Victory Over the Sun – Bucharest
I have directed three different versions Victory Over the Sun for The New Factory of the Eccentric Actor including this one. Previous stagings have featured large casts (up to 40), but this staging in the Romanian capital featured only 5 performers.
The 60-minute version was designed specifically for the Undercloud festival in Bucharest. Performed in English, the work is based on, and inspired by the 1913 Futurist opera of the same name created by Khlebniko, Kruchenykh, Matiushin, and Malevich. Panned by the critics in 1913, but hailed since as a forerunner of the Surrealist and Dadaist movements, Victory Over the Sun is rarely performed. Not least because the original score was thought to be lost for more than seventy years.
The New Factory’s interest in the piece has always been based on the works’ call for the breaking down of traditional ways of performing and staging. Wherever the staging, we have used the original libretto in translation as our starting point, and presented our response, with made sounds, and the rhythm and music of the human voice.
August 2018 – The Undercloud Festival – Bucharest