Opera, Up Close and Personal: Kaspar Hauser: A Foundling's Opera

Downtown at The Flea Theatre, Kaspar Hauser: A Foundling’s Opera is reimagining both an old story and one of the world’s oldest forms of musical theatre. The story of Kaspar Hauser the wild child is an old one: Kaspar lived in the 19th century, and hypotheses of his origin and life have been adapted into art for almost as long. The theatrical form on which Kaspar Hauser: A Foundling’s Opera plays is even older: the operatic tradition dates back 400 years.

Many of opera’s defining characteristics were necessities of the time of its popularization. In the days before microphones, big-voiced singers with loud vibrato in combination with acoustic-rich concert halls were imperative for reaching a larger audience. Because the presence of people soaks up sound, there had to be a larger ratio of open air to people: thus, many opera houses have very high cavernous ceilings, and much of the audience is far away. And so, just like the singing style, design and acting choices were made to carry. Choices had to be evident even from the nosebleed seats. In most traditional opera, design and acting choices are grandiose and exaggerated. A performance at the Metropolitan Opera, for instance, will feature elaborate sets, costumes, and makeup, along with acting whose message can be understood from seven hundred feet away.

The Flea Theatre’s production of Kaspar Hauser: A Foundling’s Opera, by Elizabeth Swados and Erin Courtney, draws a lot from operatic tradition. However, The Flea’s downtown theatre space is very intimate; at any point, the actors are at most twenty feet away from the furthest audience member. It would be hard to find a space less like an opera house. And, sure enough, Kaspar Hauser branches off from traditional opera. The set is minimal: just a pair of balconies and a bare wooden floor. Both the music and the singing style are more reminiscent of modern musical theatre than opera. However, many aspects of operatic exaggeration are maintained. Though the Flea’s space is one in which physical and visual nuance would have no trouble reaching the audience, the costume, hair and makeup, along with the acting style, are kept very over the top. Every actor wears pale white makeup, which is highlighted by other dramatic touches: many of the girls wear bright-red lipstick, and in the middle of the play, Kaspar’s relative health is denoted by a bright red circle on each cheek. The hair of Kaspar and of the lower class characters is teased and messy, whereas the more upper-class characters, such as Lord Stanhope and Kaspar’s mother, have elaborate and well-kept hairstyles, a difference that would be noticeable even in a larger space. The costumes are also very bold: Kaspar’s mother wears all white, Lord Stanhope dresses entirely in Venetian red, and many members of the ensemble wear clothes in bright colors and patterns with great adornment.

But perhaps the most radical element of Kaspar Hauser is the effect of its operatic acting, exaggerated even further and seen up close. From the way Kaspar walks to the unchanging facial expression of his mother during her multiple laments, every acting choice is so over-the-top as to seem ridiculous. Even the energy of the ensemble is extremely high; every member of the cast sings with gusto and enthusiasm every minute they are onstage. Claudia La Rocco of The New York Times disparaged this choice in her review, saying: “By keeping the dial turned past high throughout the show, where the lines between good and evil are far too neatly drawn, Ms. Swados misses opportunities to develop any of her themes or arrive at any intriguing insights into human nature.” However, when viewed in historical context, the show’s incredibly high energy finds meaning. If Kaspar Hauser were staged in a traditional opera house, even those audience members sitting in the orchestra would not find the acting style too garish for its genre. But in the Flea’s space, the movements and facial expressions of the actors are conspicuous and even a little frightening. By playing on exaggerated opera traditions up close, the audience is made to feel slightly uncomfortable.

The same is true for the opera as a whole. The story of Kaspar Hauser has been adapted for theatre before, but never quite like this. By presenting Kaspar’s story in a very over-the-top manner, his life seems even more tragic. Just as the operatic staging makes the audience feel ill-at-ease, so does Swados’ adaptation of an old story. The people among which Kaspar Hauser is raised are celebrity obsessed, greedy, and manipulative, and at every turn prevent a decent life for Kaspar. Because of the intimacy of the space and the brazenness of the acting, it is impossible to ignore the awful quality of Kaspar’s life and demise. It is difficult to space out or look away from what is occurring onstage. The singers sing not into a wide open acoustic hall but into the audience’s ear, making the awful world of Kaspar Hauser inescapable.



