Le piège de Méduse

Le piège de Méduse ("The Ruse of Medusa") is a short play of which Erik Satie wrote both the text and the incidental music.

The nine scenes of the play develop as a funny succession of non sequiturs and misunderstandings, ending in an amicable hug of the protagonists.

The musical score is a series of very short dances in popular modes (quadrille, waltz, mazurka, polka, etc.

At the private premiere of the Piège, Satie, performing the music, had slid sheets of paper between the strings of the piano for a more mechanical sound.

At the 1921 public premiere, Darius Milhaud conducted an orchestra composed of a small string section, some wind instruments and percussion, performing Satie's orchestral version of the music.

Satie, however, had probably the limited sound of mechanical music in mind for the seven "toutes petites dances" of the Piège.

Apart from the Piège, Satie had contributed to that emergence of absurdist theatre by publishing a text regarding his theatrical vision as one of his Mémoires d'un amnésique in January 1913, in the Revue musicale SIM.

Cast included: Buckminster Fuller, Isaac Rosenfeld, William Shrauger, Elaine de Kooning, Merce Cunningham, and Alvin Charles Few.