15 – 20 July 2014 8.15pmLimerick, Irelandwake

A Chamber Made Opera Production Conceived by Maeve Stone (IRE) and John Rodgers (AUS) A Limerick City of Culture Commission 2014

chambermadeopera.com

Maeve Stone (IRE) Director

Tom Lane (IRE) Composer & Sound Designer

Tamara Saulwick (AUS) Dramaturg

Christie Stott (AUS) Video Designer

Saileóg O’Halloran (IRE) Costume Designer

Pius McGrath (IRE) Technician

Mario Burke (IRE) Technical Assistant

Fionnuala Gygax (IRE) Assistant Director

Patrick McCarthy (AUS) Eulogy Writer

Performed by

Katherine O’Malley (IRE) Performer & Choreographer

Rory Grubb (IRE) Musician & Sound Design With Tom Lane and Fionnuala Gygax

Jo Mangan (IRE) Commissioning Programmer

Pan Pan Theatre (IRE) Administration/Local Auspice

Sarah Kriegler & Tim Stitz (AUS) Production

Chamber Made Opera (AUS) Producer

Hosted by The Carr family

Commissioned and funded by the Limerick City of Culture

Chamber Made Opera is supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria and by the City of Melbourne

How do you lift a curse? If you look around there are some interesting suggestions about how it’s done; recipes for herbs and water and smoke, incantations and counter curses, rituals and more rituals. But this is no ordinary curse. If you believe that Saint Munchin had God on his side when he laid down his dictum to damn the people of Limerick then it becomes something more, something with deeper roots, something that gets into the faith of a person. So this is where my journey into Wake began; asking myself questions like “If a pain is deeply rooted and the person believes its cause to be beyond their control, how do they overcome it? How do we move on from these moments of failure or loss in our lives? How do we make peace with the past?” With these questions I felt I was starting on a personal and universal journey understanding the idea of the curse.

I found another really useful connection when Storm Darwin arrived at the coast of Ireland

in early February. It hit Limerick with particular force and seemed biblical at times. Driving down O’Connell Avenue with slates cracking to the ground and trees bending over the gates of The People’s Park it felt like our city and its people were being tested. I began to see the metaphor of a storm as something that leaves scars in the landscape, that shakes foundations and digs up things buried long ago. The two ideas became twinned in my imagination; lifting an old curse, and surviving the worst storm to hit the city in hundreds of years.

What you see is a combination of ideas and forms, creating a new pattern from old rituals. Using theatre, dance, music and video to create a storm - a personal storm - that guides us to a moment of decision: Is it time to leave the curse behind and take control of the future?

Maeve Stone

The distinction between sound and music in Wake is a difficult one to make. In this piece we are using recorded sound in a very musical way by building up loops and layers of different elements to create a dynamic audio environment. Almost all of the sound you will hear in this piece is recorded directly from the house in which the performance takes place. The sounds of weather and storms have been derived from every day household items such as extractor fans, hoovers, chairs, doors, kettles and blenders. The purpose of this was to link the inside and outside worlds, the public and domestic spheres, and to blur the boundaries between the two. Another reason was to explore the specific sounds and resonances of the location in which the piece is taking place. We have achieved this in several ways. We have partly recorded sound in the space using conventional microphones but on other occasions we have used contact microphones.

These microphones pick up vibrations directly from the surface they are attached to and so allow us to listen more deeply into the fabric of the building. We have used this to build up textures and harmonics which are present in the house at a fundamental level. Contact microphones also allow us to amplify the inherent audio properties of everyday items and turn them into musical instruments. This can lead to surprisingly beautiful sounds emanating from objects as diverse as banisters, tables and radiators. This in turn allows us to combine live performance with pre-recorded sound to create an engaging and vibrant musical score. By engaging with the fundamental acoustic properties of the location we are performing in it is our hope that we will create a fully integrated and coherent musical language, a fully realised “sound-world” within a unique domestic environment.

Tom Lane

A note on the music and sound

Director’s NoteThank You To…

John Rodgers and Stephanie Blake, The Carr Family, Mike Fitzpatrick, Shelia Deegan, Elaine O’Connor, Kathy O’Grady, Helen Creed, Olivia O’Sullivan and The Limerick City of Culture, Aoife White, Gavin Quinn, Jackie O’Shaughnessy and all at Pan Pan Theatre, Jo Mangan, Imbi Neeme, Sally Goldner, Sophie Travers, Erkki Veltheim, Sheila, William and Emmanuel Stone, Katie Sheehan, Petra Kalive, Robert Manson, Bryan O’Connell, Peter Knight, Quinn Knight, Jacob Williams, Ada and Henry Williams Kriegler, Mattie Young, Matthew Gingold, Mike Beck, Liv O’Donoghue, Ellie Creighton, Mary Nunan, Marg Horwell, Dominic and staff at the Ardhu Hotel, Emma Fisher, Sweet Creative and Zilla and Brook.

Chamber Made Opera Staff

Tim Stitz (AUS) Creative Director / CEO

Sarah Kriegler (AUS) Artistic Associate

Tamara Saulwick (AUS) Artistic Associate

Christie Stott (AUS) Artistic Associate

Erkki Veltheim (AUS) Artistic Associate

Imbi Neeme (AUS) Program Coordinator

Patrick McCarthy (AUS) Emerging Writer in Residence (VCA Professional Pathways Scholarship)

Sally Goldner (AUS) Finance Officer

Chamber Made Opera Committee of Management

Michael Bink Chair

Greer Evans Treasurer

Kylie Trounson Secretary

David Maney

Erin Milne

Michael Roper

Fiona Sweet