~A community of 31 Hudson Valley Artists come together to recreate lucid dreams and spiritual visions through performance art and music~
Elizabeth
Clark’s “Seeds Under Nuclear Winter: An Earth Opera” returns to the
Widow Jane Mine Theater, on August 26 and 27, at 3 PM both days.
The Widow
Jane Mine is at 668 Route 213, Rosendale, NY. The venue phone is 845-658-9900. The website
is CenturyHouse.org. Tickets can be purchased at www.centuryhouse.org/events-2023/
Composer,
producer, harpist/vocalist Elizabeth Clark says “‘The Earth Opera’
has evolved quite a bit since it premiered last summer. We are deepening the
story this year with an incredibly talented and expanded cast and elaborating
upon the work with additional scenes, songs, and dreams.”
“Seeds
Under Nuclear Winter: An Earth Opera” is a recreation of spiritual visions,
dreams, and stories through world and sacred music, performance art, movement,
and light experiments, shared within an immersive and multi-sensory community
experience. The theme centers on “finding light and beauty in the darkest
times, remembering how connected we all are to each other” says Elizabeth
Clark, who wrote the opera while living in a tiny artists cottage in the forest
at Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, Woodstock NY from 2019-2022.
Using world
and modern sacred music, “Seeds Under Nuclear Winter” offers sounds and visions
of otherworldly realms that unfold in a non-linear and timeless path, similar
to the way we dream. Ms. Clark's “Earth Opera” combines an immersive
experience from many creative disciplines including music, performance art, and
movement, as well as experiments with light and audience interaction.
The “Earth
Opera” includes an ensemble of 31 incredibly diverse Hudson Valley
musicians, dancers, choreographers, actors, visual and performance artists.
Elizabeth orchestrated the score for a world music “pit” orchestra of harps,
piano, ethereal choral voices, Native American/Andean flutes and traditional
instruments, Indonesian gamelan, chamber strings, drones and harmoniums,
hammered dulcimer, French horn, waterphone, gongs, and frame drums.
Over 500
people attended performances of “Seeds Under Nuclear Winter: An Earth Opera”
in 2022. Clark wrote the opera to be performed site-specifically within the
Widow Jane Mine and describes the space as “ ….A pre-built post-apocalyptic
set, complete with its own microclimate. It’s like being in an earth womb.”
Audiences
praised: “So beautiful, transcendent, and healing" and “Sacred
moments of pain and hope for the light....a celebration of our universal
humanity. You took us on a journey."
Noted
author, playwright/director, and poet IONE (creative partner/spouse of composer
Pauline Oliveros) writes: “A gifted harpist and vocalist, Elizabeth has created
a rich, mythic tableau that brings forth potent musical stories, revealing the
needs and longings of an entire community.” Woodstock-area Renaissance man
(musician, archivist, writer) Robert Burke Warren said the show was
“Breathtaking... Truly transcendent, moving, like a very intense dream from
which I did not wish to awaken. It put me directly in touch with that part of
me: the dreaming part, the deeper, truer part.”
Financial
support comes from a Community Arts Grant through Arts Mid-Hudson, a
regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of
the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, in
community partnership/fiscally-sponsored by the Ministry of Maat.
