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ONCE FIVE YEARS PASS is an ongoing work-in-progress Opera-Theatre Spectacle based closely on Federico García Lorca's surrealist play Así Que Pasen Cinco Años.
Translation and libretto by Dustin Wills Music composition and orchestration by Daniel Schlosberg. “Beneath the poetry of the text there is the actual poetry, without form and without text.” – Antonin Artaud |
Once Five Years Pass (August 1931) is a kaleidoscopic story of homosexual awakening, reckoning, and torture. Its layers are rich and complex, heavily influenced by surrealism and Andelusian tradition - both cultural and social. It is a play created in a world bereft of any public queer discourse or even adequate language – an endless desert to those who felt different. It therefore makes sense that much of Once Five Years Pass is understood in coded visual symbols, embodiment of the subconscious, and paradoxes.
It is Lorca’s most personal work and his only play with a male protagonist: A Young Man afraid to grow up, who is comfortable in his child-like pre-sexual and dream-like state. He is afraid that his fiancée - whom he met as a child - will, once five years pass, become a fully-grown woman. He is terrified of reckoning with the power of his forbidden (homosexual) desire and crippled by his fear of being unable to procreate and produce a son to carry on his bloodline – without which the Young Man becomes, in essence, the murderer of his entire family. The women he pursues both innately understand that his desire for them is purely procreational and not connected in any way to passionate desire, and because of this they both retreat from his pursuits leaving him alone and childless. Because of this crime he must be put to death by the Card Players, who act as executioners. In a frightening coincidence, five years to the day - August 18, 1936 - after Lorca completed the first draft of Once Five Years Pass he was captured by the fascist Franca regime while hiding in a friend’s home (awaiting a flight to take refuge in Mexico with his young male lover). Many sources claim he was working on revising this very play while in hiding. Two days later Lorca was executed by firing squad, though neither his body nor the alleged revised draft of this play were ever recovered.
“Comprendí que me habían asesinado.
Recorrieron los cafés y los cementerios y las iglesias,
abrieron los toneles y los armarios,
destrozaron tres esqueletos para arrancar sus dientes de oro.
Ya no me encontraron.
¿No me encontraron?
No. No me encontraron.”
Fábula y rueda de los tres amigos
Poeta in Nueva York (1929), Federico García Lorca
ONCE FIVE YEARS PASS received developmental support as part of the 2015 Directors Commission, a partnership of the Williamstown Theatre Festival (Mandy Greenfield, Artistic Director) and the Drama League of New York (Roger T. Danforth, Artistic Director and Gabriel Shanks, Executive Director).
It is Lorca’s most personal work and his only play with a male protagonist: A Young Man afraid to grow up, who is comfortable in his child-like pre-sexual and dream-like state. He is afraid that his fiancée - whom he met as a child - will, once five years pass, become a fully-grown woman. He is terrified of reckoning with the power of his forbidden (homosexual) desire and crippled by his fear of being unable to procreate and produce a son to carry on his bloodline – without which the Young Man becomes, in essence, the murderer of his entire family. The women he pursues both innately understand that his desire for them is purely procreational and not connected in any way to passionate desire, and because of this they both retreat from his pursuits leaving him alone and childless. Because of this crime he must be put to death by the Card Players, who act as executioners. In a frightening coincidence, five years to the day - August 18, 1936 - after Lorca completed the first draft of Once Five Years Pass he was captured by the fascist Franca regime while hiding in a friend’s home (awaiting a flight to take refuge in Mexico with his young male lover). Many sources claim he was working on revising this very play while in hiding. Two days later Lorca was executed by firing squad, though neither his body nor the alleged revised draft of this play were ever recovered.
“Comprendí que me habían asesinado.
Recorrieron los cafés y los cementerios y las iglesias,
abrieron los toneles y los armarios,
destrozaron tres esqueletos para arrancar sus dientes de oro.
Ya no me encontraron.
¿No me encontraron?
No. No me encontraron.”
