THE SOUNDS TRUMP THEATER IN NEW-INSTRUMENT DISPLAY 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of March 9-16, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 11, No. 75
 <>            STANFORD---There’s a tinkerer in the basement, building weird new percussion instruments with built-in electronics---gadgetry par excellence. And out of that underworld of invention comes an ambitious new theater piece by Paul Dresher called “Schick Machine,” which got its world premiere here on March 7.
            It’s somewhere between Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape,” “Back to the Future,” and the novel instruments of composers Harry Partch and Lou Harrison. I’d mark it down as little more than a meandering work in progress, but one which has much validity if sharpened, edited, and thus brought to fruition.
            The monodrama ideally would call for an actor, or a theatrical percussionist like Evelyn Glennie, with arresting visual appeal able to bring the piece to life, beyond just playing the instruments with great skill like protagonist Steven Schick. Schick, a heavy-set San Diego percussionist who launched the project with Bay Area electronic composer Dresher, is cast here as a basement-laboratory nerd named Laszlo Klangfarbe, reveling in a dream world of strange musical instruments.
            The marvel of  “Schick Machine” comes when the whole kit and caboodle reverberates and resonates by itself via digital looping, all over the stage, even when Schick is distracted by making tea. It’s a 21st-century  “Coppélia.”  The instruments themselves are novel and at times unique---a dazzling electrified metal hoop that seems to want to spin and wow forever; an organ mounted like the Aztec rays of the sun; a versatile eight-foot-long hurdy-gurdy; a four-foot-diameter spinning “cymbal” disk; and assorted woodblocks bouncing around in space, each tap-tapping on a different meter. Of these, the oversize computerized hurdy-gurdy was the central protagonist.
            Schick’s polished musical performance in the March 7 unveiling was abetted by Dresher at the computer controls, and a narration/scenario conceived by writer/director Rinde Eckert. The story evokes Klangfarbe’s early memories as he is faced with eviction, and the ability to take only a few of his beloved instruments with him.
            If Dresher was a risk-taker with this complex Rube-Goldbergish machinery that could break down in the blink of an eye, so too was Schick. With some instruments Schick had to don insulating gloves to avoid getting electrical shocks. 
            The music for this leisurely 71-minute (no intermission) monodrama ranged from dance rhythms you’d find in a Bollywood film, to one-note tunes, to Schick doing what seemed like fast-flying improvisations. The ultimate stars were the instruments themselves, invented by Daniel Schmidt and Matt Heckert.
            “Schick Machine” is next scheduled for performances in November at the Mondavi Center at U.C. Davis, followed by tour engagements.
            Paul Dresher’s “Schick Machine,” a monodrama featuring percussionist Steven Schick, written by Rinde Eckert, at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford Lively Arts, Stanford March 7. For Lively Arts info: (650) 725-2787, or go online.
        ©Paul Hertelendy 2009

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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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