opera

Stall

Stall

Voiced bellows, purges, moans, snorts, expulsions, mumbles, screams, cries, words and plain song; 2 women vocalists in pinstripe; projected philosophical text of Wittgenstein and noises off. Parallel script structures run the entire length of the 20-minute performance. Christopher Butterfield composed a 20-page score with three different sections on each page (sheet music, words -toilet paper, lipstick, tampons- and visual/text mashups), a bell chime signals every minute and the performers choose one section to vocalize next. Choosing adds improvisational stalls, loops, overlaps, rests and chants. Public washrooms are the subject and with all the echoing sounds and text a labyrinth of stalls is easily imagined where the entire private but shared bodily functions take place. An ugly-pretty sound experiment belted out with tongue.

Stall

Stall by Christopher Butterfield

Vocalists: DB Boyko/Christine Duncan

Stitch

Stitch is an opera for 3 women and 3 sewing machines formed on the language and narrative of the seamstresses and the sweatshop: slip, back, cross, feather, chain, rip stitch; running, tacking, hemming stitch. The seamstresses look at life through the eyes of needles intent on keeping each other in a straight line; they poke more holes in each other than the cloth. A power struggle ensues. The women voice the conscious cramps that live in their bodies: self-denial, suppression, abstinence, agitation, arousal, wildness, compliance and restraint –

Stitch

-clothes are restraints that hold and shape a body; the cut and selvage of my coat is stiff, the collar upright, the sleeves pinched. It tailors my stance. What would I be without it? Naked deformation. Women, fashion, sculpt each other, a dress code, a “proper” understructure = social compliance. Read the label on your shirt or dress. Where was it made? Who made it?

Vocalists:Neema Bickerseth, Christine Duncan, Patricia O’Callaghan

Libertto: Anna Chatterton, Christine Duncan, Juliet Palmer, Christie Pearson