Music by Steve Bramson Libretto by Gayle Hudson
André Kertész, his photographs and the undying power of love and art.
Amidst the forces of emigration, anti-Semitism and the flux of the art world, André Kertész forged a path that secured his place as a master of the photographic art form. His wife, Elizabeth, was a driving force behind his hesitant creative genius. After decades of buffeting the winds of change - leaving home in Hungary for fertile Paris, escaping Naziism, struggling in New York - their difficult marriage endured. After losing Elizabeth, was André’s love for her the creative spark that refused to die?
Rights to use projections of photographs in productions of CLICK! have been secured with the Kertész estate.
CLICK! is a musical rendering of the life and work of André Kertész, an internationally acclaimed pioneer in the art of photography. Interpretations of interviews conducted at the end of his life provide the framework for André’s journey; from his youth in turn-of-the-century Hungary, his early successes in the creatively vibrant Paris of the 1920’s, to his artistic frustrations and ultimate rediscovery of his passions in New York. His wife Elizabeth tells his story and re-enters his world as a powerhouse of influence, a role she continued to play after her early death. CLICK! takes us through the rise of a burgeoning art form and André’s relentless need to communicate in the only language he ever mastered - photography. Projections of his work are incorporated into the production further illuminating the layered portrait of the artist as André and Elizabeth reveal their story in a mostly sung-through score.
Estate of André Kertész, courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto © 2021