Black and white photograph of the face of a light skinned woman smiling with a closed mouth; the image is cropped just past her nose on the left side

Erin Gee

Samuel Barber Rome Prize
September 3, 2007–August 1, 2008
Profession
Composer
Project title
Sleep Towards Sound: An Opera in Four Acts
Project description

As a culmination of the Mouthpiece series, this work for theater will focus on the dissolution of voice and language, both of the actor and the singers, based on the function of sleep to living beings. Building on years of professional collaboration with my brother, former principal clown for Cirque d’Soleil, Colin Gee, I will combine phonemic text with the Italian Commedia dell’Arte technique of vocal improvisation, Trammeled, and augment this vocal bifurcation through live electronic patches developed in 2006 with Thomas Musil (Institute for Electronic Music, Graz). The story takes place during one day, on a large body of water called the Sound, and four acts correspond to the four divisions of sleep found in the Upanishads: A, U, M, and silence. This is a joint production between the Graz Opera House and the University of Music and Dramatic Arts, Graz.