SWITCH

 

June 2019

The Secret Theatre

(4402 23rd St, Long Island City, NY 11101)

​

By John Aylward

​

 

OVERVIEW

 

From the composer: "In Switch, I try to take the absolute extremes of vocal expression and embed them in a kind of traditional storytelling technique. So the work can sometimes feel like a theatrical play when the voices are speaking, a bel canto opera when the voices are expressively singing, or a fantastical abstraction from reality when the voices are stuttering, gasping, whispering and finding expressions in between speech, singing and the raw natural aspects of the human voice. Each time the voice moves in or out of these expressions, it is in response to the text either becoming mundane, fantastical, dramatic or dreamy. And so the piece is really a way of fantastically animating the libretto, which itself is a concatenation of texts written by authors I admire: DH Lawrence, Italo Calvino, Carl Jung, and Shakespeare. This same fluidity of expression is embodied in the fluidity of sexuality, gender and fixation embodied in the characters. "

​

PRODUCTION

 

Jean-Philippe Wurtz, music director

Laine Rettmer, stage director

​

​

​