I emerged from the final performance of “Einstein on the Beach†on Sunday exhilarated and exhausted, elated and with a distinct feeling of relief. The four and a half hours spent in contemplation of this elusive but entrancing opera was without question among the most memorable theatrical experiences I've had in the past few years.
Above all I was struck by the intense commitment required of the performers involved, from the chorus to the principals to the musicians. Even the stagehands are active participants in “Einstein.†By coincidence I met Helga Davis, one of the principal performers, a few days later, and decided to find out just what the experience of performing the Phillip Glass-Rob ert Wilson opus was like from the inside.
How did you come to be involved in the project?
I worked with Bob on a piece 10 years ago, “The Temptation of St. Anthony,†and I immediately felt like I had found a kind of artistic home, one that housed all of who I am as a performer. I was anxious to find another project, and he would call me to sing something from time to time. But when I finally got the call about the auditions for “Einstein,†I had just torn my rotator cuff. I didn't tell anyone, because I know how much of his work is physical, about specific movement. I was determined. Luckily at the audition I wasn't required to do anything that I couldn't do. I had the surgery and four months later was in rehearsal.
How does working on a Robert Wilson production differ from working on a more traditional stage project?
It's precise. It's formal. There is nothing taking place by accident. But for me this work is the perfect vehicle to channel my own particular neuroses. In my apartment, everything I have is exactly where I want it. If I have a vase turned this way, it's because I want it that way. I am attuned to that kind of precision.
Wilson's work wouldn't seem to allow a lot of personal interpretation. Some actors might find that constricting.
What's been interesting is that whenever people I know see the show, they come back and tell me they do see something of me in this work. And yet it doesn't have anything to do with my interpretation of it. Maybe there's work in which you show yourself from the outside, whereas this is a very interior work. Even if I'm doing exactly what someone else has done, my interior world is there, influencing it.
You can tell a Wilson actor in a way that you can tell a Grotowski actor. When you see them enter a space, or turn their head, all of who they are is somehow contained in that movement. It isn't confining. I feel it en gages the performer even on a cellular level. Everything is concentrated in one gesture, one walk across the stage. All of that actor's presence is in each particular movement.
The text is mostly streams of numbers or phrases that seem nonsensical. But you're reciting these words for long stretches of music. How do you manage to memorize the material when it lacks the usual connective tissue of logic or narrative?
That was the hardest part for me. There's nothing for you to grab on to in the way that we need logic to communicate. There's nothing. It was maddening. I would say the text while washing the dishes, while walking, cooking, anything. I would just keep saying it out loud. I recorded it in an MP3.
But for a long time it didn't work, and I really couldn't understand how I could possibly memorize this work. Then a funny thing happened: when we got into rehearsal, the language got attached to movement, and suddenly I didn't have any problem at all. Con necting the text to the body was the key. I still have trouble just saying the text, but if I do the movement I can reel it off easily.
Audiences and actors are used to looking for concrete meaning in theater works, and specifics of character. Did you conceive of your various roles in the show as specific characters?
The best piece of direction that Bob gave me, which was also the most liberating thing any director has said to me: “Just say the words.â€
That's very much like what George Balanchine would tell his dancers when they would ask about the meaning of a movement or work: Just do the steps.
Bob said the moment you as a performer ascribe meaning to the words, you alienate the audience because they may not agree with your interpretation. You want to leave the door open for each person to have their own experience of the language. I feel like I'm playing jazz, like I'm Charlie Parker.
From the audience's perspective, Bob often says, “W hat you see should help you hear, what you hear should help you see.†The audience shouldn't have to choose between the two.
So in the scene set in the back of the train, when you're in period attire, you're not portraying anyone in particular. Anthony Tommasini thought the characters might be intended to represent Einstein and his wife.
I would say the less Greg and I try to make it Einstein and his wife the more it can be. Someone else thought it was Abe Lincoln. But that's what we want. You in the audience get to make those people into whoever you want them to be. Our work is to engage the audience in that way.
I love that scene. It was the thing I was the most terrified of doing because I thought, we don't do anything, nothing happens. It's 18 minutes long. I don't have any internal story going on â€" I don't want to give away too much, but the key for me was to make it look like something is always about to happen, and then it finally does.
Just on the physical level, I imagine this is one of the more challenging things you've done.
The thing that's great is I get to eat everything I want. We burn up so much energy. By the end of a run there will be people whose pants are too big. People think it's simple to stand there. Not at all. There's movement in stillness. Bob said once that someone said to him, “Nothing happens in ‘Einstein.' †He said, “Until you try and do it.†I know exactly what he means.
How do the rewards of doing a piece like this differ from the rewards of performing more traditional pieces of music or theater?
I wouldn't say it's more or less rewarding. But I get something from this work that I take to my other work. It's a kind of rigor, a way of being specific and not casual in my speech, to pay attention, to listen.
Those are things that I take with me in everything that I do, and I'm very grateful for that. I know how to bring my full concentration to whatever task or text or new thing I have in front of me. This work has been like a boot camp into that kind of discipline.
If you saw “Einstein on the Beach†during its run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, it's probably impossible not to have some thoughts about it. Please feel free to share yours here. Does it warrant its excessive length? Did you, like Ms. Davis, feel the absence of traditional narrative allowed the audience to engage with the piece on its own terms? Or were you confused of confounded?
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