Line #39 Theatre/EinsteinOnTheBeach


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4	Four-act experimental opera about the life and achievements of UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein written by Music/PhilipGlass and Creator/RobertWilson in 1975, with text and libretto by Lucinda Childs, Samuel M. Johnson, and Christopher Knowles. First performed in 1976 at the Avignon Festival, it is one of the defining and most influential works of the minimalist genre.
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6	!! I was on this prematurely air-conditioned web site, and there were all these tropes…
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8	* ActBreak: Between each act is a "Knee-Play", partially to tie the show together and partially so that audience members can go to the bathroom without missing the main performance.
9	* ArcNumber: All integers between one and eight, inclusive. Roughly half the sung lyrics are numbers.
10	* ArcSymbol: There's a rectangular light bar that serves as a bed, a spaceship, a vertical divider between the two halves of the backdrop in the first scene, and some sort of window in the courtroom.
11	* ArcWords: The other half are solfège.
12	* AsceticAesthetic:
13	** There is some decorative element to the courtroom, but on the whole it's very simple, geometric, and sterile-looking.
14	** The Knee-Plays are generally set against a featureless white background. Stage right is lit up with a bright square light, and two performers sit at bland-looking, minimalist desks.
15	* BeachEpisode: [[AvertedTrope That would be a no]].
16	* ChildProdigy: The court of common pleas has two judges. One is, inexplicably, a child.
17	* ColorMotif: Blue and white are very prominent in the staging.
18	* ConspicuouslyLightPatch: In an ''opera'', no less. The conch shell that one of the chorus interacts with shows up in the first act is spot-lit against an otherwise bland and featureless stage.
19	* CallARabbitASmeerp: They're not ''entr'actes'', they're "Knee-Plays".
20	* EpicRocking:
21	** Some of the individual songs in this work clock in at around ''twenty minutes''. Keep in mind that this is an ''opera''.
22	** The work itself is so long, at about four and a half hours, that there are no intermissions, with the viewers instead invited to come and go as they please (provided they're quiet about it).
23	* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Albert Einstein. Possibly. It's arguable whether the opera has characters at all in the usual sense.
24	* {{Intermission}}: [[AvertedTrope Averted]], despite the length of the work. Instead, the audience is permitted to come and go as desired during the performance so long as they don't make a ruckus.
25	* JudicialWig: Both of the above-mentioned judges sport one.
26	* LiteraryAllusionTitle: Some interpreters believe the title refers to the 1957 novel ''Literature/OnTheBeach'', which describes a post-nuclear dystopia.
27	* {{Minimalism}}: One of the crowning achievements thereof, and one of the iconic compositions of Music/PhilipGlass, the master of the genre.
28	* NoAntagonist: No plot, either. (The judges aren't really antagonists; they're just putting Einstein's theories to the test. Or something.)
29	* NoIndoorVoice: This is the elder judge's normal mode of diction:
30	-->'''Elder Judge:''' '''''[=THIS=] [=COURT=] [=OF=] [=COMMON=] [=PLEAS=]…[=IS=] [=NOW=] [=IN=] [=SESSION=]!'''''
31	* NumerologicalMotif:
32	** As mentioned above, about half the lyrics are just numbers.
33	** The opening scene has one of the performers recite numbers, seemingly randomly.
34	* OurActsAreDifferent: Namely, there are four of them, separated by "[[ActBreak Knee-Plays]]".
35	* RandomEventsPlot: ''[[SubvertedTrope Subverted]]'', believe it or not. The opera jumps around a bit between a couple scenes (the train, the prison, and the field with a spaceship), and we get things like a child throwing paper airplanes off of a gantry and a very drawn-out sequence involving the courtroom eating lunch…but there's no actual plot. It's more of a series of snapshots involving Einstein and his work.
36	* ShoutOut: Given [[Creator/ChristopherKnowles the poet]], it's not sure if these were references or just bits of pop culture that got caught up in his creative process, but:
37	** Some of the poetry in one of the Knee-Plays is a repeated advertisement for contact lenses.
38	** Much is made of "Mr. Bojangles" in the third act.
39	** One piece is subtitled "[[Music/CaroleKing I Feel the Earth Move]]" and uses lyrics from the song. This same movement quotes a radio station advertisement repeatedly and also references Creator/DavidCassidy.
40	* SeadogBeard: The ''train conductor'' sports one.
41	* TitleConfusion: Albert Einstein appears (kind of), but at no point in the opera does he spend any time on the beach.
42	* TruthInTelevision: Einstein really did play the violin. He once even played it with the Queen of England, and stopped mid-song to complain because she was playing too loudly.
43	* UncommonTime: A staple of Glass' minimalist era, in many cases developing somewhat organically as individual notes were added to the repetitive sequences. For a more-obvious example of that, see the "Mr. Bojangles" movement from Act I.
44	* UnsoundEffect: One of Creator/ChristopherKnowles' rambling poems involves a gun. A performer takes a prop gun, and in the course of the poem "shoots" it:
45	-->''Gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gun.''
46	* UpdatedRerelease: The 1993 re-recording is about half an hour longer than the original 1978 release, which was compressed to fit on four sides of an [=LP=]. It also features more modern synthesizers, and the elder judge's recitation text is completely different. On the other hand, they were able to not cut off the final piece halfway through[[note]]"Impossible, you say?"[[/note]]. (The 2017 Blu-Ray release maintains these altered lyrics.)
47	* WordSaladLyrics: Given that Christopher Knowles wrote much of the poetry used, there's more than a slight element of this.

Context Theatre / EinsteinOnTheBeach