This is the one book of mine that had no intended correlation to performance. Soon after it was published, Janet Bogardus, a choreographer and performance artist, asked if she could do a performance based on the book. So much for intentions. Her brilliant choreography set the chants to music and projected images of the pages onto white costumed dancers.
GRRRHHHH was composed and printed at the Center for Editions at SUNY Purchase, where I teach. Instead of preparing the book entirely in advance of printing, Instead of preparing the book entirely in advance of printing, I was able to work in a fluid hands-on approach to offset lithography, allowing for experimentation with overprinting, split fountains, translucent, iridescent and metallic inks.
Before going to press with the sixth and last movement where all the animals come together, I ran out of money. Unable to afford the plates and film needed to prepare a new three or four color section, I sent Phil Zimmermann the artwork for the climactic movement as one color flats. Lori Spenser and I then printed selected plates from previous sections, in increasingly darker and darker colors as the movement progressed. On top of that, we printed the new plates in a split fountain from rust to a kind of deep olive. Like natural phenomena, the resulting pages are rich with unexpected patterns and meaning.
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