Works cited:
Swados, Elizabeth and Courtney, Erin. Kaspar Hauser: A Foundling’s Opera. New York, The
Flea Theatre,
New York, 26 March 2009.
La Rocco, Claudia. “Fascination Endures of Diamond in the Rough.” New York Times, 4
March 2009.

Reimagination of Power in Mabou Mines' Dollhouse

In Mabou Mines’ experimental interpretation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, perhaps the most immediately obvious of the many radical choices is the stature of the actors. All of the men in this production are under five feet, and all of the women are over six feet, with the exception of the Helmer daughter, Emmy, who is played by a thirty-seven-inch-tall primordial dwarf. Another notable choice is the use of nudity at different points of the performance, as many of the characters appear in various stages of undress during the show. Both the choice in height and in costume attempt to subvert traditional views of the source of power. Throughout the majority of the show, the men, despite their diminutive stature, hold power over the women, and both female and male characters use their own nudity as a tool for intimidating those around them. Whereas society traditionally relates shortness with weakness, and nakedness with shame and babyhood, Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse seeks to relay the point that it is not what you have, but how you use it, that gives you power.

The male characters in Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse use their short stature to their own advantage, creating a world in which women are forced to be subservient. The set is a man’s world: all of the set-pieces and props are built to their size, and the women literally do not fit in. In her New York Times review of the show, Margo Jefferson, explaining choice of height, said that “our bodies instinctively crave order, that from infancy on we try to control the world's scale and proportions. That's why the dwarfs and giants of folk tales are powerful.” The men show their power by creating a world expressly for people of their size, and by forcing the women to live in a world where they are uncomfortable. The women in the play are forced to shrink themselves below the men; in most of the scenes in which both female and male characters appear, the women kneel, lie, or sit in order to be below the men.

The men express physical dominance throughout the play. They take advantage of the women’s subservient postures and, at many points of the production, mount and/or climb on top of women. Though the women, because of their large size, are clearly not pinned to the ground by the men, they act as if they are unable to move. Even when the women do respond, the men use it to their advantage. At one point, Nora crawls between Torvald’s legs, lifting him onto her back so that his feet cannot reach the ground. And yet even though Nora is nearly two feet taller than Torvald, even though she is the one moving, Torvald takes control of his wife as if she is a horse, and controls where she goes. Until the end of the play, every move the men make is a show of dominance. In Jefferson’s words, “They wear perfectly cut Victorian jackets…they swagger through the doorway, smoke cigars and slap one another on the back. They are like toy soldiers.” Just like soldiers, every movement shows purpose and dominance. Their strutting and their physical and sexual mistreatment of women show the most extreme of the domineering quality of maleness. It is perhaps because of their height that they are so controlling, and so eager to abuse those around them. At every moment their power is challenged, and so they use the size of their homes and their physical behavior to keep the women from rising up to their full height.

Nudity is also used as a show of physical power. In the masquerade scene, Krogstad is shirtless, clad only in the bottom half of an obscene goat costume. In the masquerade scene, he takes advantage of everyone, dominating them. Later in the play, Torvald also uses his own nakedness to show control over Nora. For a large amount of their conflict scene, he, half-nude, nearly rapes her, and as a finale to his show of power, he drops his underclothes and stands naked, arms raised, in front of Nora, who kneels in front of him. Despite his height, his body is well built, and in that moment, there is no question of who is in control.

However, at the end of the play, the tides turn. During the opera scene, Nora, whose clothing has been disappearing slowly throughout the play, drops her last items of clothing. In a balcony overlooking the now-robed Torvald, she stands completely naked and completely still. Her hair, the last of her once-elaborate costume, has disappeared. She is no longer putting on a show for Torvald, flittering around in elaborate frills for his benefit. Her voice has dropped, and she stands at her full impressive height. The world of the play is still a caricature, but it is no longer a doll’s house. It has become a giant’s world, and it is Torvald’s turn to adapt.


Works cited:
Ibsen, Henrik. Adaptation by Breuer, Lee and Mitchell, Maude. Mabou Mines
Dollhouse. New York, St. Ann’s Warehouse,
New York, 24 February 2009
Jefferson, Margo. “THEATER REVIEW; Fun-House Proportions Turn Dominance
Upside Down.” New York Times, 24 November 2003.