The Styrous® Viewfinder: Alan Hovhaness

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February 20, 2024

20,000 vinyl LPs 355: Jean Erdman ~ The Coach with the Six Insides

Jean Erdman ~ The Coach with the Six Insides

vinyl LP back cover detail

back cover photo by Deborah Berman

photo of album cover by Styrous®

Today is the birthday of American dancer and choreographer of modern dance as well as an avant-garde theater director, Jean Erdman who was born on February 20, 1916, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to John Piney Erdman, a doctor of divinity and missionary from New England, who settled in Honolulu as a minister at the non-denominational Protestant Church of the Crossroads where he preached, in both English and Japanese, to a multi-ethnic congregation. Her mother, Marion Dillingham Erdman, was a member of one of the founding industrialist families of Hawaii.

Erdman's earliest dance experience was the hula. She attended the Punahou School in Honolulu where she learned, as a form of physical education, Isadora Duncan interpretive dance. Reflecting on her early dance training, Erdman said these two influences taught her that "dancing is an expression of something meaningful to the dancer, not a mere series of lively steps".

Jean Erdman ~ The Coach with the Six Insides

vinyl LP front cover

design: Howard Bernstein

photo of album cover by Styrous®

Erdman worked with the greats of Avant-Guard and experimental musicians and performers; John Cage, Martha Graham, Louis Horst, Merce Cunningham, Lou Harrison, Alan Hovhaness and many others.

Jean Erdman ~ The Coach with the Six Insides

vinyl LP back cover

back cover photo by Deborah Berman

photo of album cover by Styrous®

The Coach with the Six Insides is an adaptation of the James Joyce book, Finnegans Wake. While Joyce's story is told from the perspective of the male barkeeper Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, Erdman's work a combination of dance, mime, and Joycean stream of consciousness language focuses on the female psyche, as seen through the many incarnations of the main female character Anna Livia Plurabelle. Erdman danced all the aspects of Anna Livia from young woman, to old crone, to the rain itself that becomes the River Liffey flowing through the heart of Dublin. Teiji Ito was the musical director and composed the musical score on a vast array of instruments from around the world including among others, Japanese bass drums, Tibetan cymbals, a violin and an accordion.

The Coach with the Six Insides premiered at the Village South Theatre in Greenwich Village on November 26, 1962. It ran for 114 performances and received the Obie and Vernon Rice Awards for Outstanding Achievement in theater. She choreographed a few Broadway musicals, one was Two Gentlemen of Verona, a delightful send up of the Shakespeare comedy.

The Coach with the Six Insides was performed on CBS anthology series "Camera Three" in December of 1964 and there is a video of that performance on YouTube (link below).

In 1943, Erdman choreographed Creature On a Journey with, Counterdance in the Spring, composed by Lou Harrison. There is an excellent video of it performed by movement artist, Stephanie Liapis, with a documentary about the costumes, artists and music. The work demonstrates the influence hula and Duncan movement was incorporated into Erdman's work.

In 1945 she choreographed Daughters of the Lonesome Isle with a commissioned solo prepared piano score by John Cage; it premiered in Bronxville, New York, on February 27, 1946 (link below).

In the mid-thirties, Erdman met Joseph Campbell and Martha Graham: both would be immensely influential in her life.

Joseph Campbell & Jean Erdman

date & photographer unknown

In 1972 Erdman collaborated with Campbell, they had married by that time, to form the Theater of the Open Eye performance group.

Theater of the Open Eye
date & photographer unknown

The album included a libretto.

Jean Erdman ~ The Coach with the Six Insides

libretto cover (below)

libretto photo by Deborah Berman

photo of libretto by Styrous®

Jean Erdman ~ The Coach with the Six Insides

libretto interior

photo of libretto by Styrous®

There are cover variations as well as label variations in the pressings: The German pressing has text on the labels.

German label pressing, side 2 & side 1

This version, the US pressing, does not have any text, just artwork printed on the labels.

Jean Erdman ~ The Coach with the Six Insides

vinyl LP record label, side 1

photo of record label by Styrous®

Jean Erdman ~ The Coach with the Six Insides

vinyl LP record label, side 2

photo of record label by Styrous®

Tracklist:

Side 1:

A1 - Act I Scene 2
A2 - Act I Scene 6
A3 - Act II Scene 5
A4 - Act II Scene 6

Side 2:

B1 - Act II Scene 7
B2 - Act III Scene 1, 3 & 4
B3 - Act III Scene 5

Companies, etc.

    Copyright © – ESP-Disk' Ltd.

Credits:

    Art Direction – Stephen I. Levitt
    Composed By, Performer – Teiji Ito
    Cover – Howard Bernstein
    Directed By, Choreography – Miss Erdman*
    Lacquer Cut By – DBH*
    Performer – Genji Ito, Peter Berry
    Photography By [Back Cover] – Deborah Berman
    Voice Actor [Anna Livia Plurabelle], Written-By – Jean Erdman
    Voice Actor [Daughter Iseult] – Sheila Roy
    Voice Actor [Shaun, The Older Twin] – Leonard Frey
    Voice Actor [Shem, The Younger Twin] – Van Dexter
    Voice Actor [Wife And Chairwoman] – Anita Dangler

Notes:

Label variation: This version does not have any text printed on the labels,
just artwork.

Includes an eight page booklet with original lines of the play.
which was Inspired by James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake".

