Welcome to the first segment of the official "program notes". Again, these notes are supplemental to the performance experience and intended for those of you are interested in knowing more about the creative process and where all these strange ideas for the Medea project have come from. Feel free to engage as much or as little as you like, and as always, feel free to comment and ask questions.
One of the main questions that inspired me to embark on doctoral studies:
How do I innovate my performance practice?
Or:
How do I find new ways to engage with performance and performing?
Coming out of my masters degree, I felt that I had developed a very specific (and useful) arsenal of tools that taught me to engage with singing, classical music, and performing in a very particular way. And while I still use all these tools in my performing today, I was curious about expanding on this foundation and exploring new ways to engage with the different realms of my artistic domain. There were certain aspects of what I had been taught that didn’t ‘fit’ my personality, my body and voice, or my ideas of what performance is. This question was inspired by my interests in music, literature, theatre and performing and my desire to find many different ways to perform that could embrace those interests as well as the capabilities of my body and my voice; that could honour and exploit my artistic instincts and creative impulses.
Medea is the fifth and final concert in a series of five. The five concerts were all designed to push my boundaries as a performer and to challenge myself to engage with music, sound, gesture, text, storytelling and singing in different ways. At this point in the study, Medea feels like the most extreme of these experiments, but when I think back on the previous concerts, each and every one of them has felt like this because the experience of creating and executing these projects, is entirely foreign and new. I take this to be a good sign: one that indicates that I have been pushed into the realm of uncertainty and risk taking, which, for better or for worse, always yields artistic growth.
The concept for Medea was inspired by the evocativeness of sound and the capacity of the imagination. I have always been fascinated with how effectively sound engages the imagination. How, for example, when you watch a scary movie scene, it isn’t necessarily the visual information that builds the tension, but rather the way the music and sound is employed. The most classic and perhaps obvious example is the movie Jaws. In the scene “Get Out Of The Water” we see an ocean full of happy swimmers enjoying a typical day at the beach, but overtop of this happy scene, we hear the infamous Jaws theme song. And it’s terrifying.
Take away the sound and the scene isn’t nearly as pungent. But take away the visual information, and the sound track is still terrifying. I can’t help but wonder if it would be even more frightening to hear that soundtrack and listen to someone simply narrate the events that are happening as opposed to seeing the movie clip with sound because then there would be nothing to bind the imagination - she would be free to conjure up the most terrifying version of the story.
When I was speaking about this with the journalist in our project, Petja Pelli, he quoted a teacher that said “radio is the best form of television”, implying exactly this - that sound has unique ways to provoke the imagination and that the images
Which made me ask: How can I use sound, singing and my musical vocabulary to provoke the imaginations of my listeners? And can I create a performance that mostly exists in their imaginations?
These questions became interesting to me because my previous concerts were incorporating more and more visual and gestural elements. I enjoy using my entire body as an instrument and incorporating gesture and visual information into my performances. These additions to my performing feel like a very natural way for me to create performance experiences for my audience that better express my creativity. However, in developing this final concert, I needed to remind myself, that diversifying my performance options and the ways in which I engage with and create performances, is integral to my research and my development. Also integral to this study is expanding the ways in which I think about and use my voice. Creating a performance almost entirely out of sound seemed conducive to fulfilling both of these objectives.
With those things in mind:
Medea is a four-episode performance that combines personal listening experiences with a live sound-installation and performance to depict the story of Medea and her husband, Jason as they face the prospect of divorce after seventeen years of marriage.
The audience is asked to engage with the episodes either on their own in a suggested space as a personal listening experience or live in a specific location. The personal listening experiences will be released online as weekly podcast episodes, and the live experience will take place in Black Box Theatre in Helsinki on October 11, 2017. The episodes are as follows:
Episode 1 (Podcast - Online): To be listened to at your home while doing the dishes or any other part of a daily routine; or in the car or on public transit on a familiar commute somewhere. You have just turned on your radio and tuned in to WGRK, Corinth’s popular music radio station.
Episode 2 (Podcast - Online): To be listened to in a public place, such as a cafe, or restaurant. You are overhearing a conversation between two people beside you. They happen to be the infamous, Medea and the producer, Homer Holmes from WGRK radio. It seems like they are recording an interview.
Episode 3a (Sound Installation & Live Performance - Black Box Theatre, Musiikkitalo, Helsinki): To be listened to inside the bedroom of Alceste (the six year old son of Jason and Medea). You will experience this part of the story as if you are Alceste and you are overhearing parents arguing about their future, and yours.
Episode 3b (Podcast - Online for those who cannot attend the live performance): To be listened to in a bedroom as if you were hearing an argument unfold outside its walls.
Episode 4 (Podcast - Online): To be listened to in a private space such as a bedroom, or your own living room. You have just tuned back into your favourite radio station, which is broadcasting live from the public mourning vigil being held for Alceste, the son of Jason and Medea Argos.
I will leave you there for today and in the next installation of these program notes, I will discuss how we have developed the material for these episodes and the conventions we have adapted from Classical Greek Tragedy to create this performance experience.
Until then,
Debi
PS - Before there was the Jaws theme song, there was Tarquinio Merula's (1595 - 1665) "Hor ch'è tempo di dormire". Have a listen to L'Arpeggiata's version of this song and see where your imagination leads you...
