John Cage: Insane In Modern Theatre

In Twentieth Century Theatre from the time of the Renaissance on, theatre seemed to be striving for total realism, or at least for the illusion of reality. As it reached that goal in the late 19th century, a multifaceted, antirealistic reaction erupted.

Many movements, generally lumped together as the avant-garde, attempted to suggest alternatives to the realistic drama and production. Paralleling modern art movements, various theoreticians turned to symbol, abstraction, and ritual in an attempt to revitalize the theatre. Although realism continues to be dominant in contemporary theatre, its earlier functions are now better served by television and film.

The originator of many antirealist ideas was the German opera composer Richard Wagner.
He studied with the American composers Henry Cowell and Adolph Weiss and the Austrian-born composer Arnold Schoenberg. In 1942 he settled in New York City. Influenced by Zen Buddhism, Cage often used silence as a musical element, with sounds as entities hanging in time, and he sought to achieve randomness in his music. In Music of Changes (1951), for piano, tone combinations occur in a sequence determined by casting lots. In 4 '33" (1952), the performers sit silently at instruments; the unconnected sounds of the environment are the music. Like Theatre Piece (1960), in which musicians, dancers, and mimes perform randomly selected tasks, 4 '33" dissolves the borders separating music, sound, and non-musical phenomena. In Cage 's pieces for prepared piano, such as Amores (1943), foreign objects modify the sounds of the piano strings. Interestingly Cage wrote dance works for Merce
Visually our performance was simple; we combined movement and drama, with the poem being read over the music. Although simple because we had five different people displaying their personal interpretation of the journey, we allowed the audience to choose what they looked at or focussed on, also we wanted the performance to reach peoples senses so that even if a member of the audience closed their eyes, we felt we had created such an apt atmosphere that they could still recognise what was happening. We wanted to create a calm, slowly paced experience, enabling the audience to take in all aspects of the piece, in hindsight I feel that the repetitive nature of our piece added to the atmosphere and nature of the piece where as at first I personally thought it could possibly be a hindrance, I feel that we achieved what we set out to do and put together a simple yet complex performance of our