20 - “Kinesthetic Empathy” and the Comedia refundición

Summary

However, a public that shudders at train wrecks, that is

familiar with earthquakes, plagues, revolutions, wars;

that is sensitive to the disordered anguish of love, can

be affected by all these grand notions and asks only

to become aware of them, but on condition that it is

addressed in its own language, and that its knowledge

of these things does not come to it through adulterated

trappings and speech that belong to extinct eras which

will never live again.

–Antonin Artaud, The Theater and its Double

The 2011 refundición of Porgy and Bess caused a major stir when heirs to the estates of George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward (lyrics) requested a Broadway-style adaptation of the trio's original four-hour opera. The production team hired by the estates (comprising diane paulus, director; Suzan-lori parks, playwright; and Diedre L. Murray, composer) began to cut. Recitative became dialogue, major arias were eliminated, and the title was changed to The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess. Soprano Audra Mcdonald, Bess in the production, defended the changes, stating “I imagine Gershwin purists will have their arrows in their bows, ready to shoot” (Healy). And she was right. In an open letter to the New York Times, composer Stephen Sondheim openly criticized the “wholesale rewriting” of the work, and expressed concern for the “legacy” of the original. “In the interest of truth in advertising,” he wrote, “let it not be called The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, nor even The Gershwin–Heyward Porgy and Bess. Advertise it honestly as Diane Paulus's Porgy and Bess. And to the hell with the real one” (Sondheim).

The comments by Mcdonald and Sondheim highlight opposing approaches to contemporary stagings of previously performed works. While Sondheim argues for the singularity of a given work that is “the real one,” Mcdonald advocates for its adaptability: “The opera will always exist to be performed. What we wanted to do was a new conception that tries to deal with the holes and issues in the story that would be very, very obvious to a musical-theater audience” (Healy).