Page 47 - 72_11PDF_Searchable

ArtisCheeseMadeVsbe

Religious FrenzyWith

The FinesignTheatre

Edited by Jonh Ingham

CAST:
Phil Austin .. P.A
Phil Proctor . P.P
Peter Bergman P.B
David Ossman D.O.
SIDE TWO and introducing
the Chorus
On Waiting for the Electrician
P.A.: I figured recently that you could interpret the ending that he s saved, because someone pulls the plug. That is, the
'
mechanical monster that’s saying, “Come to Side Six!” - Ha! Another Kafka trap!- the plug is pulled on him. Not the hero, just
the record. Then I flashed Ah, it’s the electrician; the guy who pulls the plug. ’ Because Peter did a rap once on Radio Free Oz,
*
that was the archetypal electrician rap. The electrician was a character of Peter’s that he used to play with all the time on Radio
Free Oz, and the original ‘Waiting for the Elcctrican’ is an improvised title Peter came up with one night on the radio show. I was
sitting in the booth engineering, and Peter was rapping wildly over the phone with Judy Eisenstein, a very brilliant poetess who
was one of the frequent callers, and they’d get into these stoned philosophical raps on the air for four or five hours. He began
putting her on and explaining how he ’ d seen a Bulgarian play when he was in Europe, because a lot of the radio show would go on
Peter’s reminiscences of Europe. That’s all he had to talk about at the time, having just come from Europe. So Radio Free Oz wai
very Continental. And he said when he was in Bulgaria he saw this amazing play called ‘Waiting for the Electrician Or Someone
Like Him,’ and then fantasized this whole play with all these strange things- musicians in the bathroom - it was an avant garde
Communist play. It was forgotten that night, and then when the group got together, one of the first things we did together was
with the Fine Arts Festival at UCLA. There was Joe Byrd and the U.S.A., and it was very Provo and that whole trip, and so we
went and we said we’ll perform this play that Peter made up because it so amazed everybody, and the title was so weird. So all
along it’s a thing in Peter’s head.
Then the next record is Peter - he’s Babe on Two Places, driving the car. And Peter, in fact, at that time had millions of cars.
He’d just come to L.A.- the only one of us who had just come here. He was the visitor from Enroute. And he comes to America
and he buys a car, which takes him on a trip into the past, basically. Nick Danger eventually solves the riddle of the past, brings
him up to the future, and he is left in this parallel present day world: Home. That’s what’s explored in Dwarf - home/high school.
Everything that ever happened when you were a kid, all the movies you’ve ever watched on tv, your whole life in the present. And
then that guy from the present begins moving on Bozos.He takes a walk - it s not George Tirebitcr, but it’s that same sort of guy,
’
only it’s played by Phil Procer, as Clem... Or you could say me as Barnie, whom he picks up on the bus. I haven ’t been seen
since Electrician, when 1 was the guy screaming for his mother.
46 coeoffl