Desperately Seeking Rimbaud

The Civilians’ production of Rimbaud in New York, written and directed by Steve Cosson, with poems by Arthur Rimbaud translated by John Ashbery and produced by BAM with major support from the Poetry Foundation, runs at the BAM Fisher from March 1—6.

By Steve Cosson

Last season I had the good fortune to direct Joely Richardson in the one-woman show about Emily Dickinson by William Luce, The Belle of Amherst. That show, originally created for Julie Harris in the 70s, invented a kind of theatrical language for making theater about a writer and a writer’s work. I learned much from this form, and learned even more in the rehearsal room with Joely as I followed her emotional and mental intelligence into a deep excavation of the poems.

Art Shading Into Theater—Alexandre Singh interviewed by Steve Cosson

Flora Sans, Sanna Elon Vrij, Sanne den Besten, Gerty Van de Perre, Amir Vahidi, Philip Edgerley. Photo: Sanne Peper 

Alexandre Singh's The Humans comes to the BAM Fisher on Nov. 13. Singh, best-known as a visual artist, has taken on no less than the creation of the universe in this theatrical production, based on Aristophanes. He spoke with Steve Cosson, who directed ETHEL's Documerica earlier in the Next Wave Festival, as well as last year's production of Paris Commune by The Civilians.
 
Steve Cosson: What can you do in theater that you’ve never done before? 
Alexandre Singh: This isn’t by any means unique to theater, but this is the longest project I’ve worked on in terms of research and development. Definitely the most fully developed in terms of the script, visual elements, the work with the actors, the chorus, the costumes, the dance. Everything. It was such a pleasure to really be able to flesh out an entire world, and to do so with such talented and imaginative collaborators.

SC: In creating this show were there any aspects of theatrical norms that you were consciously avoiding or working against?
AS: I can’t really say that I’m familiar enough with contemporary theater to know what its norms might be. Not that I’ve chosen to be deliberately naive about it. I couldn’t tell you for that matter what the norms in visual art are either. Sad to say: I spend almost all my time squirrelled away, scratching out my own work. But there are a few what I might term "stylistic" choices that I’ve come across and that I did avoid in this play. I’m not a fan of video projection in theater. I wouldn’t rule it out, per se, but I think it’s quite difficult to reconcile with the materiality of the world on stage. I also much prefer live music and foley to prerecorded sound for much the same reason. What attracts me to theater—and this may seem surprising given the apparent exuberance of The Humans—is its potential to be simple and direct.

SC: Do you consider The Humans to be theater? Or performance? Or is that distinction important to you?
AS: They’re just such broad terms. With regards to The Humans: it’s theater—because, well—it’s a play. Certainly there’s dance and music there as well as certain strong visual ideas that are present throughout. But all of those things are woven into what is at its heart: a quite orthodox piece of theater. Of course when you sit down on any given night to watch it: that’s "a performance."

The BAM Fisher Files: Steven Cosson

Steven Cosson is a co-writer and director of Paris Commune, which runs from October 4—7 at the BAM Fisher. 

Our Show: This theatrical event revives the radical cabaret of 19th-century Paris to tell the story of the Paris Commune, a spontaneous popular uprising of working-class Parisians in 1871. Arguably the first socialist revolution in Europe, the Paris Commune was an anarchic festival of the underclass. While the Commune was violently defeated, its legacy inspired a century of revolution and change.

Sights and Sounds:

The music ranges from raucous popular songs to opera, from rude and hilarious satires of the Emperor to the future communist anthem “The Internationale,” written by Commune leader Eugène Pottier, and Communard Jean-Baptiste Clément’s “Cherries of Spring,” which became the anthem of May’68. All songs speak directly to the events of the Commune using a variety of narrative and visual techniques to tell the story, such as a Can-Can that charts the history of France in two minutes.