Questions & Answers
1997 — Burn The Quilt
Coates, Dresher and Eckert
Can you tell me more about Coates, Dresher, and Eckert?
From Wikipedia:
George Coates (born March 19, 1952) is an American theater director most notable for his work with George Coates Performance Works (GCPW), which he founded in 1977 in San Francisco, CA.
In the 1990s, he was the first to merge live performers within stage environments created by computer generated graphics in real time live theater. Coates became known as a pioneer of experimental live theater using stereographic projections and 3-D glasses populated by live actors and musicians.
In 1976, Coates began creating original works with performers including movement artists, opera and gospel singers presented non-traditional formats in a theatrical context. His first major piece, 2019 Blake, was the story of a performer who can't keep a linear train of thought, performed by mime Leonard Pitt with a few props. His next one-man show, Duykers The First, featured operatic tenor John Duykers.
The Way of How, performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in 1983, included the same performers, operatic tenor Rinde Eckert, and a real time analog sound processing system invented by composer Paul Dresher that created the sound of an ensemble playing when a performer laid down multiple tracks on a tape loop.
Commissioned in 1986 by William Cook and "American Inroads" for their San Francisco New Performance Festival, Actual Sho was created through eight months of improvisation, utilized an original design of a tilting, rolling stage. Actual Sho premiered in Stuttgart, West Germany on June 25, 1987 before its inclusion in the 1987 New Performance Festival. It was performed in Yugoslavia, Poland, the Kennedy Center's San Francisco Festival in Washington, D.C., the Pepsico Summerfare Festival in Purchase, NY, the BITEF Festival in Belgrade and Herbst Theater in San Francisco.
www.dresherensemble.org/performances15-17/schick-machine/
Composed by Dresher, directed by Eckert, December 15-17, 2023 at Z Space, 450 Florida Street, San Francisco.
George Coates is the performance art father of Paul Dresher and Rinde Eckert, who split from Coates in the mid-1980’s to form the Paul Dresher Ensemble. Rinde’s work with Dresher consists of their Opera Trilogy from 1986-1992, Slow Fire, Power Failure, and Pioneers. Coates’ Actual Shō (1986) was a revelation and a worldwide smash. That’s the one that has the guy opening the show saying “The temperature of the artist is 98.6 degrees. Let’s go!”
www.rindeeckert.com/slow-fire-1992
Paul Dresher Ensemble/Rinde Eckert, first workshopped in 1986, I swept floors for Rinde in 1987 for their second workshop production.
My head is shaved in part as a tribute to Rinde Eckert and his influence on my art, my style, my composition, my brawling grace on stage and in life. He showed me how to howl an anthem.
I met Rinde shortly after I arrived in San Francisco in the spring of 1986. An organization called Theatre Bay Area was producing new music theatre workshops at Fort Mason on the north shore of the City (a former Navy deployment depot of WWII fame that was given to the City decades ago as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area).
I went to their auditions and landed a role in a chamber opera called Least Of My Children – a retelling of the manifestation of Our Lady of Guadalupe via a gay San Francisco couple dealing with final-stage AIDS. Rinde Eckert was the director for this staged reading.
“Mystical Rose, Star of the morning,
Gateway to Heaven, Mother divine,
Font of my happiness, mankind adorning,
Virgin of Virgins, Queen of my heart.”
A gorgeous tune for lyric baritone in a quick 12/8 meter. That’s what I sang, just those eight bars. I sightread it straightaway and there’s Rinde, big ol’ shaved head and wide-open Iowa face, grinning like the Cheshire Cat and nodding his head up and down like crazy. “Yes, I see a role for you here.”
Going home from rehearsal one day, Rinde and I were riding with a company member and they were talking about Rinde’s latest project. She said, “I just wish more people knew about just what it is that you do.” I asked Rinde, “Just what is it that you do?” They looked at each other and grinned. Rinde said, “Come to our workshop performance next week, I’ll comp you in.” The workshop was Slow Fire and Chris it rewrote my world.
The following year, I volunteered to be Rinde’s rehearsal assistant on the second workshop of Slow Fire and seeing Rinde work with the director Richard E.T. White was like a graduate-level seminar in imagistic semiotics.
If Coates was their grandfather, I’m his grandson in direct lineage. During school at Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island, I’d played music and jammed at a space called A.S. 220 (Alternative Space at 220 Weybosset Street) that had taken over a couple of floors of a downtown office building and converted them to art/performance space. Umberto Rocha, Scott Seaboldt, and Peter Doyle were the founders; Scott Seaboldt (another shaved head) was an undergrad at the Rhode Island School of Design in sculpture who came to me for voice coaching; we hit it off, and in 1991 while Scott was in grad school at the SF Art Institute, he was the art director for Pieces of Jesus. “You are the show, man,” he told me when I was struggling during rehearsal – that’s stuck with me.
AS 220 became a landmark art space, and Umberto and Peter’s works plowed the ground of my imagination; I “got” their work in ways that others didn’t, and they noticed that and called it out, preparing me for the bigger visions of George and Paul and Rinde. Couldn’t have asked for a better path into this widely disdained in vernacular concept but inconceivably vital life’s work in hardcore practice gig. Performance Art is not just a noble calling, it’s the best gig in show business.
