I witnessed the results of the previous Kagel project, and was impressed by the dedication and skill exhibited by all of the participants. True collaboration of any sort is not an easy task. Successful cross-cultural mixing is exponentially more difficult. But I feel that the skill and commitment of Gao Ping and those involved with the Free Theatre, provide a unique opportunity to move forward into new and invigorating creative territory.
John Cousins, composer
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This project builds on a successful inter-arts collaboration with composer Gao Ping and conductor Hamish McKeich. In 2015, Free Theatre started the collaboration under the working title, The Mauricio Kagel Project, which saw an intensive workshopping period with Free Theatre actors and local musicians, culminating in the presentation of a work-in-development at the 2015 Christchurch Arts Festival. Our current project develops the successful elements of this collaboration towards a work for presentation, pursuing further the dialogue between theatre and music and in particular the inter-cultural exchange with Gao Ping incorporating new elements including performers and musicians of Sichuan Opera.
We are grateful to receive a Creative New Zealand Arts Grant to develop the project. 
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"Music has also been a scenic event for a long time. In the nineteenth century people still enjoyed music also with their eyes, with all their senses. Only with the increasing dominance of the mechanic reproduction of music, through broadcasting and records, was this reduced to the purely acoustic dimension. What I want is to bring the audience back to an enjoyment of music with all senses. That’s why my music is a direct, exaggerated protest against the mechanical reproduction of music. My goal: a rehumanization of music-making!" |
Kagel reinvigorated music-as-performance by incorporating elements of his bi-cultural experience as an Argentinian composer working mainly in Europe, especially as musical traditions from his own cultural background brought a quite different notion of theatricality to his work in the European context. This was an aspect of our initial collaboration in 2015 that we found most productive, taking Kagel's work 'Playback' as inspiration for a theatrical framework of a 'music fair' in which musical traditions, styles and sounds, traditional, contemporary and everyday, played against each other to create a playful immersive environment for an audience. Pushing further this bi-cultural exchange, with Gao Ping incorporating aspects of traditional Sichuan Opera from his native Chengdu in conversation with New Zealand actors and musicians, we will create a special 'music fair' that explores different aspects of music-as-performance. Ars Acustica refers to the acoustic or intermedial art that was experimented with by Kagel and others in a Cologne studio from 1969, which led to a liberating, aesthetic opening-up for international sound and performance artists, notably amongst them John Cage. Some of his work will also be incorporated into our production in keeping with our aims to provide an experience that confounds expectations and conventions - a way to engage the audience in an exciting, new experience of multicultural interaction.
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“For Sichuan Opera, the percussionists are quite different from those that play in a Western orchestra. They play quite different instruments. They are an integral part of the opera ensemble. It is not exaggerating to say that without the percussionists, Sichuan opera actors would not know how to move on stage. The percussion patterns (a whole complete language, stylized but with great flexibility) triggers what actors do in terms of singing and movements. It sets the rhythm to all the dramatic actions. So it will be ideal to have both which will complement the show”. |
Free Theatre has previously produced a Peking Opera-inspired performance of Goethe's Faust - Faust Feast. During the devising process, the company was visited by a group of Sichuan Opera performers in Christchurch as part of a national tour, and were treated to a special demonstration of the stylized movement to percussion mentioned by Gao Ping above. The images below are of Free Theatre's production in Old Queen's Theatre, 2007. The audience were provided a three course meal by Richard Till (who also designed the set) while being entertained by the company.
