Chapter 1
1.2.a Science, Story and Stage
As an analogy for the process undergone by the science-based subjects in this work, consider the earth itself, its atmosphere and surface, and how it acts as a lens through which we experience what is both within and beyond it. The light from the sun is reflected, making the external world visible and connecting people to their surroundings by the path of a photon. The daylight, sent directly from the Sun, has undergone several transformations before being received by the retina. As it enters our atmosphere the light and radiation from the sun and more distant stars is scattered and refracted or reflected, making the sky blue, the sunsets red, and changing the perceived position of celestial objects in the sky. Continuing its now altered path it can either travel directly into the eye, become further refracted by some other material or partially absorbed, scattered or reflected by other objects. When I perceive my surroundings in daylight, I do not remember in every instant that this light came from, and was created by, the sun, and that in fact in these moments I am engaged in a direct relationship to the fiery star at the centre of our planetary system. The sun is mediated to me through the prism of the Earth and its atmosphere and surface, yet the relationship is still there and reminding me that the sun really does exist. Beyond the limits of the Earth's atmosphere the sun emits radiation I do not see: X-rays and gamma rays which are shielded from me. The fundamental building blocks of life protect me from experiencing the fullness of what the sun is and creates, yet by experiencing the scattered refracted and reflected light I am able to know that this fullness and reality is there beyond our reach.
This work makes use of this mediated, scattered, refracted and transformative process. The sun acts as the idea or ‘subject’ and the Earth - its atmosphere and material makeup - as the human psyche, our archetypal stories and transpersonal1 experiences, and the operatic stage and performer. Through an anthropomorphic and dramaturgical refraction of the subject its everyday, and even eternal, relationship to us as humans is transmitted to the audience, who become the receiver.
Opera is a prism which allows the audience to receive a subject in many ways, just as raindrops help us to receive all the refracted colours of light in a rainbow. They can receive the subject in opera refracted and scattered through stories and emotions (which in this work are created through properties of the science), the musical journey and the visual representation of it. In receiving the performance the audience becomes a key player in the piece, engaging with the subject on stage, and becoming complicit in its existence.
By looking through my own human tinted glasses, and acknowledging the ways in which these lenses refract, distort and reflect what passes through them, I can start to imagine what exists beyond them and get to sense what that subject might really be in its fullness.2 This work aims to first acknowledge through narrative and characterisation how we as humans see through the lens of our own species, in order to empower the participants and audience to centre their thoughts in the worlds and realities that exist outside of themselves (even if we cannot see them, touch or experience their existence ourselves). It focuses on the abilities of anthropomorphism to disrupt typical views of these “subjects” as being relegated to the realm of science and the interest of only scientific thinkers, re-presenting them in our human selves to refocus the way theatre makers and audiences think about them. Just as I see the sun in everything around me, I can also see all of these subjects, and my relationships to them in the way I relate to other individuals and our species.
In Iain McGilchrist’s seminal text The Master and his Emissary he describes how important imitation has been in the development of human consciousness and intelligence, describing it as ‘imagination’s most powerful path into whatever is Other than ourselves’ (McGilchrist, 2009 : 248). In the same argument he goes on to explain that:
The enormous strength of the human capacity for mimesis is that our brains let us escape from the confines of our own experience and enter directly into the experience of another being: this is the way in which, through human consciousness, we bridge the gap, share in what another feels and does, in what it is like to be that person. This comes about through our ability to transform what we perceive into something we directly experience.
It is founded on empathy and grounded in the body. In fact, imitation is a marker of empathy. (McGilchrist, 2009 : 248)
As a performer the imitation, assimilation and embodiment of what is often described as the other (the non-human in this case) enables the body to enact and explore the inherent drama that lies in the perceived existence of that other. This in turn can help to inform the creation of a narrative that can come out of the physical experience of the body performing the subject.
As a singer one can also consider how the voice engages with the subject through timbre, text and vocal communication. Virginie Magnat explores the ability of the voice and vocality to engage in the experience of creativity. She cites Fox and Alldred’s description of creativity as an 'open-ended flow of affect that produces innovative capacities to act, feel and desire in assembled human and non-human relations'. She suggests that an understanding of the:
ecology of other/more-than-human relations is key to the development of non-anthropocentric perspectives on the affectivity - understood as the transformative power - of the sensorially experienced, non-visual materiality of sonic/aural/phonic and vocal performativity. (2020: 145)
Here she acknowledges from the perspective of a singer and performer that vocal performativity can be a powerful tool to engage in this exploration of the other and our relationship with it.3