Listen!; 1968-04-03, Cyril Peters Interviews Rouben Ter-Arutunian

this is a my guest is ruben churchill wrote to me and he is a very good and famous set design customer as dozen fantasy production including things but martha graham paul taylor the protection of a bright spot to only girl in town and other things which will get into and just the terror of two indian has been seeing all over the us around the world i think it's really one of his productions has been exposed more and then anything else and that's a nutcracker parties nutcracker first test is a tour to me and good tell us something about his beginnings when he was studying in berlin and paris to tell something about the differences of the education system comparison to the wine isis was told some people and they seem to feel that the european educated designer sees be more well rounded in the american designer on this issue about that i think it's agreed to a certain point my education as for this thing the stick side this

concern really began at the school which was similar to parsons in europe an art school rather superficial training connected with some still lives and drawing from life figure fashion studies to fix something for everyone something from the truth were you just in design for the fear and that's a part that i'm a major league mention that the student is not concentrated in the arts so that they did not approach the austin with the idea of going into the theater well isn't it possible at the center for myself as to what i wanted to do and how i want to go about it and felt that if i wanted to work for the theater in the tradition of the brother in an impressive decorators at this stage of the twenties and thirties connected with the jacket of theater of by day then that ought to be in

command of drawing and painting but at that time it was at nineteen when i finished training so that the best way to do that would be to get some sort of superficial overall education that will enable me to know how to use pencil and pain after a few years later after the end of the war i felt that i did not have sufficient command of my tools and thought that that would be absolutely necessary to have to sell plastic bags for my water and old vehicle that was in paris which is one of the most traditional institution around anywhere and being to go to these terribly old fashioned and very sort of tight and then the very interesting well it wasn't terribly interesting really except was actually convicted for one whole

year i was sitting and drawing from plastic us of the antique and there after he was admitted to a painter and patron and then from there on one was painting for each week or two weeks to study of a new but every morning after that on my phone worked at the occasion here for three four hours in the afternoon truer poses in our mouth fifteen minute poses and then after dinner and then seven o'clock i would go to the phone from yale and worked from seven to ten and short prose is now five and ten minutes half an hour the most from life figure again and that that was doing for about three years and sometimes even at night up to work on my own portfolio taking in a play on an opera that i was particularly fond of

and doing some designs for it on my own well that was quite marvelous and work from morning till night and well i guess disco have acquired some of the tools to make it possible for me to put down on paper anything that i want to put down that field that is necessary for the play which enables me to choose a technique for they also that i think other than working for which sometimes can be a painted backdrop and the old fashioned way of the future of the illusion or candy at a sculpture in space similar to the contemporary siege of martha graham or it can be a constructive this backdrop that made both on and eventually pieces and the combination of new materials or whatever it is that on someone feels says best to interpret the idea of the play and the author of find that

absolutely deplorable to impose a style of painting that is one's own iphone anonymity which is never too really is never in anonymity and there is always a subjective point of view for at an interpreter but i find they superimpose style of painting in the manner of so and so doing they call for a certain opera or you know ahead of time as to what that is going to look like and how beautiful it is and there's always so and so i'm not a composer of the force there that is being presented on stage mr turow to interview me your name from the operas and the design that you've done for dance then use it migrated to play it and so the most extraordinary desire that you have done and very experimental and radical decides that you've done have been for martha graham and for paul

taylor and forty sousa de ballet and dance companies one sees those designs are those ideas slowly filtering to the theater that is violist parties with martha graham is one if you find that you have more freedom in the dance and opera feel rather than theater brought with him i'm afraid this country would you just not so in nineteen fifty six i was asked to link interest and to the giant stage for the american trickster festival and stratford connecticut at a stage where two other stage space back from fort drum platform that would make it possible to play and one or two years of shakespeare in meaning three four productions a season well with john houseman inject lando designed to fund a series of panels made up of horizontal wooden slats of various width and how little stage with them

and every platform the protruding through the pristine much so the sausage was really based to a great degree on some light and shadow and a nondescript graphic space very high and very open which presented the actor very much of its own it did require quite a strong acting company that howard lincoln kirstein get involved in that well he was on the board of the theater and had decent my first opera for him having us for an interview and evening to trim up for you she commissioned to do the double billed for the new york city opera which he had at one time at that time been the gift is director of so then design the ballet for the new cd but only a few years later i'm having designed to see more operas for the newark city opera ballet as

well as of the bali was a veneer some barbers of the new group of problem under which then later was done in a few more times in europe and more uses his trunk of the moment and will be done for the artist billy later on in the summer and then a few years later i was after having had that stage forty seconds five years which means that served about fifteen productions i guess they're not possessed into a new stage in you back and there was a series of plastic three forms interconnected opened against a background of similar color that was sometimes what the lighting being barren and the right level it creates a feeling of air which had tried to achieve but that didn't need a much more sophisticated like a slot then was possible at the time so did the lighting's turn to ian of the lighting was the messiah

musser and that was a great deal of green purple which i wasn't quite sure was absolutely right for the feeling of air on that point of lighting and since some designers are doing their own lighting uses of feel that that even if you attracted to or to view that you have enough to do with doing designs will i feel that what happens in command of the lighting and whenever i do my sets no matter what does the lighting gets the credit for it and finally responsible for that and what the director who i think is after all the final arbiter and the result is worked out with him in advance or at least should be worked out with them in advance of wrecked and these are in charge of the picture on stage and nobody else really was sort of the sense that you don't secure twenty and four modern dance is

