The Blue Flower
Music, Lyrics and Script by Jim Bauer
Artwork and Story by Ruth Bauer
Music
Selections from the score may be listened to while opening the various other components in pdf.
Script
Download or open The Full Script in Adobe Reader.
Score
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THE BLUE FLOWER
The text in THE BLUE FLOWER script is spare.
Apart from the brief exchange between Max and Fairy Tale Man at the end of the play, there is no dialogue. Both the literal and emotional content of the play rely on the elaborate collage of music, sound, film projections, imagery, choreography and narrative text presented in live performance.
The play takes place during the moment of Max's death while he is sitting alone on a park bench at 61st St. and Central Park West, in New York City, 1955.
He has arrived in good humor, knowing this is the day he will finish the book of collages he has been working on for years. Just as he begins work, a pain in his chest arrives, halting his progress. None of the other characters are real. They are friends and lovers from Max's past, the subjects of his book, conjured by him in his moment between life and death. He conjures Fairy Tale man as a guide, to help him summon the strength to do a final review of his work before he dies, to make sure he's finished, that the book speaks.
The orchestra musicians and band leader are on stage and should be part of the action. All actors are onstage at all times.
Until the very end of the play, Max speaks only in "Maxperanto", a personal, improvised language he has invented in part as a protest against the failings and betrayals of language, in part as an art form, echoing the experiments Dada poets and writers pursued in the abstraction of language, breaking it down to its component parts of sounds and syllables, just as visual artists experiment with the abstraction of imagery, breaking it down to colors and shapes. Maxperanto has the nuances of many languages. Max sings in real language because music is poetry.
SMALL ON THE PAGE, BIG ON THE STAGE
Notes
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The Blue Flower
The Blue Flower
CHARACTERS
MAX: a German artist, lecturer, and, during the war, medical orderly. Inspired by the historical figure MAX BECKMANN
HANNAH: a young Dada performance artist and, during the war, ambulance driver; Max’s lover. Inspired by the
historical figure HANNAH HOECH
MARIA: a brilliant young scientist and irrepressible bon vivant; the object of Max’s not-so-secret desire. Inspired by the historical figure MARIE CURIE
FRANZ: a young German artist and, during the war, soldier; Max’s best friend, and Maria’s lover. Inspired by the historical figure FRANZ MARC.
FAIRYTALE MAN: the Fairytale reader and Max’s guide
TYPEWRITER MAN: a Dada performer
SEWING MACHINE MAN: a Dada performer
THE BAND The Music Director and members of the show’s 9-piece orchestra
DEMO PERFORMERS
Jim Bauer, Jen Chapin, Phoebe Legere, Meghan McGeary, Alice Moore, Ben Schrader
Notes
To save the script to your computer click with the right mouse button. A small menu should appear select "save target as" or "save to your computer," or "save link as." The exact text may vary depending on your browser.