Dramaturgical notes of Lawrence Kornfeld on Stein works in no particular order:

Kornfeld has directed 19 productions of 11 different Stein plays:

1]. Stein/Meyer Kupferman: IN A GARDEN, a short opera; my very first piece of directing ; at a music club somehow connected to Hunter College sometime in the very early 50's [exact date unknown]; a girlfriend of that time recommended me to do this because she knew I liked Stein and that I wanted to be in the theatre; I wasn't sure I wanted to direct, but I knew I loved and understood music. The piece turned out quite well, in that I discovered that I liked directing and that I could get people to act out my ideas of intensity.

2]. Stein/Al Carmines: WHAT HAPPENED, 1963; Judson Poets Theatre; a short play with music, for dancers, singers and actors; it began as an experiment to combine dancer/performers [Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer, Aileen Passloff, Arlene Rothlein, Joan Baker] from the Judson Dance Theatre and singer/actors from the Judson Poets Theatre in collaboration with designer/painters from the community. It was a somewhat difficult time of creation because I was inventing a form and procedure for mounting a script that had no characters, plot, setting or linear component. A four week rehearsal period produced a 32 minute piece: the first of what was to become a partnership between myself and Al Carmines making Stein productions. The production turned out to be extraordinarily successful, and in a sense, made the Judson Poets Theatre; it received 5 OBIE Awards and was revived 5 times over the next 6 years.

3]. Stein/Carmines: IN CIRCLES, 1963?4?; Judson Poets Theatre, then moved to The CherryLane Theater for an extended run; A full length one-act play with music that was an exploration of the inner states of a group of people in a countryhouse garden: lyrical, psychological, "checkhovian". An intensely personal piece for each of the performers who were very daring in realizing iconic presentations of their own vulnerability and passion: the result was a piece that, although using the non-linear language of Stein, still gave the audience a world of intense, passionate people. It was at this time that I found I hated pretentious productions of Stein's plays that treated her work with a kind of condescending, childish whimsy and cuteness. I felt strongly that Stein's work [all of it!] was passionate, daring, powerful, revolutionary! It was with this production that The Judson Poets Theater became recognized as a vibrant experimental theatre in New York.

4]. Stein/Telemann: Plays I II III; 1965; a wedding gift to Margaret on our marriage; four actors who finally get into a cardboard box, a flutist playing Telemann, and a marriage of all souls! a happy piece, still one of my favorites; it was seamless and built steadily to a great quiet climax; it was also the first Stein piece at Judson without Carmines.

5]. Stein/Carmines: A MANOIR; 1966?, a very large-scale work, really an opera, with an extraordinary score by Carmines; A two-act apocalyptic vision of society before and after collapse; act one had a subtext from OVID in the courts of love; act two, a subtext from Rilke's Duino Elegy #7 on rebirth. Beautiful and terrifying set by Ed Lazansky, magic lighting by Roger Morgan, eclectic and handsome costumes by Theo Barnes; I still feel that this was one of the most Epic productions of the Off-off Broadway Movement; it expressed the possibilty of large-scale theater events in less-than-large theaters. It certainly showed that Stein's plays were as monumental as her two famous Thompson operas. OBIE award for Margaret Wright, for acting.

6]. I later did 2 different productions of A MANOIR at the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College in the 1980s. Both productions used the apocalyptic theme of the original but did not use Carmines' score; [incidental music by Richard Cameron-Wolfe] and each one used different visual contexts. These productions explored the inter-relationships of two different groups of actors/characters; the productions were excercises in finding sub text for invented characters using the non-linear text of Stein.

7]. Stein/Carmines: LISTEN TO ME; 1967?, another Epic-scale production; the text is one of Stein's most beautiful poetic masterpieces, and Carmines wrote what I believe is his most powerful and successful score [matched only by THE MAKING OF AMERICANS]; The piece portrays the journey of two lovers through life and into death; I set the sub text to be the point-by-point re-telling of the complete Orpheus myth: the life, death and re-birth of Orpheus and Eurydice. For me, this production is the high point of the epic-theatre pieces done at Judson: it had an intensity and rightness that was unrelenting; it also was satisfyingly inventive in its manipulation of time and space. Although I had just come out of the hospital after spine surgery and directed the piece on two canes, the staging was very muscular and athletic. Everything seemed to work for us, even though the rehearsal process was filled with pain and struggle: it all added up to an event that was a landscape of life. Michael Feingold in THE VILLAGE VOICE wrote: "...I do think [it] is the best thing I have ever seen anywhere. What sort of comment can you make about a play which you suspect of having changed your life? You don't get many of those...Kornfeld's production, a painstaking lesson in weaving complexities out of simple statements, is so attuned to the text that at times he appears to be breathing with [Stein]. Absolutely nothing is fussed over or muddled, and the big risks - like playing against Stein's words to bring out her feelings- are all successful; the use of space and groupings, which sometimes harks back to Graham, and sometimes forward into some nameless sci-fi future...so is the very daring and sensitive use of divided focus and repetition...the cast, like Kornfeld (and presumably because of him) is remarkably attuned to this demanding production." This is one of the few reviews [positive OR negative] that I feel understood what we were about;somehow even the reviewer became part of the life of this production.

8]. I later did two different productions of LISTEN TO ME at the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College in the 1980s. Both productions used the Orpheus and Eurydice theme of the original but did not use Carmines' score; [again incidental music by Richard Cameron-Wolfe] and each one used different visual contexts.; One of the productions was exported to Symphony Space in NYC. Each of the productions retained, in its own way, a power that was firmly rooted in the poetic genius of Stein.

9].later in the early 80s: THREE HISTORY PLAYS; while teaching at Yale I directed these short plays in a theater with windows, the action taking place on the stage and outside on the window sills; the actors were all over the place [one of them hanging from ceiling pipes most of the time]. It was a bit of a zoo, but it reflected the sort of "in your face" attitude I felt necessary to combat the prevailing modernist-conservatism at Yale at that time. It was fun to do, but a mere divertimento.

10]. Stein/Leon Katz/Carmines, THE MAKING OF AMERICANS; 1968?; Leon Katz, at my request, spent six months adapting Stein's magnum opus for the stage; the opera was composed by Carmines and presented at Judson with Carmines at the piano (as the persona of Stein) seemingly re-remembering the story of the family and America; We were riding high and knew that we had a major work to present:- three generations of Stein's family presented as story AND text, as narrative AND process, as construct AND de-construct. It proved very successful and audiences were moved by the grandness of its theme, the intricacy of its structure, the passion of its characters and the beauty of the language and the music. In its over-all structure, the production was, in itself, a sequential demonstration of narrative styles from the romantic to the post-modern.

11]. In the 80s a new production with some old cast and some new, was mounted in a very beautiful production at the Center Stage in Baltimore Maryland. Again Carmines was Stein. Very evocative sets and costumes by Marina Dragici. Baltimore, being one of the homes of Stein, had an almost civic interest in the piece: it garnered praise and scorn in the local press, and arguments were the healthy rule. It was fascinating to see this elegant modernist work playing to both Stein aficionados and subscription audiences.There is a video tape of this production in the archives at Lincoln Center.

12]. Stein/Carmines DR FAUSTUS LIGHTS THE LIGHTS; 1979?; Carmines first major score after his near fatal cerebral aneurism: he also played Mefistofeles; the cast featured an electrifying performance by the legendary Jeff Weiss as Faustus, and my 11-year-old daughter Sarah as the Girl whose monologue ends the play. Wonderful sets that moved around and transformed landscape into theatre-space: by Ed Lazansky.