Post 12: A new character: "The Geek"

   I have been brainstorming about what contraptions to build and use on stage, and have come up with a new"protagonist", which I call "The Geek ".  He mans a thoroughly 21st Century machine with a 19th Century Steampunk esthetic, a spoof of what a computer might have looked like 150 years ago. At it's core will be an old typewriter, a large computer monitor, and a live cam housed in an old bellows view camera:

 Everything will be mounted on a box on wheels equipped with handles, and will be carted around the stage by "The Geek" like a large TV camera. Something along the lines, but not quite as elaborate as "The Brain" in Caro and Jeunet's "City of Lost Children":

   "The Geek" will be manning the live cam, from wide view to close up, and to some extent interact with the other characters at the same time. He will at times tap the keyboard in rhythm with the music, but also be a "stagehand on stage", helping with the set changes, pushing the bed or the wheelchair around, cranking the front set up, etc...

Post 11: Tadeusz and Frida?

   In the course of my research, I ran across a Polish Theatrical Genius I had never heard of before, not mind you because he is obscure, but because of my own  ignorance of 20th century theatre history: Tadeusz Kantor.

      Born in 1933, he was active from 1940 to 1990, and was at the same time a Painter, a Sculptor, a Set Designer, and a Theatre Director of tremendous vision and talent. I was so impressed with what I read and saw that I started a new blog that envisions which way to take things further afield than just the Frida Show:
        http://theabsurdisttheatrecooperative.blogspot.com
    I now want try to reconcile both things, and make Frida an integral part of the new vision that is evolving out of that discovery. Kantor's work was often called "The Theatre of Death", and that fits squarely with my idea of Death being the second main protagonist next to Frida herself, rather than Diego Riveira. I was already planning on making the props  (bed, wheelchair, easel, prosthetics, corsets, etc…) an important part of the show, and that also fits very well with the Kantor inspiration. I was seeing the show almost as a non linear vaudeville, a sort of Frida Carnival Show, highly stylized and "overacted", a succession of loosely tied together iconic scenes. That too is akin to the Kantor style of "avant-garde theatre". For Kantor, there are no vulgar props, they are works of Art in their own right, and that fits with my intentions to use my own sculpture as props. Lacking in my preliminary vision of Frida were the Absurdist context, the use of mannequins, and the dadaist wackiness of the scenes and of the props. 
     I now see puppets playing the part of the child Frida, the tortured Frida(spine stretching, surgery, amputation), and a larger than life Diego Rivera. 

In light of the general demise of Communist regimes (for all practical purposes, although keeping the label, both Russia and China have become de facto rabid capitalist states, the Party leaders having transformed into Oligarchs), I see the belief of Frida in the communist Party then as philosophically absurd now.

Post 10: Building a Tabletop Test Stage

     I want to build a tabletop Test stage in the studio to play with projected images and staging ideas. My work table is 48" deep, and the actual stage is 12 ft deep, so the 1/4 scale will be perfect.
    I will use 3/4"" conduit for the four vertical posts, the back ones being 36" tall and the front ones 60". The front ones will be bolted to the front of the table for stability, and have pulleys on top to lift the front set, which will be cut out of 1/2" plywood :

     The back set will be also cut out of 1/2' plywood:

    Rectangular tubing will tie the posts, and a beam will hold the lights. The side walls can be cut out of white cardboard. All the doors and shutters are hinged, front and back set.
   After testing counterweights, I switched instead to a crank wench and sisal rope; I like the idea of doing set changes in front of the public, and having one of the actors crank the front set up from the side. But I will need to find a larger wench.

POST 9: Props

  I can see various props used in the show:
   . An antique wood and cane wheelchair:

     . A Large Wooden Easel:

     . A Day of the Dead Altar on casters, in the shape of a stepped pyramid(reminiscent of the one Diego built in the courtyard at Casa Azul:

      It could be made of lightweight boxes stacked on a 3ft X 8ft  platform fitted with casters, so it can be moved within the set, and wheeled out of the way:

     . A Bed that can serve as both a Hospital bed and Frida's bed: I can make a basic bed on casters that could be used both as a plain metal hospital bed, and as Frida's own bed once fitted with a wooden canopy and headboard. I have 4 x 10" legs with heavy casters (left over from my electric bed), that can be screwed under a 30" x 66" rectangular frame made of 1" square thin wall tubing with slats to hold a small foam mattress. It can be fitted with a basic tubing headboard and footboard, and a basic pulley, cable and weight traction system for the hospital scene:

    The same basic bed frame can be fitted with four posters, a wooden headboard and footboard, a lightweight flat canopy with a mirror, and a "bed easel" contraption for the Home scenes:

       . A Wooden Leg:

        This is Frida's prosthesis:

      That is a very similar one I already have:

       . A Leather and Steel Corset:

       . Several plaster Casts:
     I particularly like this one with the bright red Hammer and Sickle and the fetus, which she wore defiantly in her wheelchair:

I would like if possible to actually make a cast on stage at some point, or at least paint one live. We can make a fairly thin and flexible cast and cut it so it can be worn as a corset.

       . Paper maché parts from an Antique Medical Model:

     The heart looks very much like the ones Frida painted in "The Two Fridas", and actually opens:

    The front of the model could be worn by Frida as an écorché body like the model in this drawing:

   And as shown in this animation, the model has all the other organs in it: lungs, uterus, etc...

