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Changing the Conversation Through the Arts
The man Ray Project: CAESAR & THE MANNEQUIN
As autocratic leaders are on the rise again world-wide, a new work of music-theatre examines an original
—Julius Caesar –
whose ruthless ambition destroyed a 500-year-old Republic in short order.
CONGRATULATIONS ALL!
We had a very successful run. Some comments from the audience:
"Edgy, Fun, Contemporary"
"Very Creative, Great Voices & Music"
"When I heard the work was about Man Ray, I knew I had to be there. I enjoyed every minute. Fun & engaging, Fresh"
Excellent - We need more of this.
Fine job! You are spoiling us with this quality of production. Keep going!
This piece is thought provoking and entertaining. I need to see it again to catch the details. Thank you for making this.
Very relevant show! Great music, choreography, voices! Fun, profound – a great work of art in itself.
Alliance for New Music-Theatre just brought down the curtain on this world premiere after 10 performances from September 12 to 22 at Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street N.E. DC.
" A mashup of Marx Brothers pratfalls and Machiavellian politics feels about right for this Presidential election season. That Alliance for New Music-Theatre has been working for four years on a comic chamber opera taking seriously both Marx — that is, the brothers — and Machiavelli, with tongue firmly in cheek, makes this seriously funny 90-minute one-act both prescient and precocious."
- DC Theater Arts - Read the full review HERE.
The Man Ray Project: Caesar & The Mannequin was first conceived in 2019 by composer Andrew Earle Simpson and writer Susan Galbraith, based on a painting by Dadaist artist Man Ray and commissioned to celebrate The Phillips Collection’s Centennial Anniversary. Due to Covid, all live presentations were postponed, and an abbreviated version was released as part of a limited digitalized series of “Short Gems” works of music-theatre. The original painting - Shakespearean Equations - is in the Phillips Collection - certainly worth a visit-
Now the full mixed-media, music-theatre work, blending music, text, movement, still photography, and video projections seems more prescient than ever. Caesar’s head spins out of a museum closet to wreak mayhem, and a careening Mannequin follows suit and speaks truth to Caesar’s power. Meanwhile, the artist re-envisioned as Wo-Man Ray assembles found objects to create a painting and proclaim the pre-eminent power of art. Caesar remind us all, “You can’t stick me in the closet; I will not stay there. The people… they want me; they always have.”
The company re-commissioned Simpson and encouraged him to expand his original idea of the of the artist re-imagined as Wo-Man Ray and a Mannequin, who is revealed as the artist’s model and muse, ‘Kiki.’ With librettist Susan Galbraith and singers Baritone John Boulanger (Caesar) and Mezzo-Soprano Cara Schaefer (Wo-Man Ray), Soprano Danielle McKay (Mannequin) and a trumpeter who is a dead ringer for Harpo Marx, they will re-explore the Dadaist, surreal world of artist Man Ray in the 1920’s—was it really only one-hundred years ago? - Joining the cast will be a mechanical doll who nevertheless stands up to domineering Caesar’s power. Together, they might just blow your minds.
Or will they foreshadow the end of another democratic republic?
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Librettist & Director Susan Galbraith discuss the project with Composer Andrew E. Simpson
Take a listen:
John Boulanger (Caesar_
provides some insight to
the role and working with
Alliance for New Music-
Theatre.
Take a listen.
Composer Andrew E. Simpson comments on the work-in progress Caesar & The Mannequin
Several factors drew me to the work:
-
Ancient Rome (always a great interest: many of my other pieces are inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity, including three operas on Aeschylus’ Oresteia)
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Politics, particularly American politics and democracy
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Art in the context of its world: how does it fit? What role does it play?
The piece itself part Baroque opera, part blues, part Spike Jones, part Cabaret.
I find so many parts of this story appealing. Themes we explore include the nature of power: political vs. artistic power and fame vs lasting significance or relevance, and the question of duty owed to patronage.
The painting itself provided the impetus for the plot. The painting looks like a found-object assembly, and foregrounds what looks like a sculptural base without its head. There is also an upturned table leg and a blackboard in the background with some cryptic expressions and equations. Two which stick out are 2 + 2 = 22 and the square root of Man Ray.
The parallels with Julius Caesar and our own time are compelling. Caesar was a lawbreaker – crossing the Rubicon with his own army was actually illegal, though it paved the way for his eventual dictatorship. We use the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” to represent a major step or decision in our life, but not everyone knows that the phrase references an illegal act which led to a civil war. Let’s remember also that Caesar became “dictator for life.”
Our first cut of this work happened all prior to January 6. In November, 2023, Robert Kagan wrote a very powerful piece in the Washington Post in which he warned that the country is closer to a dictatorship than ever before. Kagan even compares Trump to two historical dictators: Napoleon and – Julius Caesar.
The artistic world of the 1920s, not only in film but in visual art, literature, design, was also an inspiration. Man Ray was such an important part of that world, as photographer, filmmaker, creator of the “Ray-o-Graph,” and visual artist. His painting, the starting point for our work, brings together the everyday, the incongruous, and the absurd.
Man Ray was also an artist who delighted in ambiguity; we have taken a cue from that in making the gender of the character indeterminate: Wo-Man Ray is our character’s name.
The Mannequin adds the third angle. I took inspiration from Man Ray’s interestingly attired mannequin to the “Street of the Mannequins,” part of the 1938 Surrealist Exhibition. The Mannequin is part of an automaton tradition in the arts, where machine or puppet is mistaken for and desirous of being a “real” boy/girl. Our Mannequin spins out of a closet, where we learn she has been stuck with Caesar, an abusive male figure, for an indeterminate amount of time.
They tangle. The show is a triangle – love and otherwise – amongst the three characters.
And what is the intrinsic value of art? Can art actually make any kind of difference in the sphere of “real” (i.e., political, military) power? We believe it can, although whether it is Man Ray or someone else who can do it is open. But the path exists.