David Byrne and David Binder on Breaking Into the Mainstream – The New York Times

Byrne: So, how do you find the shows? Do you spend months going to Edinburgh Fringe and various festivals?

Binder: I think that Joe Melillo is superhuman. Hed be like, Oh its Tuesday, Im going to Paris. Ill be back on Thursday. Im not built that way. I tend to go in bigger groupings. So, this Wednesday, Im going to Zurich, Hamburg, the Netherlands, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and London in nine days. And then that will be it for about a month. But I always feel like the New York audience does feel idiosyncratic. Just because the show is working in those cities, I dont necessarily think it would here. David, how were the audiences different with American Utopia?

Byrne: Its pretty consistent, but occasionally wed get surprised. In Santiago, Chile, we did a festival, and I dont think this happened anywhere else: A large portion of the audience copied the choreography. So if we did some gesture, they would all start doing it back to us hundreds of people. Im going to guess its because Santiago has this tradition of mass movements. A number of years ago, they had these huge street protests. They were like performances. There was one where the entire group did the dance from Michael Jacksons Thriller.

Binder: Thats how I learned to produce. Seriously! Doing street demonstrations and actions in Act Up. One time, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS hired me to produce this action about Guantnamo Bay [where the United States quarantined Haitian refugees with H.I.V. in 1993]. We staged this giant thing in Rockefeller Center, with a Statue of Liberty wrapped up in chains. Jonathan Demme was there, and I remember having this conversation with him. He was like, I dont know if I should get arrested. Hes trying to work it out with me and Im, like, 25. And he decided he would, so he did.

T: Thats collaboration! American Utopia is also, in a sense, about the utopian world of collaboration. That seems to define both of your careers. Does it also help keep the work fresh?

Byrne: Oh yeah. It pushes me out of my comfort zone, the things I do by habit. I know that there are some artists who feel that collaboration betrays their vision as an artist. There are some who feel like, My personal vision is sacred. I dont want to dilute it. I find that to be riskier you have this danger of falling into the trap of only being inside yourself.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Excerpt from:

David Byrne and David Binder on Breaking Into the Mainstream - The New York Times