Three Minutes, Three Questions

Gertrude Stein's writing will come to life through ArkansasStaged next week at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

ArkansasStaged created an original piece to perform for Wednesday's Art Out Loud to complement the "William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism," ArkansasStaged member Sabrina Stoker explains. ArkansasStaged actors include Stoker and her husband Kristopher Stoker, Jason Suel, Laura Shatkus and Jason Engstrom. Suel and the Stokers answered these What's Up! questions about the performance.

Q. Why were Gertrude Stein works chosen for this performance? Why these pieces?

A. Sara Segerlin, the senior educator of public programs at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, contacted ArkansasStaged and asked if we would be able to put together a reading of Gertrude Stein's work to pair with the William S. Paley exhibition. Gertrude Stein was not only a collector of Modernist art, but a friend and patron to famous artists and writers, most notably Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne. Gertrude Stein's popular book, "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," is filled with amazing stories about many of the artists from the Paley collection. Through her words, the audience is taken to dinner parties with Matisse, sittings with Picasso and on visits to Cezanne's home. This is where we began.

Gertrude Stein was also a writer of novels, poetry and plays. Much of her work is experimental, capturing in words the Cubism, plasticity and collage that surrounded her in the art world. We decided that the evening would be more exciting if the show itself reflected the movement from representational to abstract. The show begins with a narration by Alice B. Toklas (Laura Shatkus), which is written in a humorous but mostly conventional form. Images and sound interrupt Alice, and then she is joined by actors, first as narrators from Stein's novel "Three Lives," then as disembodied voices from Stein's more experimental "Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein." Finally, the actors become characters in Stein's playful and idiosyncratic plays "He Said It, a Monologue," and "Turkey Bones and Eating and We Liked It."

As we assembled the script, we decided that in order to capture the essence of Stein and her language experiments, we needed to use film and sound. We were fortunate enough to have John C. Kelley, a visual artist and composer, agree to collaborate with us. He has created a stunning piece that underscores the live performance perfectly.

The piece is exciting to work on, because it will be a translation of Modernism and Cubism into the world of theater. We chose pieces that would "decompose," beginning with the conventional and evolving to the abstract. We also chose plays, because we thought they would be dynamic and fun in performance.

Q. What will the reading of "Three Lives" entail?

A. The reading of Stein's novel "Three Lives" will be brief sections of the second part of the book, "Melanctha." The story is about self-discovery and the search for love against the tides of racism and gender stereotypes. The passages were selected for the beauty of the language and the strong imagery they evoke. We join Melanctha, the title character, at the railroad yards. It is where she goes to meet and talk with men, but also a place to lose herself in the sound and movement of the trains. The three narrators (Jason Suel, Kristopher Stoker, Sabrina Stoker) describe the smoke, the whistles, the wind and the "steady soothing world of motion," as images of "fire and blue color" are warped and morphed behind them.

Q. What do you hope the audience will learn or leave with?

A. We would like the audience to leave understanding more about the Modernist movement and Gertrude Stein's role in it. We would like them to have a more intimate knowledge of Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne. We would like them to feel that theater can be something experimental, unconventional and surprising. We'd like them to feel that things that may seem complex and confusing can also be beautiful and funny. Also, we really hope that they'll learn to appreciate the aesthetics of a nice flowered pantsuit.

-- Ashley Batchelor

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