About

Life and Times
Creation I
Creation II
Balance
Responsibility
Hope

1987 was an industrious and fertile year for the seven members of Watchface. After their
compilation of new and revived works at the new club performance space within the La
MaMa complex, Watchface: The Spring ’87 Collection, they were also invited to perform as
part of Los Angeles’ Fringe Festival that fall. Carol Colin and Ted Waltz, who owned and
operated the gallery and performance space Oranges/Sardines, knew Iris Rose from her
performance work in Southern California prior to her move to New York. Carol and Ted
invited the group to come west as the gallery’s submission to this annual festival celebrating
the Los Angeles art scene, which featured theater, music, and dance located in a wide
range of venues. As with the Spring ’87 Collection engagement, the invitation to Los Angeles
inspired new work and new partnerships.
Fringe Festival calendar cover and listing
Oranges/Sardines flyer

Life and Times was to be the single collaboration between Kurt Fulton and Maggie Siena as a
duo. By the time of the Fringe Festival invitation, Maggie had already worked with both Kim
X Knowlton and Melanie Monios on two-person performances. It was Kurt who suggested
that he and Maggie work together on a piece for the festival, and Maggie agreed. Two
other novel duets came together for the trip to California – Chazz Dean and Melanie with
MissMister and Iris and Kim with What’s Your Problem?

Kurt not only thought that he and Maggie had similar sensibilities and the ability to work well
together but that she could help him crystallize some of his grander notions and make them
more concrete. He proposed utilizing the creation myths of early civilizations within the
performance or as a jumping off point. He had been fascinated by the various fanciful
myths, their contrasts and similarities, presented in his early college classes in Cultural
Anthropology. This caught Maggie’s imagination and her own interest and past studies in
Developmental Psychology. They conceived of aligning the mythical steps in the creation of
the world with the stages in the creation of a person, along with the major phases that
transpire in human beings over the course of his or her lifetime.

As they further discussed the concepts that would inspire the performance, they arrived at
three principles they felt were essential to a successful life – hope, responsibility, and
balance. Their definition of a successful life at its most primitive was procreation, the cycle of
life. Maggie’s show notes contained this definition:

Cycle – creation is everyone’s story of life and the realization of responsibility to maintain
balance and create life… because we cherish ourselves and hope for humanity to
survive.

An outline began to form as the various ideas were conceived and organized within the
Watchface style. The show was to begin with a section depicting aspects of creation myths
followed by associated stages in the development of human beings. Abstract
representations of their three vital values were to complete the performance. With Kurt’s
background in dance, particularly his modern dance experience, he was not concerned
about the very nonrepresentational direction the show was going. He was used to
audiences forming their own perceptions from materials presented, or simply staying in the
moment and enjoying the visual and aural stimuli. Contrarily, Maggie’s experience was in
theater. Another line from her notes asked this question: “My problem – how can we relate it
to people – ground the issue?”

Maggie’s proposition was to use folktales to humanize the project, to craft a contrast to the
abstract creation stories. They would enact fables, each with its own “moral of the story”,
which stood as lessons that humankind passed down from one generation to another. Kurt
was enthusiastic. He had hoped for Maggie to ground the piece and this appeared to him to
be the missing element. Maggie chose an ancient Tibetan legend for the first story; the
second was an Icelandic “old wives’ tale” of the Middle Ages. Maggie thought the third
should be a contemporary story and reflect present day. She decided she would write it
herself. She also suggested that the piece be titled Life and Times. They both agreed that
the name captured the spirit of this intimate, less than an hour long show that contained
these very large and complex concepts.

They began Life and Times in a tableau evoking a couple posing for a family portrait.
Maggie sat with her hands in her lap as Kurt stood rigidly behind her. They used this image in
their promotion materials as well, with the photo sepia toned to look like a vintage tintype.
The photos were taken by Maggie’s future husband, Ken Schles.

For the first section, Creation 1, elements of various creation myths were organized by theme,
such as the time when nothing yet existed, the “beginning” or the first appearance of a god,
and the formation of the earth. The acknowledgment of God as represented in the script:

Kurt:
The god of all things, some call him nature, appeared suddenly in chaos.

Maggie:
In the beginning, the goddess of all things rose naked from chaos.

Both:
In the beginning, God.

Maggie:
The secret of his power lay in his name.

Creation II was more difficult to conceive. Several stages of human development were
outlined and scripted, but ultimately only the period from the start of life up to that
individual’s first independent step was portrayed. The collaborators felt the stories took both
the world and a person to the point where they had become receptive “blank slates,” ready
to be written upon. Ideas such as teething, weaning, and trust instigated the movement.

For the first story, the Tibetan tale “The Young Man Who Refused to Kill,” Kurt and Maggie
performed in only t-shirts and boxers. The narration was divided into halves – as one
performer was telling the story, the other moved between multiple two-dimensional poses
appropriate to the story. They wanted to interpret the tale as if through primitive carvings or
hieroglyphics, so the storyteller made marks upon the poser – rough lines and basic shapes
to emphasize highpoints in the plot.

