Saint Joan at Beaurevoir (1959)

Saint Joan at Beaurevoir poster for performance at The Player's Theatre, NYC March 21st, 1960

From Dick Higgins, foew&ombwhnw:

"Saint Joan at Beaurevoir consists of a series of events and situations all of them familiar, performed by familiar personalities juxtaposed, fragmented and suggested. It is a ceremony which belongs on a stage" 

"The set consists of 55 slides, to be projected right over the performers. The music is mechanical and is described in detail afterwards. The scenes are changes of the projected setting, and they ignore this music completely. The numbers given at the beginning of each scene give its length in seconds, with an extra 2 minutes added to each as a lyrical prologue."

"The durations of scenes, actions, and sounds and the sequences of events are all derived by chance structures through the use of such notations as the one produced in John Cage's book Notations, (Something Else Press, New York 1969)." 

Pictured: Graphis #19 (Act One of Staint Joan of Beaurevoir), 1959. 

Dick Higgins, Graphis #21 (Act Two and Three from Saint Joan at Beaurevoir), 1959 as it appears in John Cage, Notations

"It is recommended that there be a conductor standing in front of the audience during the performance, in order to ensure the accuracy of the timing of these changes. This was, however, not done at the 1960 premiere of the work."