Caesar and the Mannequin
(2020, rev. 2024)

About Caesar and the Mannequin

When Susan and I started work on this project (which became an opera film) in the summer of 2020, we knew it was relevant to the situation at the time.  Man Ray’s painting on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is enigmatic, to say the least; but creating a narrative to partner it allowed us to explore the fraught relationship between art and power.  The painting’s equation, 2 + 2 = 22, is an apt symbol of this relationship.  It can be just a clever intellectual trick; but, interpreted in a different spirit, it can also be a means by which to invent truth.

One thing that has intrigued me in working on this project is coming to see how the historical Caesar and Man Ray, at first glance very different men, seem alike in so many ways.  Both were pathbreakers (sometimes, as in Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon with an army, by illegal means) and knew how to promote themselves and respond nimbly to the tenor of their times.

And, like us who are still recovering from a global event that killed millions - COVID - Man-Ray was in a Paris recovering from the Great War (which spawned its own pandemic).  The Dada movement, although beginning before the war, continued beyond it, dipping into the absurd to speak (or not) about serious underlying subjects.  That posture seems right for our time, as well.  I have loved our own ventures into the absurd, as we have similar goals.

Man Ray, sculptor, photographer and filmmaker as well as painter, produced remarkable works called “Rayographs:” photographs made without the use of a camera by placing objects on photo-sensitive paper and exposing them to light.  These might be better known as “sun prints;” and although Man Ray did not invent them, he did – with a Caesarian flair for taking credit – coin the term “Rayograph.”  The objects in Rayographs appear as curious shadowy versions of themselves, recognizable, but (to me) fascinatingly different.  Rayographs play an important role in our story, as you will see.

The creation of the Mannequin was my idea, born from a 1938 Surrealist Exhibition in Paris. Man Ray participated in a “Street of the Mannequins,” a hallway lined with mannequins (the non-living type) dressed and accoutered in fantastical ways.  It is among my favorite artistic presentations of all, and couples with my own fascination with (and, I confess, a little fear of!) mannequins.  The fear derives from a TV episode of a detective show I happened to see as a kid: the detective, alone in a department store at midnight, discovers that the mannequins are moving when he is not looking. The creepiness of that has stayed with me ever since).  In developing this live stage version, Susan and I also expanded and fleshed out (literally) the character of the Mannequin.  At first more like a puppet or automaton (think ballet’s Coppélia or opera’s Olympia), she gradually drops her mask and reveals her full humanity (think Pinocchio or even the Barbie movie).  Unnamed at first, eventually she gains the courage to speak her name: Kiki.  But that process involves dealing with a world of trauma (and abuse). She speaks truth to power - and pays the price, as truth-tellers so often do.  In my view, she is the strongest of the three.  Her character is linked with Kiki de Montparnasse (born Alice Prin), a painter, performer, and model who had a multi-year relationship with Man Ray.

The character of Wo-Man Ray (Susan has wanted to emphasize a non-binary identity for the artist, in part, I believe, to underscore the role as representative of all artists) has a u-shaped power curve.  In many ways, this piece is Wo-Man’s creation: we see Wo-Man, at work, at the beginning, finding objects and imagining how they could be used in artistic expression (“Possibilities.”).   So, the “Artist is Creator,” as the lyrics say, and Wo-Man is in charge...until Caesar shows up.  Then, the show becomes a fluctuating power struggle between the artist and the dictator, with the Mannequin acting as shifting ally and go-between.  Eventually, Caesar is forced back into the closet from which he emerged at the show’s beginning – and it is Wo-Man who forces him back in, at sword-point.

The show is structured in three parts, with the subtitle, “A slightly Dada work of musical theatre in three arguments and six lessons.  Each of the three parts/arguments ends with a different member of the cast on top; the shifting alliances within the cast triangle drive each argument.  Caesar is the dominant figure at the end of part 1; by the end of part 2, the Mannequin has vanquished Caesar in a wrestling match; and in part 3, Wo-Man forces Caesar back into the closet and finishes the artwork begun at the top of part 1, but not before Caesar almost scores a complete triumph in his debate with Wo-Man on the importance of power vs. art.   Susan and I have taken care not simply to lampoon Caesar as a pompous fool, but rather to give him some subtlety, acknowledge his real abilities, and recognize his danger.

The show’s evolving power struggle is also focused by six lessons (topics) that, in themselves, nod to a Caesarian classical education: 1. The seven elements of art; 2. War is good; 3. Grammar; 4. Philosophy; 5. The relativity of math; 6. Art vs. Power.  The show is set in no particular time or place; and indeed time has no meaning, either in the closet where Caesar and the Mannequin have been, or in the world outside the closet.   For example, the fact that Caesar claims not to know who Napoleon is (entirely plausible) is followed shortly thereafter with Caesar claiming to have invented France and taking credit for Napoleon.  And for us there is no incongruity.  The absurd does not excuse everything, but it does allow a freeing suspension of disbelief in time travel.  (Thinkers since at least Augustine have told us that time is invented, and modern science has shown us that time is relative; and so why not play with that invention as with any other?)

I said before that Susan and I saw relevance in the story of Caesar in 2020.  But we could not have known what lay ahead.  January 6, 2021, was still months in the future, and the sentiments our Caesar expresses have proven, for better or worse, enduringly relevant.  And we are a little startled by the show’s still-topical epilogue, written in summer 2020.  Caesar, although he was (and is) removed from the scene, cannot truly be put away, back into the closet.  A Caesar will always return, because there always seems to be a need, somewhere, for a Caesar.

Creating the music for this show has proven fascinating.  The original 2020 version called for just one instrument – I chose the trumpet because it easily inhabits multiple personalities: the military and ceremonial side (which accompanies Caesar at the beginning), and also the jazz, blues, and horse-whinny side, with a range of mutes, including a plunger.  The stylistic “degradation” of the trumpet that occurs over the course of the show mirrors Caesar’s own loss of power and control; I seek these kinds of musical metaphors of dramatic content whenever possible.

Responding to the sometimes wildly diverse dramatic needs of the lyrics and book, the score covers a vast range of styles: military marches, tango, neo-Baroque opera aria, Irish pub song, Chinese opera, blues, and even some silent film chase music (which taps into another huge aspect of my work!).  And, as a theatrical piece/opera, it also contains lyrical pieces for the fine voices of Danielle McKay (soprano, Mannequin), Cara Schaefer (mezzo-soprano, Wo-Man Ray), and John Boulanger (baritone, Caesar).  I have also had the opportunity to expand the original instrumentation to a five-player chamber ensemble, with clarinet/bass clarinet, cello, piano and percussion augmenting the original trumpet (piccolo trumpet as well as a standard C).  For the 2024 Atlas production, this excellent ensemble consisted of Chris Reardon on clarinets, Susan Rider on trumpet, Emily Doveala on cello, Liz Hill on piano, and Chris DeChiara/Glenn Paulson on percussion.

—Andrew Earle Simpson
September 2024