Slow Fire
1988 – Part One of the American Trilogy
CD and cassette recordings, as well as a video are available.
Original
Stage Production Credits:
Directed by Richard E.T. White
Produced by Robin Kirck
Composed by Paul Dresher
Written by Rinde Eckert
Singer/Performer: Rinde
Eckert
Guitar, Keyboard, Electronics:
Paul Dresher
Percussion: Gene Reffkin
Larry Neff
Lighting Design
Jay Cloidt Sound Design
Melissa Weaver Production Director
Delphi Technical Services & Design Consultation
George Lakoff Linguistic Consultant
David Hyry & Associates Marketing And Public Relations
Kate Edmunds Visual Design Consultant
Leonard Pitt Movement Consultant
Rowie Kirck Costume Construction
Rena Shagan & Associates, NY Booking Agent
SLOW FIRE is part one of the Paul Dresher Ensemble's American Trilogy. Followed by the second installment, POWER FAILURE, the trilogy was completed in 1990 with PIONEER.
Tape loop system designed and built by Paul Tydelski and Paul Dresher
Special thanks to Jana Hawley, Chris McFee, Alex Nichols, Fides Krucker, Jeremy Hamm, Roxanne Merryfield, Carrie Boram, and Theater Artaud
SLOW
FIRE was commissioned by New Music America '85 and produced
with the Mark Taper Forum and the American Music Theater Festival.
Support for the production was provided by the National Endowment
for the Arts, California Arts Council, Lila Acheson Wallace-Reader's
Digest Fund, Zellerbach Family Fund, Betty Freeman, the Los
Angeles Opera Association and the Los Angeles Theater Center.
Artist Statement – SLOW FIRE AT TWENTY YEARS
When the Paul Dresher Ensemble last performed Slow Fire in
1996 – eleven years and nearly 200 performances after
Rinde, Gene and I, in a basement jam session, started discovering
the music and words for the comically disturbing everyman
characters Bob and Dad – we promised ourselves (and our
audiences) that it was time for Bob and Dad to go bed, permanently.
But as Rinde and I have collectively and individually toured
around the United States and Europe since then, we are continually
pleased to be approached by people who saw Slow Fire, considered
it a seminal event, and still hope for yet another chance
to see it, this time with their partner and/or children. There
was something about Bob and Dad that resonated with most of
our audiences, who could see in these figures a part of themselves,
their fathers, or someone close from their past. Thus the
work developed a remarkably broad spectrum of audiences beyond
its own origins in the contemporary performing arts. These
included fans of traditional opera, rock and roll, modern
dance, the visual arts, and even large numbers of children.
But Slow Fire was never just a character study of a familiarly
comic but dangerous buffoon. Bob and Dad’s outlook contained
the attributes of a world view that, when written large, reflected
some of the darker consequences of American attitudes: the
hubris of “manifest destiny”, the despoiling of
the environment and destruction of indigenous cultures in
the name of progress and property, and the obsessive enforcement
of power, not in a self-questioning culture of ideas and principles,
but in a climate that poses the threat (and actuality) of
violence. While Slow Fire in is no way an explicit political
critique of American policies, it offers engaging characters
whose behavior asks that we reflect on the larger consequences
of their actions. Slow Fire was created in the political cauldron
of the mid 1980’s, during the Reagan presidency, soon
after Vietnam, and during our now nearly forgotten but very
violent adventures in Central America. The fears and anger
wrought by 9/11 have sadly propelled the American public on
a course that plays into and amplifies these most dangerous
of American inclinations toward the exercise of power. We
hope that Slow Fire will offer audiences a renewed opportunity
to reflect upon the connection between our choices and actions
as individuals and our current condition and choices as a
nation.
Slow Fire was, individually and collectively, a defining work
for each of us, launching our long-time collaboration, our
individual careers as artists, and the Ensemble as one of
the leading producing and touring groups in the field of new
opera/music theater. Thus it is with both gratitude and great
expectations that we offer the work again in a 20th Anniversary
tour.
Paul Dresher
August 2003
SLOW FIRE gives us a glimpse into the thoughts of one man in isolation. Through operatic aria, speech, frenzied falsetto and declamatory incantations, his language vacillates between common clichés and poetic soliloquy. The first of three works in the "American Trilogy," SLOW FIRE conjures up the imbalances and dark passions lurking behind the "normal" veneer of middle-class American life. Writer and performer Rinde Eckert plays ‘Bob,’ a man caught between the American dream of success and consumerism and the alienating psychoses of contemporary urban living. Although the action takes place all in one weekend, Bob’s story unfolds through memories and fragmentary thoughts; only at the end are his deadly secrets finally revealed. Bob’s life balances precariously on the banality of day-to-day practicalities and the intricacies of a disturbed psyche. Through his reminiscences we hear the voice of Bob’s father, who conjures up an old-fashioned rural wisdom and reverence for land, clashing with Bob’s urban consumerism. Haunted by paranoia, he sleeps with the lights on and panics when he hears a knock on the door; Bob also has the ability to transform ordinary objects (a cardboard tube, a flashlight) into personal, mystical totems.
Composer Dresher uses a tape delay system of his own invention to create a densely layered and richly evocative score, infused with the propulsive rhythms of rock and roll. His delay system manipulates the elements of language to accentuate the unsettling sense of fragmentation. Dresher, playing electric guitar and synthesizers, and percussionist Gene Reffkin perform at either side of the spare stage. SLOW FIRE was developed by Dresher, Eckert and director Richard E. T. White.
SLOW FIRE premiered in
its final form in February 1988 at Theater Artaud in San Francisco.
Its first one-act version premiered at the Mark Taper Forum
in Los Angeles in 1985. It has received rave reviews proclaiming
it a masterpiece. SLOW FIRE was commissioned by New Music
America and American Music Theater Festival and was produced
by Robin Kirck.
Act One:
Glimpses of Bob. He remembers his Dad. He asks questions.
After a phone call, bedtime. Did he lock the car?
He settles down, he drifts.
Saturday: scrapwood for a decoy, Dad says "Fire into the clouds."
Act Two:
A noise at the door. He rifles the Sunday paper.
He practices the art of self defense.
He looks at his scrapbook.
Bob and his Dad on their last trip.
The weekend is over. Eyes open, he starts his day.
