Dick Raaymakers "Table top theatreThe Microman. A short phenomenology of falling"

Location: Dissecting room of the Binnengasthuis, building 14. Entrance left of the main entrance of the Theaterschool (Grimburgwal 10, Amsterdam). 'The Microman is one in a series of complementary operations, each of which is related in its own way to the film Nightowls, made in 1930 by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. It was their first 'talkie', after having exclusively produced silent movies for a period of four years. Far and away the major portion of their 20-minute soundtrack was left unused, namely empty and silent: an excellent demonstration of what they understood sound to be in a film. All the various operations relating to Nightowls have to do with 'falling' - falling as music, falling as accident, falling as waste, and falling as theatre. The first operation dates from 1981, and is called SHHH! (because Laurel and Hardy followed up all of the sounds they produced with an emphatical 'shhh!'). In order to get at the secret of their art, all of the approximately thirty sounds from the original film were cut; they were then remounted on a modern sound tape, after having been thoroughly retouched, while these sounds retained the time and place which they occupied in the original, image and speech were discarded. Thus, a 1930's sort of musique concrète-like composition avant la lettre emerged. The second operation (1982) was concerned with the construction of a kinetic-pneumatic super-machine: The Sound Wall. The third operation (1982) consists of a presentation of all sound-actions which arise in the film: the play, The Soundman. The fourth operation (1982) is essentially a presentation of The Soundman, not in stage format, but in tabletop format: The Microman. Of all music action - singing, bowing, blowing, strumming, beating, falling - falling is the last and the lowest. As far as music is concerned, it doesn't concern itself with falling. Yet, something which falls usually creates a first-rate sound. Thanks to the operation, The Microman, falling is manoeuvred into the realm of music, when perpetrated by Laurel and Hardy.' (Dick Raaymakers, 'Operatie: The Microman', De Appel, 2 (1982) 3, pp. 16, 17.)