?

Wechkin: I love writing for voice, and I think that�s always going to be part of it. I started out as an instrumentalist and then came to singing later, in my 20s, and I just can�t imagine being without that. . . I�m kind of drawn to the restriction of, what are all the sounds that one person can make? It�s an infinitude. . . It certainly makes scheduling rehearsals easier. There is a level of practicality to it that is very inviting. I�m stuck on this for a while.

SW: For yourself, or for other people? Other sopranos?

Wechkin: I think everybody who�s putting anything to paper wants to share it [so] that it�s not restricted to you as a performer. But I feel like I�m the laboratory—I need to work these things out on myself. All of the music for [Charisma] is notated—anybody could pick it up and pretty much sing and play exactly what�s happening.

One of the things the director is very clear about—she asked, "What do you want the audience to do?" I said, "Well, you know, I want them to understand it, and to feel a certain way—" "No, no, no, what do you want them to do? If they could do anything, what thing would they do?"

SW: You mean while hearing it, or afterwards?

Wechkin: What action do you want to inspire in the audience? Do you want them to get up and wash the dishes, do you want them to go to sleep, to dance?

SW: What an odd question.

Wechkin: Well, you know, it was one of those weird theater things.

Fisher: "What color comes to mind? Purple!"

AuYong: It�s the "motivation." The audience is the motivation!

Wechkin: It�s very interesting, actually: I�ve been in workshops where I�ve watched other people perform a Mozart piano concerto with an idea of what they want the audience to do, and without an idea. And it is palpable, the difference. Classically trained musicians, you know, don�t really go there very much, but it makes an enormous difference in the impact. And the thing that I realized I want the audience to be able to do is to fly. . . I think there�s something about watching one person do something that makes it easier to translate to the individual. Instead of it being a spectacle.

SW: You want them to identify with you?

Wechkin: Not with me; I want the thing they�re seeing on stage to cause them to do something that they didn�t think was possible.

SW [to the others]: How do you think about your audiences? Your relationship with them, your effect on them?

Fisher: It�s a good question. [Pause.] Byron?

AuYong: The place where I�m writing, and the audiences I have, is a very privileged place. So I feel it�s crucial that my relationship with them is convivial and compassionate.

Fisher: I think my goal is to try create something very visceral, finding the deep connections between things, the bridges—and for the audience to really lose themselves in that, and be changed by it in some way. So they almost "wake up" at the end and feel different.

Wechkin: Like a dream?

Fisher: Like I�m creating a world and I want them to enter it—like when you watch a movie, a really good one, and you just forget you�re in a theater, and you think "whoa, that felt very real to me". . . The strategy is that you create open spaces in the piece so that the audience fills it in with their own imagination.

SW: Open spaces in what sense?

Fisher: For example, with the Thomas More piece, the singers wore big masks [on top of their heads] but there�s nothing else around them. So you saw the person singing underneath, and it created this interesting dichotomy—they were feeling the human presence but they were imagining what the emotion was on this face that had no expression. They�re creating the story, in a way. . . [it�s] an invitation for the audience to come in and invest their own emotion into it.

SW: You don�t tell them what to think. You invite them to.

Fisher: You guide them through something, and that�s when they become really invested in a piece, and they�re changed. . . that�s when you�re going to have a visceral response.

Wechkin: When I think of the audience, I think of this very individual relationship, not unlike the relationship I have with patients. . . some transformation will come about as a result of that interaction. You know, music is medicine and they�ve always been related. Music is this medicine for the soul.

I got totally fascinated by how much we�re sort of physiologically entrained to music. I have been very lucky to have this opportunity because I work at this inpatient hospice center. And I have taken my violin in and improvised for different patients. . . There�s a whole movement in medicine that you play different music for different people based on what that person�s experiencing—for somebody who�s depressed you would play something different than for somebody who�s very anxious, or who�s having trouble breathing. I have this nice laboratory right there, and I�ve gotten the background of different patients and played based on their symptoms. . . It�s this one-on-one thing, you�re at the bedside, it�s not a performance, it�s a delivery of medicine. And there was this woman who was dying of respiratory failure, and she had a very fast respiratory rate—about 28, which is fast. I played based on what I thought made sense for her respiratory rate, and I took it down to 16. This is not imaginary woo-woo—

SW: It�s not a metaphor.

Wechkin: —it�s not a metaphor, it�s real, it�s totally real, this affects our physiology. And I think there�s a part of that I have in mind when I�m playing.

SW: What did you play?

Wechkin: Oh, it was something improvised. . . Also, there was this one guy, and it was Thanksgiving, and he had not eaten for three days and hadn�t woken up. And I did play "Turkey in the Straw" and he opened his eyes and smiled. And I thought, OK, there�s a place for "Turkey in the Straw."

AuYong: I love "Turkey in the Straw."

Wechkin: What can�t you love about "Turkey in the Straw"?

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