The Star Of The Show

"The culmination of the summer, for Cage, and for many who were there, was the performance of Satie's short play Le Piege de Meduse (The Ruse of Medusa), which had only been performed once before. Poet M.C. Richards translated the text, and Cage performed the music. Buckminster Fuller, whom Cage and Cunningham had befriended, was enlisted to play the lead role of Baron Medusa, with Elaine de Kooning as his daughter, Frisette. Cunningham danced in the role of 'a costly mechanical monkey,' and student William Schrauger was Frisette's suitor. Willem de Kooning painted the sets. Fuller, although able to talk captivatingly for hours on end, froze when faced with the prospect of acting in conjunction with this extravagant gathering of geniuses. Nothing could deliver him from his crippling panic, until Arthur Penn was called upon to direct the production. Penn, a student, already had experience with Stanislavsky's theories before coming to Black Mountain and eventually taught a popular class at the college in 1947 using the Russian master's An Actor Prepares as the textbook. Realizing Fuller was afraid of making a fool of himself, Penn himself proceeded to do the most ridiculous things he could imagine. Suddenly, when Fuller saw this, and everyone laughing at Penn, it unlocked him, and from then on he was the star of the show."

-from Vincent Katz, Black Mountain College: Experiment In Art