How did you meet and decide to work together?
Elliot Goldenthal: We met through a German producer, a crazy gentleman who produced two films of Andy Warhol’s that I worked on. One was “Blank Generation”, a pretty good film, and the other was “Cocaine Cowboys”, an absolutely hideous film. He realized that Julie’s work and my work had, in his words, “a learning toward the grotesque”, and he felt we could get along well artistically.
Could you explain your collaborative process?
Julie Taymor: We start with a short story or an idea or some written source material. We go from that and talk about what’s missing from the original story. This is happening on our new piece too. Where do we want to go as artists and with the kinds of things we want to say? What else can we go with that story? What are the techniques we want to use, both musically and visually? What do we as artists want to play with the next time around? I want to use some film; Elliot will be using full choruses, a children’s chorus, and a larger orchestral setting. So it’s a combination of both themes and techniques that we want to expand upon.
Elliot and I have a common sensibility even though we have different talents. We know the kinds of things we’re trying to say in the theater. That means how we want music to function and how we want visuals to function. In Juan Darien we decided that language would not move the story forward, that English language would not be part of it in any way even though there would be language. Elliot put together the Latin Mass. The Requiem Mass was not part of the original story; so he brought in the use of words as music.
With Juan Darien we went off for a year and started on Horacio Quiroga’s text, expanded it tremendously from the original story, and turned it into a theatrical thing. It took us seven months of just yapping and seriously working four or five hours every day, just talking and talking and talking. After that, we felt solid enough that we could start on the music and the designs.
Then we go off.
Yeah.
Different directions.
Then we went off, but it was literally a saturation of concentrated work for seven months. A great deal of our time is spend where I’m talking about visuals and she’s talking about orchestral settings. In my wildest imagination I wouldn’t design a show, and I don’t think Julie would compose an orchestral piece, but we spend a lot of time discussing in that manner.
Does it make each of you feel uncomfortable when you cross the boundary of your respective disciplines?
No.
No, because we know that he’s ultimately going to write the music and get the credit for that, and I’m ultimately going to be the designer and get the credit, or design whatever I design. We basically accept that we’ve co-created a project – that’s what we’re doing as collaborators – and in that process we have to cross over. It’s not that we fight about it, but one has to give and take on what should be dominant. It’s not vying for power – he may have a strong idea and I may have a strong idea, and we have to convince the other person.
But the strongest idea usually emerges.
As we began to trust each other, or know each other more as artists, an interesting thing happened. In The Tempest he wrote a piece of music, ‘Full Fathom Five’. Although it was fully orchestrated, he could only give me a demonstration on his four-track or on the piano. I really couldn’t hear it. I was the director, he was the composer, Shakespeare was the other. I had a choice to either say, No, I don’t like that do it again; or if he really felt passionate about it, then I’d just accept that, and trust that he knows what he’s doing. He’s the artist and it’s his freedom to do that.
Give me the right to blow it.
Or, if ultimately he carries it through and it really doesn’t work, then he’ll have to fix it. But it ended up being a piece of music I absolutely adore, and now, knowing his work as a composer much more thoroughly, I can make the leap easier, and I have a greater understanding of his range. When something is very simply, I’ll know that it may not necessarily be simple-sounding once it’s fully orchestrated and all the colors are there. I think we both have that short-cut which comes with so much collaboration and time.
Do you have a way of describing the work as a genre, or is it Multicultural Mythological Music Theater?
The mythic is very important. There is something underlining it [which] we’re always trying to get to, some kind of undertow that flows into the mythic. We’re always looking for the mythic in the real. The Transposed Heads was a very real story, a love triangle, but the mythic was there the whole time. Even in Juan Darien we didn’t want to lose the human element of it.
So there’s a statement about fantasy and reality?
Levels of reality, all the time.
That’s why I use puppets, masks, and humans, so you can really jump off those levels, and the audience has the hook with the human. Juxtaposing the non-human gives them some perspective.
What about the multicultural element of your work?
