<Begin Segment 54>

RS: You know, another thing that was happening just prior to all this time, too, was when I first became involved in performance. And this is something that was sort of stimulated by buying a video camera in 1984, I believe it was, and also goes back to my graduate days -- well actually, that one year I spent in graduate school at the University of Washington, taking part in some "happenings" as they were called at that point. And then when I got to Syracuse as a TA, I always introduced performance in my basic 3-D design classes. And I would shoot them with a Super 8 movie camera. And I also studied filmmaking when I was at Syracuse, and actually contemplated changing my major to filmmaking. And one of the jobs that I was offered was as a filmmaker when I got out of graduate school. So that interest in sort of linear, creative flow was, was always there.

And so, in '84 when I bought a video camera I began to -- because I knew some, this choreographer, and I had her come over with anywhere from one to three dancers. And in my studio we'd turn on the video camera and we would just sort of play. And they would wear costumes and we'd try different things. And then I started sort of assigning plots. I mean, I was recognizing how much these women looked like my paintings, you know, in their kimono. And so we would do these improvisational pieces where I would give them these little plots to work around and so on.

And then the opportunity came up one day to do a piece for the, what was called the Symposium of Contemporary Music. And, because they were having a difficult time getting people to come and listen to this music, they thought if they would have a live performance attached to this new music that they can appeal to a broader audience. So they asked me to not only pick a composer, but to do a performance. And so I jumped in and wrote this piece about Pearl Harbor, except in ukiyo-e style. So essentially it looked like one of my paintings, one of the diary paintings coming to life. And of course all this followed the diary paintings. So I did this, I think it was about a fifteen-minute piece, that was the Pearl Harbor day entry, and worked with Marsha Paludan, the choreographer. And she had a troupe of dancers that also joined in and, and it was called, I called it "The Kabuki Play Performance" or something like that because there was a lot of parody of kabuki play in it. And I had these figures dressed in black that were called kurogo in kabuki theater that were stage assistants and they would run around and move props and help change costumes and all of that. So the piece turned out to be a real hit, just from friends of mine. There were three or four hundred people in the audience and, but I always remember sitting in the back of the theater because they were all rehearsed, ready to go. And the music went on, and sitting in the back there, and I literally got goosebumps, and they were goosebumps of fear. And I had no idea what I was doing at that point. I had no idea the value of what was about to take place on the stage, because it certainly wasn't traditional theater and I was working on a very intuitive level, things that interested me. And it was -- it paralleled, like, maybe doing your first painting and showing it to the public. And that's what I was feeling. There were people from the theater department there and everything, you know, these critical, jaded eyes that were about to see this silly thing that I put together on stage, and I was absolutely petrified. And I was this close to running out of the theater, and just like pulling the plugs and saying, "Just kidding," and not letting anybody see it and getting the hell out.

MT: So what was the reaction?

RS: The reaction was, it was standing ovation. And I, you know, I didn't know how to deal with that. But the addiction had, at that point, had set. I knew I wanted to do more of it.

AI: So you continued on with developing more --

RS: I continued on. I decided that I would do a full-length performance with this being the first act. And so I made arrangements to do, because the response was so good, and the word sort of spread, I decided to write two more acts, which would be two more diary entries, and that I would do those three at another venue, which I did in Topeka. And then, several months later I added two more diary entries on it. So there were five altogether. And I did that in Emporia, Kansas, at a big theater. And then, I wanted two more acts. And we ended up doing that at a place called Southwestern College outside of Wichita. And so that was the completion of what was called the "7 Kabuki Plays Project."

AI: So, as you say, when you were first doing that first piece, on a very intuitive level, but looking back at it afterwards, what do you think worked so well about those pieces?

RS: Uh, I think, I think in some ways the fact that they looked like -- they had a tremendous visual appeal. And I realized at some point, how driven I was by the way the performances looked, that they moved, they kept moving like this. And they were like moving paintings. I mean, the figures were moving, background was moving all these things were moving constantly. And I think that was sort of a maybe a slightly unique vision to have of theater, as this kind of tableaux where things constantly move like this. I don't think that would be nearly as impressive today, but back then, I think, I think maybe it was, because we went to such great lengths to care about what it looked like and we'd get into these very complex series of movements, just to gain one effect, and usually done in a very primitive sort of way. But because we rehearsed and rehearsed, rehearsed, when they did work it was, it was really quite beautiful. I look at some of those old video tapes now and part of them looked extremely crude. I mean, I'm reluctant to even share that with other people, but on the other hand there were moments that they were incredibly beautiful. And I wish I could just sort of steal those and represent the whole piece by those, those moments, but obviously I can't.

MT: So you said that you worked with a choreographer and some dancers. Did you ever, at that time work with a theater director or a --

RS: No.

MT: -- playwright to work on that end of it?

RS: No. That's what I thought my role was, the sort of meat of it. I worked with professional lighting people. I worked with professional costume designers, professional choreographers, but the writing of the piece was all mine. And I was really afraid to ask for advice or for criticism because I sort of felt like the bubble would burst in a way. I mean, there was a certain naivete about how I was approaching it. And I really relied upon that and frankly was frightened to death to ever ask a professional how was I -- how I was doing. But I also know that Paul Stephen Lim, for example, is a quite well-known Asian American playwright, is on our faculty, our faculty, he's in the English department, but he teaches playwriting. And he came to all of the performances and told me how much he liked them. And that was, that's all I needed, was to hear that and it didn't matter at that point.

<End Segment 54> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.