Composer and percussionist Tyler Eschendal is a lifelong stutterer. And he wants you to know about it.
Through Actions, a set of five interconnected musical movements, he confronts what it’s like to live with a stutter and explores the musicality of speech and communication, redefining fluency in the process. Eschendal will premiere the hourlong work at Pasadena’s Lineage Performing Arts Center, March 29–30.
This deeply personal and artistically groundbreaking performance, produced by the musician’s collective Synchromy, began as a film series. The Los Angeles-based Eschendal, 31, explained: “I started it in 2021, and COVID was the catalyst. The impetus before the actual film series, though, was to start making work about my stutter.
“For a long time, I was never really sure how to talk about it,” he continued. “I was coming from a background in music composition, writing for orchestral instruments, but that never really felt like the right medium to do it in. When I started to write for myself, that felt like the best way to talk about it.”
There are 3 million Americans who stutter, including former President Joe Biden, so Eschendal, who is also a recording engineer and videographer, is decidedly not alone. But baring his soul about his condition onstage is still difficult. “There is a lot of shame, a lot of masking for people who stutter, so I think for me it was always something that I tiptoed around, just in how I lived. I primarily identified as a covert stutterer, someone who would circumnavigate and sort of decide which situation was right to stutter, who to do it around.
“After doing that for many, many years, I needed to talk about it. [And] I wanted to do it in a way that felt the most comfortable for me. As someone who makes music and film, that came the most naturally.”
Actions is directed by Diana Wyenn and runs about 50 minutes. Its five movements — “Arguing,” “Acting,” “Singing,” “Ordering,” and “Explaining” — are, according to Eschendal, “heightened scenarios of what it is like to live with a stutter. For example, the movements ‘Arguing’ and ‘Ordering’ deal with the fear of confrontation and some of the societal fears of stuttering. ‘Singing’ uses text from actual speech therapy worksheets that I used when I was young. The last movement is really about coming to terms with the acceptance of your speech and trying to redefine what fluency means to me and, hopefully, what that can mean to everybody.”
Although the project began as a film series, Eschendal wants to keep the show “as live as possible.” He added, “I’m excited about connecting each movement with stories and being able to talk about anecdotes of stuttering from my life.”
The music, he said, runs through a gamut of styles, including singing with vocal effects and Auto-Tune. “Because I am a percussionist, the whole show is very rhythmic. I have a long part of the second movement where I am performing on ceramic tiles, a tom-tom, and a desk bell. There’s [also] a piece where I am rhythmically arguing with myself.”
The musician explained that he’s “offering a new narrative that encourages empathy and celebrates neurodiversity” and that those in the audience who stutter will “experience something that they know deeply. I’m using stuttering to talk about anxiety and guilt and shame, but I think that is everywhere in our lives. The hope is that there’s a universal message but also that people walk away with a better understanding and empathy for people who stutter — because they’re all around you.”
When asked if he thinks he’ll stutter during the performance — whether from stage fright, habit, or because it’s at the heart of the show — Eschendal replied firmly, “Since there is actually not a lot of stuttering in the filmed version, that was something I really wanted to adjust in the live show, so I hope I stutter during the show. I know I will.”
