``Flowers and Wreaths'': Radio theater and surround

Abstract

Originally produced in late 1992, ``Flowers and Wreaths'' is a setting for poems by Jacques Prvert (paroles Prvert) in French and in English translations by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and me. Prvert's success in France after World War II was largely due to his unabashed use of street language and his staunch antiwar, antirational political stance. The performance featured much original instrumentation: an amplified skull-resonator dental floss violone, a 35-ft.-long infrasonic electric monochord, a naval signal lamp, mechanized moving audience seating, the amplified electrocution of vegetables, unconventional speaker placement, etc. Mari Novotny-Jones and I continued to perform the piece through 1993. This new, surround recording is of only the title poem in the suite, ``Flowers and Wreaths,'' with a few elements which were originally used with other texts. It was a relatively quiet passage in an otherwise fairly raucous performance but was also a kind of spiritual center for the piece. The point of view for the listener during this extracted section is that of a corpse laying in a ditch by the side of a road. My intent is to explore the possibility of new, surround broadcast technology and its suitability for a resurgence of radio theater.