KILLSONIC performs “Tongues Bloody Tongues: An American Man from Iraq”

KILLSONIC will be performing a 15-minute slice of our opera Tongues Bloody Tongues.

This is the opening Saddam Hussein monologue, rewritten as a stand-alone piece with percussion, brass, and chorus.

We perform at 8pm sharp, on Saturday Dec 4.

Come and see us kill it again, theatrical-style.

This will be part of the theater festival Micro-Fest: LA

Our performance is free! But if you want to stay for the rest of the festival, you’ll need the Yankee dollar.

Here are details:

Micro-Fest: LA will be held December 3-5, 2010 at the Atwater Village Theatre, (3269 Casitas Ave. Atwater Village, CA 90039). Full Festival Passes are now available for $75 and include six performances, full access to workshops, panels, opening reception and a Sunday morning pancake breakfast. Single tickets and Micro-Passes on sale after November 20. Micro-Passes cost $30 and do not include performances, but entitle holder to $20 tickets for the performances. Individual tickets to the performances are available for $25 to non-passholders. Discounted early bird and student rates available. For additional information including a complete festival schedule and to purchase festival passes, visit www.ensembletheaters.net

An inner view

This is an unpublished Tongues Bloody Tongues interview with Joseph Tepperman, Killsonic’s librettist/trombonist.  The magazine’s web site got hacked the week it was supposed to run. But these question-answer pairs are among the most straightforward Tongues Bloody Tongues exegesis you are likely to see.

Describe Tongues Bloody Tongues and the excerpt/stage adaptation you will be bringing to REDCAT for NOWFest.

Tongues Bloody Tongues is an opera about the history of Iraq, told over a few thousand years, with Saddam Hussein narrating and conducting the orchestra and generally re-imagining it all, mostly unreliably. The Tower of Babel is the unifying metaphor. Originally we wanted to do it as a parade, with the audience following floats down the street. The excerpt we did on stage at the NOW Festival is about Gertrude Bell and the beginning of the modern state of Iraq.

When did you become interested in Gertrude Bell? What compels you about her work and her story?

I heard a radio news story about Gertrude Bell a few years ago, by accident. And certain details – like her suicide in Baghdad – stuck with me. Later I read a couple of her biographies and she just seemed like such a complex character. She loved the Arab world and spent most of her life there, but she was also a tool of the British Empire. She was strong-willed, but with a weakness for men who were about to go off to war and die, or who were already married. Easily one of the most powerful women ever, right behind Elizabeth and Victoria, but ultimately she was really lonely. Her section in Tongues Bloody Tongues is supposed to be a way of making sense of her. Through Saddam Hussein’s eyes, of course.

What is your relationship to Babylon and to the Tower? What draws you to that part of the world, to that story?

The Tower of Babel is a universal story and every culture has some version of it, even outside the Bible. The divergence of languages somehow being linked to the construction of a giant building. And the more that I’ve read about the Tower of Babel, the more it has seemed like a perfect metaphor for Iraq itself – all the different languages, all the different armies rolling through there. That’s why it’s called Tongues Bloody Tongues. My personal thing for the Tower comes from having a job doing research in speech and language stuff. They say you should “write what you know,” so that was part of it.

Was it difficult to cast/direct/write for Saddam Hussein? How are we to read the metaphor of Hussein as orchestral director?

We didn’t hold auditions – I wrote the part with Mike Ibarra in mind. He leads Killsonic, and played Saddam Hussein at the NOW Festival. He was careful not to make this version of Saddam Hussein too charming or funny – we didn’t want to do a South Park thing on it. But I also didn’t want to paint Saddam as some evil mastermind, like both George Bushes used to do. Saddam Hussein is a complex figure, too – Gertrude Bell’s not the only one. For me, he represents the worst in human audacity. He is the Tower of Babel himself!

There are a few ways to read the orchestra conductor thing. One is that maybe Saddam is in Islamic purgatory – the barzakh – and he’s making up the whole opera as he’s looking back on his life and all of history. Or maybe Killsonic is having our revenge on him, by portraying Saddam as an ignorant and prejudiced buffoon. The secret reading that only we know is that it’s all an allegory for Killsonic, for ourselves and our personal lives.

Is Tongues Bloody Tongues a political piece? What does Killsonic want to say about Iraq? Have you been speaking about/considering the war in previous performances?

It’s definitely political, yeah. But it isn’t heavy-handed. It’s meant to remind Americans about how it all got the way it is now, to show that what’s happening in Iraq today is nothing new, that it’s the same mistakes all over again. And it’s meant to show both sides of the exploitation – both against Iraqis and by them. No one is innocent, but no one is an evil supervillain either. We’ve done some political stuff before – one of the best and oldest Killsonic tunes is called “Liberation Technology” – but never anything like this. And in a way it’s not really political at all. It’s just as much about the mundane lives of historical figures – Gertrude Bell’s love life! In a way it’s just a love story.

Do you believe absurdity can be a political act? In your opinion, what’s the most absurd element of Tongues Bloody Tongues? What is your most absurd habit/desire/Killsonic story/Tongues Bloody Tongues moment?

Anything can be a political act. Is Tongues Bloody Tongues absurd? Maybe. Absurdism means that you’re trying to find meaning in the universe and failing badly. And Tongues Bloody Tongues is hard to understand, but it isn’t meaningless. The most absurd part of Tongues Bloody Tongues – or at least the part that’s the hardest to explain – is probably the parrots: we had a 15-voice women’s choir for the NOW Festival, and at a couple of points they all had to make these loud parrot squawks to interrupt Saddam Hussein’s opening monologue.

One of the things I find most exciting about Killsonic is your use of public space- An act I believe this city desperately needs! What compels Killsonic to burst into the space of public appearances as you do? Is this a political act? Or is it just fun? (‘Both’ is certainly an acceptable answer!)

