CONT. from page 1.
Les Fleurs du Mal:
The Thinking Man's Ritual Theatre presents
THEREMINIAD
Karl-Heinz Wienerblut's interview with DJ NoMore (Sir David O'Clock; Ambiance21; WordCitizen; Laszlo Najmanyi), writer, composer and director of a multi-part Theremin-epoche

The sixth part of the series, Clara & Leon, which we also staged at Süss Fel Nap, in Budapest, on February 27, 2006. It is an electro-theatrical exploration of Professor Theremin's relationship with Clara Reisenberg-Rockmore, the greatest theremin virtuosa of all times. My co-composer, Vilmos Vajdai played the role of Professor Theremin, Eva Sandor danced the part of Clara Rockmore, and
I did Bob Moog.


Éva Sándor as Clara Rockmore, Clara & Leon, February 27, 2006,
Süss Fel Nap, Budapest, Hungary
(Photo: Adrian Costache)

This multi-media ritual is composed of four segments, connected by narration. My Internet-based approximation of the Theremin-story goes like this: Professor Leon Theremin and his invention, "The music instrument you don't have to touch in order to make it sound" arrived to New York in 1927. The scientist was invited to America by Clara Reisenberg and her wealthy family. She was an aspiring violin player. Her hands were partially paralized by a disease, she couldn't play the violin anymore. She was hoping, that Professor Theremin's invention can resurrect her artistic carrier. Her wish came true. She mastered theremin playing in a short time and became a celebrated star of the future-instrument for the rest of her life.

A long time agent of the Russian intelligence service, Professor Theremin came to America with a double task. He was to propagate the superiority of Soviet science, and also, he was to secretly collect information on prominent American artists, scientists, politicians and military personel, whom he befriended as he was quickly found his way into the heart of High Society. Albert Einstein, Leopold Stockowski, Arturo Toscanini, Charlie Chaplin and Dwight Eisenhower were among his closest friends. He dutifully reported to Moscow on all. According to some sources he had a long range radio transmitter built into his theremin, which he was using to contact his NKVD superiors, in Russia.

He was spying on his closest collaborator and lover, the Lithuanian emigrant Clara Reisenberg too. He taped their conversations and Clara's frequent emotional outbursts, on a tape-recorder (the world's first such equipment) he constructed in his New York laboratory. He's planted a bugging device into the theremin he custom-built for Clara. Some say that it was Bob Moog, the inventor of the synthetizer, who accidentally found the bug in the instrument, as he was replacing a burned out vacuum tube, to the request of Clara Rockmore, long after the Professor was kidnapped from New York and was secretly taken back to Moscow, by Russian agents. Clara suspected that her friend and saviour was spying for the Russians, but she did not know that the inventor was reporting on her, too.

After Professor Theremin has disappeared from New York, Clara Rockmore, and the scientist's wife, Lavinia Williams were desperatelly trying to find him for decades, to no avail. Even Clara's American governmental contact couldn't help locate the kidnapped celebrity. The Russian authorities refused to give information on his where-abouts. As I said earlier, the inventor was found guilty of anti-Soviet propaganda and he was sent to the Gulag, to a labor camp, in Siberia, for 13 years. Even after his release from the camp, in 1951, he was not allowed to keep contact with foreigners, until the system-change in Russia, in 1990. After his release from nearly four decades of house arrest, his American friends brought him to New York, with great fanfare.


DJ NoMore as Baron Samedi / Remix Africana November 28, 2005
(Photo: Andrea Nehez - szinhaz.hu)

His Afro-American wife, Lavinia Williams was dead by that time. So was his abandoned Russian wife, Vera Tyermenova. After 53 years, Professor Theremin met with Clara Rockmore again and he did confess his snitching on her, over half a century ago. He was 93 years old, Clara ten years younger at their reunion. Clara easily forgave her old friend's treason. The Professor surprised her with a present, which he's brought from Moscow for her: a bottle of Clara's favourite Russian perfume. Shortly after their concert at the Radio City Music Hall, Professor Theremin died of a massive heart attack, while walking on Mott street, in Little Italy.


Aliz Krausz as Clara Rockmore
THEREMIN, an oratorio electronique
December 8-9-10, 2000, Hungarian Academy of Music, Budapest
(Photo: Moli)



continued in next column >>>>

Clara survived her friend by five years. On the day of her funeral, Clara's sister Nadia Reisenberg has found a miniature, but extremly powerful listening device, built into the silver top of the perfume bottle, which Professor Theremin gave to Clara at their reunion party. Nadia Reisenberg gave the bug to the family-friend Bob Moog, who forwarded it to the American authorities, after extensively examining its circuitry. Moog was amazed by the technical sophistication of the device. He had no doubt that it was constructed and planted personally by the father of Russian bugging industry, the Professor himself. Yet he couldn't fathom, why on Earth would the present day Russian intelligence services would be interested in the private life of an old lady, who had no contacts to the High Society anymore.

