Gary Halvorson and Robert Lepage | Die Walküre / 2011 [Metropolitan Opera HD-live production]

casting out the self

by Douglas Messerli

 

Richard Wagner (composer), Robert Lepage (stage director), Gary Halvorson (film director) Die Walküre / 2011 [Metropolitan Opera HD-live production]

 

One of the major questions of Wagner's great opera, Die Walküre, is how it is possible to cast out or renounce oneself, and a great deal of the argumentative and pleading discussion between Wotan and his warrior daughter, Brünnhilde, is precisely about this issue. She claims, rightfully, that in protecting Siegmund she has only followed the will of Wotan, even if it is no longer his stated command. She is, she argues, only a manifestation of his will, and has no other existence. On his part, Wotan must suffer the strictures of his own laws, particularly since he has himself ignored those laws in search of power and love. Fricka, who insists on his destroying Siegmund in favor of Hunding, may seem unable to comprehend love or even less, unable to forgive, but she is right: Wotan has disobeyed his own rules, and so too have his offspring, the brother and sister lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde.

     In this opera, Wotan painfully loses those whom he loves most, Siegmund and Brünnhilde, in order to obey his own proclamations. Suddenly the omnipotent god must be punished for his own sins. And, in that sense, he is, symbolically speaking, renouncing his own power; by casting out Brünnhilde from Valhalla, he is also assuring his own destruction and, ultimately the fall of the gods. Brünnhilde, now human, becomes a kind of Christ-like figure who shifts the center of reality from heaven and the underworld to earth itself.

    It is for these very reasons, I would argue, that, although there is great music and drama in the other operas of the Ring cycle, Die Walküre is the most poignant, the easiest of all to hear and love.  

     Strangely, a similar "outcasting" almost happens with the god of this new Met production, director Robert Lepage, and most of the opera's characters. The final Met live-in-HD broadcast production of the season began 45 minutes late, having suffered, we were told during the first intermission, computer difficulties of the great, galumphing, set of 24 rotating planks at the center of this production.

    People patiently waited it seemed, both inside the opera house and at my movie theater, yet there was a sense, that only grew as the production got underway, that the wonderful performers— Deborah Voigt (Brünnhilde), Eva-Maria Westbroek (Sieglinde), Stephanie Blythe (Fricka), Jonas Kaufmann (Siegmund), Bryn Terfel (Wotan), and Hans-Peter König (Hunding)—were now subject to the directorially created machine. Kaufmann was a stunning Siegmund, portraying a character with whom the audience could not help but be sympathetic, as he and the lonely wife of Hunding, Sieglinde, slowly fall in love. The planks, standing linearly to suggest a forest of trees, was quite effective, except that the image projected upon them also was reflected across the faces of singers (primarily Hunding).

     The great ride of the Valkyries was quite terrifying given the see-saw movements of Brünnhilde and her sisters, particularly after we had been told, during another intermission, that in some of the early productions, some of their dresses had been caught in the apparatus. I am afraid that I missed a few of the Valkyrie's cries simply worrying about the actors as they slid one by one down the planks to the floor.

    At one stunning moment, as Brünnhilde was left by Wotan on her burning rock, the apparatus rose to the heavens, with a body-double Brünnhilde suspended upside down over the fire, one felt that the machine had finally done something, created a kind of cinematic effect, that would have been otherwise impossible. Yet, for the most part the expensive contraption (estimated at costing over forty million dollars), so heavy that the Met needed to reinforce the underpinnings of the stage itself, was more an intrusion than a delight. As some critics have suggested, it seems that the singing, excellent as it is in this production, was sacrificed to the art of staging.

    It seems to me, moreover, that the kinds of effects achieved—far tamer than the recent Archim Freyer production in Los Angeles—might have been accomplished with more standard stage devices, light, scrims, etc.

    Let us hope that in Siegfried and Götterdammerung Lepage might find a way to justify the immense cost of his device without ousting Wagner's singers from the stage!

 

Los Angeles, May 27, 2011

Reprinted from Green Integer Blog (May 2011).

 

 

Christopher Stollery | dik / 2011

misreading sexuality

by Douglas Messerli

 

Christopher Stollery (screenwriter and director) dik / 2011 [10 minutes]

 

Although Australian director Christopher Stoller’s 2011 short film dik bills itself as a comedy, it is actually a rather disturbing example of parental hypocrisy and homophobia that gives us a clue to some of the difficulties the truly innocent six-year-old son Andrew (Keilan Grace) of the couple Robert and Rachel (Patrick Brammall and Alexa Ashton) may have to face in the future as he is shuffled between the two given their impending separation and divorce.