It’s been both. More often it’s fun, we want to terrify and inspire, and it’s an aesthetic thing – usually it sounds better in the street than in some club. But we also marched against Prop 8, in two or three of the big protests. So we’re not above being recruited for a cause.

How did the stage and the venue affect your work? Was it weird/restrictive/exciting/comfortable/scary/boring..?

It was a surprise to find that we felt so at home at REDCAT, and I personally was surprised that the opera worked so well on a stage, since it was originally meant for the street. Everyone at REDCAT was totally supportive, and I think we thrive in situations where we don’t completely belong.

How about working with a grant – was this Killsonic’s first funded project? How did you go about the grant application process? Will you do it again?

This isn’t the first time we’ve been paid in advance for a gig, but it is the first official grant money we’ve gotten, yeah. I just had to write a really good essay. And it helped that we had REDCAT’s invitation before applying. All the money went back into the project, though – sets and costumes mostly. We’ll probably reach for some gold again, sure.

What’s next for Killsonic?

We’re already talking about doing Tongues Bloody Tongues again, about doing it bigger and longer, but I shouldn’t say too much about that yet. We have a classic Killsonic gig coming up at Bloomfest L.A. on August 14th.

What advice do you have for other artists/performers who would like to participate in NOWFest?

Make it as big and as bad as you can.

Tongues Bloody Tongues: 11 July 1926

The first performance of Tongues Bloody Tongues has come and gone.

It played three sold-out nights at REDCAT during the NOW Festival – July 22-24, 2010.

Details below:

Tongues Bloody Tongues: 11 July 1926
(an excerpt of the opera Tongues Bloody Tongues)

Libretto by Joseph Tepperman
Music performed by Killsonic and composed by Michael Anthony Ibarra, David Dominique, Jose Varela, Ashley Stuart, Bryan S. Diaz, princessFrank, and Geneva Skeen
Art Direction by Dorian Wood

Cast
GERTRUDE BELL: Leah Harmon
SADDAM HUSSEIN: Michael Anthony Ibarra
QUEEN HUZAIMA BINT NASSER: Eddika Organista
KINAHAN CORNWALLIS: Dorian Wood
HAJI NAJI: Joseph Tepperman

Production Team
Lighting Design: Dominique Rodriguez
Stage Managers: Christoper L. Janney and Dominique Rodriguez
Lead Makeup Artist: Taryn Piana
Video Projections: VJ Fader
Sets and cast costumes made by Rafa Esparza, Eddika Organista, Ariana Petrojvic, Jason Savvy, and Dorian Wood
Chorus dresses designed by Kate Gilbert and made by Kate Gilbert, Mary Gilbert, and Geneva Skeen

Killsonic
Musical Director: Michael Anthony Ibarra
Trumpet: Jose Varela
Woodwinds: Luis Chavez, Bryan S. Diaz, Angel Hernandez, Eddie Rivas, Christian S. Rosales, Brian Walsh
Trombones: David Dominique, Joseph Tepperman
Tubas: Ben Friedmann, Paul Perez
Accordions: Laban Pheidias, Jason Savvy, Dorian Wood
Drums: Andy Hunter, Eddika Organista, Ariana Petrojvic, princessFrank, Ashley Stuart
Chorus: Afsaneh Moallef Akbari, October Crifasi, Lisa Dee, Kate Gilbert, Rx Harpe, Alissa Kueker, Jill Paxton, Gloria Plaza, Taryn Piana, Sara Radovanovic, Rosa Rojas, Sugey Salazar, Geneva Skeen, Justine Woodford

The Gates of the Garden

A while ago, but way after I started writing my own version of her story, I found this short comic book about Gertrude Bell.

It’s called The Gates of the Garden, and it’s by Jesse Post and Ben Towle.

It’s mostly an entirely different take on her from the way we depict her in Tongues Bloody Tongues, but with some of the same themes – e.g. comparing modern Iraq with biblical Babylon, Babel, the Garden of Eden, and all that.

But check out page 4: King Faisal makes her an honorary Bedouin (!!!!). Seems sort of ridiculous.

– Joseph Tepperman

An incomplete list of books I read while writing the libretto for Tongues Bloody Tongues

by Joseph Tepperman

Not that having a bibliography somehow makes it more legitimate. This is just a reading list for anyone who wants to know more.

The Book of Genesis
The Book of Daniel
The Book of Jeremiah
The Qur’an
The Talmud
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Gertrude Bell by H.V.F. Winstone
Selected Letters of Gertrude Bell, edited by Lady Bell
Desert Queen by Janet Wallach
The Greatness That Was Babylon by H.W.F. Saggs
The Religion of the Landless: The Social Context of the Babylonian Exile by Daniel L. Smith
The Histories by Herodotus
Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam by G.L. Simons
Assyrian and Babylonian Literature by Robert Francis Harper
A Reader on Classical Islam by F.E. Peters
The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection by Jane I. Smith
The Mongols: A History by Jeremiah Curtin
Reign of Nabonidus King of Babylon: 556-539 BC by Paul-Alain Beaulieu
The Saddam Hussein Reader, edited by Turi Munthe
National Lampoon’s The Saddam Dump: Saddam Hussein’s Trial Blog by Scott Rubin
The Iraq War Reader, edited by Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf
Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
Nestorius and His Teachings by J.F. Bethune-Baker
Omeros by Derek Walcott
The Mother Of Us All by Gertrude Stein
The Age of Anxiety by W.H. Auden
Iraqi Poetry Today, edited by Saadi A. Simawe
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
A Course in Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged
Arabic For Beginners by Syed Ali
Baudolino by Umberto Eco