Wilson mimes the text in theatre’s language form, while respecting the importance of the pause. This does not give any immediate meaning – of course. While he sleeps, we hear a recording of Cage’s own reading of the text. He pulls the cover over himself, closes his eyes and seems to be sleeping for a little while. ![]() This is delightful and liberating.Īs Wilson is reading what Cage writes about it being perfectly OK to take a nap during the performance, he gets up from his chair and walks over to a small bed on the other side of the stage. Which is a liberating comment how often has one not fought against drowsiness during a performance or concert? According to Cage this is not necessarily something we should criticise. You can never possess art.”Īt one point in his lecture, Cage writes that it is perfectly OK to sleep if you feel drowsy. ![]() As the American critic Mark Swed writes about Cage’s work: “by reducing everything to nothing you begin to understand that art is the experience of the moment, that all that matters is now. This contributes to stimulating curiosity, and makes it impossible to remain neutral to the scenographic expression. The audience is left to make its own sense of the madness. Neither Cage’s text, nor Wilson’s theatre create a linear story the artists do not offer a coherent and logical narrative with a beginning, middle and end. There might be a number of meanings in the text, not least meanings one makes up oneself while reading it or experiencing the theatre version. Is there any meaning in Cage’s lecture, which sometimes may seem like pure madness? I honestly do not know. Or perhaps you could call it puppy-dog love, for the fifth did not make me want to write music: it made me want to devote my life to playing the works of Grieg.” Through the music of Grieg, I became passionately fond of the fifth. Perhaps, of all the intervals, I liked these thirds the least. “I realize that I began liking the octave. Cage speaks enthusiastically about Grieg’s music in his lecture, which we obviously find very pleasing here in Norway: They both find their own voice, but in very different ways. Still, tradition is precisely what he loves, just like Arnold Schoenberg, another of music history’s great innovators. I enjoy a lecture based on a text that is both charming and amusing, as well as thought provoking on a philosophical level.Ĭage talks about tradition, about the old music which he is about to leave behind for the sake of something radically different. Some may also have experienced the ground-breaking opera “Einstein on the Beach” from 1976, created in collaboration with Philip Glass.Īs the lecture goes on, I gradually get accustomed to the repetitive text patterns and surrender to the meditative atmosphere. In Norway, we witnessed this the last time when the Berliner Ensemble visited Bergen International Festival with an astounding performance based on Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and we witnessed it in the EDDA performance at The Norwegian Theatre. In the staged version of “Lecture on Nothing”, Robert Wilson places the repetitive, musical prose in tableaux filled with magic that only Wilson is able to create. Regardless of the questions posed, Cage answered with one out of six pre-determined answers, one of which was «this was a reflection of my engagement in Zen». Later that evening there was a Q & A session on the performance. Lectures and Writings by John Cage» (1961) where “Lecture on Nothing” was first published, Cage writes about the world premiere in Manhattan in 1949. There, the composer himself performed the 40 minute long lecture with seemingly endless repetitions that finally made a member of the audience, artist Jeanne Reynal, get up and shout on her way out: “John, I dearly love you, but I can’t bear another minute!”. It talks of how the actor has nothing to say, all the while saying just that: “I have nothing to say and that is the point of my saying it”. We are introduced to slow and intoned sequences of thought that undermine themselves once they seem to reach their point: “Slowly, as the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere and that is a pleasure.” Suddenly, the theatre icon breaks the silence and starts the lecture. Wilson opens the staged version of Cage’s renowned “Lecture on Nothing” with loud silence. Several minutes pass, not a word from his mouth. The legendary director Robert Wilson is sitting in the middle of the stage, dressed all in white. Shanghai Grand Theater. The lights go down in the auditorium. Close to 70 years after its world premiere: Robert Wilson’s version of John Cage’s famous “Lecture on Nothing” awakens the Chinese audience's interest in their… mobile phones?
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