KHW: It is a maze of a story. It makes me dizzy.

NM: The life of Professor Theremin is a superstructure of overlaying, interconnected, dark labirynths. It is definitelly not for weak hearted explorers. Facts and fiction are interchangeable, with no consequences in his surrealistic bio. To present the story in it's full complexity, to show these overlapping layers clearly we have to stick to minimalism, both in acting, dancing, music and also in visuality. The dancers dance with their frozen-in-time silhuettes, at the front of flashlights-lit phosphorescent screens. The background projection (created by Adrian Costache and Edua Dobos) is a collage of vintage documentary movies and computer-animated barbed wire. The music is based on drum & bass and hip hop rhythm tracks, over which we float theremins-generated, digitally effected walls of sound.

KHW: Why do you prefer to first show your works in Europe, particularly in Hungary? Wouldn't Professor Theremin's saga be more at home on a New York stage?


Vilmos Vajdai as Professor Theremin (2002)
(Photo: Moli)


NM: I spent the dark years of my youth in Hungary, until the Communist authorities kicked me and my friends out of the country, for forming the first punk band (SPIONS) of the late Eastern Block, in 1978. I like this place, because it is still changing, not as complete, finished, polished and packaged as New York, or London is. It is a rough terrain though, a kind of Mad Max's land, totally chaotic. But chaos can bring out surprises, which order rarely allows. This is my theater's practice ground. The audience is overly sincere and very responsive here. They are as far from the New York cool as humanly possible. They give me clear signals of the weak points of the show. In other places well developed social conventions tend to restrain people from expressing themselves. There are no social conventions here, so to speak. Half a century of Communist dictatorship took care of that. My hometown (if there is any) is still New York, but my playground right now is Budapest.

KHW: What are your future plans with your THEREMINIAD project?

NM: The seventh, last part of the series, titled Tiger Lily will premier on June 21, 2006, at the Ludwig Museum, in Budapest. This is the story of Vera Tyermenova, Professor Theremin's first, Russian wife. She was a Futurist poet and theatre artist originally. She was involved with the young artists' circle around the revolutionary poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky. She accompanied her husband on his concert tour of Europe, then on his voyage to America, in 1927. She felt lonely and neglected in New York. Professor Theremin was too busy with concerts, with his new inventions, with his love affair with Clara Rockmore, and with his candlestine activities. He had no time for his pretty, moody wife. Longing for company, for some tenderness and understanding, Vera joined a Russian cult, headquartered in Brighton Beach, New York. They were followers of the last Tzarina's spiritual mentor and closest friend, Grigoriy Yefimovitch Rasputin. Rasputin taught purification through sin. His followers worshipped by getting drunk and engaging in week long orgies. When the Russian secret service learned about Vera Tyermenova's involvement with the banned Rasputinist sect, they ordered Professor Theremin to divorce her. The scientist has obeyed the order. He had Vera move out of their apartment, to a rented walk-up, in the East Village, gave her some money, then he's cut communication. They've never seen each other again.

During the war years Vera Tyermenova worked in an ammunitions factory. After the war she moved to a farm, near Manitoac, Wisconsin, with her religious congregation. She became an animal caretaker. She no longer wrote poetry or dreamed of modernist theatre. She learned horse riding and performed stunts on horseback, at county fairs, instead. She had two children, fathered by her priest, Father Fiodor. She married the manager of a traveling circus. The circus needed an animal trainer. Vera took the job and began working with Siberian tigers. She took up the stage name Tiger Lily. Dressed in a tiger skin bikini, she used to ride two white tigers on stage. Vera Tyermenova died in 1989, just a year before Professor Theremin came back to New York, for his last show. Her sons, Duane and Leon traveled to Russia and threw their mother's ashes in a stream, near the village of Prokovskoie, where the staretz Rasputin was born. The role of Professor Theremin will be danced by Atilla Gergely, as of Vera Tyermenova by Éva Sándor. The creator of the video-projections is my long-time collaborator, Adrian Costache.

After staging the seventh part, I am planning to remix the THEREMINIAD series to a three parts, 3-4 hours long electronic opera, which would incorporate the main elements of the epoch. I hope to premier this final result of 16 years of my Theremin-research in Moscow, in 2007. After the Russian premiere we'll take the Theremin opera on a tour of Europe, playing at the stations of Professor Theremin's 1927 concert-tour: Milan, Rome, Vienna, Salzburg, Berlin, Frankfurt - ending the tour in Paris. We are going to employ five tube-theremins in the orchestration, and also a technically perfected replica of Professor Theremin's invention, the motion-sensing stage (TerpsiTone), which converts the dancers' movements to music. We are working on the reconstruction of his virtual drum set, the Rhytmicon. I want to fully automate the show, using space controlled light-effects and projections, so both sound and vision could be created real-time, on-stage, by the performers.

Vienna - Budapest, March, 2006


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