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Originale (Originals, or "Real Characters"), musical theatre with Kontakte, is a music theatre work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in collaboration with the artist Mary Bauermeister. It was first performed in 1961 in Cologne, and is given the work number in Stockhausen's catalogue of works.
| Pianist | David Tudor | James Tenney | Michael Orland | Aya Inokuchi | Stephen Drury | Adrian Heger |
| Percussionist | Christoph Caskel | Max Neuhaus | Don Baker | Christian R. Wissel | Stuart Gerber | Ni Fan |
| Sound engineer | Leopold von Knobelsdorff | David Behrman | Ed Herrmann, Richard Zvonar | Wolfgang Mittermaier | Joe Drew | Sébastien Alazet |
| Cameraman | Wolfgang Ramsbott | Robert Breer | Paula Levine | Simone Speer | A. L. Steiner | Vincent Stefan |
| Lighting director | Walter Koch (Theater am Dom) | Gary Harris Billy Klüver | Jim Quinn | Nikolaus Pirchtner | Brittany Spencer | Irene Selka |
| Stage director | Carlheinz Caspari | Allan Kaprow | Henry Steele | Elisabeth Gutjahr / Claudine M. Kolbus (choreographer) | Caden Manson/Jemma Nelson | Georg Schütky |
| Action composer | Nam June Paik | Nam June Paik | Michael Peppe | Robin Rhode | Rachel Mason/Colin Self | Antinational Embassy |
| Child | Markus Stockhausen Christel Stockhausen | Anton Kaprow | Milena | Meret Zyrewitz | Raul de Nieves | Marcelo Renne |
| Fashion model | Edith Sommer | Olga Klüver / Lette Eisenhauer | Chris Maher | Sonja Kunz | Justin Vivian Bond | Caterina Pogorzelski |
| Street singer / String player | Belina/ Lilienweiß/ Kenji Kobayashi (violinist) | Charlotte Moorman (cellist) | Pamela Z | David Stützel | Nick Hallett | Miloš Kozon |
| Cloakroom attendant | Liselotte Lörsch | Marje Strider | Jan Martin-Risk | Rita Borchtler-Kracht | threeASFOUR | Ilona Schwabe |
| Newspaper seller | Frau Hoffmann | Michael Kirby | an original from Sindelfingen | Saori Tsukada | ||
| Conductor | Karlheinz Stockhausen | Alvin Lucier | Randall Packer | Manfred Schreier | Zach Layton | Max Renne |
| Animal attendant | a woman from the Cologne Zoo | Keeper from the Bronx Zoo with a large ape (replaced on one night by a small lady with a dog) | Jasmin Held | Narcissister | FUmanoids | |
| Painter | Mary Bauermeister | Robert Delford Brown (1st night only) / Ay-O | Hitomi Ikuma | Mary Bauermeister / Steffi Stangl / Ole Aselmann | Joan Jonas | Thomas Goerge |
| Poet | Hans G. Helms | Allen Ginsberg | Michael Peppe | Hans G Helms | Eileen Myles | Gerhard Rühm |
| Actor | Ruth Grahlmann | Vincent Gaeta | Chris Maher | Jerry Willingham | Nao Bustamante | Kader Traoré |
| Actor | Eva-Maria Kox | Gloria Graves | Diane Robinson | Barbara Stoll | Ishmael Houston-Jones | Friederike Harmsen |
| Actor | Alfred Feussner | Dick Higgins | Lisa Apfelburg | Birgit Heintel | Niv Acosta | Nora-Lee Sanwald |
| Actor | Harry J. Bong | Jackson Mac Low | Traci Robinson | Dorothee Jakubowski | Alexandro Segade | Irm Hermann |
| Actor | Heiner Reddemann / Peter Hackenberger | Peter Leventhal | Elena Rivera | Markus Schlueter | Lucy Sexton | Günter Schanzmann |
The New York performances took place at Judson Hall, 165 West 57th Street, across from Carnegie Hall, as part of the second annual New York Annual Avant Garde Festival, during the early performative period of the avant-garde movement Fluxus. Outside the concert hall on the opening night, 8 September 1964, several New York artists calling themselves Action Against Cultural Imperialism, including Fluxus founder George Maciunas, Conceptual art creator Henry Flynt, poet, journalist, and activist Marc Schleifer, violinist and filmmaker Tony Conrad, and actor/poet Alan Marlowe protested against Stockhausen as a "cultural imperialist" because of some reportedly disparaging remarks about jazz and folk music he was supposed to have made at Harvard in 1958. Some of the protesters seen before the event were actually performers involved in the piece, including