An underscore typically refers to a soundtrack, an accompaniment to something to lend it an atmosphere. Originally it was a term used in typewriting: through the space which underscore creates the word is given emphasis. There is a doubleness to causality here: does the underscore come before, or after, its subject? Both.
We want to create a performance space where everything about opera is live and visible.
We wish to invite the audience into a contract with the smoke and mirrors we play with.
We do not seek to re-interpret or contort text, we simply wish to explore what happens when we introduce it to new scenographic spaces.
Our aim is that operatic repertoire, whether rarely performed or part of the established cannon is authentically realised in the new environment we are finding ourselves in as young opera makers; to take the core of what is unique to opera whilst embracing the turn to the technological which contemporary performance is traversing through innovative uses of AV, LX and SFX.
Our ethos will be to produce opera as a collective where all creative inputs are performed live, declaring the process as the end product. In practical terms this means:
We will work with professional singers.
We will use the rehearsal room to be a departure point for a performance we are involved in.
We will both perform everything which would be normally shared across musicians, stage management and technical crew. We wish to handle all of these elements as provocative of and responsive to the performers we have worked with in the rehearsal room. Our involvement as participants as well as creators of the piece will be shared with the audience.
In this way the entire scenographic and audio material will be manipulated live, and its puppet masters declared as part of the performer ensemble.
We feel the inherent live-ness that this experience provides enables a scenographic space in which the audience is implicated without challenging traditional audience conventions.
Rather than stand outside of the work we are putting ourselves into the fabric of its spatialisation.