Easily Slip into Another World by Henry Threadgill & Brent Hayes Edwards

Author:Henry Threadgill & Brent Hayes Edwards [Threadgill, Henry & Hayes Edwards, Brent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

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I haven’t played the hubkaphone in concert for years. It’s not that I no longer appreciate the palette it provides. But it’s gotten harder to keep up with the physical demands of playing the instrument, with all the choreography I developed.

The last time I used the hubkaphone for a production was in March 1994 at the Kaaitheater in Brussels, Belgium, for a show directed by Jan Ritsema called Philoktetes Variations. Featuring the American actor Ron Vawter (best known for his work with the Wooster Group) and Belgian performers Dirk Roofthooft and Viviane De Munck, it combined three different renditions of the story of Philoktetes, adapted from Sophocles’ late play. During the journey to Troy, the Greek general Philoktetes, a renowned archer who was bequeathed the magic bow and arrows of Heracles, is bitten on his foot by a snake. Unable to bear the sound of his moans and the stench of the festering wound, his compatriots abandon him on the uninhabited island of Lemnos. Years later, an oracle informs the Greeks that they will only be victorious against the Trojans with the help of Philoktetes. The play is set on Lemnos, as Odysseus goes with Neoptolemus, the young son of Achilles, to find their former colleague and convince him to come to Troy.

Philoktetes Variations sequenced three versions of the story in three languages. In Heiner Müller’s German, Odysseus (played by De Munck) takes center stage, rationalizing his abandonment of his friend with the argument that in times of crisis, the needs of the nation take precedence, even when it requires falsehoods and personal betrayals. In André Gide’s French version, Philoktetes’ status as an outcast lends him a moral authority; he rejects their pleas and remains in the solitude of his island exile. John Jesurun’s English is otherworldly, by turns crude and lyrical, coruscating and meandering, brimming with American slang and yet weirdly out of time. In it, Philoktetes speaks from beyond the grave to his former colleagues: “The cadaver will direct the autopsy, a talking corpse narrating.”

We rehearsed for weeks. I had prerecorded tapes as well as the hubkaphone and my alto and flute. Ritsema had me play on an aerial platform about twenty-five feet above the stage. I had to ride a Genie boom lift to get up there. I designed my own costume: I was supposed to be a sort of spirit haunting the action from the clouds, and I wore a white gown made out of gauzelike material. I had heavy makeup around my eyes, so the audience saw what looked like a spectral figure with bright eyes, floating in the air in a thicket of glinting metal. I had to be careful. It was like the houseboat in Amsterdam; the platform would sway as I moved around, and I had to make sure not to fall off.

The performance was given another layer of impact by the fact that Vawter was dying of AIDS. He spent much of the show naked, and the sight of

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