Victory Over the Sun – Bucharest

This is the third time I have staged Victory Over the Sun for The New Factory of the Eccentric Actor. Previous stagings have featured large casts (up to 40), but this featured only 5 performers. This 60-minute version was designed specifically for the Undercloud festival in Bucharest. Performed in English, it was 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. We 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