  

Post 8: Frida's Diary

  This is a very interesting document, that has only been available since 1995, and give an almost voyeuristic peep into Frida's world. Much of it doesn't make a lot of sense, but it is nonetheless fascinating. It is not a chronological journal, and there are very few dates. It is more like a surrealistic collection of thoughts, sketches, automatic drawings using ink blobs, automatic writing, love notes to Diego, political statements.

   The drawings are very rough, heavily outlined in black, in contrast to the usual fine brushstrokes of her paintings. The writing is very rough too, with whole sections over written with a thick color pencil or different color ink.
   It is so different visually from her paintings and her neat made up image that I would like at some stage in the show to use it in projections overhead as the words are read aloud by "La Pelona".

Post 7: My view of Frida

     I have not fully completed my research, but my original image of Frida has already changed considerably, as I read more and more about her life, what friends have said about her, what she said about herself and her life, her psychologist evaluation, etc...
    I suppose I started like everybody with an idealized "Santa Frida de Los Dolores" image of a strong original woman way ahead of her times, that physically suffered greatly from her injuries, and mentally suffered greatly from her skewed relationship with Diego Rivera, but triumphed over adversity and exorcised her suffering through painting.
   The image that is emerging is quite different. She seems to have been very insecure since childhood, feeling ugly and dumb, and spent most of her life begging for love and attention, actually "milking" her disabilities to get compassion, care, and love.
    She was starved for love as a child: a failed "replacement child" (for her dead brother) to her cold hearted mother, and "sort of" a "favorite daughter" to a rather strange, sick, distant and recluse father. She had a mild case of polio (?) in childhood that left her with a withered and shorter leg that was a lifelong source of "shame", and made her feel inferior and physically damaged. But that taught her early that sickness was a way to get attention and love. The only unconditional love in her life was that of her younger sister Christina, except for the period of her affair with Riveira. She was Frida's "caretaker" most of her life.
   She actually wasn't extremely smart academically. She went to the Prepa , but that was in large part because she had a lesbian relationship with her gym teacher Sara Zenil at her previous school(which horrified her mother), and the Prepa was mostly a boy school. She did not work very seriously there, and admitted she never bothered to learn anything. Instead, she ran around with the "bad" boys(Los Cachucas), and went after the smartest one(Alejandro Gomez Arias), acting liberated and literally begging him for love(see her childish letters to him in Hayden Herrera's Biography). He really never took her seriously, but played along for a while(free sex in Mexico in the 20's wasn't so easy to come by I suppose)… He disappeared after the accident.
    She then went after Diego Rivera, the most famous man in her world, whom she met through her friend Tina Modotti. The reasons for her choice are not clear, and will remain one of Kahlo's enigmas. Diego never behaved as a real husband, but he did bring some financial security both to her and her family, and took care of her medical bills. She kept on begging for his love and attention though his numerous affairs.
   She was not an intellectual, and was a rather tepid communist, mostly because Diego was. She basked in his fame as much as possible, and through him, met a lot of famous people whom she impressed with her sexy exotic look. She didn't really like most of them. She didn't really consider herself a serious painter.
   Because of her insecurities, to hide her "deformities", because of Diego's taste for popular "Mexican "culture, and probably just as a way to be noticed, she started wearing the Tihuana outfits that became her "exotic" trademark, and decking herself up with jewelry and flowers. She worked very hard every morning putting on a face, braiding her hair and dressing up, even when she was confined to bed, to transform her insecure self into her flamboyant image:

     It became more or less a ritual. Significantly, she called herself "la Gran Ocultadora"(the Great Concealer).
     Like most Artists, and even more so because of her insecurities and dependency on others for her self esteem, she was subject to chronic bouts of depression through all of her adult life, some severe. There was very little in terms of medication at the time, and alcohol was the most readily available way to drown the pain, physical and psychological…
     She remained rather childish in some ways, and loved to play games. Toward the end of her life, she loved playing with dolls, playing theatre, or playing merchant, probably to escape pain and reality.
    BUT despite all these problems, she produced 143 paintings, 55 of them self portraits, many of them quite extraordinary, of great originality, and unlike anything ever painted before. She gave many of them away to friends, and money was not a motivation, so it is admirable that she had the will to keep on painting despite the sickness and the pain. Actually, she probably painted BECAUSE of the sickness and the pain, to keep the physical pain at bay, and to exorcise the mental anguish. I know for a fact from personal experience that total mental concentration(on painting, writing, whatever) is a very effective "painkiller".

Post 6: The Characters

   Mary and I were discussing who we might ask to be Frida, and came to the conclusion that may be we should actually have 3 Frida's: a young inexperienced Frida, a late 20's early 30's Frida that would be a dancer, and an older "invalid" Frida that is an Artist. No names yet, but we have people in mind.
   The second most important character is "La Pelona"(Lady Death), that lurks around Frida most of her life. That character would also be the narrator, and have the only speaking part. We have somebody in mind for that part too.
   We also need Frida's sister Christina throughout the show, from childhood to death.  
   Other characters are Tina Modotti for the Tango scene, her father for the Family Picture Scene and the Polio Scene, Chavela Vargas.
   I don't believe I want a live Diego in the show. As important as he was in Frida's life, a large puppet, real or projected, seems sufficient to me...