a quite different like the ones that you've done for martha graham which effectively called the sense of like honesty is unfortunate she's at the market that to rest that it's a beautiful heiress and in a beautiful set i was trying to get to his ad in ballet the designers tend to be except for the ones that i think that they've had no good you do for all of this they don't seem to work with the designs as objects as modern dances tend to use the designs like martha graham dance which computer for competitive well i think the city center liquid fried about mentioning certain difference between the two companies i think one of the most of all she does it work that has a metered approach rather than the traditional one and he does it without any scene reports it relies entirely on his own invention and her his own inspiration which he gets from his composure and

i must say the effect is it should absolutely thrilling i can't really blame him for not wanting to act so to create a force to it what happened when he went against that a faucet which the seven deadly sins sophia proletariat didn't go against laws are a little bit you saw where the girl first the solar panels more usable objects in savannah calls for them in their sudden different segments each one of the prison to buy at any of the imaginative city in america in the america of the german expressionism of the city's huge it's a segment had a small step and actually it wasn't that much different from him at martha graham's setting in a way that was really the same idea was a small piece of scenery in black space it still is one of my favorite pieces in one of the few that though was like to go back to see what i find that

most moving restore the beginning with loathing and electric and coming out of darkness and the moment one came to the tableau that film in boston with electric and that and from then on the un to build to the setting of envy of san francisco the panel of some before with some expressionistic shape it's expressionistic futuristic the shapes of the number to be of the citizens of a takeoff on the end with a code diving students true religion i thought was most moving combination of these two personalities which didn't seem to have written anything to match them and get it was a perfect combination could you tell us about the beginning when the idea

is thrown at you and how you form a leg what you have in mind is a different with each person well and this of course was different with each person and martha graham's call you and tell you what the details as to what she thinks about to do and as metro effect and working on a piece right now for her and this is a project that she has been sick but for many years i believe and so little by little bit please take shape and she has a scenario one action behind the career of really is meant to be which i'm sure the moment she starts a career shift it's about completely and it becomes a part of any of her of the fiber of the piece itself but not really know the literal interpretation and more less the same with what design that really does it with a great deal of historic research looking at this and that and going out using any of it but

such raids says imagination in which takes direction of this one particular subject with visual images that possibly sink into his mind and you know maybe they build whatever it is you do have to have a certain amount of research you look at paintings sculpture books a museum or whatever that directs your subconscious into a certain period of the issues that was brilliant and i'm making use of what her collaborators deeper i'm sure the same with the dances as this with a designer at as a constant give and take and she picks the best out of the imagination of her designer and like for instance the sentiment in these days when you sigh and double truth and all of them with a silver cable come

at least through her short segments of you cite roberts as various sites she invented the movement through that wall and every time the figure past critical explosive bisected and pushed to petition of the passage of time i believe or the constant presence of time she's just you know most wonderful about using know what ever is on stage and she is most brilliant about kurt no knowledge of space and ethics of the theater which he does with a costume with a cape or a piece of cloth you know very few people have that knowledge of what they were at the usage of a prop probably comics to have a great deal of influence on wednesdays on anti war and the setup of a repertory company which has to travel and where the pieces have to

be more flexible they influence no doubt that he's on a great deal of course also the rehearsal time as something to do with it if not any dancer and choreographer and has the luxury to work out in his own studio or instability hires its usage of props for the use of a costume that can happen on the broadway stage to gwen verdon france's would work weeks ahead of of rehearsal time of her broadway musicals dances and movements and costumes with botox and look there's been other fruit and then you dance is always to that level where they are brought we're not immediately the only ones there so disciplined so devoted to her own work security mean you also do the costumes most of your sense moses wondering if you prefer this way or if it makes life easier or pass what comes first the harder you think

of both in terms of just doing sets alone or costumes but cautions alone i never do i don't particularly find it very interesting to close character on the stage itself cause i find that that is always there look is really good or is subject to the space that that character moves and so essentially whenever i do so i can see another element that i can i i am seeing people moving into the characters take on life and play and the exit gate reforms of certain function dictated by the action in certain areas so they must wear something and that obviously they're the color is dictated by the play so i just for sale growth to

compete with either the picture with clothing to characters whenever somebody works with me as a costume designer and he is either given complete freedom to do whatever they like tickers and make this case space so beautiful that no matter what they were and they want her to see the right hand or i do that myself the turtle meehan has an exhibition man at the r right hepburn webster khouri conceptual five the sixtieth street he tells some your feelings of seeing these drawings on the wall and the memories that they brought out for you i'm not very sentimental some drawings in the gallery that now that they're in frames to killing bees so most people friends kulick is i don't know what i'm doing and the credit is this a rather difficult work with industrial levels first time

goes but friends and magnificent so and then it looked very well and it really puts a plastic that but they are than the walls anthems mother was an assistant mental about them protect my guest justin ruben terror to me and who has an exhibition on at the right hepburn webster county that's too low five the sixtieth street dance between third and second at night wishing well my guess will be seeing him with martha graham nash thank you it was a pleasure to be here