De Profundis (Died of Spurn)

Submission for the 30th Rhubarb Festival (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre). In a nutshell, it is a 25 minute audience-directed aleatoric mono-opera.

I have been struggling with my setting of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis for some time (mainly because it is so freaking long), and the performance art element seemed fitting to the material and the problem at hand (my long-standing desire to disrupt classical performance conventions notwithstanding)

Basically what is going to happen is all 30 pieces are going to be composed, the beginning and ending is fixed, but what happens in-between will be decided by the audience. My idea is the audience will be given a card with a different color on each side (say red and green with a corresponding direction). At the end of each piece, they hold up their cards and someone will count how many reds (backwards) and how many greens (forwards) there are. Assuming there are 20 red cards and 14 green cards, it means an end result of 6 backwards; so the next piece to be played will be 6 pieces prior to the current piece. And the process repeats until the 25 minutes is up.

In essence, some pieces will never get heard, others may get repeated - but the sequence and overall narrative will be decided by the audience.

stephen.chen.sf music