With Ring of Glass Bowls, a Partch Rarity Is Revived

March 29, 2005

With Ring of Glass Bowls, a Partch Rarity Is Revived

*By BRIAN WISE *

MONTCLAIR, N.J. - The exotic sound world of the American composer and inventor Harry Partch is rarely heard in concert halls, but starting Wednesday night, audiences can get a crash course in his music. The new Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University will present a four-night run of Partch's 1952 work "Oedipus," based on the Sophocles tragedy, in a new production by the director Bob McGrath, and performed by Dean Drummond and his ensemble, Newband.

For this work, Partch abandoned the 12 tones of the chromatic scale and replaced it with his 43-tone scale. He went further with his sonic ideal, inventing a group of instruments that were richer in pitch and built of materials like bamboo tubes, bell jars and Pyrex carboys used in nuclear radiation experiments. Mr. McGrath describes the production as a "hallucinogenic world of projections from ancient Greek icons to Sigmund Freud's Vienna to our own contemporary culture," since it incorporates film, video and lighting design.

Montclair State has housed Partch's instruments since 1999, but organizers are hoping this production will establish the $26 million, Spanish-style Kasser Theater as an incubator for experimental productions often seen as too risky for most commercial arts presenters. The last time this Partch work was performed in the New York area was in 1997, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jedediah Wheeler, a 55-year-old producer who for nearly three decades has worked with artists like Philip Glass and Twyla Tharp, became Montclair State's executive director for arts and cultural programming in June. He said he hopes to avoid the kinds of prepackaged dance, theater and music productions that tour the country and set up shop at performing arts centers.

"Montclair State is not going to be presenting work that is part of a circuit," he said. "We are going to be presenting work that we're either producing ourselves or in partnership with other institutions. We're giving major contemporary artists the ability to realize the vision that they have."

Since the Kasser Theater opened in October with a performance by Mikhail Baryshnikov in "Forbidden Christmas or the Doctor and the Patient," it has been offering a steady diet of offbeat works. In November it presented the East Coast premiere of "Blush," a dance-theater work by the Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus. It also presented the American premieres of Michael Nyman's opera "Man and Boy: Dada," about the Dada artist Kurt Schwitters and "The Busker's Opera," the Canadian director Robert Lepage's resetting of John Gay's "Beggar's Opera."

As the Kasser Theater tries to carve out a niche in the region, questions remain about whether experimental, cross-disciplinary theater can gain a following in New Jersey, where, as in other states, most arts series offer more traditional productions. In some ways, the Kasser's closest model is the Brooklyn Academy of Music. But Mr. Wheeler balks at the comparison, saying that the Brooklyn Academy is primarily a presenter of works, whereas he wants to take the far riskier step of creating original work from scratch. He said that the Kasser Theater's flexible, 48-foot-by-40-foot stage, full orchestra pit and 499-seat house made it unique in the region.

"There's no facility in Manhattan comparable to this one for this kind of work," Mr. Wheeler said. "This is more what you'll find in European spaces where you'll have small houses and large technical capacity. That's what makes this theater structurally so unusual. So much can happen in this space."

Mr. Wheeler said that Kasser keeps labor costs down by not using union stagehands. In addition, Montclair State subsidizes the theater's $2.1 million annual budget, providing money for programming. He said ticket sales have been modest so far. The school is hoping to attract its 17,000 students and nearby residents of Montclair, an affluent community with a tradition of arts patronage.

Lawrence Goldman, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark pointed out that that northern New Jersey is a region crowded with small and mid-size arts centers, like the Community Theater in Morristown, the State Theater in New Brunswick and the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, but that these theaters mostly serve local audiences with fare that can often be found in New York.

Mr. Wheeler said he was counting on New Yorkers to make the trip to Montclair, and pointed out that New Jersey Transit trains stop just a few hundred yards from the theater entrance. Following the Brooklyn Academy of Music's example, the Kasser has begun chartering a bus that leaves from the Maritime Hotel on Ninth Avenue at 17th Street in Manhattan, shuttling New Yorkers to and from certain weekend performances.

Susan A. Cole, the college's president, called the initial concept for the Kasser "BAM West," but added that the campus environment sets it apart. "I think of the Kasser Theater as a high-end laboratory," she said. "To me, it's analogous to a science lab: it's a place where discoveries are made, where faculty does their best work, where students can learn what can't be learned anywhere else, and the larger community gets the chance to watch it all happen."

Mr. Wheeler is particularly eager to turn the Kasser Theater into a kind of laboratory for artists working across disciplines. This summer, for instance, the choreographer Bill T. Jones will spend five weeks in residence there, developing "Blind Date," a work scheduled to open the theater's fall season, before moving on to the Kennedy Center in Washington. Similarly, Montclair State has teamed with the University of Maryland, the University of Nebraska, and the University of California, Davis to commission "The Horizon Project," by the performance artist Rinde Eckert, which will also be presented at the Kasser next season.

In future seasons, Mr. Wheeler said, he hopes to undertake more contemporary opera and to give major directors, like Robert Wilson, a platform to share their expertise with students. "One of our goals is to broaden the context in which students are learning about the art that they want to create," he said.

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* David Beardsley
* microtonal guitar
* http://biink.com/db