There are a lot of multicultures right here. Even our own culture is sometimes not recognized. In terms of the burgeoning pop music, black, white, or Asian out there, people hardly recognize it. When they do, it rapidly turns into something coopted and commercial and hideous. But while it’s still fresh, it’s fun to see.
In King Stag, director Andrei Serban wanted a gamelan quality to the score. I guess the closest to Indonesia I’ve been to Indonesia would be Red Hook, Brooklyn. I enjoyed working with another cultural imperative involved. It was like limiting the palette to a few pitches. On the other hand, I didn’t know that much about the music, so I approached it in a very fresh way, free of all the restraints – the cultural restraints as well.
It was so exciting to work with Julie on the projector, because of her first-hand involvement with Indonesia, having a theater company there for four years. I think it was the first time we actually hooked into something in which we could see the possibilities for future work.
There’s something else that both Elliot and I feel very strongly about when we use the word ‘multicultural’. We take it in and then spit it out as our own; both of us, as artists. We don’t pick it up or take from other cultures and repeat it, the way it’s often done.
We would never take Shakespeare and stage it with some brilliant salsa musicians and then take the credit for doing it. How the subject filters through ourselves and out is more interesting.
Is it a political statement that you’re not using other people?
Absolutely, in the sense that it’s political.
You’re absorbing them, being affected by them, and then creating something that has your voice.
That’s also what unifies our work. You can say Juan Darien had bunraku, and had shadow puppets, but they weren’t bunraku like Japanese bunraku; they weren’t shadow puppets like Indonesian shadow puppets. We may take the sounds of or the instruments or the techniques, but the material, the themes, the way they’re put together, even how they’re manipulated – it’s not completely original, but it’s transformed.
For example, a friend of mine criticized Juan Darien for having didgeridoo. He wasn’t aware that those things exist in the Amazon, or in Haiti. I was saying, ‘Can’t you give me the right for it to exist in myself, in my own head? Why does it have to be linked or borrowed from another society? It’s out there.’ No one would ever accuse Transposed Heads of being classically Indian.
What are your other influences?
Fellini is a major influence for me, besides the influence of Asian theater. I think Ariane Mnochkine or Teatro du Soleil is one of the finest directors. She did a French production of Twelfth Night, incorporating Asian techniques and putting it together in a completely original, beautiful, and exuberant way.
Herbert Blau was an important influence in my life when I was at Oberlin. I was in the Oberlin Group, a company with Bill Irwin, David Suehsdorf, Sharon Ott, who runs the Berkeley Rep, and other artists, actors, and performers who’ve now gone off in various directions. That was during the Grotowski era: I was a performer, and it was a company that created the productions from scratch. It was one of these close-knit, inward-looking, kind of claustrophobic groups that used a lot of their own personal material. I hadn’t been a very verbal person; I was sort of always the visual and physical one. The thing I benefited from was that the director, Herbert Blau, demanded that in your hour-or-two improvisations, you bring up verbal material, really use the human instrument in a total way. It was very non-puppet and mask; it was human-oriented.
I’m impressed with the imagery of Robert Wilson, but not particularly moved by the productions. I think I like it more in photographs than I do on the stage. But I like that he goes that far with the imagery.
My first influence was Louis Armstrong. I remember being very young in Red Hook, Brooklyn, listening to this Hot Five recording without any drums – five musicians. I believe Johnny Dodds, clarinet, Louis Armstrong, trumpet. From 1925. It was contrapuntal and basically non-melodic. It was like fire-bursts of rhythm. And there was one personality riding over it: this Louis Armstrong solo. It had an unbelievable impact.
On the other hand, listening to Mahler symphonies had a kind of psychological impact in the same way. That it was just unabashed. Stravinsky and Beethoven are constantly mysterious to me in their structural miracles and, especially in Stravinsky’s case, their orchestration. Also, with Mahler’s orchestration I never get a sense he’s using the orchestra for sound or effect. The instruments come across almost as creatures, as individuals, characters and animals. That had a lasting effect on me from age nine, ten, and eleven.
And that was in your household?
