The muses have turned into demanding demons, and have split. At my wit’s end, overextended, frustrated and tired, I was booked to premiere a new work. Without a clue as to what to create, my solution was simply to render my point of view. If straddling the footlights had taken its toll, make a piece about the footlights.

I designed the set so that the footlights were along a side wall. The real audience shared my vantage point, as if they were with me looking through the off-stage wings onto the stage which lay beyond. In this sacred precinct, hidden from the imagined audience but in full view of the actual audience, was a messy dressing table, chair and mirror loaded with costumes, makeup and props––a safety zone.

I performed a shotgun tirade of song, dances, short acts played to the footlights, which reached a feverish pitch, into a bit of a mad scene. Tripping over one of the black cubes that populated the space, I considered what their purpose might be. One side of the largest cube turned out to be a lid. On the inside of the lid is a circle of light bulbs, and a mirror. All I needed to do was remove the makeup from my face to end this torture.

Story, choreography, direction, set and costume design by John Kelly; music by Adolphe-Charles Adam, Georges Bizet, Giulio Caccini, Joni Mitchell, Claudio Monteverdi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amilcare Ponchielli, Henry Purcell, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Camille Saint-Saens, Robert Schumann, Giuseppe Verdi and Paul Whiteman; lighting design by Howard Thies. Premiere: La MaMa E.T.C., NY, October 14, 1988.