Reel
Role: Librettist
Performances: APT Gallery (2018)
Collaborators: Alex Tay (Composer), Mimi Doulton, Patricia Auchterlonie, Fiona Sweeney
Alex approached me and asked if I’d care to write an illusory text, drawing on his research interest in… illusion. He taught me about something called a dual-voice illusion, so Patricia, Alex, and I spent a fun afternoon listing the words we had heard through the speakers.
Using these words, I wrote something filled with double-meaning and punnery (marking the second time I had to write in a spreadsheet for a composer's idea to work), and then handed it to Alex. He added a bunch of musical trickery, and we shared it at 2021 Concerts.
I really like work with academic composers, learning about new things, and using them to make work - in this case, it gave me a chance to use puns in a very different way to how they’d been deployed in my comic work.
And now there’s a rather exciting extended version of this project in the works. But stay tuned.
“Neigh, I brayed. “Know, knight, tails gnaw mine throne. Barred groom on rear: rued.””
“Nay, I braid no night-tales; nor mine thrown bard, groom ’n’ rear rude…”