I came from a very, very poor family. But music was always buzzing around in my household.
And your parents were listeners?
My parents were listeners; my brother was a listener. Just flipping the dials. I remember hearing Charlie Mingus when I was six years old. It was the old Five-Spot, and these people were gods: Miles Davis. I got to hear Coltrane.
I always composed. I was working in 20-minute pieces by age 12-13. The long form was always very attractive to me. When I went to conservatories I became close to Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, and I really became attracted to orchestral music. I used to play keyboard; I played brass and some percussion; also, I sang in a blues band that toured the country when I was 18.
There are a lot of wonderful musicians involved in world music. It’s such an exciting time to live when a sharing of this kind can be at one’s fingertips. And I never feel anyone feels threatened about anything they’re trying to do. We’re all carving in the same mountain, but making different tunnels.
What other collaborative projects did you work on before you worked with Julie?
I worked downtown with Carolyn Bilderback Dance Theatre. She was an older woman in her 70s with unbelievable energy and curiosity about form and dance and music.
What do you think are the best parts of working with Julie? And Julie, what do you think are the best parts of working with Elliot?
I never feel I’m composing in a vacuum. Even in my own work, which is predicated on structures and layers. I could always turn around and say, ‘What do you think about this; what do you think about that?’ And in an odd way I do trust Julie’s acumen and her gut. She seems to have a good sense of what’s going to be right in the long run.
Isolation isn’t an important part of collaboration?
Well, when it’s in the collaborative situation, yes, it is. Because when I have enough material I can go back and review it. I think we work slightly differently. Julie thrives on bouncing things off of other people and talking through other things. ‘Let’s go now and talk about this or that.’ And I’m more of, ‘Just give me a pen and a pencil,’ and be isolated with something for a while.
So she can share her ideas; that’s one of the things you like?
Yeah, she might now know all the layers or structures or everything, but she gets to the nugget of what I’m trying to do. And she’ll say, ‘That’s horrendous’, or ‘hideous’, or, ‘It’s…’
It’s interesting that when I ask what you like best about working with her, that you mention ‘hideous’ and ‘horrendous’.
Well, that’s a big help because I trust her opinions when we’re dealing in a collaborative effort. I don’t think I ever said, “I told you –that other chord would have worked better” [laughs]. I don’t think it’s ever been that way. In rehearsal, the ‘Gloria’ was along piece of music in theatrical terms. It seemed too long to have these butterflies on stage for three minutes, and before the band learned their music it was four minutes. So it was like Julie saying, ‘This is a long time to have people on stage with butterflies.” In the final analysis it worked out in the context of the play. But it took a lot of trust there, with the producers sitting in the audience, “Just trust me, producers. When the musicians learn their parts, it’ll be 2½ minutes, not 4.”
So it’s not just at the beginning of the process when you’re generating ideas, but also further along in production that you feel the same about Julie’s reaction to what you’re doing.
Exactly.
We’ve worked enough together. If I describe what I’m going to do with puppets, or what I’m going to do visually, Elliot understands the techniques – he knows the vocabulary. We can discuss a concept that may be a philosophical idea – which is another thing that he brings. But I have to translate that into physical, theatrical terms. Over the years we’ve worked together, I’ve seen him develop as a theater person. In the beginning, I didn’t feel he would add to what could be done theatrically. Now I thoroughly trust his instinct. If I ask him if we should use film or puppets, or go with a two-or three-dimensional image, he knows what that means. He doesn’t just stay in his little pan of what he does.
There’s also a tremendous advantage to working with a composer who can write lyrics. Elliot has written lyrics for the works we’ve done and he’ll continue to on the new opera-theater piece BAM is considering for the Next Wave Festival in 1990. There’s a certain self-sufficiency to that. Sometimes the fewer people the better – you can go farther in a certain way.
Sometimes the more people the better. It depends on the project. I would have never come up with the poetry that David [Suehsdorf] and Sidney [Goldfarb] came up with.
What is your dream project?
My dream project is to be doing dream projects. I hope I’ll never run out of wishes.