Barcode and Other Identifiers

Matrix / Runout (Side A runout): ESPS 1019 A ORT-2 DBH
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout): ESPS 1019 B ORT-2 DBH

Jean Erdman – The Coach With The Six Insides (Original Cast Album)
Label: ESP Disk – ESP 1019
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US
Released: 1966
Genre: Non-Music, Stage & Screen
Style: Soundtrack, Musical, Avantgarde, Poetry, Experimental

Viewfinder links:

John Cage

Joseph Campbell

Merce Cunningham

Isadora Duncan

Martha Graham

Lou Harrison

Louis Horst

Alan Hovhaness

James Joyce

Net links:

Stephanie Liapis

NY Times ~ Jean Erdman, a Dancer Moved by Myth

Northwestern University ~ Cage and Contemporary Choreographers

University of Washington ~ Creature on a Journey

YouTube links:

The Coach with the Six Insides

Creature on a Journey (56 mins., 52 secs.)

Daughters of the Lonesome Isle

Jean Erdman Campbell's 100th Birthday

Jean Erdman choreography links

Hamadryad

Ophelia

Jean Erdman -
photo: White Barn Theater

Styrous® ~ Tuesday, February 20, 2024

20,000 Vinyl LPs Archive
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~

April 17, 2021

Thornton Wilder, Grace Wilder, Telegraph Hill & ButohDrawing

Thornton Wilder - 1920

Yale University

photo: Roger Sherman Studio

Today is the birthday of American playwright and novelist, Thornton Wilder. Born on April 17, 1897, in Madison, Wisconsin. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. He also won a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.

I have an indirect connection with Wilder on several levels. When I was in my English Lit class in high school, one of the books I read for one of my book reports was his novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. His novel had a profound impact on me as it was my first awareness of Chance Operation where time, things, people, events converge with no obvious plan but effect those involved in different ways (link below). This was long before I had heard of John Cage, Charles Ives, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Alan Hovhaness with their concepts of Aleatoric music; then 30 years later applying the concept to the ButohDrawing performances by Tom White that resulted from it (link below).

Another level was in the early sixties, when I was acting and appeared in a performance of The Skin of Our Teeth; I met his nice, Grace Wilder who had been involved with theater her whole life. She was a delightful old lady who had a wonderful sense of humor and told amazing stories. I remember visiting her home/studio perched on the side of Telegraph Hill where she had been living for decades. The area by then was nothing but rundown housing inhabited by outcasts and artists; characters that could have been right out of the Cannery Row novel by John Steinbeck. The structures had been built sometime in the 1800's and had survived the 1906 Earthquake but were dilapidated and probably very dangerous. A story in a 1947 newspaper stated that "the reason Telegraph Hill was reasonably safe in 1906, was due to how the "Italians and Spanish kept it from burning by quenching, with buckets of red wine and wine-soaked blankets, the flames that threatened their tinder-dry frame houses and board shanties." Seems to me the alcohol in the wine would have added to the fire, but what do I know?

There was an abandoned quarry just below her place that threatened all the buildings on her side of the hill. In 1927, Philo Farnsworth invented the first fully functional all-electronic image pickup device video camera tube and produced the first electronic television transmission in his Green Street lab in the Telegraph Hill quarry.

Telegraph Hill - ca 1885

Photo: San Francisco History Center

San Francisco Public Library

As far as I can remember, her studio was somewhere in the area I've circled in red in the above photograph I cropped:

There were two or three huge casement widows that swiveled up in her studio and you could see the San Francisco bay. The photo below is from 1878 but take the church out of it (I don't remember seeing it) and the view looked pretty much the same.

Telegraph Hill - 1878
photo by Henry Guttmann

The paths along the way to get to the dwellings on the hill were all made of wood and I remember the steep stairs and uneven walkways were rickety and scary.

On January 2, 1857, a newspaper reported about the graveyard on Telegraph Hill:

"During the late storm a miniature avalanche of rock and dirt occurred at a quarry on Telegraph Hill, in Sansome Street North of Vallejo. The fall exposed several coffins which were buried high up on the hill, and on examination it was found that a great number of graves were scattered about. A headboard in one place bore the following inscription: "Here lies the remains of James Anderson, seaman on board the U.S.F. Congress, a native of Canterbury, England, died July 16, 1847, aged 41 years. The coffins were in remarkable state of preservation.

The Telegraph Hill Dwellers site (link below) states that Telegraph Hill has had a series of names through its history. Allegedly the Spanish called it Loma Alta. Others referred to it as Clark's Point, Prospect Hill, Signal Hill, Windmill Hill, Goat Hill and Tin Can Hill (fits in with Steinbeck's Cannery Row).

Telegraph Hill map

Telegraph Hill Dwellers

The Bridge of San Luis Rey has been translated to film in 1929, 1944, 1958 (for TV) and in 2004 with F. Murray Abraham, Kathy Bates, Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, and a score written by Lalo Schifrin. In 2018 it was adapted for the stage by David Greenspan.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey - 1929

movie poster

The Bridge of San Luis Rey - 2004

movie poster

Some time in the seventies, I think, the old buildings on Telegraph Hill were demolished to build condos but Grace had died long before that happened.

Viewfinder links:

ButohDrawing

John Cage

Robert De Niro

Philo T. Farnsworth

Alan Hovhaness

Charles Ives

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Tom White

Net links:

The Bridge of San Luis Rey plot

ButohDrawing