Medusa (re)Emergent (working title)
Misha Penton: soprano-composer, concept and direction.
1-2 instrumentalists (optional).
Media and audio-scape (the work is un-amplified and the audio is played on a sound system at a low volume).
Duration: 20 minutes.
Project Background
Medusa (re)Emergent (formerly The Medusa Project) is a postopera monodrama for soprano performer-composer (Misha Penton) mixed media and an 1-2 instrumentalists (optional). The work is a poetic and abstract re-imagining of the Greco-Roman Medusa heroine, and a synthesis of live semi-improvised and improvised voice work utilizing classical, experimental, and extended voice techniques, fused with original poetics and integrated into an original digital audio voice and film-scape.
The work is an exploration of the transformative monstrous: a breaking apart and putting-back-together of the self— a (re)membering and (re)invention of identity through the voice and body.
The work’s structure is modular, in that it functions as a completely solo monodrama for voice and media, or additional improvising musicians may be added to a given performance— making each performance version completely unique. Medusa (re)Emergent is also an iterative piece, having a number of incarnations, including an online-only original films, a number of poetic writings, and several experimental writing pieces that integrate poetry with feminist critical theory.
Should the work be chosen for Tête à Tête, I will create a staged version with minimal technical requirements and offer PR photos and PR copy well in advance of the 2019 festival. The staged version will have a projected media component.
Medusa (re)Emergent would be a UK premiere and a world premiere as a staged version.
Score: the work is a structured improvisation under my direction, and as such, no physical score exists (please find the libretto below)
Performance History
Medusa Emergent was live on the MediaWall at Bath Spa University, UK, June 4 - 15, 2018.
The Medusa Project premiered in performance at The Women Composers Festival of Hartford, April 7, 2018.
Live Audio
An excerpt (6 min approx) from the (un-staged) performance premiere of The Medusa Project The Women Composers Festival of Hartford, April 7, 2018:
Media Project version (studio recording)
Created for the MediaWall at Bath Spa University UK (June 2018). Score created, recorded and produced by Misha Penton with original clarinet tracks contributed by Boja Kragulj. (7 min):
Performance: Technical Info
— A performance space / concert hall / gallery space / or alternative space with good natural acoustics. The work is not conducive to an outdoor environment.
— Minimal theatrical lighting and 1 tech person provided by Tête à Tête.
— Small sound system for the audio-scape. Projector and projector screen for media. Both provided by Tête à Tête.
— The work is for un-amplified voice and optional 1-2 un-amplified instrumentalists— the audio for the projected media is played through the sound system at a very low volume and will need a sound check / tech rehearsal.
— 1 run thru with tech / sound check the day-of or day before the performance.
— I am highly active on social media and I have some connections in the UK, but PR and audience development would be provided by Tête à Tête.
Libretto (by Misha Penton)
One
I see my (re)flection
I see myself and am seen
I hear myself and am heard
(Re)flect
(Ab)sorb
(Re)flect
I am snake-haired
Formidable - Ferocious
Exquisite: my armor
Intricate in swirls and swooshes and whirls and whooshes, carved with patience. The engraving is meticulous and painful, yes, but ever so slow, I barely realize. I am exquisite, shimmering and crystalline, chitinous, some even say, magnificent.
First
My skin gently hardens (over time, I barely notice)
I did it myself, meticulously, patiently
The designs stylus carved
Splendid, chitinous
_________
Two
Echoes return from steel and glass canyons and spin across headlands and valleys and rise from cathedrals, tunnels, and vaginal caverns. The pointy tips of my membranous wings scrape the cliff edge and I look down on the concrete turned-to-stone cityscape. I gasp and scream and sing with ferocity and mourning and rage: firecloud lighting splits the sky: there is space here, so much space.
I open my wings, I breathe in, I soar— ‘I am spacious singing flesh…shot through with streams of song.’
I tower up to the place of clouds
_________
Three
I am she
She is me
My sisters, my kin
Howl with ferocity and mourning and rage:
We whisper. Snarl. Gasp. Speak. Scream. Sing. Sigh. Rage
I call out, I shout and scream and sing and rage and rage
I am thunderous and sonorous: I am poetry.
I am Many She-Monsters: I am the Furies and the storm-torn Harpies, I am Scylla and I am Charybdis, I am Medusa: a New Muse.
We are Monster Women. Now, so many many many more of us.
I see my (re)flection
I see myself and am seen
I hear myself and am heard
(Re)flect
(Ab)sorb
(Re)flect
I am snake-haired
Formidable - Ferocious
I am exquisite, shimmering and crystalline— magnificent.
I am thunderous and sonorous: I am poetry.
I am Many She-Monsters: I am the Furies and the storm-torn Harpies, I am Scylla and I am Charybdis, I am Medusa: a New Muse.
We are Monster Women. Now, so many many many more of us.
I shatter the mirror and craft my gauntlets from the skin of Perseus.Â
Rend and reassemble, resemble, dismember, remember, destabilize, reflect, disorganize, destabilize, reflect, destabilize, reflect
Re-imagine
Dismember
Re-semble
Remember
Re-imagine
Reflect
MEDUSA EMERGENT — media and vocal sound work, showing on the Bath Spa University (UK) MediaWall. June, 2018.