Antoine Garth and Julie Queen in Erik Ehn’s operatic play, Phrenic Crush, photograph by  David M. Allen

Project Title: Phrenic Crush
Recipient Organization: San Francisco State University Department of Theater
Lead Artist: Erik Ehn
Genre and Date Awarded: Performing Arts, April 1997
Premiered: July 31-August 2 1997, Studio Theater, San Francisco State University; August 3 concert performance, St. Boniface Church, San Francisco

Playwright Erik Ehn, composer Lisa Bielawa, novelist and epidemiologist Andrew Moss, director Christine Säng, and the San Francisco State University Theater Department collaborated to create an original opera about the natural and social history of tuberculosis from the nineteenth century through its contemporary outbreak among homeless populations in the United States and its interaction with the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco.

The artists’ research included extended interviews with tuberculosis patients in San Francisco’s Tenderloin and South of Market (SoMa) and study of the history of the disease, including exploration of its treatment in literature and in such operas as La Boehme. Phrenic Crush premiered at San Francisco State University as a full production and in a concert version at St. Anthony’s clinic at St. Boniface Church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. Proceeds from all performances benefited the clinic. Christine Säng directed the production. A free public symposium, “The Soul in Plague Time,” featuring members of the San Francisco Bay Area medical and artistic communities—also was presented as part of the project.

The piece was set in San Francisco, in and around the single room occupancy hotels of the Tenderloin and SoMa. The work’s growth drew together San Francisco State University students and staff, the local medical community, and hotel residents. Interwoven with the play development process, Ehn directed a class at San Francisco State through the Extended Learning program for which Phrenic Crush illustrated the course content.

The project’s title came from a surgical intervention tried against tuberculosis prior to the development of drug therapies. Ehn explained, “Steps were taken to shut down infected areas: wax was poured into the cavities of the lungs, ribs were removed to prevent the lungs from expanding… the ‘phrenic crush’ severed the nerves of the diaphragm, again to inhibit breathing. The craved breath, the need for spirit, is at the center of our project.”

Erik Ehn had worked with Dr. Andrew Moss and San Francisco General Hospital’s tuberculosis diagnosis and drug adherence programs since September of 1995. Specifically, Ehn conducted extensive interviews and delivered medication through a program operating out of the Sixth Street Merchants and Residents Association. Dr. Moss served as a mentor to Ehn and informed the students’ and the performing ensemble’s investigations.

Erik Ehn and Lisa Bielawa, playwright and composer, viewed the writing of the piece as a step in the evolution of an artistic partnership that had begun with creation of the opera Vireo, The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser. Prior to their partnership with San Francisco State University, in 1996 they had developed a short sketch for Phrenic Crush, entitled “Ideas of Good and Evil” at the University of Iowa, during the course of a seven-week residency. This groundwork gave them a basic story, and musical approach. That sketch then developed into an opera through their collaborations with the medical community, the School of Creative Arts at San Francisco State University, the Sixth Street Merchants and Residents’ Association (particularly Paul Zenti and Heather Long), and residents of the Tenderloin and SoMa. Ehn wrote, “Phrenic Crush is about a community and must involve community as more than a topic; it is of, and for the people of a place. We rehearse, work in, and work with Tenderloin/SoMa; we seek to draw residents into auditions, rehearsals and performances.” Among the project’s many development steps, the script-in-progress was read to medical staff of San Francisco General Hospital’s tuberculosis ward at a surgical theater on General’s grounds.

Erik Ehn is the author of numerous plays and musical theater works. His work has been produced at Sledgehammer Theatre Company (San Diego, California), Undermain (Dallas, Texas) Intersection for the Arts (San Francisco, California), BACA (Brooklyn, New York) Lincoln Center’s New Director’s Series (New York City), and many other venues.

Lisa Bielawa is a vocalist and the winner of two ASCAP Young Composers Competition Awards (1995 and 1996). Her music for Phrenic Crush was scored for continuo organ, percussion, violin, cello, and voices. She noted of her approach to the music, “Among the various early twentieth century diagnostic tools, which Erik and I discovered was the method of ‘percussion of the chest.’ These musical tie-ins are deeper than metaphor; they address some of the many ways in which music inhabits the body and invests it with meaning.” Bielawa added, “Musically these ideas and feelings express themselves in a certain lyricism, brought out in the sonorous melodic tone of the violin and cello and the use of melismatic vocal writing…. I’d like to create the sense that we are hearing the instrument ‘breathe’ under the piece.”

