Gut
Pete M Wyer
Saturday 26 July & Sunday 27 July, 2014
White Lab Central Saint Martins
“There is the feeling of exhilaration as we enter the descent.
As we rush toward the ground
we experience a new gravity – somewhere in the gut – pushing us back towards the sky, we sense it in the body. But always, the pull of the earth is so compelling…”
The writer, Ben Okri once said to me: “the loudest sounds in the universeare inside us and, for me, opera is the form that best gives them voice”, which rings particularly true with this piece. GUT takes us on a raw journey of the mind, through the surprisingly common experience of mental disorder – around 25% of all people will suffer some form of mental illness and almost all will encounter it through a friend, relative or colleague. GUT is a raw but ultimately redemptive work intended for a single performer with film and multi-‐speaker installation.
This is a work-‐in-‐progress and, today, we are performing the first act. The final opera will be in 3 acts:
Act 1: The protagonist relates his view of the world as he walks around. He moves through populated places but there is a deep sense of isolation and dislocation. He plans to end his life.
Act 2: In a psychiatric ward, the protagonist is removed from the last vestiges of normality and immersed in a shadow-‐world where the boundaries between what is external and what is internal no longer exist. Hemust encounter his inner demons – to all intents and purposes – literally, alongside the clinical world of psychiatric care.
Act 3: A short post-‐script on surviving that concludes:
“For all the suffering and striving
The sounds of life embrace an incomprehensibly wonderful harmony.
The human capacity for
Entering the weightlessness of love, half-‐turned to heaven.
For seeing that this is a garden and it is spring.
I try to remember that”.
Music & Words: Pete M Wyer
Director: Zachary James
Baritone: Adam Green
Film: Pete M. Wyer
Pete M. Wyer is a London-‐based composer who has created works for the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, ROH2, Juilliard Orchestra and many others. His seven operatic/music theatre works include: Johnny’s Midnight Goggles, Numinous City and 57 Hours In The House Of Culture. This summer saw the premiere of And Death Shall Have No Dominion in New York, which featured scattered singers – synchronized via an app across Brooklyn and Manhattan – singing settings of Dylan Thomas’ famous poem whilst walking toward one another and eventually assembling at Rockefeller Park. He is the recipient of numerous international fellowships and awards.
Zachary James was recently Associate Director at the National Theatre onDavid Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face. He worked as Assistant Director at The Watermill onAnthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, and Lily Bevan’s Mock Tudor (which opens this August at the Pleasance, Edinburgh). Recent work as lead director includes: Kayhan Irani’s Tree Of Seeds (Rich Mix) and Challenge (Soho Theatre). Film work includes projects for Topman, Eurostar and Laura Marling. This is Zach’s first venture into opera; he hopes it isn’t too obvious.
Adam Green studied at St John’s College (Cambridge), the Royal Academy of Music (London), and the National Opera Studio. Winner of the Song Prize at theNational Mozart Competition and the Great Elm Competition, he was awarded the prestigious Ian Fleming and Sybil Tutton Awards.Operatic roles at English National Opera include: Belcore The Elixir of Love, Arbace Idomeneo, Aeneas Dido & Aeneas. Other roles include: Title Role The Barber of Seville (Welsh National Opera), Il Conte Le nozze di Figaro (Musique Cordiale Festival and Iford Festival), Aeneas Dido & Aeneas (Opera du Lille, the Grand Theatre d’Aix en Provence and Opera North), Title Role Don Giovanni (Berbiguieres Festival, France), Title Role Rigoletto (Grange Park Rising Stars), First Mate Billy Budd (with Daniel Harding and the LSO), Retrofire in Jonathan Dove’s Buzz on the Moon (BBC Channel 4), and Judge Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane (with Vladimir Jurowskii and the LPO). Recent engagements include: James Macmillan’s Clemency (Royal Opera House), Tarquinius Rape of Lucretia (Arcola Theatre), Rattus Rattus in John Barber’s We are Shadows (Spitalfields Festival), a revival of Clemency (Scottish Opera), Ford Falstaff (Berbiguieres Festival, France), Escamillo Carmen, cover Father Hänsel und Gretel (Glyndebourne on Tour) and workshops at the Royal Opera House on Richards’Traffick (nothing to do with the so called Lighthill–Whitham– Richards [LWR] model or kinematic wave theory of traffic flow).