     Their divorce-defining argument is rooted in a simple child’s picture which the couple’s son has been asked to draw and describe in writing something he enjoyed during the weekend. Andrew proudly displays his drawing and writing project to his parents, who mostly ignore it until Andrew finally pushes it before his father. The words above the picture read, in childhood letters:

      If the message seems to be that Andrew likes “ribin Tims dik,” Robert doesn’t bother to even ask his son as about it before he falls into something close to apoplexy over the fact that his son has been possibly sexually experimenting with his best friend Tim. What’s worse is that soon after he sees his son painting the grass pink, because, he responds when asked why, it is one of his favorite colors. His father insists that he use green, thus destroying any childhood creativity the boy might want to develop.

     Parents have a way of doing that, as well as some teachers. But Rachel reminds him that at six Andrew simply growing sexually curious and exploring. Certainly, she argues, Robert did the same thing.

     But her husband will not even begin to talk about any such childhood encounters, which she declares means that he did have some childhood male-on-male experiences. She reminds him that it might be good if he could recall them to put his son’s activity in perspective, to help explain their child’s natural curiosity.

     Finally convinced that he might discuss the matter, he admits he had a sexual experience with another boy at 18. This startles Rachel even more than Andrew has disturbed his father. Suddenly, for Rachel her husband is a secret homosexual, who at a far later age than innocent childhood experimentation possibly had sex with another male. Has he been imagining it during their sex in years since while having sex with her?

      Robert defends himself, arguing he was still a kid, just exploring things, but when it comes out that he also had sex with another male at age 25 when they took a trip to Europe when he and his wife her around together, she goes ballistic.

       He points out that she probably too has had fantasies about other women; but she insists, in a kind of reverse chauvinism and hypocrisy if nothing else, that two women imagining such an act is completely different than two men, particularly men fantasize about two women having sex, while she is completely disinterested the idea of men having sex with one another.

       So the fight escalates until, she admits that she now realizes why she has thought something was missing in their sexual life. He demands to know she begin feel dissatisfied with this sex. She admitting perhaps that it was just recently, hinting, he insists, that she has had something new and different to compare their sex to—Rachel finally admitting that she has indeed been seeing someone else, her female yoga teacher Claire, with whom she declares she has had wonderful sex.

      Robert hits back, not only arguing that, unlike him, who has remained faithful to her throughout their marriage, she really has been “cheating.”

     But again, she insists it’s something completely different, describing him as a faggot and a queer, whole he hits back by calling her a dyke, remarking that his young 25-year-old friend was a great cocksucker while she can hardly open her mouth and keep her teeth away from his organ.  The name-calling continues, as she finally leaves the house, surely never to return.

       In the last scene, Robert is busy packing up boxes for his move, as he tells Andrew to get ready to visit his mommy, where evidently he will now be living. But the boy demands to finish his sketch and description first. This time, however, the picture is of his father and mother, with the word “bik” written ever his daddy’s head. What are you drawing? Robert asks. “That must be me. What am I saying?”

       “You always say that to mommy,” Andrew shyly responds. The child has previously asked what dyke means, with Robert responding that it’s something in Holland. Suddenly Robert perceives that his son may not be as sexually inclined as he is perhaps a bit dyslexic, or simply confusing his “b”s and “d”s as many children do at his age.

       Opening the earlier drawing which he has just balled up into a wad, Robert asks his son to read him the message on his first drawing, the one that lit the fuse on the parent’s breakup over their sexual gender preferences. Andrew reads it straightaway, “I like riding Tim’s bike.”

       Yes, this is funny, but the consequences of both Rachel’s and Robert’s misconceptions about not only their son, but about their sexual gender consistency is rather tragic. It’s not just a mistake in comprehension of their son’s words, but in their entire perceptions about sexuality.

 

Los Angeles, January 8, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

Jamison Rockmore (as Jamison Karon) | Sorry You're Sad / 2016

dirge for a life of fun and love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jamison Rockmore (as Jamison Karon) (screenwriter and director) Sorry You're Sad / 2016 [17 minutes]

 

Julian (Jamison Rockmore as Jamison Karon) and Lenox (Zach Gillette) have been a quite happy couple in Los Angeles, until Lenox has gone away to Colorado for law school, leaving Julian behind and taking up, at least for a while with a new lover.

    In the meantime, Julian’s life has been thrown out of whack, wherein the once ambitious celebrity chef is now serving breakfasts naked, except for a front chef’s apron, to older gay men.

     Julian’s best friends are now a sassy black woman named Milkshake (Bri Giger) and a Hispanic woman, Karla (Almarie Guerra), who waxes men’s asses and encourages her friend to marry his dreamboat immediately.

     Today, however, is different, as Lenox is back in town and has called him up, this time as a “friend,” to go out to dinner. White the women insist that Julian attempt to reignite their relationship, Julian perceives the difficulties, and the film itself becomes a melancholy dirge to the end of not only a possibility of returning to the past, but to the closure of their friendship.

     Both men express unhappiness for the end of their relationship, recalling how wonderful their sex life was, and how much they enjoyed each other’s company. But Lenox isn’t able to find a table at the restaurant Julian has suggested, and they walk to the nearest taco stand instead, finally ending up at an utterly boring “hipster” party where the two flirt, dance, and try hard to restart what is clearly over, Lenox finally engaged with another young handsome partygoer.