The tale was of Tashi, who refused to kill, even to supply food for his family. His father found
him useless and after a botched hunting trip threatened to kill his son. After being severely
wounded by his father, Tashi was nursed to health by a group of monks who listened to his
story. The monks gave Tashi a magic horse. The horse asked Tashi to kill him and spread his
skin across the land and throw his hair into the wind. Horrified, Tashi refused. When the horse
took his own life and Tashi fulfilled the horse’s last request, he was presented with a mansion,
herds of livestock and much gold. This was his reward for “showing only compassion toward
other living things.” Tashi brought his family to his mansion where his father begged for his
forgiveness. They never wanted for anything again.
page from “The Young Man Who Refused to Kill”

The Icelandic folk story was the second legend. Back in their full costumes, Kurt and Maggie narrated the tale and performed choreography that emanated from improvised movements created as the story was read by other members of Watchface. It began on a cursed farm. Whenever a member of the family was left to tend the farm while the others went to an evening prayer service at Christmastime, that person was often found dead upon the others’ return. On the Christmas of the story, neglected daughter Helga was chosen to stay. “No great loss if she went the way of the others,” said her parents. After dark a child greeted Helga holding an empty bowl. The child asked her for something to eat. Helga gave the child a portion of the evening meal, although told to save the meal for her family. Soon a woman approached Helga and thanked her for the kindness she had shown her hungry child. She gave Helga a bundle of beautiful clothes to wear on a special day. “Of course she would have to live, when no one would have missed her if she had died,” her parents whispered upon their return. Katla, Helga’s favored sister, had seen the gifted garments, so when the next Christmas came, she wanted to stay home. A child again appeared with an empty bowl. Expecting gifts instead, Katla refused the child. The family returned home to find Katla dead, every bone in her body broken. Helga wore the treasured clothing on her wedding day, and all wondered at them. The story ended with the line, “And of this tale I can tell no more.”

For the final story, Maggie wrote a modern, ambiguous account of a young woman going
about a busy day in a busy city. The woman, Carol, encountered many situations in which
she had to make a moral decision, as all do in their daily activities, from deciding to assist an
elderly lady struggling to find a seat on a crowded bus, to saying no to a homeless person
on the street asking for money. Maggie voiced the story, with Kurt only adding occasional
lines of found text that reflected the plot line. For instance, as Maggie narrated Carol’s
hurried visit to a drugstore while still taking time to examine each product and its price, Kurt’s
line was “If I only have one life, let me live it as a blonde.” Upon leaving the store, Carol
dashed across the street with her purchases and was struck by a cab and killed instantly.
“Carol” script To reflect Carol’s hectic day, the movements here came from the same method
as the previous tale, with the addition of challenging patterns created by the
performers, weaving between, around, and over a trio of chairs.

Following each folktale was one of the three interpretations of balance, responsibility, or
hope. The sections were relatively brief, with movement and text based on each of the three
concepts. The actions were simple, progressing from one into another, while the text was
spoken in an evolving poetic chant. A portion of the “Balance” script:

Both:
On the other hand
On the other saw
I saw the other hand
I saw your hand
I see it
Saw other
Saw hand

After the premier performance at the Fringe Festival, Life and Times was presented with other
shows from the Watchface festival repertory at System M, a performance space in Long
Beach, California. John Traub, a close friend of Kurt’s, was the current artistic director and
invited the group to perform.
System M flyer
System M program

Back in New York City, over the next several months, the show was also performed at Dixon
Place and La MaMa. The Lower Manhattan Arts Council presented the piece at noontime on
the plaza of what was then the Continental Insurance Building along Wall Street. Maggie
later wondered, “What were we doing there?” It was a stark contrast, the quiet
contemplative performance and the harried business population.

Later that year, when Iris was pregnant with her son Joe, she received word that she had
been awarded a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). One of the
requirements of recipients of the award was that they offer a free performance or workshop
somewhere in the state of New York. Since Iris was pretty far along in her gestation, she
didn’t want to travel, so she arranged to do three sessions at the Hamilton Fish Public Library
on East Houston Street. For the first one, she read a slightly edited version of the book One
Hundred Dresses while Jennifer Ross, one of the producers of the video for her solo show
Extreme Women and a skilled storyboard artist, drew illustrations on the spot. At the end of
the reading, the children in attendance were allowed to keep the drawings. For the second
session, which was dedicated to folktales, Iris read the Grimm’s fairy tale “The Story of One
Who Set Out to Study Fear” and then had Kurt and Maggie perform the Icelandic folktale
section of Life and Times. Although the children seemed to like the creepy folktales, Iris
received a phone call from the librarian the next day, asking her not to return for the
scheduled third session.

At the start of the next year, 1989, Richard Schachter, friend and Watchface collaborator,
invited Watchface to perform at Galerie SAW Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario. Richard was
currently living in both Ottawa and New York City, and he had developed a relationship with
the Canadian gallery. Busy with their newborn son, Iris and James Siena opted out, but the
five other members of Watchface accepted the invitation. The five assembled an evening
entitled 2 ½ by 5 – that is, 2 ½ pieces by five performers. It consisted of a five-person version of the first two sections of the originally seven-person Septophonic, Structure and Danger,
and Chazz and Melanie’s MissMister. In order to include Kim in a third show, Kurt and
Maggie developed a three-person version of Life and Times. Incorporating Kim into the
existing show was not difficult as most parts of the performance were easily adjusted to
include a third person. The staging for the folktales was less adaptable, so instead of altering
the complicated choreography, Kim and Kurt performed the Tashi tale, Kurt and Maggie
continued to tell the account of Helga and the strangers, and Kim took Kurt’s role in Carol’s
story.
Galerie SAW Gallery program
Galerie SAW Gallery calendar

Kim used her connections in Ithaca, New York, from her years at Cornell University to
organize an additional engagement at the city’s First Street Playhouse. 2 ½ x 5 traveled to
Ithaca in January and Ottawa in February. First Street Playhouse program The evening received
a wonderful response from the audiences of both cities. Kim’s contribution to Life and Times
added yet another level of insight and humor to Kurt and Maggie’s unique observation of the
development of mankind. And of this tale there is no more to tell.