poet Allen Ginsberg who, enlisting the support of Schleifer, extorted his way into the picket line against Flynt's wishes. Claims by Moorman and Stage Director Allan Kaprow that they also joined the pickets have been disputed. Meanwhile, Maciunas had recruited cast member Robert Delford Brown as a saboteur. Brown, performing the part of the Painter, came costumed as a huge papier-mache penis and, some way into the performance, lit a stink bomb on stage. This forced an evacuation of the hall and an unscheduled intermission to clear the air. Edgard Varèse, who had been seated near the front as guest of honor, had a violent coughing attack and had to be assisted out to the street. Needless to say, Brown disappeared during the interruption and in subsequent performances was replaced by the Japanese artist Ay-O, who was living at that time in New York. Thrilled press reviews reported that the protest and sabotage were actually part of the performance, a publicity stunt staged by Stockhausen himself.) Brown disputed the accounts that he was an intentional saboteur or that any rift developed between him and his friend Kaprow. Brown's only interest was to create as outrageous a spectacle as possible and embody the persona of the "Artist." His own documentation left no evidence of being involved in any way with Maciunas.
The May 1990 performance produced and directed by Randall Packer in San Francisco was presented by Zakros InterArts at Theater Artaud. It was the first West Coast performance of Originale and was the first time it had been performed since the 1964 New York City performances. The production draw from recent technological advancements to introduce digital techniques of sound manipulation and live video, replacing the analog media of the 1960s, to disrupt the linear flow of the work and to enhance its qualities of fragmentation and deconstruction of everyday events.
A performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1964 New York performance was produced in 2014 at The Kitchen by composer/performers Nick Hallett and Zach Layton.
In 2015 the Berlin State Opera produced a new version of Originale staged by Georg Schütky. It featured a mainly Berlin-based cast (e.g., Irm Hermann, Gerhard Rühm, Thomas Goerge, Max Renne, Vincent Stefan). The performances took place in the Werkstatt im Schiller Theater which allowed the realisation of Stockhausen's principle of an inverted arena situation, with the actio in the centre, and the audience around it.
An unusual assortment of "characters" are introduced in Originale, including a pianist, a percussionist, a sound technician, a stage director, a cameraman, a lighting technician, an action composer, an action painter, a poet, a street singer, a coat checker, a newspaper vendor, a fashion model, a child (playing with blocks), an animal handler with animal, a conductor, and five actors reading a collage of unrelated texts.
According to the musicologist , " Originale is a musical composition. The macrorhythm of scene continuity and the ordering of moments are musical. The individual scenes are composed musically, regardless of whether or not there is any 'music' in them. The verbal counterpoint is musical, as are the 'monodic' word melodies and the polyphony of speaking voices". Originale is constructed in 18 scenes, grouped into seven self-sufficient "structures", which may be performed in any order, either successively or with as many as three structures simultaneously, on three separated stages. Each character's actions are specified to take place within a specified number of seconds or minutes, and at one point the actors even speak in what Stockhausen calls "formant rhythms": in a span of four minutes one actor speaks three equally spaced words, a second actor has five equally spaced words, a third has eight, and yet another has thirteen, while a fifth provides a "noise band" of completely irregular rhythms.
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