Young Artists Talk

After a Chinese Cabaret per formance, this reviewer sat down with Peter Melnick, Paul Warner and Andrea Burke in the theater.

Crimson: Where did you come across these Bronze Age poems. They are not something on your normal reading list or summer reading?

Paul: Well, surprisingly enough it is. There was a Lit and Arts class that I never went to last year but Arthur Wailinz has a translation of the Book of Songs, maybe 400 Poems from Bronze Age China, and they're just really gorgeous, and that's how I came across them. I never did anything else for that course, I didn't take the midterm, never went to it, didn't sign up until March, but I read all those poems in this book and I decided to put them together into a show.

Peter: Initially Paul found the poetry and as usual I said 'Right, you're crazy,' and 'We haven't got a show.' We each took the 300-odd poems and agreed we would pick out 10 or 12.

Crimson: Where was Chinese Cabaret developed and where is it going?

Peter: We did it at Harvard for a two-day workshop this summer--Paul was directing. It very nearly didn't get born. It was a one-woman show at Harvard, with Andrea, and we later added L.G. Ubieta.

Paul: We're shooting a video starting December 10 for PBS of shooting on Revere Beach, we'll be shooting in a white studio, and most important we will be shooting in the Everett Graveyard. Then we have applied for a very large grant to develop this and have it open in New York.

Crimson: Andrea, when did you start working with Paul?

Andrea: February 24th of this year, I was not really auditioning for plays but he saw me one day and said he had heard me sing and he asked if I'd be in his play (Curse of Kulyenchikov). I had just come back and was sort of bumming around the Harvard campus, bored Curse of Kulyenchikov was the only thing I had done.

Crimson: What were you doing on your year off?

Andrea: I was in a rock band, and I wrote music and doing a lot of singing. Nobody's Heard of it. We were pretty good, but I'm glad I got into this play, it gave me a reason to quit, because if I hadn't gotten into that play I would probably be still singing in clubs and not getting anywhere.

Crimson: What do you have coming at Harvard?

Paul: At the Agassiz theater we're doing a new musical with the Korean War as a backdrop. Scott (Scott Rubin '85) is writing it and Peter's writing the music and that will be for six weeks at the Agassiz theater in a sort of artist in residence program.