    Julian moodily escapes the party, and the two have sex nearly in Lenox’s truck. But it now is also clear that Lenox’s life has been reclaimed by his wealthy father, as he admits that upon graduation he has a job offer in Denver and that his father has bought a house for him in that city, having always wanted a Denver property. We can imagine now how Lenox will be forced to marry some socialite, settle down, have children, and lie to himself about his wild past; or, at the very least, how his life will return to a discrete and somewhat closeted existence. Lenox admits that he has already pulled away from the new lover he found in Colorado; and Julian has no room in his world anymore, and the cute former lover knows it.

     He invites Lenox back the party, but he demurs, as Julian walks home along the Pacific Ocean near the Santa Monica pier. He finally strips off his clothes and gets lost into the ocean waves, a symbolic cleansing of himself and death for what he knows he can longer have.

     Without being obvious about its subject, this is a story about a love affair that has been destroyed by class values and the parental pulls of a father determined to have his son rejoin the proper social world of his own values. Not only would Julian never fit into the new world Lenox has had created, but Lenox would no longer be able to endure the sexual and racial differences that Julian’s life would impose upon him.

      Although Lenox expresses his sorrow about Julian’s sadness, it is actually Lenox’s own sadness that is so very apparent; in order to continue with his structured life, he has been forced to give up all the laughter and campy nonsense that Julian embodies. The fun is entirely over for Lenox, just as love has walked out of Julian’s world.

 

Los Angeles, January 8, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

 

Stephen Petronio (choreography) / Robert Longo (images) | American Landscapes / 2019 [video broadcast]

american history

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stephen Petronio (choreographer) / Robert Longo (images) American Landscapes / NYU Skirball, 2019 / [video broadcast]

 

If you don't know the Joyce Theater in New York City, it is the very center of US dance. It's a theater where all the major dance companies have and will continue to perform.

     For some inexplicable reason (I've never been there), I regularly receive their emails. And I love it. Actually, I later discovered I had been in that space, when as Ira Joel Haber reminded me it used to be the Elgin Theater.

     Recently, they announced on their "Joycestream"—a way they can keep in touch with people who love dance in a time when there are no longer any audiences—they sent me an announcement of a streaming of choreographer, once the manager for Trisha Brown's company, Stephen Petronio's dance group for what was to have been their annual Joyce Theater preview of "American Landscapes," performed by the dancers Bria Bacon, Taylor Boyland, Ernesto Breton, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Ryan Pliss, Nicholas Siscione, Mac Twining, and Megan Wright, along with guest performers Brandon Collwes and Martha Eddy, danced out their hearts.

     I can't say I was particularly impressed by their dark blue body clothing—women in simple body stockings and men in high-rise shorts, which did not at all accentuate their supple muscular mid-body extensions.

     But, in a sense, Petronio's choice was perhaps purposeful. This was a performance not about his dancer's bodies, but about their constantly shifting relationships—gay, lesbian, and heterosexual relationships through a long history of time documented through Howard and my dear friend Robert Longo's artistic relationship, a long friend as well of Petronio's (he recalls how his $50 charity purchase of one of Longo's "Women in the City" drawings was one of his very first art purchases, leaving him to have to absent himself from lunches for a full week) led to a close friendship.

     The images, along with the insistent drive of the music composed by Jozef van Wissem and Jim Jarmusch created, with Petronio's choreography, a kind of tri-partite structure, despite his intended abstraction.

      The first part, in which the dancers moved from left to right clearly represented a shift from the East to the West coast.

      What begin as duos and triplets moving forward in lateral space, in the second part was represented, along with Longo's increasingly violent imagery—from an almost pastoral setting, to the nuclear terror of World War II and the post-War years—to a kind of strange line-dance, despite the failure of some of the performers to survive it, dropping away from the linked hand-upon-hand framework of the almost Fosse-like chorus line. Indeed, several of Longo's images, including his glorious swirl of dark red roses suggested iconic images from film, this particular one from Vertigo, but others from The Magnificent Ambersons, 2001: A Space Odyssey and other films.

     In the third section, as the figures moved through space in the other direction, couples paired-off into gay and lesbian relationships, which seemed to suggest to me the traumatic shifts that occurred in New York City in the AIDS epidemic, the horrifying 9/11 events, and, of course, the impossible to comprehend current virus events.

     Yet, even as things got worse, Longo's images moved to an almost prelapsarian return to nature, even if the images were a bit blurred and dripping with the blood of the past. Petronio's ballet is a profound statement that speaks of our early longings and impossible failures, including those of our current time. The performance at the New York Skirball Center was not only about the American landscape but, in a true sense, about American history itself.

 

Los Angeles, May 16, 2020

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance. (May 2020).