Fallen Voices: 3 Operas for 2 People
* CROSS-POSTED TO SCINTILLATOR*
Funny, I haven’t really used this blog for what I originally intended.
I think I thought I was going to mull over the process of my different projects, using it as a virtual sounding board and playground of ideas.
Instead I’ve barely used it at all. Oh well.
BUT at least I have been working on things, because my operas are going up a week Friday!
Yes!
Fallen Voices: 3 Operas for 2 People is going up at Bread and Circus Theatre (299 Augusta Ave) on the 24th and 25th at 8 PM, and at 3 PM on the 26th. You can even buy tickets online here.
If you don’t know about the operas, this is what they’re about:
Time Will Erase (Alex Eddington/K. Mueller-Heaslip)
Who has the power to destroy an artist’s work? What does that destruction even mean in the face of death, war, and desperation? What sacrifices would you make to express yourself – and what self-expression would you give up to protect the one you love?
Based on the life of Anna Akhmatova, one of Russia’s most famous poets, Time will Erase is a lyrical exploration of the artist’s relationship with society.
Milk and Honey (Michael Hynes/K. Mueller-Heaslip)
Through all of her troubles, Tammy Faye Bakker stood by her man and her faith in the Lord and never complained, even when people lied about her and misrepresented her. Now she is ready to tell her own story the best way she can: with straightforward honesty, music, and puppets.
Electric Eel (Benjamin Mueller-Heaslip/K. Mueller-Heaslip)
“I will not be taught my business by a bunch of pipsqueaks. I am an electric eel in a pool of flatfish.” Dame Edith Sitwell, famously eccentric poet, novelist, and socialite, has come to lecture the Rosedale Ladies’ Self-Improvement League on her life and works, and to sell her autobiography in verse, Electric Eel. A touch too much Valium and a little too much vodka, however, cause her to reveal more of her life and works than she originally intended.
I haven’t produced a show in a while, so I’d forgotten a lot of the unpleasant things about it – you know, how the time you probably ought to spend practicing you spend mailing press releases and putting up posters, how you lie awake at night wondering how you’re going to get your puppets to change props without dropping one, the anxiety dreams, all that fun stuff.
But at the same time I know that if I weren’t doing this myself, it would almost certainly never get done, so I’ll suck it up and put up posters like a big girl.
After this is done, I’m performing in Nuit Blanche the following weekend, then trying to decide if I’m going to go to Italy for a new music competition in November.
