Why were you attracted to “Liberty’s Taken”?
It represented a kind of handmade America. An America that didn’t know where it was going, but it could make things by hand. There were two characters in it: one as Jonathan Corncob and the other was Susannah Wills. Jonathan was a scamp, not unlike Tom Jones, who believed in complete personal freedom. Susannah was a woman disguised as a man fighting in the American Revolution who believed you couldn’t have personal freedom until you have freedom in society.
What attracted me to it was that it was completely ruckus, bawdy, and you could orchestrate it with instruments that you wouldn’t normally associate with theater, like a hammer dulcimer, certain types of flutes, and fifes. You could really make it a ruckus kind of celebration of America, when America didn’t know what America was going to be, but they knew what it didn’t want to be.
Also, in the spirit of the women that made these patchwork quilts, who would work for hours and hours, sit around, and talk about stuff and create this amazing art that’s just so American. I think that’s what attracted us to it, as well as Norman Lear who produced it and put the money up for it.
What was the story dealing with these characters?
Jonathan wanted to be a privateer and make as much money as he could, which meant that you were not affiliated with any governmental or rebel army, that you could be a pirate basically; while Susannah wanted to be part of the American Revolutionary army. His goal was to find his Uncle Winters, who lived in Barbados and had this vast plantation. He thought of him as the ultimate independent man who did whatever he wanted to do. When he finally got there he found him to be a disgusting slave owner, who eventually he rebelled against, and that brought him closer to the woman who he thought he was diametrically opposed to.
In the same token she went out into the battlefield disguised as a man and eventually had to kill a man because he deserted camp. She had to shoot somebody that she was really fond of because she was a soldier. At the same time, her mind started to go into him, the Jonathan character, saying, ‘This is terrible; this is not what I wanted.’ It’s about desire for what you dream of in the world and how things don’t take you there, and you need the other half of the coin to get you there.
Was it the visualization of the play or the story or both that influenced the music?
The music was simultaneous to the visuals, so the story was the motivating factor in this. We would all express our opinions as to what the visuals would look like or what the music would sound like. The music was very bony-sounding; it had the influences that America was influenced by in the eighteenth century. It had a strong Irish influence, that kind of fiddling; English-, Irish-, and a very strong French-fiddling type of influence. The Arcadians, who later became the Cajun people, had a certain type of fiddle-playing; they have a certain way of playing the violin, which is very well-known down south. It also had a tremendous amount of rhythm to it that represented the Afro- and Native American. There was a very wide melodic landscape, but what brought it all together was the orchestration, which was with hammer dulcimer, violin, fife, harmonium, synthesizer early on, and two percussionists. It had a very bony sound.
So what was your real challenge in this project?
The challenge was trying to find a contemporary voice, but looking back and finding those strands of music that were homemade and American at that time. You felt like you were in 1776, but you also realize that you’re in a theater now, in a very raw way, not in a cultured English way, but like what the people on the streets would be playing.
Did you achieve what you set out to do here?
No, I achieved halfway. The eighteenth century feeling I got. I don’t think I got the contemporary thing right. But if I had another chance at it I’d figure out a way to blend them both a lot better.