RICHARD III

Shakespeare Center of LA production with Al Pacino - 2023-4

music and sound by Michael Roth

submitted as the second of two evening length works of live performance 

for the Perelman Democracy Cycle 2025

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From September, 2023 - March, 2024, during the actors' strike, the Shakespeare Center of LA and Al Pacino presented a series of staged reading productions of RICHARD III to benefit Los Angeles school's arts departments and various LA arts organizations including the Wallis-Annenberg. Pacino's thinking encouraged experimentation. We had no rehearsals and no director, rather we trusted our skills and instincts as artists and knowledge of the play - and the importance of the play in our current politics. Al and I agreed in that spirit that I would improvise the music and sound for each performance live in front of the audience, playing various instruments - especially prepared piano and percussion, eventually adding a cello -

and manipulating many digital sounds and modular synths.

 

This was in many ways the opposite of THE TEMPEST with Mr. Plummer - that production was thoroughly rehearsed, the score composed, orchestrated, recorded and precisely put in place.  With Mr. Pacino, RICHARD had an immediacy, a sense of being alive in the moment, presenting the event of the play clearly and directly, slightly different each time, the only production element being my improvised score, underscoring Al extensively, and to heighten the drama as needed during the fights, murders and dream sequences - and none of it rehearsed, just theatre artists going for it.

 

This was the most exciting theatre piece I'd worked on in years, the most alive and challenging. And it worked - the young audiences especially were "violently awake' throughout, and, appropriate to remember for this application, actively involved in Shakespeare's political discussion of monarchy, democracy and corruption. Audiences were also intrigued by the instrumentation for the improvised score, especially prepared piano - many young music students had never seen that before.  

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There was no documentation of the production, no official photographs, no recording, no filming, no reviews, no press invited.

 This was a pure live experience and a very strong reminder that live performance could and should at its best be absolutely alive and unique in the moment - and when possible, especially as the times demand it, politically direct and astute. The photos below were taken by friends in and around performances:

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