Staging and direction

Staging and Direction

The BRAVE NEW WORLD, is Martin Butler's second staging of a new Opera Project. His past work has always bridged and combined various artistic and design disciplines, in order to explore the boundaries of the New Dramatic. Although highly interdisciplinary as a maker, the body, its physicality and its representation has always played a central and pivotal role in his work.

Butler has been drawn to the world of Opera, by its inherent combination of disciplines to create a work stronger than its individual arts forms, with Opera being the true pinnacle of interdisciplinary collaboration, but has noticed, a strong lack of physical performability in the abilities of many opera singers, compared to the other dramatic arts. He is striving with this project, as director, to find a true and emotional and physical support for the singers, allowing the voice to be an intergrated tool within the physical expression of the performer, in order to convey to the public a more sincere richer, honest and more accessible communication with the public.

The BRAVE NEW WORLD, deals with three main areas of physicality, the sterile, constructed, mechanical, selfless, emotionless, soma induced state of Act 1, the ritualistic, tribal almost animalistic ego driven world of Act 2, and the clash of these two opposing states in Act 3.

With John the Savage, serving as a tortured poetic innocent soul that unwittingly evokes this chaos, unleashing their lust and desires, leading to his guilt and internal turmoil, that pushes him into taking his own life.

A sacrifice of passion to save a soulless world from the pains of what it is to be human.

The emphasis on the varying states of physical expression will be utilised in all aspects in the direction and staging of the work, with the physical and the performative aspect serving to support the drive of the music and the Libretto, aiming to create a series of highly charged images and scenes that are equally relevant to the dialogues with in the world of contemporary performance practice and applied cutting edge aesthetics from the world of fashion and design.

For some scenes we will collaborate together with the french polish interactive video artist Tomek Jarolim, who has been developing a project called dream machine that allows for the hynopsis of large groups of people, to use interactive video as a another element in the project.