April 01, 2005

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Chaotic male-bonding

by Terry Tang

Men who watch "Slow Fire" shouldn't be alarmed if they begin to see themselves in the show's vulnerable anti-hero, Bob. Those everyman thoughts are pretty much what the creative minds behind-the-scenes intended.

"All the names are palindromes -- Bob, Dad," composer Paul Dresher said. "They're roles, not so much people. Bob is a name but it's a very generic name."

For Bob, Dad's salt-of-the-Earth mentality leaves him a recluse cowering in the material world of suburbia. Bob's fear and father-figure issues not only burst forth in hyper monologues, but in operatic verses. Accompanied by an electric guitar, keyboard and electric drums, the character of Bob sings, rants, runs around on-stage -- unabashedly projecting his madness and anxiety.

A razzle-dazzle fusion of musical genres and character drama, "Slow Fire" was conceived by Dresher and librettist Rinde Eckert two decades ago. Clearly, the production can still make sparks. The two men, along with electronic percussionist Gene Reffkin and original director Richard E.T. White, will reignite the production on Saturday at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium, where they initially premiered their work for Stanford Lively Arts. Just as it did 20 years ago, the critically dubbed "electric opera" defies categorization for typical theatre-goers. And the creators are just fine with that.

"I'm well-versed in the mainstream but I've never fit comfortably in any traditional category," said Dresher by phone from his Berkeley home. "I think my whole career has been about blurring the boundaries. 'Slow Fire' is about blurring the boundaries between rock 'n' roll, opera and music theater. Rinde and I really discovered our true voices working on that piece."

The two artists, who see each other as brothers, first hit it off in the '80s while both were teachers at the Cornish Institute of the Arts in Seattle. After a couple of years, they went in separate directions only to reunite in Northern California. The Bay Area at the time, said Dresher, was a "wonderful cauldron" where people were mixing traditional disciplines such as opera, chamber music and theater in non-traditional ways. And the composer recalled how Eckert, who would share excerpts from his journal, was an entertaining writer.

For executing his musical score, Dresher constructed his own four-track analogue tape-looping system. Using custom-made foot pedals, he was able to record and repeat different tracks while playing various instruments during any scene. This time, like most artists, Dresher will go digital. Using a device called the Oberheim Echoplex Digital Pro, he can layer as many as six tracks in synchronization for one musical section.

Music would remain a backbone for character and narrative. Neither Dresher nor Eckert, who played Bob, wanted to take those elements for granted and end up with a theatrical production driven by visual images. Otherwise, like watching a film, the audience would become passive and cushy observers of Bob's plight.

"That comfort becomes an anodyne," said Eckert, in a phone interview from his home in upstate New York. "We didn't want that to happen. We wanted this figure to be front and center. You have to deal with them. You can't relax. You're going to his world. You don't get to leave his world and disappear into a nice little movie. You stick it out with him -- all his weirdness and fear."

By 1985, the duo completed a first act and staged it for a mini-opera competition at the New Music America Festival in Los Angeles. "Slow Fire," which clocked in at about 35 minutes, ended up stealing the spotlight from what started out as a contest amid 5-10 minute operettas. The show went on to tour around the country and Europe for another 11 years. It was the first of three productions in the Paul Dresher Ensemble's "American Trilogy."

One theme that people responded to was the main character's inability to feel safe. Bob shoots out proverbs that "Dad" passed off to him as knowledge. Unlike his rural-minded patriarch, he has a home with must-have products to sing about: an automatic camera, a four-wheel drive with sheep-skin seat covers. But he can't maintain inner peace long enough to enjoy them or any human interaction.

As a result, Bob is left with few street smarts and cannot bring himself to trust anyone. Rooted in the Reagan Era, this notion isn't very farfetched in a post-9-11 world.

"I'd say America is a very paranoid place," Dresher said. "The idea of protecting yourself, your property is a very American thing and you do that through violence, through guns as opposed to more security or to protect yourself with more armor. Bob chose the armor route. We made him that way because it's a part of American culture."

However, Dresher emphasizes that the two-act piece is not a political commentary. Lacking a conventional plot, the core of "Slow Fire" is one man's isolation. The two hours spent examining the fractured father-son relationship through Bob's memories has struck familiar and familial territory for even the most jaded viewers.

"I've had guys come up to me in tears because they recognized their own fathers," Eckert said "It's their relationship to their father and [we] know it in a way that staggers them. Other people are simply delighted by the form it takes -- the strangeness of it, the comedy of it and the irony of it."

In fact, Eckert drew some inspiration for this chaotic male-bonding from his own family. His grandfather, he revealed, was not exactly "father of the year." And Eckert often mused how his father grew up to be a complete contrast.

"My grandfather was a troubled man and not a very nice man on top of it. You could mistake him for someone with a heart of gold and suddenly, he'd turn on you and be vicious -- not physically, but a vicious tongue," he said. "My father was the exact opposite. He was incredibly generous. It's interesting that he'd come from that type of father. I started to ask the question 'what happens? What do you do when your father doesn't have anything for you?' My father didn't have anyone to give him any good advice. He was a lost man."

Twenty years later, the only major changes to "Slow Fire" are internal. The first time around, Eckert was around Bob's age. Now in his 50s, the actor-singer-writer is more likely to get mistaken as Dad. The result, Dresher said, almost becomes a two-person drama. Eckert echoed the sentiment.

"Before I had a young man's sympathies for an older man," Eckert said. "Now I have an older man's sympathies for an older man; Bob the character does, too. In a sense, it's more tragic. At that age, you know there's no turning back."

Dresher, who taught composition seminars to Stanford undergrads and graduates in the music department last spring, is thrilled to recapture the show with his old collaborators at a familiar venue. At times, it's hard to believe 20 years have gone by and "Slow Fire" is now part of his "juvenilia" repertoire.

"Sometimes one goes back to one's earlier work and you sort of say 'I barely remember that or I'm not connected to that person. When I go back to 'Slow Fire,' I can completely trace that person. The choices I made then make complete sense to me. It's a piece that I still completely believe in."

What: The Paul Dresher Ensemble and Rinde Eckert in "Slow Fire," a multimedia theatrical blend of opera, rock, performance art, and electronic music at Stanford Lively Arts. A free post-performance discussion will follow.

Where: Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University.

When: Saturday at 8 p.m.

Cost: Tickets are $38/$34 adults; $19/$17 Stanford students. Half-price tickets are available for people aged 15 and under.

Info: For tickets and more information, contact the Stanford Ticket Office, located at Tresidder Memorial Union, at (650) 725-ARTS (2787) or visit http://livelyarts.stanford.edu.

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