Happy Birthday, Mozart!
Today marks the 252nd birthday of my favorite composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart! And now, these many years later, his enigmatic and universal appeal moves into the 21st century as unstoppable as ever. Mozart can be found virtually everywhere and in every possible medium available, including more recent tech phenoms such as iPods, MySpace, mobile ring tones and live HD simulcasts.
“Birth of An Idea” installation by American designer Robert Wilson in the birth room of W.A. Mozart, Salzburg, Austria (2006). Photo and graphic design by Sheryl Davis.
An Enlightenment Composer for the 21st Century Theater
For me, Mozart’s music represents an instinctive rendering of the human heart – an illumination of the soul and assertion of life. Each of the 626 works that he’d written (the number at least known to us) in his short life of 35 years takes us on a journey that heightens the vast emotional range of life that we as humans experience – a jovial and sometimes melancholy frolic along the spectrums of fantasy and reality. Mozart’s music perpetuates humanity and will therefore always grip us with a newness and timeless relevancy. He was a Freemason and progressive intellect of his day, reflecting themes of the Age of Enlightenment in such famous operas as “The Marriage of Figaro,” “Don Giovanni” and “The Magic Flute,” which echo today in our new emerging golden age of social, political and environmental movements. Mozart’s revolutionary messages in fairy tale and philosophy combine to portray reason, wisdom and character over mysticism, tradition and social class, as well as the hope for love and forgiveness found in the brotherhood of man.
Mozart’s operas continue to inspire us with the musical and ideological framework of humanitarianism, enlightenment and independent thought. His works not only ignite ideas for new productions, but his own operas are being set to new libretti (text) to express the specific concerns and progressive dialogue we’re encountering today with regard to environmentalism and other social and political agendas.
In 2007, the Berkeley Opera decided to take on Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio” and craft the libretto in the context of a world where money and oil no longer exist.
“It’s a post-petroleum urban underworld, populated by addicts, scoundrels and thieves. Oil is over. Money is over. Sensation is currency. Newspaperman Beau strives to free Connie, his star investigative reporter, from the arms of the region’s most redoubtable purveyor of pleasure, Sir Gorgeous Jerome. But Connie is only one of many (including an invisible dog) in thrall to Sir Gorgeous, spellbound by the unstrung, dusty glamour of his notorious emporium of sensual entertainments, The Seraglio.”
Soprano Ann Moss (Blondie) and tenor Brian Thorsett (Pedrillo) in The Seraglio.
“Re-imagined in an original libretto by award-winning writer, Amanda Moody, with new lyrics by director and veteran translator Ross Halper, The Seraglio offers Mozart’s characters a fresh chance to assert their humanity with cunning and humor, while giving us a keyhole-view of a time yet to come.”
“Collaboration can be a scary thing for two writers, but as director I can see how perfectly Mozart is bringing us together. It’s a bit eerie,” said Halper.
Theater As a Form of Citizenry
Whether using the sounds of Mozart or other modes of artistic inspiration, the theatrical atmospheric on the modern stage is being presented as a form of citizenry to advocate positive change in our world. In the U.S., the concept “think globally, act locally” has proven successful in eight grassroots ensembles as they address urgent community issues through drama, dance and song. The Grassroots Ensemble Theater Research Project and resulting publication “Performing Communities: Grassroots Ensemble Theaters Deeply Rooted in Eight U.S. Communities ” assess communal artistry that is devoted to this emerging philanthropic performance genre. In the UK, Cardboard Citizens is the country’s only professional people’s theater company for the homeless and those at risk. It reclaims lives by providing formal education and performance opportunities as well as employment. This means of social theater enables a traditionally excluded audience to voice their existence through the arts and to challenge cultural perceptions of homelessness.
In the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago and Urbana, Illinois, the Change of State Performance Project was founded in 2005 and produces a repertory of unconventional performance content through various forms of artistic dance and theater. “The Mission of Change of State Performance is to fuse improvisation, theater, and somatic techniques to create precise and absurd live performance. We careern across the dance-theatre spectrum, asking today’s looming socio-political issues.”
Change of State presented Take This House (And Float Away) in 2007 and questioned whether a different U.S. city and demographic predisposed to the same New Orleans-type flood devastation would’ve devised an alternative outcome had they taken action on the knowledge of a deteriorating, entangled levee system.
Change of State dancers rehearse (left) and a Take This House production in 2007.
“Take This House sets up the illusion of normalcy using the basic theatre conventions—this is just a regular play in a regular living room, set over a couple of irregular days—and then shakes that illusion, leaving the characters’ vulnerabilities exposed. Glimpses of Stu and Marlene’s private lives, unknown even to each other, are revealed through dream scenes. Time stretches and snaps in a game of cards. Then the world slips back to normal as if nothing had ever happened. Suburban hegemony descends once again.When disaster finally unleashes, audiences find themselves asking, ‘What was the problem here?’ Could Stu and Marlene have saved themselves? Or is the house of cards we’re living in much larger than we’d like to believe?”
On the international stage, playwright Joe Penhall exercises what he refers to as “moral gymnastics” and likens his inspiration to that of “suburban and urban existentialism.” He is famous for his award-winning Blue/Orange (2000), a comedic exhibition of the social stigmas surrounding racial and mental health issues in 21st century Britain. In his 2007 production Landscape with Weapon at London’s National Theatre, through the internal struggle of a brilliant weapons engineer, Ned, played by Tom Hollander, Penhall examines a psychologically riveting storyline that persists as one’s moral questioning of terrorism and the arms trade.
Tom Hollander in Penhall’s Landscape With Weapon at the London National Theater (2007).
Press reviews…
“[Penhall] sets the aesthetic world of the creator against the harsh realities of politics. It’s a series of debates in which the emotions run deep as the ideas…Penhall has a terrific ability to explore moral conundrums dramatically…hones in on the argument with accuracy and force” -Time Out
“Joe Penhall’s gift for dramatising uncomfortable arguments is again apparent in his powerful new play about the arms industry and the moral responsibility of the scientist. Roger Michell’s production does justice to its lithe intelligence, emotional pain and rueful humour. Tom Hollander is excellent… The ending is bleakly beautiful.” -Independent, Critics’ Choice
“Fascinating… constantly subtle and engaging…Hollander gives an extraordinary portrait of myopic preoccupation and subsequent unravelling…” -Observer
Lynne Elizabeth said,
January 28, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Dear Sheryl,
I am delighted to discover your Environmentlightenment blog! I enjoyed all your posts. Google alerted me to the fact that Performing Communities was presented — very intelligently, I might add — in your Happy Birthday Mozart blog.
New Village Press publishes the book Performing Communities. We specialize in books about enlightened community building and are a project of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility , which I thought you might appreciate since you are an architecture student.
Lynne
Deborah said,
January 29, 2008 at 4:07 am
Nice site Sheryl! I am impressed.
Deb