Over Spring break, a team of artists led by director/video artist Mark deChiazza and composer Steve Mackey used the Weitz Center Theater as a laboratory for the creation of their multi-disciplinary new performance piece, ORPHEUS UNSUNG. The artists share a work in progress showing of the work on Monday, March 28th at 7:30 p.m. at the Weitz.
Orpheus Unsung will receive its world premiere later this spring at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, as part of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series.
A volatile combination of music, imagery and dance take on the operatic form in Orpheus Unsung, composed by Steven Mackey with Jason Treuting (So Percussion) in a production conceived and directed by Mark DeChiazza. Orpheus Unsung casts the electric guitar as the disembodied voice of Orpheus, who seeks to reverse fate and regain an irrevocably lost Eurydice. In this wordless opera, the myth is shattered and ultimately re-made within a space that fragments story and identity, and hangs in teetering balance between solidity and hallucinatory illusion. Orpheus’s journey is illuminated in new language, as music collides and fuses with the expression of the body, cinematic imagery, and transformations of physical space. Alongside an ensemble of three dancers, Mackey and Treuting perform live in Orpheus Unsung.