Fábula y rueda de los tres amigos
Poeta in Nueva York (1929), Federico García Lorca
ONCE FIVE YEARS PASS received developmental support as part of the 2015 Directors Commission, a partnership of the Williamstown Theatre Festival (Mandy Greenfield, Artistic Director) and the Drama League of New York (Roger T. Danforth, Artistic Director and Gabriel Shanks, Executive Director).
Concert Version
selections from Once Five Year Pass
presented as part of Daniel Schlosberg's Yale DMA Recital 2018
featuring Andrew Burnap, Juliana Canfield, Ato Blankson-Wood, Anna Crivelli, Elizabeth Fox, Aubie Merrylees
accompaniment by performance ensemble Invisible Anatomy
Synopsis
PROLOGUE
The Dramatist introduces the production and implores the audience to use their imagination.
FIRST ACT
A Young Man’s marriage to his fiancée, who he’s only met once, has been delayed for five years. In the interim three specters haunt his library: An Old Man who sees all time, a Drunk Man who only sees the present, and a Friend who wants to stop time. The Young Man’s Typist interrupts these spirits to confess her love for him and is subsequently turned out of the house. The Young Man’s servant, John, warns the Young Man of a gathering storm and two other disquieting figures break into his home from another dimension: A Dead Boy and a Dead Cat.
SECOND ACT
After a steamy love scene between the Football Player and the Fiancée, the Young Man finally arrives five years later to meet his bride. Their reunion is cold and bitter and she eventually escapes with the Football Player leaving the Young Man alone. A Mannequin wearing the bride’s unworn wedding gown comes to life and demands he seek the love of the Typist who he turned away years ago.
THIRD ACT
The Harlequin welcomes us deep into a dream - represented as a surreal forest near a circus full of souls searching for their lost loves (such as a destitute countess in a Mask). The Young Man desperately searches for the Typist who once showed him affection, but upon finding her and confessing his love she reveals she cannot be with him until five more years pass. But the Young Man knows he is out of time, and she then turns to stone. The Young Man returns home where three Card Players play him in a fatal hand of poker, which he loses when forced to expose his Ace of Hearts. He is left alone to die, crying out for “any man.”
The Dramatist introduces the production and implores the audience to use their imagination.
FIRST ACT
A Young Man’s marriage to his fiancée, who he’s only met once, has been delayed for five years. In the interim three specters haunt his library: An Old Man who sees all time, a Drunk Man who only sees the present, and a Friend who wants to stop time. The Young Man’s Typist interrupts these spirits to confess her love for him and is subsequently turned out of the house. The Young Man’s servant, John, warns the Young Man of a gathering storm and two other disquieting figures break into his home from another dimension: A Dead Boy and a Dead Cat.
SECOND ACT
After a steamy love scene between the Football Player and the Fiancée, the Young Man finally arrives five years later to meet his bride. Their reunion is cold and bitter and she eventually escapes with the Football Player leaving the Young Man alone. A Mannequin wearing the bride’s unworn wedding gown comes to life and demands he seek the love of the Typist who he turned away years ago.
THIRD ACT
The Harlequin welcomes us deep into a dream - represented as a surreal forest near a circus full of souls searching for their lost loves (such as a destitute countess in a Mask). The Young Man desperately searches for the Typist who once showed him affection, but upon finding her and confessing his love she reveals she cannot be with him until five more years pass. But the Young Man knows he is out of time, and she then turns to stone. The Young Man returns home where three Card Players play him in a fatal hand of poker, which he loses when forced to expose his Ace of Hearts. He is left alone to die, crying out for “any man.”
