Fugue for Three Voices, Part 2

More shop talk with local opera composers Byron AuYong, Garrett Fisher, and Hope Wechkin (whose one-woman show, Charisma, premieres Friday at ACT), in which is discussed "stir percussion," composer/performer schizophrenia, and Mike Min's height (or lack thereof).

Seattle Weekly [to Wechkin]: Has your stuff been changing in rehearsal?

Wechkin: There are some things cut as a result of a director coming in. We�re a month away from opening, we�re pretty much done with the cuts. . . I feel like fingers are being cut off. You know, once you�ve memorized something, it�s such a physical thing, you know these things and they become part of you. There are some things that, if it were a [song] recital, they would stay, but because there is movement, it has to go. But not much. What changes is the pacing.

SW: Why did you decide to bring in an outside director?

Wechkin: Oh, because I would never in a million years trust myself. You need somebody from the outside who has that theatrical perspective, who�s looking at it not as a writer, not as a musician, and importantly, not as one of the co-creators, because you get very married to things that may or may not actually work. And because even things as simple—or not so simple—as the way you�re occupying space on the stage, you just can�t see that. Cathy Madden is a director at the U. She also is an internationally renowned Alexander Technique teacher, which is how I knew her originally.

In the music, some things have changed [after] I�ve gone more deeply into vocal rehearsals. When I was being a composer, obviously I was writing things that I wanted to sing. But there have been times that I looked at what I wrote with my composer hat on and thought, "Now, what was I thinking?" As a singer, I thought, "That�s just too hard." So then I have to have a talk with the "composer" and have a little diva moment and say "I�m just not singing that!" I have a word with her and then she relents and changes it.

SW: I think you�re perfectly suited to playing multiple characters on stage!

Fisher: So when you write, do you feel like you�re searching for something, uncovering something that�s there, or do you feel that you�re creating something out of nothing?

Wechkin: Totally the first thing. I am totally in awe of the fact that you sit there at 12:00 and there�s nothing on the page and at 2:00 there is. It�s sort of getting rid of the stuff that you don�t want and then the stuff that you do want is there. I think it�s magic. And, I�m not starting from scratch, because I have the words, and I think that is a very different experience than if I were writing just instrumental music. Because the words just create a whole world that wouldn�t be there otherwise.

Fisher: What about you, Byron? I saw Stuck Elevator at the Arts Launch, so I saw it before the reading [at Theater Off Jackson]—

AuYong: Oh, gosh, when I performed it!

Fisher: Yeah, I loved it!

AuYong: It was so different!

Fisher: Really? What I was impressed with was how stripped down it was. It took away a lot of things, and required the audience to fill it in in their minds.

Wechkin: There�s a height difference between you and the person who performed it [at Theater Off Jackson].

AuYong: A height difference?!

Wechkin: Isn�t that guy really tall?

AuYong: No! Mike Min? No, he�s not. [laughs] Yeah, the height difference changed everything. We had to get a bigger elevator!

SW: Mike [a founder of performance-art troupe Seattle School] must have been a really strong personality to work with, and had lots of ideas?

AuYong: Yeah, he was really fantastic. But his training is different than what I think the piece is going to be in its next reiteration. . . I really want an opera singer to work with, because they�re fast. [snaps] They have it. I don�t have to teach them anything. And also, one of the things I realized in working with Mike—he�s great, but one of the comments I got is, he�s not [unlike the character he played] an immigrant. And I thought, OK, maybe if he�s more different from the audience, which is what opera is, a more rarefied voice—more insane and more "Chinese." In this first workshop Aaron and I were thinking, if he�s the only guy on stage, why is the audience going to sit there? And we realized, well, the audience doesn�t have to like him. They�ll sit there because they have to. If they�re intrigued enough. So now our next phase is to make someone who�s really intriguing, and go with that kind of strangeness.

Fisher: So how much does the performer you pick influence your piece?

AuYong: I think absolutely. Because of their training.

Wechkin [to Fisher]: What about you? It sounds like you have a piece in mind and then you find the performers.

SW: Don�t you have a little repertory company? People you work with often?

Fisher: Actually, it�s not the case at all, and sometimes I get frustrated by that. . . What is the score, in the end? Part of the score is the performance as done by someone.

SW: There are elements of improvisation?

Fisher: Yeah, even in Stargazer the opening oboe solo is all improv on a raga. It�s not written out and I don�t want to write it out.

SW: But does Taina [Karr, Fisher�s longtime oboist] deliberately do it different every time?

Fisher: Yeah, that�s my rule—you can�t do it the same way twice. And it�s easy to do because your context will be different and your energy will be different each night. But I have to work with people who are willing to think outside the box and who can sing, move, and act. It�s really hard to find singers who can do it all and be charismatic and be in the moment and spontaneous and not be so classically trained that they�re stuck because [their part] is not written down entirely.

SW: Your collaborators include your sister [choreographer Christy Fisher] and the woman who makes the masks—

Fisher: Louise McCagg. Christy and I are really close—growing up together, we tend to think along the same lines, so it makes for a good collaboration, because there�s never really any tension about where the piece should go. . . And Louise is my godmother, and I was around her sculptures all my life, so it�s kind of a family affair.

With Psyche I�m working with an entirely new singer, Ben Black, who is an amazing tenor. He came in and auditioned and I just gave him the mode of the Psyche raga—I didn�t want to give him much—and he just sort of went off and did it. I could tell within ten seconds that he�s the one. I could see how he moved—there are some people you can just feel the energy. And they might hit a wrong note, but you know it�s great. And there are some people who say "What�s this?"

SW [to Wechkin]: You haven�t had to deal with all that.

Wechkin: I was going to say—the audition process for my piece—

SW: It went pretty smoothly.

Wechkin: —it was very rigorous. It was brutal. . . But actually, as I was composing more and more, it was very tempting to say, "Oh, but if I just had a cellist here, or if I just had a pianist. . ." And basically my rule was, [the show] has to be portable, it has to be cheap, and I have to be able to do all the instruments. So it�s mostly violin and voice. There�s also mandolin, thumb piano, and—I almost caved, and I thought, "OK, how bad would it really be. . ."—there was one piece where I really wanted to have a piano, because I just couldn�t imagine it without. And I was even thinking of a toy piano; it was something that a teenager sings.

When in doubt I go to John�s Music [Center], and I found this instrument. I don�t actually know what the official name is; they call it "stir percussion." It sort of looks like a big cup made of wood of different lengths [slats, like a barrel] that are each pitched. And it�s meant to be just played for effect—there�s a stick and you run it around the inside. It basically has this one thing it can do. But I got interested by the fact that they are individual notes, so I figured out what the notes were and labeled them with little pieces of tape. And I composed a piece for voice and that instrument. So again, necessity was the mother of invention. I think it would have been a lot less fun and interesting if I had had a pit band at my disposal. It would have meant fewer creations on my part.

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