What to Wear (2005) 65'

program note

I wrote What to Wear with the great American iconoclastic theater personality Richard Foreman, who wrote the libretto and directed the first production at the RedCat Theater in Los Angeles in 2005. What to Wear features a multitude of Madeline X’s, who live in a sad, sad world and think about what to wear, and a gigantic Duck that plays golf. Like many of Foreman’s scripts, the work is at once incomprehensible and deeply comprehensible.

In the early 2000’s, Richard called me on the phone and asked if I would be interested in working on a piece together. I was a long-time fan of his work and I jumped at the chance. We live within walking distance of each other, and over the next six weeks, Richard dropped off three scripts, each script shorter than the one before. He left me with only one instruction, that I was free to include or not include any part of the script as long as the Duck remained.

In order to better understand Richard’s words, I asked him to make me a tape of a read-through of the libretto. Listening to Richard read illuminated his text and gave me the direction I needed to set the words to music. Along with four principal singers –– one male and three female –– the score to What to Wear includes a small woman’s chorus and seven instrumentalists.

––Michael Gordon

score preview