In Her Little Room
Saturday 6th 21.15 & Sunday 7th August, 18.15
Paul Evernden
Music: Paul Evernden
Words: Alexia Anastasiadis
Violin: Angela Najaryan
Director: Paul Evernden
Actress: Sibylla Meienberg
Voice: Simon Clark
Synopsis
A young woman returns home: a bare room. As she explores the space, progressing from emotions of almost hypnotic indifference to paranoia and back through silent, ritualistic movement she is accompanied by a voice. Little by little over the course of the whole work we come to learn of the relationship that once existed between these two characters – the silent yet present protagonist and the absent voice. To these two strands of the drama are added a third: it is the haunting sounds of the solo violin, the “third presence” that articulates the space between the man and women and which heightens or underplays the tension which slowly emerges from the words.
Inspired by the character of Metharme (Pygmalion’s daughter) and some of the less well known dramatic works by Samuel Beckett such as Eh Joe in regards the relationship between words, music and action, In her little room is a different “take” on music theatre which, though music is still to the fore does away with singers, instead choosing to have text spoken (and hence hopefully more easily comprehendible) and lending greater emphasis on the minutiae of movement/ action; the intention was to create a work essentially theatrical yet where music, words and action directly influence and support each other, where each one is intrinsic to the dramaturgy.
Neither theatre nor opera, dance nor tableaux vivant, In her little room seeks to articulate a sensitive subject through appealing to all your senses.
Genesis
The idea for In her little room came from a desire which has been with me since 2008 to write a dramatic work based on an element from ancient Greek myth. For this project I abandoned my initial idea of a chamber opera believing there to be a more unusual “solution” that would better reflect today’s plurality of creative media and, hopefully articulate a new form which could develop into a viable alternative to contemporary opera.