The piece we want to do in 1990 for BAM is pretty much a dream because it’s the largest piece. The forces are so big and so interesting. It also does what we want to do with dance.
It’s not a one-source project. It’s from multiple sources that are included in our work.
We love the lustiness, the color of Fellini, the multiple levels of reality. Yet he touches you on a very human level. The bizarre, the carnival, the grotesque, and the innocent – all things that, to a degree, will probably be in every piece we do.
On the other side there’s the isolated, the nihilist.
I also want to do a film of The Transposed Heads with Elliot writing the score. It would be a combination of realism, naturalism, and highly-stylized filmmaking. Very theatrical – I love that.
Have you done any films before?
I’ve played a little bit, but not feature films. What I do in the theater I feel is almost what films can do. They’re epic pieces; they’re not limited to psychological relationships. I can play with scale.
In theater you get 20-plus people together working their guts off every day, putting performances on. And at the last performance it’s over. And what was conceptualized as a theater project is gone. Now you can conceptualize the same thing for film; people do the same thing. They get paid more, and they work just as hard.
We feel very frustrated, and I think we’re not the only ones. Elliot and I don’t think small; we think big. Hopefully the people who are producing our new piece will connect it up with enough other venues, co-producers for it to have a life beyond the two weeks at BAM. And if it doesn’t, then it will be fun for the two years we work on it. It’s going to be a lot of work.
Is that the most difficult thing about your work together – that it dies?
It doesn’t all die. I think that’s theater. I think that’s the most difficult thing about theater. Even for Elliot and his concert pieces, you get one concert.
America seems to thrive on mediocrity. To strive for mediocrity should be what everybody is taught, because then everybody would work; everybody would get over their works done for the rest of their lives. I mean over and over and over again. If you write a great McDonald’s piece of music, it’s going to be played forever. It is almost impossible for works like Juan Darien or Transposed Heads to have a life. Because the Broadway people are scared to death of them. For example, there is not one 800-seat theater in New York that could support a work like this; not one.
An Off-Broadway theater is too small for a company of 27 people. If you want to go to 800 seats you go to Broadway, and then everybody’s paid union wages of $700-$1000, and you have to charge $40 for tickets. That’s not who the audience should be; the audience should be anybody. But there are no subsidies, and there’s no real support. The only places are institutions like BAM, but even they can’t support a long run. And it’s not easy to get to those places.
If you work on a theater piece the magnitude of Juan Darien, the average player gets something like $150 a week. You have to subsist for long periods of time – that’s something that stays with me – unless you’re lucky enough to be born in a rich family or something.
What other kinds of frustrations do you experience, or difficulties in the process of doing pieces? Do you feel like you have difficulties with each other that get in the way?
No.
No, it’s thoroughly enjoyably. When David, Elliot, and I were working on Liberty’s Taken, to me the thinking part, the collaborative part, is just as exciting, if not more exciting, than the actual production.
What impact does your personal relationship have on your work?
I think it’s a plus. We can mix our work life with our private – there’s almost no line for us. There’s also a minus to that.
When you’re under a lot of stress, and you’re involved in a production, do you make compromises, or do you stay out of each other’s way?
I think we help each other. The problems usually come up with producers more than with each other. There’s not enough time, there’s not enough money, or something like that. We’re very supportive of each other and if a compromise has to be made, we’ll figure it out eventually.
Has your friendship ever been endangered by the stress?
No. Even after she came after me with the knife and a buzzsaw and I saw myself splattered all over the Quality Inn bathroom [laughs]. I had images of the George Romero movie. But the reality is, you just go to sleep and you feel just as bad until the productions tarts to reach homeostasis. It takes a while. The unexpected always happens in productions; the unannounced always rears its head.
I think we know where we fail as artists; where we fail in our productions. And we can talk openly about it. Sometimes he’ll think he’s failed more than I’ll think he’s failed. Sometimes that is more of a struggle than anything.
I enjoy self-deprecation in that fashion. Where I come from, self-deprecation is an art. It puts me through a level of self-criticism that hard-boils me.