About

Case
PART ONE
Opening
Decay I
Mr. X and Mr. Y
Doctor/Patient
Double Sided Self
Decay II
Bedlam

PART TWO
B Street Dressmaker

Chazz Dean found the inspiration for Case in the discount bin at St. Mark’s Bookstore. There
he came across C.G. Jung’s classic book The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, which
included a case study of Babette X, the B Street dressmaker. He was immediately
captivated by her strange associational approach to language, what Chazz called “the
bizarre poetry of madness” – not unlike the free associations that flowed out of Chazz and his
Watchface performance colleagues when they Jammed to develop material for a show (for
a description of techniques in green, see METHOD). “They were like Jams from another
century,” said Chazz. Although the book had no pictures, the dressmaker’s words evoked
rapidly changing images:

Double bazaar – I affirm two bazaars – Mr. Zuppinger shot out of my mouth as a little
boy-doll, once in a dream – he had no uniform on, but the others had military uniforms
– they are Czars, hence the word Bazaar – also a little girl jumped out of my mouth with
a little brown frock and a little black apron – my little daughter, she is granted to me –
oh God, the deputy, she is the deputy, the end of the lunatic asylum came out of my
mouth – my little daughter shot out of my mouth to the end of the end of the lunatic
asylum – she was slightly paralyzed, sewn together from rags – she belonged to a
bazaar – you know these businesses have a large turnover – I came first as double, as
sole owner of the world – I am the double bazaar.

Chazz and James Siena had created two shows as a team: Boys Will Be Men, also inspired
by an old book, in that case an etiquette guide for boys from 1942; and Stereotype, a fast
and funny club show consisting of rhythmic portraits of familiar types. Chazz proposed that
they base their next show on the Jung book and other writings from early psychiatric
literature. James agreed, and they asked Joshua Fried to write the music and join them as a
performer in the show.

Joshua had written the music for Iris Rose’s Camden, and earlier for her first show in New
York, Mysteries, and was part of the unusual music group Nancy with James and Iris (they
sang along to songs they didn’t know; see Nancy/Marty/Masterpiece Theatre for full
description), but he had never before participated in the creation of the physical
performance style that was characteristic of the group that would soon become known as
Watchface. Joshua’s usual gig was performing danceable music in clubs as a kind of one-
man-band: he ran his own carefully constructed tape loops through a reel-to-reel deck and
played the mixer, manipulating the tracks to create variations on each endlessly repeating
composition.

Case, the show that grew out of their fascination with “the bizarre poetry of madness,” was
performed in the Parish Hall, the more intimate of the two performance spaces in St. Mark’s
Church (one block from the bookstore where Chazz had discovered The Psychology of
Dementia Praecox). Danspace Project had been presenting dance and other
experimental performance there since the late 1970’s. Danspace Project program

The piece was divided into two units. PART ONE included seven sections; PART TWO had only
one – B Street Dressmaker, dedicated to the woman whose distinctive imagination and use
of language had inspired the show. For the first half, James, Chazz, and Joshua were all
dressed to look like orderlies, in white shirts and pants. As the audience entered, the three
performers sat on chairs with their heads down, as though drugged. When the audience was
seated, Joshua crossed to stage left, where he would remain most of the time. The show
began with the clanging of a bell and Joshua reading a list of archaic names for psychiatric
ailments.

His one-man “orchestra pit” included all of the electronic equipment that he used in his
nightclub shows: large vertical tape decks with rubber darts attached to their smooth, silver
faces and a mixer on a stand so he could operate it standing up. Multi-track tape loops
traveled around the darts and through the tape heads as Joshua mixed the sound live. He
also had a microphone and acted as the show’s narrator most of the time. Joshua had no
real acting experience, so he approached this challenge by playing with the sounds of the
words aesthetically, without consciously seeking to summon emotions or create a character.
Many sections in the first half were accompanied by variations on an electronic droning
sound that Joshua had created.

Two sections in the first half were linked – Decay I and Decay II. In Decay I, each of the three
performers recited a list of mundane sentences in a matter-of-fact tone, with a simple,
accompanying gesture. Below are a few lines from James’ list:

As a child, the summers seemed very long.
My father is getting on in years.
I have a good job.

In Decay II, the performers repeated the same sentences and gestures, but each was
followed by two variations on the original by the other two performers in turn, created using
a technique called Abstractions. In this way, they took the original to a place of distortion or
adaptation two steps removed from the source. The final step was no longer mundane or
simple but complex and “crazy.”

James:
As a child, the summers seemed very long.

Joshua:
S’child, s’long.

Chazz:
Child!

James:
My father is getting on in years.

