Director's Note - The Black Rider
The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets is based on a fairy-tale that was turned into a romantic opera by Carl Maria von Weber (Der Freischütz). It also inspired Mary Shelley in the writing of Frankenstein and Thomas de Quincey wrote a version of the tale called The Fatal Marksman. The modern avant-garde theatre and opera director Robert Wilson brought together the popular music singer and songwriter Tom Waits and the avant-garde poet Williams S. Burroughs of Beat fame to write music and text for a new version for our times.
The resulting mix of popular and avant-garde traditions creates a modern kind of musical that is not selling out its artistic ambitions in trying to create text and “music that could dream..and be absurd, terrifying and fragile” (Tom Waits). In fact the danger of selling out is made thematic in the Faustian bargain with the devil for the magic bullets in the play: “A devil’s bargain is always a fool’s bargain, particularly for an artist. The devil deals only in quantity, not in quality.”(Burroughs) Selling our soul or integrity for money or success may be a fool’s bargain for all of us.
The resulting mix of popular and avant-garde traditions creates a modern kind of musical that is not selling out its artistic ambitions in trying to create text and “music that could dream..and be absurd, terrifying and fragile” (Tom Waits). In fact the danger of selling out is made thematic in the Faustian bargain with the devil for the magic bullets in the play: “A devil’s bargain is always a fool’s bargain, particularly for an artist. The devil deals only in quantity, not in quality.”(Burroughs) Selling our soul or integrity for money or success may be a fool’s bargain for all of us.