From Wikipedia:
George Coates (born March 19, 1952) is an American theater director most notable for his work with George Coates Performance Works (GCPW), which he founded in 1977 in San Francisco, CA.
In the 1990s, he was the first to merge live performers within stage environments created by computer generated graphics in real time live theater. Coates became known as a pioneer of experimental live theater using stereographic projections and 3-D glasses populated by live actors and musicians.
In 1976, Coates began creating original works with performers including movement artists, opera and gospel singers presented non-traditional formats in a theatrical context. His first major piece, 2019 Blake, was the story of a performer who can't keep a linear train of thought, performed by mime Leonard Pitt with a few props. His next one-man show, Duykers The First, featured operatic tenor John Duykers.
The Way of How, performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in 1983, included the same performers, operatic tenor Rinde Eckert, and a real time analog sound processing system invented by composer Paul Dresher that created the sound of an ensemble playing when a performer laid down multiple tracks on a tape loop.
Commissioned in 1986 by William Cook and "American Inroads" for their San Francisco New Performance Festival, Actual Sho was created through eight months of improvisation, utilized an original design of a tilting, rolling stage. Actual Sho premiered in Stuttgart, West Germany on June 25, 1987 before its inclusion in the 1987 New Performance Festival. It was performed in Yugoslavia, Poland, the Kennedy Center's San Francisco Festival in Washington, D.C., the Pepsico Summerfare Festival in Purchase, NY, the BITEF Festival in Belgrade and Herbst Theater in San Francisco.
www.dresherensemble.org/performances15-17/schick-machine/
Composed by Dresher, directed by Eckert, December 15-17, 2023 at Z Space, 450 Florida Street, San Francisco.
George Coates is the performance art father of Paul Dresher and Rinde Eckert, who split from Coates in the mid-1980’s to form the Paul Dresher Ensemble. Rinde’s work with Dresher consists of their Opera Trilogy from 1986-1992, Slow Fire, Power Failure, and Pioneers. Coates’ Actual Shō (1986) was a revelation and a worldwide smash. That’s the one that has the guy opening the show saying “The temperature of the artist is 98.6 degrees. Let’s go!”
www.rindeeckert.com/slow-fire-1992
Paul Dresher Ensemble/Rinde Eckert, first workshopped in 1986, I swept floors for Rinde in 1987 for their second workshop production.
My head is shaved in part as a tribute to Rinde Eckert and his influence on my art, my style, my composition, my brawling grace on stage and in life. He showed me how to howl an anthem.
I met Rinde shortly after I arrived in San Francisco in the spring of 1986. An organization called Theatre Bay Area was producing new music theatre workshops at Fort Mason on the north shore of the City (a former Navy deployment depot of WWII fame that was given to the City decades ago as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area).
I went to their auditions and landed a role in a chamber opera called Least Of My Children – a retelling of the manifestation of Our Lady of Guadalupe via a gay San Francisco couple dealing with final-stage AIDS. Rinde Eckert was the director for this staged reading.
“Mystical Rose, Star of the morning,
Gateway to Heaven, Mother divine,
Font of my happiness, mankind adorning,
Virgin of Virgins, Queen of my heart.”
A gorgeous tune for lyric baritone in a quick 12/8 meter. That’s what I sang, just those eight bars. I sightread it straightaway and there’s Rinde, big ol’ shaved head and wide-open Iowa face, grinning like the Cheshire Cat and nodding his head up and down like crazy. “Yes, I see a role for you here.”
Going home from rehearsal one day, Rinde and I were riding with a company member and they were talking about Rinde’s latest project. She said, “I just wish more people knew about just what it is that you do.” I asked Rinde, “Just what is it that you do?” They looked at each other and grinned. Rinde said, “Come to our workshop performance next week, I’ll comp you in.” The workshop was Slow Fire and Chris it rewrote my world.
The following year, I volunteered to be Rinde’s rehearsal assistant on the second workshop of Slow Fire and seeing Rinde work with the director Richard E.T. White was like a graduate-level seminar in imagistic semiotics.
If Coates was their grandfather, I’m his grandson in direct lineage. During school at Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island, I’d played music and jammed at a space called A.S. 220 (Alternative Space at 220 Weybosset Street) that had taken over a couple of floors of a downtown office building and converted them to art/performance space. Umberto Rocha, Scott Seaboldt, and Peter Doyle were the founders; Scott Seaboldt (another shaved head) was an undergrad at the Rhode Island School of Design in sculpture who came to me for voice coaching; we hit it off, and in 1991 while Scott was in grad school at the SF Art Institute, he was the art director for Pieces of Jesus. “You are the show, man,” he told me when I was struggling during rehearsal – that’s stuck with me.
AS 220 became a landmark art space, and Umberto and Peter’s works plowed the ground of my imagination; I “got” their work in ways that others didn’t, and they noticed that and called it out, preparing me for the bigger visions of George and Paul and Rinde. Couldn’t have asked for a better path into this widely disdained in vernacular concept but inconceivably vital life’s work in hardcore practice gig. Performance Art is not just a noble calling, it’s the best gig in show business.