Imagine, if you can, that you are an actor who enjoys performing the works of Samuel Beckett. Not only do you have to make sure you are always following Beckett’s precise stage directions, but you must also immerse yourself in his unique language. That was what Professor of English Steve Young had been doing for several years, until he came across two plays by Joseph Chaikin and Sam Shepard, Tongues and Savage/Love, that moved him to momentarily depart from Beckett in order to create a new kind of performance.

For more than two years now, Young has been planning his upcoming performances. "I’ve seen both of the plays and I’m really pleased to be able to perform them. The plays are quite interesting because they take ordinary, colloquial, everyday American speech and they take it to a completely different place," explained Young. The first piece, Tongues, is non-narrative, and the combination and juxtaposition of storytelling voices make a big impact. The voices that are represented vary wildly: a worker’s voice, a mother’s voice, a dead person’s voice. Savage/Love is different in that it only involves a single consciousness going through a spectrum of the many emotions of love, "all the way from outright hostility to tenderness," said Young.

Although the two pieces only provide lines for only one actor, Young did not shy from involving other people in the performances. The first thing he did was work with the noted artist Mowry Baden. Baden offered to alter two of his moving sculptures that are currently on display at the Montgomery Gallery, both of which will be used in Young’s production. Percussionist Theresa Dimond will join Young and will play percussion in the performance of Tongues. For the performance of Savage/Love, Professor of Music Tom Flaherty will be playing music that he wrote specifically for this production.

Young feels that these two plays lend themselves especially well to multimedia performances. "Both of the pieces use ‘you’ a lot, whether it is stated or not. In my performance, the music and percussion represent that off-screen person I’m addressing. For example, in Savage/Love, there’s a moment where the speaker has just awakened and is looking at his lover, who is still asleep. The loved one is dreaming, and the music that is playing at the moment is reflecting the dreams. The cello can be the other person that can be in conflict with the voice, listening to the voice, or silent. The music takes the place of a character in its own right. It’s totally separate from the speaker," said Young.

Young says that the most pleasant part of the project so far has been finding out how well this collaboration has worked. "I’ve never done a project like this before, where I’ve brought the text to an artist and then had musicians accompany me. All these things meeting together at one point–that of my performance space here at the gallery–has been incredibly gratifying," said Young, "and although it might not technically really be performance art, you can certainly think of it as such."

Preparing for the play hasn’t been easy, though. Young confessed that the biggest challenge for him has been trying to do justice to all the characters and emotions in the plays. "Usually an actor immerses himself in just one character, and takes on all the subtleties and nuances of that role. With Tongues, however, I’m supposed to represent something like 19 different characters. It’s a challenge trying to keep all these voices distinct, especially because they don’t have a central issue tying them together. In Savage/Love, it’s a similar problem of moving from one section to another quickly. You have to go from one emotion to another in two minutes, and you have to do justice to all of them." Young joked that "the audience will have to decide whether I am doing a good job of that or not."