Paul Dresher’s ‘Slow Fire’ Draws a Bead on Violence

In the paramilitary world, slow fire refers to the operating cycle of an automatic weapon. Although the Paul Dresher Ensemble does not intend to stockpile weapons, wear camouflage or conduct assassinations, the entire paramilitary concept plays a large part in their Los Angeles premiere of the electric opera “Slow Fire.”

The work will be given one performance only, Saturday night at 8 p.m. at the Wadsworth Theatre in Westwood.

Paul Dresher is probably best known from his involvement with the George Coates Performance Works, where he composed the music for the “How” trilogy. Less known are some of his commissions, from the San Francisco Symphony, La Jolla Playhouse, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and Kronos Quartet, among others.

However, he has long harbored theatrical ambitions of his own. With principal collaborators Rinde Eckert and Richard E. T. White, Dresher has cooked up a generation-gap plot line for “Slow Fire” that would cause any prospective Rambo to have second thoughts.

There are two main characters in the work, both played by Eckert: Bob and Dad (Bob’s father).

“Bob embodies proclivities that are prevalent in American culture today,” said Dresher, adding that the work makes a definite sociopolitical statement.

“Bob is very enamored with the concept of a soldier of fortune, the mercenary concept, the acquisition of property and land.” He laughed. “A kind of overwhelming consumptive urge that is the result of a very skewed relationship to one’s environment.”

Dad, on the other hand, presents a sort of rural wisdom, one loaded with aphorisms and parables. All of this sounds hollow to Bob, the product of a faster paced urban culture. Bob unconsciously rejects Dad’s wisdom while trying to integrate it into his life.

The work seems to be asking, what is violent behavior? Is it the fantasy of reading and dreaming about violent acts and the acquisition of tools of violence or is it only the acting out of the fantasy? “Slow Fire” is, in part, a character study of Bob as his own antagonist/protagonist, a study of self-destruction through fantasy.

Most of the Paul Dresher ensemble have been directly involved in Coates’ performance works. When asked if “Slow Fire” is an offshoot of previous collaborations with Coates, Dresher said: “ ‘Slow Fire’ is a direct response to the theater works of George Coates.

“George’s aesthetic consists of no characters, no language and no interest in language. A theater based around beautiful images, visual magic and very beautiful music,” Dresher said, adding that when he and Eckert were working with Coates, flashes of Eckert’s talent would come through but they did not fit into Coates’ aesthetic. So Eckert and Dresher set out to create a work that could fully utilize their talents.

“We wanted to mix elements of humor, danger, irony and dramatic moments normally found in traditional opera,” said Dresher.

It wasn’t long before they met White and, according to Dresher, the group really started to jell. “Slow Fire” is the first of a planned series of theater works involving the combined talents of this group.

How did the music, theatrical concept and images come together?

“We had this concept of this character Bob who had these paramilitary interests,” said Dresher. “He was a funny character, too. We took this idea and just started improvising.

“I would bring in music sketches I would generate in my studio. Rinde would bring in text or proposed script or whatever he had worked on himself and we would start throwing the things together.”

The music for “Slow Fire” is, in Dresher’s words, “based in pop or rock ‘n’ roll. The structure of the music is not like a pop song, however, but is through-composed like an opera.”

“People from the classical music world can take it seriously even though it sounds like rock ‘n’ roll and even funk sometimes.” He paused. “Really, the work is structured, on the whole, like an opera.”