Ava’s House
An opera-folktale for soprano and toy theatre box
A video excerpt of Ava’s House will be screened at the Watershed New Music Showcase
MAY 27th, 2022 at 4 o’clock PM ET
Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts
*
There will be a live online participation option
Tickets available here
Ava’s House is a multidisciplinary piece I am writing for myself and a toy theatre box - a parsing of dreams, birds and old houses, nostalgia, and family lore. Alone onstage, I take on the role of Ava, a woman who dreams recurrently of the house where she formed her earliest memories. The piece weaves together original texts, handmade shadow- and paper-theatre visuals, music for piano, soprano, harmonium/shruti box, and/or recorded sounds, as well as new arrangements of Jewish and Anglo-American folk songs of Ava’s (and my) roots.
In a strange and vivid dream, Ava finds herself in this first home, where she hasn't set foot in 30 years. Each room unfolds to her, like envelopes of childhood stories, releasing old feelings, innocence, mystery, grief, and whimsy in the wafting sounds, sensations, and smells, the flickering shadow images, and symbols that return to her. Gliding and ghostlike, Ava reconstructs her house from the inside, just as a young child comes to know all the nooks and crannies of the first spaces that hold her.
My book sculpture with shadow puppet Ava