Re: Restaging Lifehouse

["L. Bird" <pkeets@hotmail.com>]

>I think The Who missed the boat on the original format not doing it as a 
>live show.  Imagine 1971 with a stage surrounded with a lights with a hint 
>of electronica (lasers then?).  Then The Who come out and pretend that 
>we're at the Lifehouse in the future.  They play a Who concert centered 
>around the new material with interspaced smidgens of dialogue to hint at 
>what "The Grid" is doing outside the concert hall.  It all ends in a 
>cataclysm with "Won't Get Fooled Again" as the outside forces try to break 
>into The Lifehouse; that is, the concert hall (special effects? smokebombs 
>in the concert hall?).  The electronica builds to a climax then the lights 
>go out. Spot on Pete (or someone) at a piano as "Song Is Over" begins.  
>Song ends, Who leave, return for normal encore.

Sounds like great fun.  They could have put Moon in charge of the smoke 
bombs. :)  I do like the journey idea, though--Pete the eternal seeker after 
oneness who joins in the great Lifehouse event.  The suggestion of travel 
through a wasteland seeking for something better is enough to set it up.  In 
Lifehouse '71, presumably Ray found what he was looking for.  I thought the 
ascention was fairly orgasmic--not violent like Lifehouse 2000.


>As for Lifehouse '99, I don't think the problem would be solved by staging 
>it which would only carry the dialogue and bald-faced symbolism (I'm you as 
>a child, I'm your childhood fantasy playmate) on stage where the theatrical 
>critics would gleefully take potshots at it.  No, a rewrite is what's 
>called for.  Make us think Rayboy is a real child and leave the idea of him 
>being Ray as a boy as a possible interpretation. Make the Caretaker a real 
>person who just may be.  Put a time limit in to build some suspense (Ray 
>knows something is going to happen to Mary at the millennium).

Like Rayboy is Ray's son?  And the Caretaker really is his friend?  (Strange 
character there--I thought he was Pete's better half, or maybe all the 
people who tried to care about Ray) And then maybe a moment of surrealism 
that suggests none of this is real, that Ray's out of his gourd and they're 
all just figments of his failing mind?  Sounds great.

If the staging were mostly dialog, I think they'd need more conflict between 
the characters--some that pull Ray one way and some another, at least, until 
the final irony that he finds the solution just to have it blow up in his 
face.  I didn't actually pay much attention to what the radio play's 
characters said--just enough to place their function.  I was following the 
search and the end result, but it WAS rough going.  Easy to get bogged down 
in the details.

I was thinking about adding more music, though, instead of more dialog.  
Pete gets by just fine with his open-ended vestigal plots as long as the 
show is mostly music.  I think the LH 2000 needs some reference to LH 1970 
in order to give it the inside out irony that I really loved from this 
effort.  If we didn't know a lot about the original Lifehouse story, then LH 
2000 would have been a complete mystery.  LH 2000 needs some glimpse of the 
1970's optimism in order to have its full effect.  Maybe this was what Pete 
had in mind in using the old music behind the play, but it needed something 
new and dark to carry it forward.

We're planning enough projects for Pete to keep him busy through several 
lifetimes here, :) but I still want to hear/see The Who do this piece as a 
rock opera.  Maybe start with some of the original songs like on the last 
tour and then turn them dark with new additions?  That's wonderful in 
itself, the way they took TKAA and My Generation and added on the experience 
of 30 years.

Whatever, Lifehouse remains to be completed.  Pete only issued a history of 
the piece so far.  I guess he wanted input from the audience to finish 
it--so what happened to the Methods plan?  I don't know that Pete needs a 
complicated, custom built application to do this.  I saw some website that 
allowed you to compose a bit for an opera that he could easily reproduce.  
I'd guess the fans would contribute mostly noise, anyway, which wouldn't be 
hard to get together--that moment of surrealism maybe?  I like your 
electronica idea from above, too.  That techno Gateway remix from last year 
was terrific.

How do you think the movie should go?  :) A CLOCKWORK ORANGE?  MAD MAX?  
STRANGE DAYS?


keets
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