At Simon Fraser University in 1970 he developed a
performance sonnet form for ordered improvisation
while working in the drama department. That same
year he played First Musician in Yeats's "At the Hawk's
Well," an Irish play based on Japanese forms. For 20
years in way-way-off-Broadway theater, improvisation
and the Noh aesthetic were guiding interests.
In 1998 he offered a course in ordered improvisation
for musicians at UC-Santa Cruz.
In the early Seventies he belonged to a performance
group in San Francisco called the Angels of Light.
They performed stage shows similar to commedia
dell'arte in drag while other members of the large
commune of which they were part served free feasts
to the general public in a school gymnasium near
Haight-Ashbury.*
In the mid-Seventies he worked as a musician at La
Mama Experimental Theater Company in New York with
Ken and Fae Rubinstein.
In 1982 he worked with Claude Duval's Noh Oratorio
Society in San Francisco on "The Harrowing of Hell," a
medieval European mystery play presented with roots
in the Japanese Noh drama's aesthetic. He also did
lights for an "Ubu Roi" at Project Artaud.
After a few years seriously under the weather with
AIDS, he's able now to work part-time as a teacher
and composer-- especially enjoys working with
dancers and videographers.
Currently he's working on Fly High, a performance
piece about a young bird whose parents are too self-
absorbed to find time for teaching him how to fly.
The technical form is based loosely on Noh. He's also
involved with numerous projects in the Burning Man
community.
* Some of the Angels left the troupe and formed another
group of their own, which was called the Cockettes.