RESEARCH General Arts

MUSIC
John Cage radio play to be performed for first time in U.S. at Illinois

Melissa Mitchell, News Editor
(217) 333-5491; melissa@uiuc.edu

Tammey Kikta, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
(217) 333-6282; t-kikta@uiuc.edu

9/1/2001

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The inimitable avant-garde composer John Cage premiered some of his most important works before audiences at the University of Illinois. Nearly a decade after Cage's death, a new staged version of his 1982 radio play "Marcel Duchamp, James Joyce, Erik Satie: An Alphabet" will receive its U.S. premiere Sept. 29 at the UI's Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

The production, directed by Laura Kuhn with music realized by Mikel Rouse, opened Aug. 30 at the Edinburgh International Festival, and will be staged in Berlin and Dublin before coming to the UI. "Alphabet" unfolds as a fantasy meeting of some of history's most imaginative minds. The conversants are introduced by a narrator who poses as Cage himself. In addition to the title characters, other contributors to the dialogue include Buckminster Fuller, Robert Rauschenberg, Henry David Thoreau, Mao Tse-Tung and Thorstein Veblen.

"Juxtaposed here are centuries, occupations, genders, even the living with the dead, making 'Alphabet' a remarkably democratic intermingling of perspectives, with unmitigated humor, and an unmistakable irreverence for the particulars of history," said Kuhn, co-founder of the John Cage Trust.

Cage died in 1992, leaving behind a completed libretto for "Alphabet." The score, however, was not notated, and existed only as a series of handwritten notes. Rouse worked from them to complete the score.

Much of the libretto "is actually a poetic piece written as a mesostic," said David Patterson, a UI music professor and Cage scholar who will give a pre-performance talk about Cage and his work. Patterson said a mesostic is a technique Cage used in which key letters – in this case the characters' names – are placed on the page vertically with new text preceding or following the key letters.

Illustrated copies of the libretto will be available at the Krannert Center performance.

Patterson said it is fitting that this "hybrid" Cage production is opening the U.S. leg of its tour at the UI because "Cage was in and out of here several times since the 1950s. This is one of a string of several important works that have been premiered here." The composer came to the university in the 1950s, Patterson said, "with his highly controversial electronic work 'Williams Mix.' " In the 1960s, UI audiences were the first to experience "Musicircus" and the multimedia piece "HPSCHD."

"Alphabet" will feature a professional cast that includes Rouse; longtime Cage friend and associate Merce Cunningham; David Vaughan; and John Kelly. Two other characters appear on tape, with remaining characters portrayed by artists from the UI College of Fine and Applied Arts.

The 75-minute piece will be presented at 8 p.m. in the Tryon Festival Theater, Krannert Center, for the Peforming Arts, 500 S. Goodwin Ave., Urbana, Ill. For ticket information, contact the Krannert Center ticket office, (217) 333-6280; kran-tix@uiuc.edu.