Erik Ehn

Julie Queen and Antoine Garth in Erik Ehn’s operatic play,  Phrenic Crush, Photograph by  David M. Allen

Plays include:

Ideas of Good and Evil, Beginner, Wolf at the Door, The Saint Plays, Vireo (opera libretto: music composed by Lisa Bielawa), Clubhouse Rules and A Capella Hardcore (musicals, with Chris Kowanko), AOK (book and music), Porphyra (book and music), Gravity’s Dream (book and music), Service for the Dead, Sarajevo (oratorio with Kim Sherman), No Time Like the Present (play and songs), Lover’s Tongue (play and songs), Moira McOc (play and songs), Tailings, Erotic Curtsies, Little Rootie Tootie, Saint Plays, Red Sheets, and many others.

Productions Include:

Portland State (Maine); Addison Theatre Company (Addison, Texas); Empty Space (Seattle, Washington), Wolf at the Door; Sledgehammer (San Diego, California); Annex (Seattle, Washington); Intersection for the Arts (San Francisco, California) Moira McOc and The Saint Plays; BACA (Brooklyn, New York); The Chimera Festival (Addison, Texas); Lincoln Center’s New Director’s Series (New York City), The Saint Plays; Undermain (Dallas, Texas); Two Roads (Los Angeles, California); Theatreworks (Tulsa, Oklahoma); Teeny Feats (Austin, Texas), AOK; The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City), No Time like the Present; Bottom’s Dream (Los Angeles, California); Erotic Curtsies (At the A.S.K. Festival, Performance Series, Los Angeles, 1996); New Arts Theatre Festival (Fort Meyers, Florida), Porphyra.

Publications

• “Three Saint Plays,” Performing Arts Journal, PAJ Press, New York, (June 1993)
• “Art Worker’s Hostel: Towards a New Broke Vaudeville,” Theater Magazine, New Haven, Connecticut (September 1993)
• “Eight Saint Plays,” TheatreForum, University of California, San Diego, California (October 1993)
• Beginner, Sun and Moon Press, Los Angeles, California (November 1995)
• “Two Altars,” Wordplays, PAJ Press (October 1996)

Teaching

• Graduate Students (visiting faculty), University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
• Undergraduate Students, Santa Clara University and San Francisco State University
• High School English: Fordham Preparatory, the Bronx
• Playwriting workshops: for the mentally ill homeless at the Julian Street Inn (Santa Clara, California, 1994)
• Founder and co-facilitator, Tenderloin Opera Company, St. Boniface Church, San Francisco, California (1995- )

Professional Experience

• Literary Manager, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Berkeley, California (1991-93)
• Dean of Studies, NTWH (1988-90)
• Co-Artistic Director, Thieves Theatre, New York, New York (1984-86)
• Chair, Board of Directors, Intersection for the Arts (1993-96)
• Planning Committee, Santa Clara University’s Institute on Justice and the Arts (1995-96)

Grants, Fellowships, and Commissions

• Ideas of Good and Evil, Partnership in the Arts project at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa (1996)
• California Arts Council Individual Artist Grant (1995)
• Gravity’s Drain, Commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum (1992)
• New York State Commission on the Arts Commission Grant, California Commission on the Arts for The Saint Plays
• Mary Flagler-Cary Commission, Service for the Dead, Sarajevo
• New York Foundation for the Arts Sponsorship Program for Vireo
• Member, New Dramatists

Antoine Garth is watched by the Companions and the Monkey in Erik Ehn’s operatic play, Phrenic Crush, photograph by David M. Allen

Lisa Bielawa

Lisa Bielawa is the New York Foundation for the Arts 1996 Greg Millard Fellow in Music Composition and the winner of two ASCAP Young Composers Competition Awards (1995 and 1996). Projects at the time of Phrenic Crush included Polybe’s Wish for amplified chamber orchestra and voice, commissioned by the Albany Symphony’s “Dogs of Desire” series; a 1996 Composers Commissioning Program Grant from the American Composers Forum to write a solo percussion piece for Lee Ferguson; Lux, for 13 instruments and soprano, commissioned by the Bronx Council on the Arts for the Bronx Arts Ensemble (May 1997); and a symphonic wind piece for the University of Minnesota at Moorhead Wind Ensemble.

As the winner of the 1995 Dale Warland Singers’ New Choral Music Program national competition, she received a commission for an extended work on the texts of William Blake. City Summer produced her opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser, a collaboration with Erik Ehn, in July 1997. A second music theater piece with Ehn, Ideas of Good and Evil, was developed in residency and produced at the University of Iowa in the spring of 1996 with support from the American Music Center. Other commissions include several pieces for the San Francisco Girls Chorus; and a ballet entitled Songs of Psyche, a collaboration with Juilliard choreographer Carrie Nedrow, which was showcased at the International Guild of Musicians in Dance conference in 1995.

