MEDIATHEK

Created by avant-garde cello virtuoso Maya Beiser, in collaboration with theater director Robert Woodruff, "Elsewhere" is a psychological CelloOpera. In two acts, "Elsewhere" tells the tale of two heroic women who are fighting to survive the apocalypse, each attempting to come to terms with their existence as calamity and puzzlement engulf their lives.

ACT ONE takes inspiration from “I am Writing to You from a Far Off Country”, a text by surrealist poet Henri Michaux. Far Off Country unfolds as a letter from a young woman witnessing her world as it comes to its end. She takes refuge in a secluded hermitage filled with video that shows the dissolution of the natural world. An alternately haunted and rhapsodic score composed by Eve Beglarian and set to the lyrical Michaux text is an imagining of a dying planet. The voice of the cello attempts to communicate the plight of these cloistered women to another woman in a distant land whose face and voice the audience sees and hears electronically.

ACT TWO shows a woman experiencing the violent end of that world. Based on the biblical character of Lot’s wife, a figure from the book of Genesis known for being turned into a pillar of salt as punishment for looking back upon the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, this woman is forever suspended between life and death, and all the while she is forced to look back at the destruction of her world. Separated by time and distance, the two women call out to each other, bearing witness.

By incorporating cello, vocals, spoken word, video, dance, and elaborate sets, the piece draws the audience into their catastrophic worlds. The opera includes music by Michael Gordon (co-founder of the Bang on a Can Festival), Eve Beglarian, and Missy Mazzoli with texts by Henri Michaux and Erin Cressida Wilson. "Elsewhere" is a Beth Morrison Projects production.