Workshop Production Photos
Williamstown Theatre Festival 2016
photography by Tyler H. First
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Once Five Years Pass
by Federico García Lorca translated by Dustin Wills composed by Daniel Schlosberg produced by Williamstown Theatre Festival Boris Sagal Fellowship directed by Dustin Wills scenic, Alexander Woodward costume, Stephanie Bahniuk lighting, Andrew Lott sound, Adrianna Brannon puppets, Katie McGeorge featuring performances by Andrew Burnap, Young Man Juliana Canfield, Typist Jason Cohen, Harlequin Anna Crivelli, Fiance Lizzie Fox, Nurse Doron Mitchell, Mannequin Alex Shaw, Friend Madison Welterlen, Old Man |
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Composer Thoughts
composed by Daniel Schlosberg
I have a kind of love-hate relationship with musical theater. At its worst, it can seem unapologetically commercial, a mishmash of recycled formulas whose sole purpose is to engender calibrated, stereotypical emotional responses. (The same critique might have been lobbed at Italian opera in, say, the early nineteenth century. We are still living in the age of Broadway musicals and thus history has only just begun its trash-sorting.) At its best, however, musical theater is a tour-de-force of vernacular communication. A great show’s genius lies in the composer’s capacity to harness a relatively limited set of musical resources to communicate all of the subtleties of the human experience. That is not to say musicals should not be adventurous or even avant-garde; on the contrary, the best often are. But a composer’s ability to push boundaries and bend genres is dependent on the audience’s ability to comprehend such music as boundary-pushing and genre-bending.
I have always felt that musical theater could stand to benefit from sidelong glances at opera, given the latter’s storied history of developing techniques for dramatic cohesion. In writing the score for Once Five Years Pass, I made the conscious choice to rely on a limited set of musical motifs to bind the piece together. One motif in particular, heard at the outset of “Texas” (titled to evoke the feeling of a desolate West Texas landscape rather than to denote the actual place) and associated with the Young Man, provides the basis from which almost all of the subsequent music germinates. As the Young Man’s reality is increasingly impinged upon by delirious fantasy, culminating in the proto-David-Lynch dream-fantasy world of Act 3, the “Texas” motif begins to infiltrate every aspect of the music.
For the show’s premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the actors were also the band, speaking, singing, and playing instruments in heroically frenzied alternation—Dustin and I wanted to impart a sense of the world of the play as being “created” entirely within the diegesis, that is, entirely by the performers onstage. With some exceptions, my writing reflects a corresponding need to work within the confines of the (nonprofessional) musical skill sets of the actor-musicians. In addition, I took the surrealistic veneer of Federico García Lorca’s play as an opportunity to lean towards musical intelligibility rather than the reverse. In doing so, I attempt to accomplish two objectives: revealing the logic of Lorca’s sometimes confounding scenarios, and accessing the intense emotional realism I believe is at the heart of, or masquerading as, surrealism.
I have always felt that musical theater could stand to benefit from sidelong glances at opera, given the latter’s storied history of developing techniques for dramatic cohesion. In writing the score for Once Five Years Pass, I made the conscious choice to rely on a limited set of musical motifs to bind the piece together. One motif in particular, heard at the outset of “Texas” (titled to evoke the feeling of a desolate West Texas landscape rather than to denote the actual place) and associated with the Young Man, provides the basis from which almost all of the subsequent music germinates. As the Young Man’s reality is increasingly impinged upon by delirious fantasy, culminating in the proto-David-Lynch dream-fantasy world of Act 3, the “Texas” motif begins to infiltrate every aspect of the music.
For the show’s premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the actors were also the band, speaking, singing, and playing instruments in heroically frenzied alternation—Dustin and I wanted to impart a sense of the world of the play as being “created” entirely within the diegesis, that is, entirely by the performers onstage. With some exceptions, my writing reflects a corresponding need to work within the confines of the (nonprofessional) musical skill sets of the actor-musicians. In addition, I took the surrealistic veneer of Federico García Lorca’s play as an opportunity to lean towards musical intelligibility rather than the reverse. In doing so, I attempt to accomplish two objectives: revealing the logic of Lorca’s sometimes confounding scenarios, and accessing the intense emotional realism I believe is at the heart of, or masquerading as, surrealism.
