The Boy Who Went Outside

Long time no blogging! (My generational markers are showing in this regard.)

I finally-- as of the last workshop we did last summer-- seem to have figured out what this beast is. And it HAS been the most vexing and perplexing piece to figure out.

The story of Harry Partch is now in the frame of another story, a playwright trying to write a fictional account of this artist's life, work and struggles. it's now much more layered and complex. So, The Boy Who Went Outsideis explores the impossible enterprise of a writer who is attempting to write an impossible play based on the life and struggles of an impossible artist. Fun!

What drives artists to sacrifice everything, their health, their personal safety and security, even their sanity, to realize their work? Are they/we actually in the grip of a delusion that operates, if barely, on the threshold of what is socially acceptable? 

For a refresher, The Boy Who Went Outsideis is based on an actual figure, the American musical revolutionary Harry Partch (1901-1974), one of the most individualistic artists of the last century. Partch was both a composer and an innovative theorist who broke through the centuries-long stranglehold of one tuning system for all of Western music. In the 1920s and 30’s he formulated a new theory of tuning, based upon ancient Greek, non-Western and pre-Classical musical forms. He identified, codified and scored the audible musical material in between the twelve tones and semi-tones of the “traditional” octave, and proposed a vastly expanded idea of harmony based on the use of microtones. He invented and built more than twenty-five beautiful instruments to play his music, and pioneered astonishing hybrid performance forms that combined music and theatre in the early 1950s.

Partch was an outsider in every way: alienated from his family, he spent much time alone; he was openly homosexual in a time when it was very difficult and dangerous to be so; he hitch-hiked and rode the rails as a hobo and itinerant worker in the 30s. He was a rebel who fought relentlessly against the established musical order, and was frequently mocked and dismissed. Meanwhile, he went on, creating new instruments, writing music that was celebrated by a few people, and misunderstood by many, living a marginal and nomadic existence. Both his work, and the narrative of his life, align with archetype of the rebel, and rebels are always compelling figures. And like all rebels, he was perceived as a threat: the musical establishment has done much to suppress knowledge of him and his work, and his radical contributions to the art form.

So, this show is set to go into rehearsal on May 3. We're only doing ONE WEEK at Performance Works on Granville Island. The design team is Conor Moore (set), Barb Clayden (costumes), Adrian Muir (lighting) and Lee Gelatly (music and sound). The actors are Meghan Gardiner, Anna Hagan, Terry Kelly, Josue Laboucane, Michael Mori and Linda Quibell.