KINGDOMS
Original Score: Christoffer Schunk / Direction: Kestrel Farin Leah / Choreography: Lauren Frias / Costume design: Kate Fry / Lighting design: Zach Moore / Scenic design: Nina Caussa / Vocalists: Marcus Rubio, Christoffer Schunk, Max Wanderman, Danny Wood, Coleman Zurkowski / Cast: Chelsea Duvall, Lauren Frias, Nora King, Sadie Kuwano, AJ Schemadovits-Nor, Sarah Shoemaker, Gyasi Silas, Joseph Thomas, Renell White
A collaboration between composer Christoffer Schunk, choreographer Lauren Frias, and director Kestrel Farin Leah, joining multiple disciplines in the manner of a “hyperopera”. Schunk’s score, based on TS Eliot’s The Hollow Men, follows the five movements of The Hollow Men but substitutes Eliot’s words with his own syllabic translation of the poem, which is distorted, repeated, and voiced with extreme vocal textures. Schunk amalgamates several genres of music into a combination of structured singing and paralinguistic vocalization, combining extended techniques from the Western classical world and vocal techniques from non-Western folk music.
Wielding the Brechtian aesthetic inherent in Schunk’s music, the work approaches the trauma of battle through parody, playing with themes of translation and interpretation, and the transfer of realities between subject, performer and audience.
