8 persons x 8 days: Manifesto 1

The subject of the opera have to give access to musical sources, some kind of sound documents.

Libretto and music must be created through the elaboration of ethnographic, historical, or documentary sources.

The libretto consists of quotation taken word by word from the sources. No translation, keep the language of the source. Titles can be used to facilitate the comprehension.

The music generates from a process of re-interpretation or re-enactment of a source (normally field recording).

I stick quite stiffly to the old recitative-aria dualism, in which the first one is delivering information and facts at high speed and the second one is freezing the time and investigating the material through music and singing.

Should never take place on a stage
Should activate/include the audience members
The duration of the piece should depend on the audience member’s choices

Making inter/transdisciplinary work. Artists stepping outside the bounds of their own discipline, as that discomfort space in between is where all the interesting stuff happens

To respond to the specific location, reacting to the building’s history It must be visceral and real and grip people by the scruff of the neck

To always stretch the limits of what i’m (or think i’m) capable of as an artist and performer through the process

To always invite mess, liquids and chaotic modes into to the process To practise care and have fun with the trouble of making art
To not produce anything without urgency
The main female character must not end up an archetypical victim Honour your source material

The dramaturgical framework must not be provided by text. There must be a clear relationship between body and space.

The work must start from a question

The work must hold an element that I cannot control

I/we must invite an outer eye/feedback into the process

Words should be treated equally as sound and meaning

Queerness must always be present, in narrative, character, form, concept, and/or process.

Multi-media, if employed, must be intentional and essential to the world. All text must be immediately comprehensible.

There must never be a one-to-one relationship between character and performer.

There must be some kind of meta layer. The form must be disrupted.

The traditional, outmoded role distributions and world views in our society, but also in art itself, must be questioned and dissolved.

For this, opera and music theater need new content and new forms of storytelling and representation that go beyond what is common practice in order to dissolve these patterns.

Authentic art needs an honest attitude and active action of the person who creates this art: on and behind the stage.

Opera without the stigma of elitism

Be humble, true and “a vehicle” in the process (decipher what is the Theme, context or problem asking for and what is your own agenda!)

There must be an interaction and resonans with the audience/listener and the space where the work is to be hold

I am interested in the exhausted contaminated body and its political standpoint The work should be neither intellectual nor naive

The work should reveal the full scope of human experience — the light and the shade.

The work should reveal spiritual truths about our connection to ourselves, to one another and the planet.

The work should critique or offer an alternative perspective to the male gaze.

The work should aim to empower the personal journey of all who partake, and should aim to help them become conscious of the deepest parts of themselves and others.

The work should interrogate, illuminate, or make a statement about the nature of reality, through the theatrical language or through magic realism.

Opera should interrogate the nature of each media that is present, analysing the individual qualities of each, the relationships between them, and how they contribute to a greater whole.

Identify the assholes, call them out, exclude them

From Katie Mitchell — ”Eco Dramaturgy” Manifesto points:

— the content must be about climate change / eco-systems and must combine human experience and planetary experience

— the form must have a connection with the climate crisis
— all materials must be sustainably produced and disposed of. — there must be an element of planetary time.