FORTUNATE COLLISION: AL CARMINES'S ENCOUNTER WITH CLAES OLDENBURG'S RAY GUN SPEX

Because Art has to do with truth, and faith has to do with love. [...]a woman up at Union Seminary said to me once, "what do you do when they conflict?" Finally, you shift, and you move from truth to faith.17 Carmines wrestled with these notions even as he was discovering his own aesthetic as an artist; Ray Gun Spex offered a way to find the bridge between art and faith through the body in performance. "32 Inarguably, Carmines's interest in dance, particularly the improvisatory style of Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton, David Gordon, and Deborah Hay, which was built on "chance, collage, free association, co-operative choice-making, slow meditation, repetition, lists, handling objects, playing games, and describing tasks," was at the heart of his technique in creating musical productions with writers.33 The "happening"-based dance technique was also central to Promenade. Because of this dance influence, Carmines composed some of his finest music for Fornés's play, and as he used the characters' physical action as described by Fornes in her stage directions as lyrics for the music he created. Dreamwrighting is key to the dramaturgy of Paula Vogel's plays, whose own writing was affected by the thinking of Bert O. States, and also Irene Fornés and John Guare. Because of Vogel's profound influence as a teacher, dreamwrighting has spread to her student Sarah Ruhl, whose plays are often structured around the illogical logic of dreams.