this actor rehearsed the 1921 first public performance of the play, Satie was upset, as he disapproved of Bertin's rendering of the play's main character with Satie's mannerisms and voice (Orledge 1995, p124). The music The musical score is a series of very short dances in popular modes (quadrille, waltz, mazurka, polka, etc.), written in Satie's most humorously straight-faced manner, and reminiscent of some of Satie's other works – the waltz, for example, is a slightly more "mechanical" version of the music reappearing a year later in his Trois valses distinguées du précieux dégouté. 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. This was supposedly the first appearance of a prepared piano in the history of music. 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 never had an easy relation towards orchestral music (at least according to his contemporaries), consequently also this orchestration was criticised for showing Satie's limitations in this medium. Satie, however, had probably the limited sound of mechanical music in mind for the seven "toutes petites dances" of the Piège. The surrealism Satie wrote his absurdist play some 15 years after Jarry's first Ubu play had been premiered in Paris. Ubu Roi was later to become the most cherished and first example of surrealism in theatre (which would develop into the Theatre of the Absurd). 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. The article was entitled Choses de théâtre. References Le piège de Méduse Paris: Editions de la Vipère, 1939 Plate E.A.S. 15802 R.L. http://imslp.org/wiki/Le_Pi%C3%A8ge_de_M%C3%A9duse_(Satie,_Erik) Original program for performance on August 14, 1948 of "The Ruse of Medusa: a lyric comedy in one act" by Erik Satie. Cast included: Buckminster Fuller, Isaac Rosenfeld, William Shrauger, Elaine de Kooning, Merce Cunningham, and Alvin Charles Few. Direction by: Helen Livingston and Arthur Penn. Dance by: Merce Cunningham; Music performed by: John Cage. http://digital.ncdcr.gov/u?/p249901coll44,1106 Fetterman, William. John Cage’s Theatre Pieces. Page 16 Psychology Press, 2012. Satie, Erik. The Ruse of Medusa: Lyric Comedy in One Act, http://www.worldcat.org/title/ruse-of-medusa-lyric-comedy-in-one-act/oclc/48677454 Compositions by Erik Satie