The Boy Who Went Outside: noble attempt despite shortsighted estate
What a great concept for a play. Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument maker who, according to Wikipedia, “was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit (43-tone) just intonation”.
Unless you’re a music nerd, that may not make a whole lot of sense. Basically, if I followed the central argument correctly, to Partch’s ear the scale that forms the basis of Western music is limited and crude and his objective was to create instruments and compose music that would make use of a more sophisticated, smoother scale. There is some fascinating stuff in here about the basic underpinnings of culture, both Western and Eastern, and how Western music, because of the missing notes in the scale, the gaps as it were, has an agitating quality to it; a quality that put us into a restless rather than meditative state (as, say, Eastern music can). If you think of music as being the most basic of human expressions (deeper than even language) you can imagine how this could unfold into a series of reflections about the West and our attitudes to our fellow humans, nature, the universe and all that.
Pretty cool, huh? These are complicated ideas to translate into a dramatic form and in a sense Conrad Alexandrowicz only gets partway there. Long sequences of The Boy Who Went Outside, produced recently by Wild Excursions Productions, have the feel of an illustrated lecture – maybe something you’d see on the Discovery Channel. These are generally well handled and if you find the information thought-provoking – as I did – you’d probably enjoy the play for this element alone. However, it is not inherently dramatic. To provide some narrative juice, Alexandrowicz builds his piece around the story of Lilly, a playwright who has been commissioned to write a play about Confederation but whose obsessions over the American composer trumps her interest in Canadian history. She instead finds herself trying to write the life of Partch. As a playwright, I found this a compelling approach. I was particularly moved by the fact that the emotional centre of the piece is the relationship between Lilly and “her” character of Partch and her inability to let him go when it’s time to move on. By using Lilly as the framing device, the play has many post-modern tricks up its sleeve, most notably Lilly chatting to her characters and reworking the scenes to better suit their temperaments or situations. While these work quite well and are often fun, for some reason the Lilly device didn’t feel organic or true to the central theme of Partch’s work, as articulated by the piece itself. I also wonder whether Lilly proved to be one step too far from Alexandrowicz himself and the struggles he faced in pulling this project together.
The biggest struggle he faced was with Partch’s estate (the composer died in 1974). Alexandrowicz was refused the rights to use samples of the man’s work and the production was thus robbed of a vital component. While Lee Gellatly and Patrick Pennefather provide beguiling replacements, the play does have the feel of a tease about it; I was dying to hear some of Partch’s music for myself. Once again the perniciousness of copyright manifests itself. There is not a shred of doubt that what Alexandrowciz wanted to do with this play was an honouring exercise– and to have it undermined by a dead man’s estate is, frankly, sick-making. These people are not Partch and whether they like it or not his work has now passed into the world pantheon. It should be available to all artists to seek inspiration and use as they see fit. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: in my world, copyright dies with the artist. Screw the descendents. Who the hell are they? As near as I can make it, the refusal of Partch’s estate is simply stopping the process of building awareness of his achievements. Not sure who benefits there.
I imagine that this was why Alexandrowciz chose to make the piece about the writing of a play about Partch. Unfortunately, contrary to popular imagination (perhaps fed by artists themselves), artists don’t always live the most interesting of lives. They usually spend great gobs of their time on earth creating work. This is not necessarily the most gripping and dramatic of past-times. You have to hope that they have had an extensive and varied sex life to spice things up. Partch does his best for Alexandrowicz on this score but it’s still not enough to get us into fully satisfying dramatic territory. Ultimately – despite many compelling elements – the play felt fragmented to me.
Still, Alexandrowicz has gathered a great cast to bring his work to life. Linda Quibell is an absolute natural at playing Lilly and must have had the time of her life performing in pyjamas. The other five performers take turns at playing Partch, a jacket handed to each in turn. Richard Newman brings an authentic gravelliness to the misunderstood genius while Josue Laboucane brings a wonderful sense of youthful experimentation. The other performers, Anna Hagan, Meghan Gardiner and Michael Mori are uniformly strong as both Partch and the other characters who populate his life. Gardiner also has a nice turn as a playwright-eating agent that made me slightly envious of Lilly’s position in the Canadian theatrical firmament. Wish I had someone so switched on batting for me.
The Boy Who Went Outside was a Wild Excursions Performance production. It ran at the Roundhouse May 27 - 30, 2010. You can find out more here. For more on the four day run check this out.