Premiering tomorrow at Earbud Theater:

HABITAT


Habitat Cover - Kevin Necessary
Artwork by Kevin Necessary

There’s a word I love: “gesamtkunstwerk”, roughly from German, it means “total artwork”, and was used by Wagner to describe opera as an artistic mode that could unify many artistic disciplines within it – composition, performance, design, painting/sculpture, etc. These days, film is our dominant gesamtkunstwerk, but to me what is most exciting it not just gathering multiple artistic modes under one umbrella, but about seeing the chain of inspiration, one piece of art generating another, and so on. It’s thrilling that a thing that springs into being from nothing can have such rapidly-mutating offspring.

Anyway, this wonderful cover piece Kevin did puts me in mind of that. It’s a wonderful image to look at, and it took me a bit to remind myself that it only exists because of a story that I wrote. So his artistry becomes a part of the whole that is Habitat, along with my script and performance, the incredible music (which, while not composed for us, nonetheless suits perfectly), and Christine’s performance, which I am dying to share with you.

Stay tuned!

Gesamtkunstwerk
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