Joshua:
Gosh, Dad, I’m sorry.

Chazz:
Sorry, Dad.

James:
I have a good job.

Joshua:
Oh, I have a job.

Chazz:
I hate my job.
Joshua’s actions for Decay II

The middle sections of PART ONE, Mr. X and Mr. Y, Doctor/Patient, and Double Sided Self, were
all based on case histories from psychiatric literature. In Mr. X and Mr. Y, James and Chazz
performed their actions back to back as Joshua described Mr. X’s case:

Mr. X fell hopelessly in love with a lady who soon afterwards married Mr. Y. Although Mr.
X had known Mr. Y for a long time, and even had business dealings with him, he again
and again forgot Mr. Y’s name, so that on a number of occasions Mr. X had to ask other
people when he wished to correspond with Mr. Y.

Doctor/Patient portrayed the revelations of a patient under hypnosis:

Often in the moonlight, I get frightened. Yes, I’m frightened that something might
happen to me. My mother wants to change me into a girl. Look at the sky. The moon
looks so peculiar tonight. Don’t change me into a woman, let me be a man. I do hope
my mother can be stopped.

PART ONE ended with Bedlam, a wild, energetic dance number by James and Chazz,
accompanied by a rhythmic musical collage of percussive clanging, grunting, and groaning
– what Joshua has called “cliché nuthouse sounds.” During the rehearsal period, Joshua
had worried about being able to complete the music in time before the performance, so
Chazz invited him to move into Chazz’s living room. This allowed Joshua to begin work on
the music each night immediately after rehearsals without having to commute back to his
home in Hoboken, New Jersey. Later, he worried aloud to Chazz that the music for Bedlam
was not danceable. “You’re crazy,” replied Chazz. “That’s dance-o-matic!” Indeed, when
Case was over, Joshua successfully incorporated that piece of music into his club set.

During the interval between the first and second halves, James and Chazz erected a metal
frame upstage with a curtain lit from behind, then ignited many candles, which would
provide the primary illumination for the remainder of the show. They had changed into long,
white petticoats over old-fashioned, one-piece, step-in underwear. At the same time,
Joshua planted a spare microphone stand some fifteen feet upstage of his tape decks, to
accommodate the longest tape loop he had ever made – the “B St. Dressmaker’s Theme.”

The introductory text for the second half, read by Joshua in what he described as a
“telephone voice,” was Dr. Jung’s description of its subject, Babette X.

B St. dressmaker, unmarried, born in 1845. The patient was admitted in 1887 and since
then has remained permanently in the asylum. Before admission she had, for several
years, heard voices that slandered her. For a time she contemplated suicide by
drowning. She explained the voices as invisible telephones. They called out to her that
she was a woman of doubtful character, that her child had been found in a toilet, that
she had stolen a pair of scissors in order to poke out a child’s eyes.

In PART TWO, James and Chazz both portrayed the B St. dressmaker, giving physical
expression to her strange, distorted fantasy world. They started off performing in unison,
while Joshua played a live version of the “B St. Dressmaker’s Theme” on the theater’s old
upright piano. Eventually, they split apart, using different variations of voice and movement
to represent different aspects of her complex consciousness. At the same time, the live
musical theme segued into the electronic version. Sometimes Chazz or James recited the
dressmaker’s words in view of the audience while the other performed the physical actions
in silhouette behind the curtain at the back of the stage. At other times, one sat quietly while
the other performed both words and movement. For instance, James, as the dressmaker,
spoke of one of her doctors as “tiny, little Dr. D., the son of the Emperor Barbarossa” in a
singsong voice while holding his hand out to the side as though a little man were standing in
his palm. Then he swung his other palm in an arc high over his head and brought it down
abruptly onto the unfortunate Dr. D., crushing him with a loud slap.

The text for the second half included a letter the dressmaker had written, requesting to be
discharged; nine items from the clinical record, listed by year; a set of simple word
associations; and a set of more complex word associations, in which Dr. Jung had let her
free associate, giving free rein to her powers of improvisation.
Simple word associations partial list
Complex word associations partial list

After its single weekend at St. Mark’s Church, Case was never seen again in its entirety.
Decay II was performed as part of Watchface’s Greatest Hits at both Gates of Dawn and
Darinka, and in one of the legendary Full Moon Shows organized by the Alien Comic (Tom
Murrin) and the Full Moon Crew at P.S. 122. Full Moon Show postcard Subsequently, whenever
Iris Rose gave workshops demonstrating the Watchface techniques at high schools and colleges,
she always showed the video of Decay II from Watchface’s Greatest Hits as a perfect example
of the use of Abstractions.