THE BLUE FLOWER / PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Blue Flower is a new theater with music piece created by the husband/wife team of musician Jim Bauer and visual artist Ruth Bauer. Recipients of a 2004 Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation award, Jim and Ruth Bauer have been developing the piece in New York over the last several years under the auspices of such programs as the HERE Arts Center's Artist Residency Program (NYC), The Public Theater's "New Work Now" Festival, and the ASCAP Foundations's Musical Theatre Development Program. (more information on the development history is available on the "history" and "news/events" pages of this website).

The story of four interesting Germans and a love rectangle

The show features the 10-piece WEIMARBAND on stage (bassoon, pedal steel slide guitar, marimba, cello, accordion, piano, electric guitar, bass, drums and percussion), projected film and still imagery, and seven singer/actors in what the writers describe as a "four-dimensional collage", and "art for entertainment's sake". The story, with four principle characters inspired by the historical figures Max Beckmann, Franz Marc, Hannah Höch and Marie Curie, is told through a narrative song cycle:

Max, a FAMOUS German artist who emigrates to the United States in the '30's, dies alone in New York City's Central Park in 1955. The show is a playfui Dada-inspired romp through the closely-protected memories that are unleashed at the moment of Max's death, centering on three friends and lovers he lost and the apparitions of events that overwhelmed their lives.

Set at the end of World War I and the beginning of the Weimar Republic in Germany, the story unfolds through the pages of a Fairytale book of collages Max has been working on for years and that come to life on stage.

Kurt Weill going Tete-a-Tete with Hank Williams

The music score blends the jagged contours of 1920's Berlin cabaret music with the lyricism of American country and western in a style Mr. Bauer describes as "STURM n' TWANG" or "Kurt Weill going tete-a-tete with Hank Williams".

WHAT THE AUTHORS SAY . . .

We began The Blue Flower project with the purpose of expanding and animating our work as a musician and visual artist with the four-dimensionality of live theater. We had no particular theatrical form in mind as a model, goal or destination, only the desire to explore and exploit the narrative powers of sound and imagery in the magic of a staged environment.

The project started with music -- the visceral way music, particularly live music performance, communicates to its audience -- and a curiosity about the shifting mixture of and running competition between light and dark, playfulness and reslessness, hope and foreboding that flowed through much of the popular and stage music of the Weimar period in Germany. Without a specific story in mind, only a mood to express, orchestration was conceived and music written in an attempt to capture some of the same color and feeling.

As songs without lyrics took shape, we began an examination of the Weimar Republic and the brief "world between two wars", which by necessity led back to the Great War that preceeded it, the last Belle Epoque out of which the 20th century seemed to spontaneously combust, and then further back through the longest period of uninterrupted peace and prosperity in European history. We finally reached 1889, the year in which we decided, for many reasons, the story would begin. In the course of our exploration we found inspiration for four principal characters in the historical figures Max Beckmann, Franz Marc, Hannah Hoech and Marie Curie -- three artists and a scientist -- all four in ambitious pursuit of one thing or another, and all four drawn into the deep mud and unmoving trenches of the First World War. A story began to take shape, and lyrics were woven into music that was waiting for a sense of purpose and a place to go. It was 1999, with the millenium about to change, and the deeper we got into our subject, the more the fin of the present siecle was looking like the fin of the last. The parallels were chilling, and are more so now, six years later.

Inspired by the art and art movements of the early 20th century -- in particular Dada, in both its lyrical and venal, politically charged forms, Surrealism, the "golden age" of German silent film, and the presiding spirit of Kurt Schwitters -- the program is built as a collage, mirroring the intense interest in collage work immediately following the First World War (the world was in pieces both metaphorically and in reality, and the task was to make it whole again, put it back together in a way that made sense). The title comes from the symbol of the blue flower used initially by Novalis and other German romantic poets of the 18th and 19th centuries to signify the ongoing search for artistic perfection and which later came to symbolize the simultaneous end to and beginning of all things, reincarnation.

We dedicate The Blue Blue Flower to the possibility of learning from history.

-- Jim Bauer and Ruth Bauer

WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID . . .

(click here for REVIEWS)

MARK HOLLMANN
composer (Urinetown)

“I love the unflinching nature of this. It has so much to say. It’s bursting. The lyrics are so interesting. Every word is unexpected.”

“I was struck that a show with The Blue Flower’s originality had been written with such craft. In The Blue Flower’s daring style of storytelling and in the resourcefully eclectic sound of its score, I think that Jim Bauer and Ruth Bauer have demonstrated that they have both the skill and the vision to explore the limits of musical theater conventions.”

GREG KOTIS
writer (Urinetown)

“It’s beautiful writing, both in the narration and the lyrics.”

“There’s so much there to think on and dwell on. It’s haunting.”

“The themes and the characters in this piece are so rich and relevant in an unsettling way – a good way. We are living in a period of history now just like the characters in this play. They didn’t quite know where they were going either.”

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ
composer (Wicked, Godspell, Pippin)

“The music is just so beautiful, ravishing. It’s an incredibly personal musical world, and yet, enormously evocative and universal.”

STUART ROSS
writer (Forever Plaid, Radiant Baby)

“I loved this, just wild about it. It’s not going to be a normal show, no matter what you do, and that’s great. We don’t need normal. If anyone tells you to ‘normalize’ this, just run, and run fast.”

“I just love the music. It’s spectacular. Eiffel Tower, that’s an amazing song.”

“[Pro Patria Mori] is just one of the greatest things I’ve heard in a long time. It was fresh and it was funny and it was insane. It turned me on; I mean, I got so excited, you know, as an artist.”

STEVEN SPIEGEL
Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization

“I think this is exactly the right time to be exploring this work and presenting it. So many venues are looking for this type of intellectual property. It’s haunting. It captures your soul. The songs are wonderful, beautiful. To me what makes a theatrical piece a classic is that it could work anytime. This is a perennial, an evergreen.”

“The song Love: What a great tune. I don’t think your intention is to release any of these as singles, but that is a great tune. I mean, wonderful.”

FRANK OTERI
Editor, THE NEW MUSIC BOX (www.newmusicbox.com)

“The melodies of Tori Amos, Sweeney Todd, and southern rock meet a country/classical chamber band to create music in what is self-described as ‘Kurt Weill going tête-à-tête w/Hank Williams’. Throw in some accordions and Dada lyrics and you have the ultimate post-modern sound.”

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