Acting The Battle of Epping Forest

You can tell that this was where Gabriel's head was at this point in Genesis (1973-1974), even if the rest of the band was not with him on his marriage of "art" with "rock"...

Considering as much as I have directed, that has never been one of my ideas ... I think I would rather put together "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway". It's themes and ideas are a lot better translated to a stage than the story in Epping Forest, but I will check myself on that.

 

.... this might not work.

 

The hard part of this is deciding what you want to take from this and where you want to go. This is what is known as "high satire", or in France known as "high comedy", and in general this stuff can be tough. In a rock song you can fly through it quickly, but on a stage ... how do you slow it down in order to show the "story". And then you have to decide what you gonna do ... in between ... until they decide the coin flip is good enough in the end.

 

If I'm Terri Gilliam, the English will probably deport me to America forever! Because their upper class on the luxury cars will look more colorful and ridiculous than the characters that Gerald Scarfe gave us for The Wall.

 

If I use Mike Leigh, I will make sure that these folks are so brutal ... as to make their own backgrounds ugly and dirty ... be it rich or not ... seedy would probably fit too!

 

If I'm Peter Brook (or a mild Ken Russell without the steroids!) ... now I have a challenge ... and is the work I will do. I will use a child's playground, define the areas with cardboard or pictures (one has to be filthy rich of course, and the other filthy dirty!) ... and in between the story elements you have a sort of West Side Story ... and you CAN NOT skimp on costumes ... I mean ... load up on them and make sure the richies have the girls with the long cigarette extender thing ... and of course, you have to have the Priest -- larger than life -- or everyone else --- show up in the middle of the stage ... and then when the fight and the stage is a huge mess ... you fly a big plane above them all and there ... they do the coin flip ... a BIGGGG coin. And everyone below, must be tired, drunk, and all over each other. In the end, there was no win ... they all fell together in a wild dance! Ohhh and that plane says "Virgin" on it btw!!!

 

I love English humor ... good thing I did not think about this enough to bring about the Peter Cook version!

 

And I don't think I can post in here the Peter Greenaway version ... specially now that Sir Gielgud is dead, and that whole thing would be too far off most "progressive minds" anywhere ... but it would get their attention.

 

I wanted to do the Sodderbergh version but I could not get Sasha in one of the main roles, so I gave up!

 

With the film footage, which you can do with video, there are other issues ... that of taking the words literally and then the interpretation falls out of place and somewhat apart. It usually works best if you go all out on the satire, or all out on the seriousness. This is, for all intents and purposes, English satire at its best ... and satire is not hard to do, but it's hardest to get an audience to come with you on it. Thus, it might be easier to pull off the Ken Russell moments to get attention and get everyone's eyes going ... a video is fine and nice, and you can use that as the "set" for the stuff you do in front ... but the reality part of it, will make the cohesion of this really difficult to mix up with the actors in the front. In these situations the cartoon'ish element works a lot better! But make sure you raid the costume department for every thing, all the sinks and all the bras and all the ties and pants and jackets and boots and what not that you can get your hands on!

 

I did this on stage, with lights and sound and lots of music. It was what separated me from everyone else, and I never compromised it in the work I did. I just did not like the vanilla stuff called T Williams, or E Albee or BS Orton or H Pinter. I wanted to do what Genesis, Pink Floyd, Ange and so many others were doing .. on the stage! My greatest fault might have been that I should have told the stage to die and grab a video camera ... but in those days those were not cheap!

 

Voila!

 

Directing is so much fun, when you love the insanity side of it all, like I do and did on stage!

 

Don't forget that the costumes that Peter was wearing, was a way to show these within a theatrical context and content ... which the music DID have. I DO think, that by the time they got to SEBTP that it had become more rock music with a solid story, instead of a solid story with rock music to go with it, and there is a difference in this equation ... I kinda think that SEBTP is more about the music than the lyrics themselves ... because you remember the strength of the organ, or the lawnmower sound ... a lot more than you do ... can you tell me where my country lies ... which you do not know what it relates to (there are many ideas!) ... and is cryptic at best, and always not as clear as ... jane gotta a gun! ... the kind of lyric that makes it difficult for us to enjoy here ... and creates discussions about "bad lyrics in prog" ... because we do not know what they mean and we think those people are trying to make us stupid'r than we look!

 

To me, a lot of this stuff ... is the "literature" of my time and place. The rest? It's up to you to elevate it to where it deserves to be! If all it is, to you, is just another song in the soup of songs ... then ... things like this tend to die off and disappear. The main reason why it is remembered? ... because these folks wanted to do a lot more than just ... another pop song!

 

Just like all the arts in history ... it's up to us to decide if this is worthy of the history of the art ... and in my book, YES IT IS! It's better written, and more concisely scripted and played than most operas ever been, for example!

Surely there are other Genesis songs that could be acted out in preference...