Rainer Maria Rilke's
REQUIEM FOR A FRIEND
Staged as an Intermedia Performance Ritual
Conceived and directed by Antero Alli
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

In these performances, three women portray aspects of one woman
-- Artist, Mother, Soul Torn Between -- through a series of isolated ritual
actions that gradually converge: an artist creates a painting , a mother embodies
a painting come to life, the soul torn between performs a symbolic dance
catalyzing a fourth entity -- Embryo -- into being.

OPENING RECITAL
JACKIE PEREZ GRATZ, solo electric cello improvisation
(May 21/22): MERLIN COLEMAN, original songs on cello

Rilke (1875-1926) wrote "Requiem For a Friend" as a tribute to his friend
and painter, Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907), who suddenly died
eighteen days after giving birth to her first child.

"I have my dead, and I have let them go, and was amazed to see them so contented,
so soon at home in being dead, so cheerful, so unlike their reputation. Only you return;
brush past me, loiter, try to knock against something, so that the sound
reveals your presence. Don't take from me what I am slowly learning."

"Once ritual lament would have been chanted; women would have been paid
to beat their breasts and howl all night, when all is silent.
Where can we find such customs now ?"

"...I'm sure you have gone astray if you are moved to homesickness for anything
in this dimension. We transform these Things; they aren't real, they are only
the reflections upon the polished surface of our being. I thought you were
much further on. It troubles me that you should stray back, you, who have
achieved more transformation than any other woman..."

 

from the translation by Stephen Mitchell
and used with his kind permission

"REQUIEM FOR A FRIEND"
The text in its entirety

 

Felecia Faulkner

Rilke's "Requiem For a Friend" is a lyrical lament of considerable depth and substance
and, one of the poet's most personal prose works. I am compelled by its narrative structure
-- which doesn't read like "a poem" as much as a stream of consciousness --
and its subtle powers of invocation; not just to Paula Modersohn-Becker
(the artist he wrote it for) but, also to Rilke's own poetic muses.

This will be my second paratheatrical staging of Stephen Mitchell's translation of "REQUIEM"
(the first was in Seattle 1990). Since that initial immersion, a rich subtext has been revealed to me
in Rilke's confessions and convictions around death and loss and their transformation of love
into art...a kind of alchemy Rilke sometimes called "the greater circulation" (also the title
I have chosen for my current feature film project which will include footage
from these performances; click this for details).

The paratheatrical processes we underwent to arrive at this performance insist on metamorphosis.
Each night all of the performers are serving new sources that create differing results; sources discovered
over an eight week period. The Artist paints a new self-portrait each time. The Mother unfolds
her series of concentrated forms of mercy and severity. The Soul Torn Between erupts into
cellular choreographies as a passive Embryo reacts to find himself. This is obviously not theatre
by any traditional definition but rather an attempt to present a living ritual in a theatrical way
that, hopefully, serves the spirit, tone and form of Rilke’s text.
This has been the experiment all along.

-- ANTERO ALLI

Rilke at Hotel Biron, Paris 1908

RAINER MARIA RILKE AND PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER
The stories behind their meeting (1900-1907)

POETRY OF RAINER MARIA RILKE
from multiple eras of his career

"ON LOVE & OTHER DIFFICULTIES"
two samples of writings on relationships

BRIEF BIO OF R.M.RILKE
with photos of Rilke and those who knew him

site map