Ms. Bielawa was born in San Francisco, where she began her music education at home with her parents, composer Herbert Bielawa and keyboardist/early music scholar Sandra Soderlund. At Yale University, where she received her B.A. in 1990, Ms. Bielawa studied composition with Martin Bresnick, Jonathan Berger, Jan Radzynski, and Michael Tenzer. Ms. Bielawa tours internationally as the vocalist in the Philip Glass Ensemble; recent recordings with Glass on the Nonesuch label include the complete Einstein on the Beach and Music in Twelve Parts. As a solo vocalist, she has performed and recorded with the quartet Toby Twining Music, the Anthony Braxton Tri-Centric Ensemble, and the Albany Symphony Orchestra in the premieres of works by Daugherty, Lang, Ince, Levin, Braxton, and Torke.

Christine Säng

RESUME HIGHLIGHTS

Director/Choreographer

Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab Director

• Theme for Five Voices, playwright Tania Myren, The Salon, Lincoln Center Theater Director Lab
• Fire-Eater, reading, playwright Brighde Mullins, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab
• Fishes, playwright Diana Son, director Jessica Kubzansky, Mark Taper Festival of New Works
• Vagabond Queen, composer Edward Barnes, Los Angeles Music Center Opera
• Queen of Swords, playwright Judy Grahn, HIP Productions, Hollywood Moguls, Los Angeles
• Monkhood in Three Easy Lessons, Japan American Theater, Franklin Furnace, Highways, Chicago Institute of Arts School, N.A.M.E. Gallery
• Lament of the Bacchae, Highways, Los Angeles, California
• Dancing at Lughnasa, Singular Productions, director Allison Liddy, Ivy Substation, Los Angeles
• Elektra, by Ezra Pound, directed James Burke, Ivy Substation, Los Angeles
• Ms. Julie, directed Rob Urbinati, The Salon, 78th Street Theater

Film and Video

• The Music Box, directed by Susan Scanlon, Sundance Film Festival
• Nariobe, video performance work, Hampshire College, Massachusetts
• USC/AFI Films and a few Karoke Videos, directed by Charles Otte, James Burke, Michael Confer, Revelstoke Films

Performance Work – Direction and Performance

• Off-off Broadway, Solo Performance Series, Flaming June: A Woman Stuck in a Painting, HERE Tiny Mythic, New York City
• Dance Artist Series, Flaming June: A Woman Stuck in a Painting, Fountain Theatre, Los Angeles, California
• Burning the German Candle, San Francisco, California
• The Voice Dance, Hollywood Playhouse
• Lah Lah NYah NYah: Opening Islands, Theater/Theater
• Temptations: A Minor Fate, Ohio Theatre New York City, and the American Living Room
• “Presenting Artist Series,” Rituals of Romance from a Valkyrie Point of Death, Project III, New York, New York
• Collaboration with Randolyn Zinn, Sunday in the Park with George
• House of ARTthieves, Performance Company

Acting – Representative Work

• Goose and TomTom, David Rabe, directed Charles Otte, West Coast Premiere, Los Angeles
• Goose Amid the Revolt, Rik Pagano, Odyssey Theatre, Los Angeles, California
• The Crab Piece, One Dream Theatre, New York City
• Winter’s Tale, Rebecca Holderness, The Salon, New York City
• Baal, Brecht, directed by Charles Otte, Callboard Los Angeles, Ohio Theater, New York City
• Chautauqua Festival, directed by Michael Kahn, Pierre Lefevre, Rebecca Guy
• Illusion Theatre, director Michael Robbins, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Biker Chick Flicks, “A&E Biography,” USC, AFI Films

Awards/Honors/Grants

• Drama League New Works Grant (1996)
• Williamstown Boris Sagal Directors Fellowship, Finalist (1995)
• Drama League Directors Project Finalist (1995)
• Djerassi Resident Artist Program Award, San Francisco, California (1995)
• Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions/New Langton Arts Grant (1995)
• CCF Grant (1994)
• Cummington Artists Residency, First Alternate (1993)
• “Up and Coming LA Choreographer,” If the Shoe Fits, sponsored by Gene Kelly (1992)
• Dramalogue Awards for productions (1993, 1995)

Teaching Positions – Physical Acting

• Directors Fellowship, University of Waikato, New Zealand (1997)
• Circle in the Square Professional Program, New York City (1996)
• Five year guest artist workshop residencies, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
• Guest Artist, American Academy of Dramatic Arts, University of Southern California
• Ballet instructor, University of Minnesota
• Guest artist in dance and theatre department, Harvard/Westlake School
• New York City and Los Angeles public schools

Antoine Garth and Julie Queen are menaced by a Bird in Erik Ehn’s operatic play Phrenic Crush, photograph by David M. Allen